I didn’t learn as much about Turkish culture as I have about other places I’ve lived in, mainly because I didn’t really manage to make any Turkish friends while I was there. My options mainly consisted of Steve’s colleagues, who were fine and seemed very nice, but for some reason people in the teaching English world only seem able to talk about teaching English. Something that would come to irritate the hell out of me very quickly.
Steve and I also didn’t manage to do hardly any travelling around the country because he worked six days a week and only had Friday off, making it difficult to do any weekend trips. I’m amazed we even saw anything of Istanbul because after working a ridiculously long workweek like that, Steve was just exhausted and would want to stay home and rest. Somehow, we never found the motivation to do much of anything around the city and plus we lived so damn far away from everything, it was more of a hassle than just being really boring and staying home.
The one trip we did go on was to Erdek, an ancient seaport that is now home to many Turks’ summer beach homes. When we finally made it to the Archeological Museum, we saw many of the amazing ruins that had once been in Erdek, and in fact it was one of those remarkable places that had been home to almost all of the civilizations that passed through Turkey. But, of course, when we were there it was home only to hotels, kebab stands, shops and a lot of people at the beach enjoying their summer holiday. Because tattoos are considered sacrilegious by Muslims (and oddly enough for the Jewish faith as well), and also Muslim culture believes that women with tattoos are prostitutes, I indeed felt uncomfortable with my many adornments. I refused to go swimming, I think I must have worn a tank top outside our house once in the entire time I lived there, and that one time I was with Steve. Anyway, I hate the beach. I just went because at the time our apartment was disgusting and what the hell was I going to do alone in Bakirkoy?
While walking around Erdek, we came upon a truly odd sight. A children’s party, though not a birthday party, where the young boy being celebrated sat upon a garish white throne, strewn with gold and silver streamers, while everyone else danced and ate and had a whale of a time. We must have passed a dozen of these parties in Erdek, and our guide Hakan soon told us that these were traditional Turkish circumsicion parties. Oh yes. Turkish boys are not circumcised until they are 9 or 10 and they make a huge party out of it. The boy is ceremonially circumsized to symbolise his becoming a man and then he wears a white outfit, not unlike a soldier’s uniform, with an Ottoman-esque cap, sits on a white throne looking miserable while everyone else parties until who knows when. The icing on the cake is that when the women prepare the traditional rice, they will throw the displaced foreskin into the mix and the person who gets it in their bowl will have very, very good luck. Oh yeah. And they thought Lorena Bobbit was crazy.
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