Turkish Hands: Gesturing in Turkey
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Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast

7/3/2014

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That title is brilliant! Hillarious!  Thank www.StrategicStraits.com for it. 
I will give one example, of what it means to feel cultural norms impact at even the most basic level, and then another of what these differences meant to me in practice as I struggled to open and run my own preschool abroad. 

1. In a tiny airport somewhere near the Black Sea in Turkey, knowing I had to find perhaps 8 different modes of transportation for the next leg of my journey to the Kackar (Caucasus Mountains), I decided to take advantage of the bathroom in the airport before there were no more bathrooms to take advantage of. As I waited my turn for the one stall this airport boasted, I found myself praying quietly that it would be an "a la Franca" toilet, i.e. a commode one can sit on--apparently the Turks think the French invented it. When the door finally opened into this very public hallway and I saw the "French" toilet, I breathed a sigh of relief that my thigh muscles would be spared and my shoes and ankles would not carry the mark of a trick I had not yet mastered. Meanwhile, the mother and daughter pair in front of me let out a disappointed "tsk tsk," that sound of disapproval Turks have perfected by sending the tongue to the roof of the mouth over and over. "Shoot, it's not an "a la Turka" toilet. Should we wait until we get home?"
And their answer was a unanimous "yes!" 

2. I had nine staff in my international preschool in Turkey: Eden's Garden International. Three were either British or American, and six were Turkish: a cook, gardener, cleaning lady, assistant teachers, etc. We would have staff meetings once a week, which was a totally novel experience for the Turkish employees who had never been included either in a participatory decision-making process nor in very open and direct sharing of opinions, thoughts and feelings.  In the end, while I may have contributed much and more to these staff members, what I learned from this experience was much more valuable.  Everyone would be assigned new duties in the summer months to prepare for summer camp, and we would all pitch in. On the first day of camp, when the kids are stowing their bathing suits for the afternoon inflatable pool extravaganza, I ask the cook if she has filled the pool yet and she answers that it still has a hole in it. 
Taking the pool to get patched had been her assigned duty, and after visiting a shop in town, the one repair idea we had come up with during the meeting, and finding they couldn't help, the pool had been left deflated and unprepared. To her, she had done what was asked of her: visited a repair shop. To me, she had not done what was asked of her: fixed the pool.  That's when I discovered this invaluable truth: initiative is not innate, it is learned, and it is not currently being taught in Turkey. There were exceptions, and when I found them I kept them for as long as I could, but the assumption that whoever saw something missing or needing to be done would either do it or alert the right person who needed to know, was a completely culture-based one that needed attention  in order to work without meltdowns and disappointments. 
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Uniquely Tara in Turkey

8/30/2011

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I had one of those uniquely "Tara in Turkey" days that is the direct chemical reaction of my personality mixed with Turkish misinformation and kind stewardship. The element in my personality that I refer to here is my chronic indecisiveness, or lack of trust in my own decision-making process. Compound this with my habit of waiting to do something until the last minute so that I need to rush, and you have created a space for many, many mistakes. Now combine these bad habits with misinformation garnered from the general Turkish public wishing to be helpful or Turkish government offices wishing to be unhelpful, and you have created several hours of waste.

It started with me rushing off to my dentist appointment, son in tow, on the wrong day. Of course I didn't know that at the time.
Allow me to welcome you into my brain: do I take (1) the bus or (2) the dolmuş, metro, walking combination? Well obviously I want the bus. But remember, the shortest way is the one you know, "en kısa yol bildiğin yoldur" and I knew the tri-ped way. The reason I'm familiar with the longer route, in fact, is because I already took the bus to the same place last week without actually arriving there. It involved going one hour away from the city, a ride filled with clues that something wasn't quite right, and then an hour back to my starting point bringing me physically no closer to my destination, but much closer to the shedding of the ego. Yes, the guy at the wrong Dental Hospital told me: herşeyde bir hayır vardır, or: there is a "good" in everything, which is the kind of stuff I love to hear because it makes me feel good when I get lost. By the way, I just spent 20 minutes trying to look up the more figurative translation online, but alas, it produced only crap. Please suggest a better one. I always took this expression to mean: "everything happens for a reason that we can't always know." Anyway, I spent the second hour-long bus ride trying to figure out what that could be. (1) I really liked the woman I sat next to on the way there, with her smartness, or, in other words, her quick understanding of my needs, jokes, questions: usually my encounters are full of misunderstandings or questions targeted at me: how did I learn Turkish, where am I from, is Turkey more beautiful or America... She had none of those, and still I learned about her that she worked on shifting nights shifts at a bakery, had recently moved, had a 6 year old daughter and really was one of those rare Turks that follow how my brain works and guesses my needs before I state them. And yet, she was a covered factory worker. I love when my presumptions are knocked to the floor and swallowed up in flour. (2) Plus, I got a chance to listen to my downloaded book: Infinite Possibilities and get inspired. Of course the first part of the second hour was full of heat and crankiness, but that was soon replaced with a bit of (3) laughing at my own expense, thus the ego shattering. The end of that story is that I got back almost literally to my starting point, 2 hours later, and this time took the metro and then walked about a mile to the dentist, only to make an appointment for the next week.
Back to the more recent past: We walked to the bus stop/ dolmuş stand with mixed intentions, still undecided about the route, and my own pressure on myself, both b/c we're running late and I know we'll be really late with the triped solution and possibly not as late with the bus, though of course my success rate with that mode of transportation does not encourage me to try again, makes me short and grumpy. So just as we're about to get on a bus, I remember the warning: "en kısa yol bildiğin yoldur," causing me to hop in the first empty dolmuş I see and take the route I had taken before through trial and error. We ended up being hot, sweaty and 45 minutes late. Luckily, we were there on the wrong day! On the right day, we took the right bus, in ease and comfort, and only arrived 30 minutes late. The "kind stewardship" I mentioned at the beginning corresponds to all the advice and misdirection I get when I ask about the "yol." It's far, or it's close, or you can't walk it, take a bus... I get opinions, not facts, and still I ask and still I'm surprised that I don't trust myself more than the false information I am about to receive. I guess i just really love Turkish roulette.
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Unconditional Self Knowledge

7/25/2011

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I know it's a tricky title, isn't it? Usually it's self-love we talk about as being without conditions. Well one is a prerequisite for the other. You got to love all of you and you can't until you see it and accept it. And this is me looking in a mirror. I had to put on some good sufi music to make my plunge a gentle and forgiving one, as much as possible. No one said this was easy. Of course I love making things hard, that's one of my specialties.  The starker and harsher and more painful it is, the more suffering involved, the more value it has. Having fun? That's a waste of time, your's and mine.  I don't mean to mock it, though I'd love to. I do it mostly without awareness. See, I spend a lot of time making people look in the mirror, not letting them get away with anything. And I've always thought that included me, but I may not have been completely straight up with myself. Let me name some of my less savoury parts out loud (you know what I mean).  I have violence. I've been violent with my son.   I've been unkind to myself. I've tried to get people, mostly men, to rescue me. It's kind of like the way I relate to them. Thing is, lately, or almost as long as I remember, I've believed I need rescuing. Save me, save me. I can't do it alone. I need help. Then I look at myself, and I do most things alone. I have some really good friends, but I spend most of my time alone--even without strangers around. Let me not say most, but half?  But let's get back to the violence. I've been agressive, blaming, and really really angry-like teeth clenching and wanting to throw a book at him. His smirk, his dismissal of me, it's so intolerable. Is that a special weakness I have?  Do all moms feel that when confronted with their tiny, it really hurt to bring you out of my uterus, children telling them to just be quiet and saying "no, I won't help you; you gave me a choice, didn't you?"  I'm sure all moms would be a little hurt, bummed out, surprised, but not all would press their child to the ground and sit on them and yell at them to stop this back talk.  And I take my own unhappiness or anxiety or stress out on my son. Often. He either receives it or gets blamed for it.  Now I know what my teacher would say: he'd say that unconditional self-knowledge means knowing all my parts, including my more admirable human ones, as well as my divine nature.  But let me be sure I'm covering the big uglies, wihout lingering over them or flagellating myself too much.  Shoot, I just had a beer and spoke to an old friend of 13 years who lives and teaches in Korea at Seoul University and I think that's all I've got in me for now.  Just now, ya Latifa, that you are mahbuba, beloved. And forgive yourself.  But I have this old habit of self-blame and bummed-outedness. How can I just give that up to be light and grateful and happy?  I'll let you know when I don't need that to be part of myself anymore, okay? with love,
Tara
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First Post!

7/16/2011

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While these entries will have what appears to be only a vaguely marginal connection to Turkish Hands, you can be assured, as I remind myself, that the subterranean connection runs deeper than you or I even know. There is a genetic history running through my veins of more than 200 years, and maybe as long as 500 on my father’s side. Add to that at least 100 more on my son’s father’s side and our combined face to face experience of Turkey for over 12 years, and you will understand that anything I have to say is colored by this heritage.  It’s what makes me who I am not, as much as who I am, and leaves me in the position of perpetual outlier and observer.  As I sit in a local library in Arlington, VA writing this, I can watch families of bike riders take off their helmets, park their bikes at bike racks, buy yogurt and berry smoothies and play outdoor chess with King-size pieces that you barely have to bend over to move.  I’m hooked up to the library’s own wi-fi service so I can blog this.  There are people who drove here to eat at one of 15 restaurants, get a massage, visit the theater or have a leisurely Saturday coffee with a friend.  I look at this, alone in a library chair, and wonder what my place is out there. I wonder how that fills people up and if I would be filled up if I picked a destination and a place to spend money and moved from activity to activity.  I suppose it would because that’s what so many people do. 

If this were Turkey, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting in a public library or using a computer attached to free public wi-fi. I might be blogging from an internet café, but I wouldn’t be riding a bike, and if someone daring enough to do so came by, he wouldn’t be wearing a helmet or parking it anywhere but a pole or tree. I wouldn’t be watching people playing outdoor chess, though I would probably be able to watch them having a picnic replete with blankets, aunts, uncles, neighbors, their own grills or kerosene devices, a giant watermelon, plastic bottles of coke and fanta and a bunch of trash that they’ll leave behind because there won’t be a garbage can anywhere in sight. 

Do you see what I’m getting at?

In Turkey people would be in groups on their day off, spending the time with food and friends, while in Arlington they’ll spend it alone or in tiny family units and there will be an objective and a goal and consumerism involved.  It will be an activity with a clear end time.


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    Author

    Tara Alisbah is a half-Turkish, (dad Bilsel) half American (mom Lorenda) third child of four (Kathryn, Cemil, Nimet) with a son, Eden, and a penchant for digging deep and writing well. Her son is in the 'tween' stages of development and is creating all kinds of learning opportunities for her. Occasionally she is able to laugh about it through her tears.

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