I spent a year living as an English teacher in Istanbul, fumbling my way through the challenges and culture shock that come with being a foreigner in a country you’ve never visited. But expat stories and experiences are different today. Before remote work and digital nomadism became so prevalent, finding community, accommodation, and professional opportunities was a different game. I got a CELTA certification and applied to a job to teach English in person to adults. I lived in a dorm for teachers in Istanbul. I used Google translate in its earliest, flawed form to nurture relationships and try to fit in. I traveled on overnight buses to other parts of Turkey and had wild adventures – I rode a Turkish gulet, took a death-defying hike on the turquoise coast, I explored Cappadocia by motorbike, walked the ruins of Ephesus, and ate more traditional Turkish breakfasts and baklava than should be legal. I fell in love, I made mistakes, and the experience of being there changed me.
Expat stories, then and now
I am a much more conscious and conscientious traveler now and understand that the word expat comes with its own controversies. But it was the word of the time (2010/2011). The expat stories that follow are a series of short personal essays, most of which I wrote and posted to my original travel blog years ago. Come back in time with me.
ISTANBUL, DAY ONE
It’s my first day in Istanbul. I awake from an epic, swirling jet lag nap in my new (temporary) home, a hostel called “Chambers of the Boheme.” The fading sun through the window inspires hunger, either because I haven’t eaten in twelve hours, or maybe it’s survivalist hunter/gatherer instinct – get out and roam while you can still see. I bid farewell to Ahmet, the plump nargile-smoking owner of Boheme. His call of warning to be careful follows me down the street and so does the jet lag fog that set in as soon as I landed. I decide to keep my adventurousness in check, reminding myself this isn’t just a blurry, weeklong tour of a new destination. Plenty of time to explore further afield later. So I settle on a nearby restaurant/bookstore called Ada Cafe (“ada” means “island” in Turkish, which I learn much later).
My eyes are still filled with sleep when I intentionally order something bland from the menu.
As someone dining alone often does, my attention turns to the people sitting around me, which includes a middle-aged couple whose table is so close they may as well be my dinner companions. As soon as the woman speaks, I recognize a flat, mid-western accent, which is a contrast to her blondey-white hair reaching high up to the ceiling. She has a half-liter glass full of Efes beer sitting in front of her, as does the man I presume to be her husband. They look tired.
After a few minutes, out of boredom and loneliness, I ask them how long they’ve been in Istanbul. A week,is the answer. But this was their first day on this side of the Golden Horn, the sliver of water that separates the historic old city from Beyoglu and the modern city (and not to be confused with the Bosphorus Strait, which divides Europe and Asia). They’ll be spending a week up here in Taksim before going back to Michigan.
“We’re having a fabulous time,” she waves at me with her bejeweled hand. They go back to their conversation as my dinner is served. As I chew, naturally I keep eavesdropping.
“Hunneee, if you want to fit Dolmabahce and the hamam in tomorrow morning, I can’t stay out too late tonight!” she teases and giggles, flirtatiously (maybe he isn’t her husband). And she keeps on drinking.
As I sloth back to my “chamber” later, I consider how this city, so huge and on an east-meets-west precipice, is open for business, in any and every sense. Open to the tourists, open to the locals, and to me. I picture Mr. and Mrs. American spending their days slowly and happily visiting the major sights – the mosques, the grand bazaar, the Topkapi Palace. The fancy dinners, the whirling dervish show organized by a tour company, the overpriced kebabs.
I can see their vacation play out in my mind because I’ve read my Lonely Planet guide cover to cover, knowing that I’ll see the things I read about but that as an expat my experience will be different from the average, short-term visitor. It’s the first time since I moved to Honolulu seven years ago that I’ve had the opportunity to see a place this way. Some of the first things on my to do list include figuring out how to get to work on public transportation, and buying hangers. I already have a friend named Fat Ahmet who invited me to come have tea with him every day. My experience, in just 7 hours, had already strayed so far from the tourist track. Traveling in reverse.
So I slump into bed and wonder what trouble the midwesterners are getting up to. Mr is smoking a hookah, and Mrs is learning to belly-dance, I think, as I drift off to sleep. They’ll make it to the Palace tomorrow and then they’ll get steamed up and scrubbed down at the Turkish bath. All before I will. And I live here. Now I live in Istanbul.
THE INSIDE OUT CITY
I studied a map of Istanbul before I arrived. I studied it pretty hard. I kept trying to figure out how an area of over 700 square miles and an estimated 16 million inhabitants that’s separated into three distinct geographic parts by two bodies of water can be classified as one city. The Bosphorus, the bigger of those two bodies, not only separates the city but is the divide between two continents, Europe and Asia. Sure, other European cities like Paris, London and Amsterdam have canals or rivers in their middle, but people cross them on foot bridges, not ferries.
Like a typical New York snob, I compare everything to the “greatest city on earth” and tend to turn my nose up at the differences, and what I see as inadequacies, of other places. In both Manhattan and Brooklyn the largest park, the highest rents, and the fanciest shopping and restaurants are mostly situated in the center, while the waterfront edges tend to be grittier, with only relatively recent gentrification in places like DUMBO, Williamsburg and Hell’s Kitchen. How could I come to terms with a place that looked like it’d been flipped inside out?
What I found was that I gravitated toward the Bogazici (the Bosphorus) more than any other part of the city. The Ortakoy mosque, the ruins of Rumeli Hisari, the beer gardens of Besiktas, the Balik restaurants and pastel gingerbread houses of Arnavutkoy are all some of my favorite places in Istanbul, and all found along the great Bogaz shores. But I don’t only go to the Bosphorus for my own experiences and pleasures…I also go to observe those of others. People go there to sit, to think, to talk, to pray. They go to swim, to walk, to ride bikes.
They tie up their boats on its ports, whether they’re bazillion dollar yachts, rusty fishing boats, or lonely house boats home to the semi-homeless.
They bring romantic partners to break up and to propose, to see the sunset for first dates or anniversaries; they look out at the water as they eat their lunch brought from home in a brown bag, or as they enjoy dinner from a four star fish restaurant.
They catch fish and sell them right there in the same spot. Elderly couples, tired fishermen, mischievous teens, ladies who lunch, and even alien – yabanzi – teachers like me. Together we share the shore.
The guide books all describe how the Bosphorus divides the city, but that’s not the whole story. They never explain how it brings the city together. An inside out version of New York, or right side in, depending on how you see it.
HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR BASKET
For my first two months in istanbul, I laid my head at night in the infamous English Time “lojman.” This is a dormitory for grownups (if that’s what you can call ESL teachers who prefer a semi-vagabond lifestyle to the normalcy of “home,” wherever that may be) with all the usual boarding school rules – a curfew, no visitors, and separate men’s and women’s floors. Each person has their own bedroom, but bathrooms and kitchen facilites are shared. Some people find this communal living to be less than desirable, but I saw dormitory-style living as quick way to make friends in a big, new city.
The lojman is in an old building wedged between one of the busiest, party-est streets in Taksim and a middle/high school with a blaring “bell” that rings out an odd hybrid Mozart tune. It’s run by a middle-aged Turkish couple, Fatih and Fatima. They don’t speak a lick of English, and although they know that most teachers living in the “loj” don’t speak their language either (since it’s mostly filled with new arrivals to Istanbul) it doesn’t stop Fatih from yelling in Turkish and gesticulating wildly in the event of necessary communication. Tenants aren’t given keys to the outside, they must be let in by Fatih or Fatima, or sometimes by their 7 year-old son wearing only his Superman underpants.
On one of my first few days staying in the “loj,” I came back midday after a morning class and rang the bell. And then after a few minutes I rang it again. Nothing. I looked around and saw a man sitting on a wooden straight chair, smirking and smoking, and watching me stand there helpless. After I rang the bell again and waited several more minutes, he yelled up toward the upper floors of the building. Soon, a small basket was being lowered toward my head, and when it was low enough I looked inside and saw a key. I looked up and Fatima’s round face was smiling down at me from the 5th floor. I unlocked the door and then looked back at the smoking man, who nodded his head at the basket, so I put the key back in it and, predictably, Fatima slowly pulled it back up. Thanks, mystery man, why didn’t I think of that?
CAT ON A COLD TURKISH ROOF
I looked out my window the other day to see a cat (kedi in Turkish) on a roof, looking down mournfully at the ground, and my first thought was, “don’t do it, kedi!” Does he feel like a small fish in a big pond here, so many cats to contend with for food, for attention? Maybe life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, kedi? Unsatisfied with life, even in Istanbul, the most homeless cat-friendly city on the planet. In this mega-city, where strangers remain estranged, the general population feels compelled to take care of strays by leaving food on street corners and plucking them from the street for a few minutes of cuddling, dirty paws and all.
Maybe Kedi just lost his job taking tourists through the grand bazaar or his gig selling fish on the Balik Pazari; the unemployment rate here is astounding, afterall. Maybe he suffers from huzun, a word in modern Turkish that – according to Wikipedia, originally comes from huzn in the Quran, a word meaning a feeling of personal insufficiency.
In Orhan Pamuk’s memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, he says this word has come to denote a sense of failure in life, lack of initiative and the tendency to retreat into oneself – something all ‘Istanbullus’ suffer from to some degree, passed down through generations like a bad gene, ever since the collapse of the ottoman empire.
Thankfully, our furry orange friend here backed down and then probably went to go meet some friends in Taksim for Cay and a game of Tavla. Tomorrow’s a new day. Another day, another Lira (or not). Chew on that, Cat.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY (ME)
I went with a few of my fellow English teachers to the popular Taksim expat bar where we sat outside on low stools, resting our 50cl glasses of Efes Pilsen on a small round table. We were soon joined by our Turkish friend Yilderai. The sounds of the night – just like any night in Taksim – surrounded us: clinking glasses, group laughter, traffic and the beats and of Turkish pop by rocker Tarkan blaring from various pubs and clubs. I had my back to an alley, and a sleek black car pulled up at one point and the looks on my companions’ face had me turn around in time to see four young women tumble out wearing all black with red veils. A Turkish bachelorette party, perhaps?
We ordered more Efes and discussed the various ways one can play Tavla, a board game popular with Turks. Soon I noticed a girl at another table staring at us…no, at me. Her eyes looked through me, every few seconds, and then she would look down at something in her lap, her hand making movements on the page. An older waiter stood behind her, admiring whatever she was working on. Eventually she came over and showed me the product – a portrait, pencil on paper, of me. She spoke no English but I gleaned that she was asking for money in exchange for this unsolicited work of art after Yilderai began to argue with her. Ultimately, she gave me the portrait for free. We moved on after that, past the buskers on Istiklal and the rowdy teenagers, and ended up at a grungy rooftop bar. Some began drinking Raki mixed with water, a stronger poison. I stuck with Efes, knowing the night was still young.
A SHORTS STORY in YILDIZ PARK
One day my friend Jenny and I decided to go for a jog in Yildiz Parki, a leafy park on a very steep hill near her place in Besiktas, a neighborhood just north of Cihangir along the Bosphorus. The temperature, abnormally high for December, hovered in the high 50s; normally, I don’t even consider wearing long pants to jog until it drops into the 40s. In Istanbul, however, recreational running elicits stares regardless of attire and so does a woman’s bare calf. Both at the same time? Might as well have an extra head.
On this particular day, I didn’t feel like wearing my running pants, which are made from spandex and really quite tight and revealing anyway. I threw on a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of Nike shorts, which are long and loose compared to what I often used to wear to lope around Central Park. I met Jenny at her door. She noted my “brave” getup. I said that since we were going together, I didn’t feel too weird about my naked knees. And I didn’t…until we ran into the Yildiz Park paparazzi.
We made our way into the park, huffed and puffed at a snail’s pace up the ski slope-grade hill. A weekday in December, the place was nearly deserted. Our company was limited to a few stray dogs napping in the spots of sunlight between the widely spaced trees. But then suddenly there was a woman running toward us, stocky and bundled, with a goofy grin on her face and a camera in one hand. She reached us, and despite the language barrier it was easy to ascertain she wanted a photo of some kind. I looked at Jenny and shrugged, and we threw our arms around each other’s shoulders, falling into a comfortable pose with sorority-style smiles. I could soon tell tell this wasn’t totally satisfactory when the woman’s look turned confused, but she snapped a few photos anyway. Then she held her camera out at Jenny, who started laughing. “ahh, sure,” Jenny said to her, taking the camera and stifling a laugh, and winked at me. “She wants a picture with you in your shorts.” Shocked, I let this stranger loop her elbow through mine and tried to smile as we posed together for the full-length shots.
Did I mention yildiz means “star” in Turkish? How fitting. I felt like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, a starlet getting caught departing a vehicle sans undergarments. My thighs – how shocking!
Jenny’s conclusion? “You’re going to end up in a frame on that lady’s living room wall.” She’s probably right. Needless to say, I always stuck to pants after that.
I HATE TO INTRUDE BUT…
If I ever live alone, the contrast to my many and varied living situations in Istanbul will be a cacophony of silence and stability. Four homes in ten months and none of these were my own, not even close. The common theme was communal living, to which I am no stranger after six years of navigating the world of tiny manhattan apartments and filling them with craigslist roommates.
In Istanbul I shared a living space with, in chronological order: 1) Ten other English teachers and one very dysfunctional Turkish family, 2) A Turkish girl who never stopped smoking and never left the couch, and a French girl whose name I never knew and who rarely came home, 3) Two hard-partying American girls, their two even more badly-behaved cats, and an imprisoned guinea pig, 4) My Turkish boyfriend, whose parents came to stay for two weeks in the apartment, the size of which rivaled those in Manhattan. Toward the end of my time in Turkey when my boyfriend told me his parents would be staying “just one more week” and I broke down in tears I realized that for ten months privacy had eluded me to the point of producing battle scars.
In my first abode, dormitory-style housing set up by English Time for new teachers, I had my own room on a same-sex floor in a four story building run by a Turkish family of three (husband, wife, young son) who always seemed to be yelling at each other. In those first few days I didn’t have a working phone, and since I was akin to a baby deer – confused about where I was supposed to be and how to get there, what to do, etc – English Time made an effort to help me out.
This help came in the form of phone calls from my Head Teacher to Fatih, the husband in our dorm host family. I would hear thunderous commotion coming in the direction of my room and the door would fly open with no warning. Fatih, or occasionally his 8 year-old son, would bound in and thrust the phone at my face, a look of both terror and expectation on their face. Sometimes they’d shout at me in Turkish. Nothing Ian called about ever merited such panicked desperation in getting the phone to me, but with both the language barrier and some clearly innate hysteria, asking them to knock was out of the question. Thus, I learned to lock my door while changing or napping, as did the ten other women who lived in the building. Lack of respect for my personal space was not the reason I moved, it was more to escape living with chaperones and a curfew, but I assumed that a new living situation would beget a little privacy. How wrong I was.
Home #2 was modern and bright, and my bedroom, while tiny, had a large picture window with a sweeping, southeast view of the Bosphorus. Surreya was a Turkish 20-something who claimed to work in advertising, though she spent most of her time pouting on the living room couch with a cigarette in one hand and her phone in the other, texting, twittering, whatever. Her English and my Turkish skills were on par, so while we were cordial and friendly with one another, there wasn’t a whole lot of roommate-style comaraderie. One weekend, her mother came from Izmir for a visit. I became privy to her presence in the apartment when I awoke early on a weekday morning to my door swinging open and a middle-aged woman’s grinning face in mine saying “canim benim!!” (my darling!!) and some other things in Turkish I couldn’t understand.
A voice came from the kitchen, Surreya’s protesting “Anne! anne!” (mom! mom!) and then, thankfully, mom disappeared. A few minutes later, my embarrassed roommate came to my door, with a knock this time, and a peace offering – a plate of delicious-looking dolma (ground meat, rice and spices wrapped in grape leaves). I had no choice but to shuffle out in my pajamas, accept, and eat. I sat awkwardly between them on the sofa, smiling, nodding and stuffing my face, trying to pretend that Mama Turk busting into my room hadn’t violated the privacy I believed I was paying for with my 750tl per month. Not long after that a more serious break-in occurred in the form of a 3AM masked thief. And thus it was time to move again.
I will not delve into a lot of detail about the third place I hung my hat, how unpleasantly odiferous and inhabitable it was; suffice it to say someone needed to tell the American females I shared it with that being a scruffy, expatriated English teacher or hippie human rights lawyer does not require one to live in squalor. My nocturnal roommates always seemed to be either sleeping or inebriated, so my conclusion was that they were never awake and sober enough to notice the stench. In addition to the girls, let’s call them Wayne and Garth, there were two unhappy cats who roamed freely, and one guinea pig who lived a bleak life in a cage on one bedroom floor.
One day Garth, the guinea pig warden, left her bedroom door open and I caught a glimpse inside. Garth’s bed – a bare mattress on the floor – resembled the frothy top of a cappuccino: white lumpiness surrounding a sunken brown spot. The real problem, however, was the cats, filthy but smart, who knew that by lifting their paws up and bearing their weight forward, my bedroom door would open easily. The first indication that this was happening was when I found a drawer full of cat fluff mixed in with my sweaters; the second was finding excrement on the floor. A padlock on the door was a simple remedy, but they never gave up – at night I’d sometimes hear hopeful scratching and see paw shadows below the door. Knowing the toxic environs outside the sanctuary of my room, I can’t say I blamed them for trying.
Finally, I lived with my very sweet Turkish boyfriend who lived with his parents (as is the norm for unmarried Turks). I moved in shortly after they left to stay for the summer at a seasonal condo, with promises from him that they wouldn’t be returning until the weather got colder again. As adorable and sweet and generous to me as they were, I feared spending time alone with them due to the awkwardness that hovered in the air over our language barrier. But when they came back to stay for a couple of weeks and I had some time off, being at home alone with them was an unavoidable situation.
Despite my prior experiences with the dorm, the mom, and the cats, I foolishly thought if I shut the door, it would stay that way. How naive! I also forgot to consider the fact that the family’s wet laundry was hung on lines off the balcony, which one could only reach by passing through my room. The upside was that when A’s mother did jolt suddenly through the door, she would bring with her a bowl of nuts, a bag of fruit, candy, etc. A’s anne was constantly concerned that I wasn’t eating enough, her worry communicated to me through body language – rubbing her belly and pantomiming the spooning of food into her mouth, a look of question on her face. If there is one thing the Turks know, it’s how to feed their families and guests. Never alone and always a full stomach; I guess there are worse things.
A WHIRL AWAY
I had heard the term Whirling Dervish before I arrived in Turkey, but usually in joking reference to a rambunctious child or a dog chasing its own tail. I did some research and learned that the order of the Dervishes in Turkey (because there are different kinds in different countries) are affiliated with Sufism, a sort-of sect of Islam. I’m no expert on Islam but I did know there were two main sects – Sunni and Shia. The Sufis, by contrast, sometimes consider themselves one or the other of these two main groups, but also occasionally identify just as being Sufi. Some basic elements to the Mevelevi order, found in Turkey, are mysticism, love and knowledge achieved through their religious whirling ceremonies where they attempt to achieve religious ecstasy. This only intrigued me more.
When I learned that it was possible to buy tickets to watch a ceremony and see the dervishes whirl in their bright white costumes, I put this activity toward the top of my list of tourist attractions to partake in once I acclimated to life in Istanbul. Once settled, however, after I had started my job teaching English to Turkish adults, had made Turkish friends, and consistently passed by signs aimed at tourists charging large amounts of money for these tickets, I was turned off by the hokeyness of it. I also learned that the sama, the religious whirling ceremony, was not meant to be entertainment, and so felt it might be offensive to attend.
For several months I lost interest in going; I felt fully and adequately immersed in Turkish culture anyway, and asking questions about religion over a meal in a friend’s home or in the classroom seemed so much more authentic. So it wasn’t until ten months after I arrived in Turkey, when my friend Rachael was coming to visit in July, that I suddenly had a renewed interest in going to see the Dervishes do their thing. I signed us up through Les Arts Turcs, a reputable organization that aims to bridge gaps in art and culture through tours and events.
It was a little odd for me as a resident to attend something I would still call fairly touristy. There were lots of brochures, complimentary cay, and some heavily perfumed tourists who sat right in front of us. But once the traditional sufi music started to play, courtesy of a live band, the room full of about 150 – which was cavernous and chilly, the atmosphere created by the stone walls and soft red lighting – turned silent and suspenseful. There were eight dervishes, all men, about equal numbers young and middle aged.
They moved slowly and in perfect sync, starting to spin one at a time and moving in gentle patterns across the round stage. The whole thing lasted about twenty minutes – hard to believe it is humanly possible for a person to move in circles for that long with their eyes shut. There was one very petite young guy who I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. The beautiful and even grace with which he spun around were otherworldly and magical.
Beautiful, gentle, magical…these are not words always associated with Islam. I was glad I went and am able to share it with others.
BANANA CHICKEN
As my time living in Istanbul came to a close in 2011, I made it a point to return often to some of my favorite spots. Places I loved to eat, drink, sit, listen, watch.
One of these such spots was Klemuri, a peaceful and bohemian oasis of an eatery set of a side street near busy Istiklal Caddesi in Beyoglu. My friend Iana had introduced me to Klemuri after reading about their delicious Black Sea-style cuisine, and one dish in particular had gotten rave reviews: something called Banana Chicken. I was skeptical, but it was heavenly. Sliced chicken in a warm, creamy sauce with banana chunks and a hint of spice. After the first trip there I was hooked. I ate it so many times in my last few weeks in Istanbul I almost got sick of it…almost. And I’ve craved it ever since.
When I found myself back in Istanbul years alter on a 3-day layover between New York and Bangkok, I basically bee-lined for Klemuri and that dreamy Banana Chicken. Inside the place was exactly the same. Warm and dimly lit, with brightly colored picture collages and artfully placed mirrors on the walls, mismatched patchwork place mats, and oddly placed clunky tables. I looked at the menu. No Banana Chicken. I was at a loss. Then my friend Niko suggested I ask. What’s the harm in asking?
I went up to the waitress and told her that five years ago I used to come by and eat Banana Chicken a few times a week. Oh yeah, she said, we don’t have Banana Chicken anymore. The cook who put it on our menu left. I joked, in my New York way, do you have the recipe? And she said oh sure. I’ll write it down for you. She gestured to an empty table, told us to have a seat, and she found a piece of paper and pen.
I realized then that I recognized her. She’s been slinging plates in this little restaurant for more than half a decade. She smiled at me and wrote down the ingredients and all the steps necessary to cook Banana Chicken. We laughed a little over a few English words she tripped over translating. I’m still not sure if she meant sour cream or heavy cream, so I’ll try it both ways. There was a man there, maybe the owner, giving her side-eye. He probably wasn’t too happy his waitress was handing two potential customers the recipe for a dish they can go make at home without paying the restaurant a dime.
I folded up the piece of paper and we said goodbye and she thanked me for coming. SHE thanked ME. She could have pretended she didn’t remember the Banana Chicken, or the recipe. She surely didn’t have to smile and write it down for me, with nothing to gain from doing so. I was so bowled over by her kindness I forgot to ask her name. So if you’re in Istanbul go to Klemuri. Tip your waitress. Or just make some Banana Chicken and be nice and generous to other people even when you don’t have to be.