Days 28-34: Question Time with the Kaiser

A couple of weeks ago, I gave one of my classes a writing assignment. I thought it would be simple and easy. I listed nine famous and infamous world leaders on the board, and I asked the students to select three of them. They were supposed to write down one question per leader that they would ask if they had an opportunity to meet the leader. So imagine my surprise when two students pick Hitler and asked a nearly identical question: “Why didn’t you finish killing all the Jews when you had the chance? Now look what they’ve done – they created Israel.”

Oh. My. God.

I just let it go. There was no sense in calling them out individually. However, I decided a lesson in tolerance was in order, but you can’t just come out and discuss anti-Semitism. You probably couldn’t even come out and discuss tolerance and discrimination. So instead I decided to teach a lesson on stereotypes. I gave them 35 adjectives and made them look the words up in the English-Turkish dictionaries so they were certain of the meaning. Then I made “American,” “British,” “Japanese,” and “Turkish” categories. We went through the adjectives one by one, and they assigned it to the people they thought it best fit. Americans fared better than the British, but naturally the Turks came out on top.

In order to teach them about perspective, I told them I was going to go through the Turkish list and mark off the ones I thought were not true. I eliminated “friendly,” “respectful,” “lazy,” and “tolerant.” Of course this caused a huge uproar. For a minute I thought I might lose control of them. When I got them to settle down, I explained that my experience was not that people were friendly because people glared at me when I walked down the street; they weren’t respectful because my students were rude to me in class; they weren’t lazy people because work hard here; and then we came to tolerance. I asked them, “What if I told you I’m Jewish?”

They looked panicked and confused. They exchanged uncertain glances. “Well?” I asked. One of them said, “I would kill you.” But then clarified later that he meant, “They would kill you,” whoever “they” is. I asked, “Am I not the same person I was before? Didn’t you all like me? Wasn’t I your friend and your teacher? So what’s different now?” I tried to explain to them that stereotypes are good things and bad things, and that you shouldn’t judge people based on ridiculous things like that. In the end, I think they understood that anti-Semitism is not a hallmark of a tolerant society.

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On Friday, someone finally invited me to their house for dinner! The headmaster of our school asked if I would join him, the other remaining American and Dr. Bayrak at his home for dinner. I was ecstatic! Finally, no more eating at the school or restaurants – I could actually sit down and enjoy a meal in someone’s home with their family. Sort of.

Dr. B drove us over to his house, which was actually an apartment. Apartment living seems to be the way to go here, but that’s not really a huge surprise because this is a mountain valley with somewhat limited space. The headmaster’s wife, children and father-in-law greeted us at the door, and they all seemed really excited to see us. We slipped our shoes off, and we were shown into the living room. Then Dr. Bayrak had to leave to go meet some member of Parliament for something, so we sat there for 1 ½ hours staring at each other and making limited small talk.

The living room doubled as the headmaster’s library, and he had an entire wall covered with bookcases full of hardback books. Of course my eyes immediately fall on the ten or so volumes written by Sayid Qutb, the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-American Muslim writer whose writings form the foundation for the Muslim Brotherhood. I don’t necessarily have a problem with Qutb or the Brotherhood, but they often seem to have a problem with us. Qutb’s time in American in particular seemed to fill him with a special sort of virulent anti-Americanism (and that was the America of the 1950’s!).

Dr. B finally arrived from his meeting with the MP, and the headmaster’s neighbor and best friend, who despite being a teacher didn’t seem to speak a lick of English, also joined us. The headmaster spread out a tablecloth on the floor and then put a low table on top of it. We all sat down around the table and tucked our feet under the tablecloth so that it functioned more like a bib/napkin and prevented things from dropping on the floor. I soon realized this was going to be quite a tradition meal, as in the men would sit at the table and eat while the women and children were relegated to the kitchen. We didn’t lack for conversation at our floor-table but they were much more lively – occasionally I could hear the sounds of their laughter and chatter drifting into the living room.

Turkish Lentil Soup

The meal started off with the traditional salad of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, lemon and…something else that I couldn’t identify, along with lentil soup. In my mind, when he put the lentil soup in front of me, I screamed, “Oh, Jesus Christ, not another bowl of lentil soup. I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE,” flew into a rage and flipped the table over. In reality, I just sat there and ate the soup. God was merciful in that his wife turned out to be an excellent cook and the soup was spiced so well that I suffered through it without making a face. Along with the salad/soup, we also had fresh cherry juice, and it was absolutely divine.

Pepper & Tomato Dolmeh

Next came the dolmeh, my all-time favorite Middle Eastern dish. When his wife brought the plates to the table, I think I might have actually squealed a little bit. There are all sorts of dolmeh, but it’s basically a vegetable stuffed with a meat/rice mixture and steamed. My favorite kind is wrapped in grape leaves, and we happened to be treated to those. But the other dolmeh was a bell pepper looking thing. In the back of my head, I freaked because I hate bell peppers. But I couldn’t sit there and not eat it, so I sucked it up and ate it – turns out it wasn’t a bell pepper but some kind of Turkish pepper that tasted nothing like a bell pepper. It was delicious!

Following the dolmeh was manti, my favorite Turkish dish. Manti are mini-dumplings stuffed with lamb meat, and they’re covered in a garlic yogurt sauce. On top of the yogurt they pour a butter/red pepper mixture, which at first I thought was grease because that’s what it looks like. Our host controlled the portions, so our bowls were heaping with manti! After that came fried chicken and rice, which I thought would surely be the last dish. But no. I forgot about dessert!

Manti - Turkish dumplings in yogurt sauce

Dessert was two huge pieces of some kind of baklava I’ve never seen, a big scoop of ice cream and two little cloves. After finishing the meal, you’re supposed to chew on the cloves for a bit to freshen your breath and then swallow them to help with digestion. And that concluded the meal….for a little bit.

We sat around and talked about this and that before turning our attention to my post-teaching travel plans. They were all giving me advice on where to go and what to see. I decided to just travel in southeastern Turkey, Georgia and Armenia and forgo the rest of the country. My luggage was somewhat of a barrier because I thought I’d have to leave it in Gümüşhane, which meant I would have to come back here to collect it before catching my flight to Istanbul from Trabzon. Having none of that, the headmaster made a call and summoned the services of his best friend in Trabzon, who agreed to store my luggage and then collect me from the bus station, give me my luggage and drive me to the airport to see me safely off to Istanbul. He also made a few calls and discovered a way to cross into Armenia even though the border is supposedly sealed (I’ll give it a try before going the more traditional route through Georgia).

Çay (Turkish tea)

Then the tea arrived! Of course no occasion is complete without five cups of çay (we each literally drank five cups). We also had watermelon and honeydew to go along with it, which, thankfully, was the last food we saw in the evening. We rolled ourselves down to the car and when Dr. B forgot to take off the parking brake he made a joke about the car being weighed down by our full stomachs.

Hands down the best evening I’ve had here – ever!