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Flattered
Allahallah! Oh God! A flat tire. And right in the middle of Istanbul rush hour on a busy main road! After one year in the country these exclamations sounded exotically vehement to me. I spat them out like a vicious mantra, pounding on my steering wheel in frustration.
There I was, stuck on the side of the road in my newly acquired car with its newly acquired flat tire. Until that point I was generally quite chuffed with how well I’d settled in to my life in Turkey. Mind you, I had yet to face any crisis like this and was dismayed to realize that my adaptation to the culture did not include the ability to extricate myself from roadside emergencies. Marooned and irritable, I thought to myself, “Here I am an independent 30 year old Londoner, a long-term car owner, an educator capable of running a large international pre-school in a foreign country, yet I have no clue how to change a flat.â€
It was dusk on a chilly October evening, I was at least half an hour from my home in the wooded district of Tarabya. My Turkish under these circumstances was certainly not enough to get me home.
I began to envision the charade-style conversation I would need to have to beg help from a kind passer-by. I knew from experience the slim likelihood of flagging down assistance during rush hour. On a similar roadside in the United Kingdom I had waited ages for some passing motorist to take pity on me, also hoping nobody would stop lest they be some kind of axe-wielding maniac.
On the Istanbul roadside, in my rapidly cooling car, I pondered my dilemma. I was going to have to approach some strange man on the street and implore help, possibly inviting trouble and danger. Was he going to expect some type of recompense for his trouble? Would I have to politely pledge a dinner date? Frustration boiled over to anger.
Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, but I had to steel myself against being lulled into a sense of false security by the frequent selfless acts of my neighbors and local merchants, who were most likely just looking out for the resident foreigner. Turks are a generous people, but, I cautioned myself, probably only to people they know, or know they will see again.
There was a sharp rap on the car window. I looked up and saw four sturdy men standing by the passenger side, beckoning for me to get out. The way the men dressed, worn sports jackets over cardigans, told me that they were not wealthy, and probably did not live in the elite area that surrounded us. I guessed they were taxi drivers from the nearby taxi stand. This did not necessarily set me at ease.
What would happen next? In my burgeoning understanding of the Turkish people and their ways I had met with many acts of hospitality in my first year, but I had also become keenly aware of gender roles within Turkish society-- specifically how foreign woman were perceived. Being a woman full of bonhomie, it is my preference to smile and chat with people I meet throughout the day. However, in Turkey I quickly I learned that my guileless approach towards strange men should change, must change. Taxi drivers, waiters, street vendors, the man clicking his worry beads at the newsstand -- their interpretation of my natural warmth often varied wildly from its intention. My innocent friendliness seemed to many men to infer that I was - well, how could I put it -- open to offers.
All my senses alert now to any cues as to how I should react, I got out of the car and walked round to the passenger side, wondering what to do with these four taxi drivers. Smile and flirt was something I might’ve tried in England to cajole British men to help me, to make them see me as a damsel in distress. But I knew that such encouragements with Turkish men held a much more serious meaning, perhaps a lingering promise. I could pretend that a male friend was on his way to help me, to keep the men on their best behavior….
Before I had formulated my strategy, one middle-aged man with a large moustache above an unsmiling mouth gruffly took my keys from me. As the men discussed in impenetrable Turkish what would be done, my mind raced with British tabloids, stories of criminal deception. Were they deciding which one would tie me up and which one would throw me in the trunk? Or maybe where they could take my brand-new car to have its plates changed before it was sold on the black-market?
As I conjured nightmare scenarios, the men rolled up their sleeves. Here it comes! I closed my eyes. Seconds passed. Nothing happened. I opened one eye.
They were crouched on the pavement. The man with the moustache seemed to be the alpha male of the party, and under his instruction the men had opened my boot to retrieve the spare tire and necessary tools that I hadn’t even considered trying to use myself. The Turks then skilfully jacked up the car, extracted the punctured tire, swiftly replaced it and returned the car to the road surface.
Mission completed, the man with the moustache handed my keys back to me. I lingered by the passenger side door, keys in hand. Did they expect something from me? Money? My number? Worse? I summoned some courage and smiled at them. They smiled back, so I braved a bigger smile and used my meagre Turkish to thank them but they humbly deflected it, each holding a hand to his chest repeating “Bir şey değil†-- it’s nothing. Then the pack began to ramble back down the road together, lighting up cigarettes as they went.
I gratefully climbed back in the car to make my way home. I was thrilled to be on my way. I put the key in the ignition, and then stopped, staring out the window. There had been no pressure for a dinner date. No questions about where my husband was. No advances of any kind. These men had wanted nothing in return for their help. They hadn’t even waited for me to seek them out. As I pulled out into traffic on my new tire and made my way home that night in 1994 I also made an important inroad into Turkish culture.
Louise Ruskin is the principal of the English International School of Istanbul.
Tale ©2005 by Louise Ruskin, abridged and excerpted with permission from TALES FROM THE EXPAT HAREM: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, ©2005 by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen, a #1 bestselling nonfiction anthology published by Doğan Kitap. In Turkish as TÃœRKÇE SEVMEK. www.expatharem.com
20.01.2007
LOUISE RUSKİN
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funny story and with a great meaning 