Culture shock! The very words pull you up with a start. They call to mind confusion, depression, the shock of the new, isolation, strangeness and being a stranger.

In the expat page of Today's Zaman, the weekday sister paper to Sunday's Zaman, articles often deal with culture shock. How non-Turks ("foreigners") perceive Turkey and the Turks, and how they adjust to the customs and ways of their host nation.
But the mailboxes of Today's Zaman columnists reveal that the paper is also avidly read by the Turkish diaspora: those Turks who are expats, living in countries to the west or to the east of their native Turkey. From the gastarbeiters -- the semi-skilled guest workers who went to Germany in the 1960s -- to medical graduates going abroad to widen their skills base, many Turks live outside of Turkey.

Do Turks, too, experience culture shock when they leave the lands of Anatolia to study or work abroad? If so, is it to the same extent as an expat in Turkey?

The whole subject is treated expertly and sensitively by Gaye Hiçyılmaz in her novel, "The Frozen Waterfall." Herself a Turk living in the UK, Gaye draws on her own experiences, and those of her friends, to tell us the story of Selda and her family.

Selda, the youngest of the five children of Turgut Bey and Selda Hanım from İzmir, lives with her mother, grandmother and sisters when her father and brothers go to work in Switzerland. As the years go by, and she only sees them on their annual trip to Turkey, she is pained to experience the change in their relationship. "Now, when she saw them on their summer visits, these brothers had become distant. They were more like relatives from another town. She hated it most when they talked to each other in German, which she could not understand. She felt that they were shutting her out of their world, and she did not like being silent."

Then, one day, the long awaited air tickets come, and Selda, her mother and sisters are to travel to Switzerland to be reunited with the men of their family. Hiçyılmaz sensitively captures a young girl's nervousness about traveling abroad. Selda's grandmother sows the seeds of doubt in her mind with her prejudices about the Swiss. Foreigners, she claims, are not as clean as the Turks: "People say they walk straight from the street into their nice rooms with all the street filth still on their shoes."

Mixed with the excitement of traveling, and being reunited with her father and beloved older brothers, is fear. Fear of the unknown, but also fear of losing touch with her friends. She exchanged addresses, and promises to write and remain friends forever, but deep down inside she knew many of her friends would never write.

But Selda fears above all things failure. Inability to speak the language would hamper her -- "she would not be able to say anything at all in German, let alone anything clever." Her sisters' taunts underscored this insecurity. "You think you know everything, but you don't!" "I know more than you." "So what? You just wait. In Switzerland you won't know anything ... I expect we'll all be bottom of the class."

Amidst all these fears of the future, Kemal Amca comes to the rescue with a special day tour around İstanbul. At night as he bids them farewell he explains he showed them the Bosporus Bridge so that she could be proud of Turkey when in Switzerland, "and tell them that we too have fine things. You can tell them, but with a smile, that we are not some poor, forgotten people knocking like beggars at the door of their country, but that we too have made great things."

Expectations and reality; hopes and disappointments; dreams and their semi-fulfillment. Even the flight to Switzerland is not as she had imagined. "In films, people always settled themselves coolly and elegantly into half-empty planes; they leant back in wide seats and sipped clear drinks as they watched magnificent views from the plane windows." Not struggling with getting hand-baggage into the overhead locker, and squeezing past a passenger sitting in the same row to reach your seat.

It was pouring with rain when Selda and her female relatives arrived in Switzerland. Even her father looked different, with his beard. But she gasped in amazement when she saw the mountains, they were breathtaking, as was the lake which stretched farther than she could see in each direction.

Her first day of school, as expected, was a day of not understanding. The teacher smiled kindly, and another pupil tried to help, but Selda understood nothing. Over the first few weeks and months things gradually became clearer, but they were still different. Hiçyılmaz summarizes this clash between expectation and reality with the words, "She had known, of course, that this foreign country would be different, but she had not realized that everything about it would be so different. Now she felt that she had been foolish." Selda realized that to survive and learn she needed to be observant: her eyes had to do twice the work as her ears and tongue were temporarily redundant.

It is this being struck dumb, the helpless sense of being unable even to express your wishes as a little child does, that is often the most serious contributor to culture shock for the expatriate. Selda finds a friend who empathizes as he, too, had been a foreigner in a strange land. "Only Ferhat understood, because he had lived it."

But in the words of Ferhat's encouragement, it does get better. Selda finds her way to triumph through the difficulties.

One of the crystallizing moments for her own understanding is when she sees, for the first time, a frozen waterfall. The relentless movement of water, stopped by the winter freeze, seemed to her a picture of her own life in culture shock.

"There, at the top, where the water first fell over the edge, was the frozen waterfall. It was as though the stream had stopped and hung there in the air, like the swelling crest of a winter wave in wind-whipped İzmir Bay. But this wave had not rolled on. It had not broken and foamed against the rocks; it hung there, just under the sky."

Selda finds the key to understanding her anguish in her new setting as she watches the frozen torrents that pour forth no more. As her experiences in "The Frozen Waterfall" are like a mirror to the pain an expatriate feels, this wonderful story can help many readers enunciate their emotions, and begin to find their own way like Selda to flourish where they are planted.


Today's Zaman

The modern Shah Faisal Mosque:

One of the largest mosques in the world, its relatively unusual design fuses contemporary lines with the more traditional look of an Arab Bedouin's tent, with its large triangular prayer hall and four minarets. However, unlike traditional mosque design, it lacks a dome, and like a tent, the weight of the main prayer hall in the center is supported by the four minarets. The minarets borrow their design from Turkish tradition and are thin pencil like. The interior of this prayer hall holds a very large chandelier and its walls are decorated with mosaics and calligraphy by the famous Pakistani artist Sadeqain. The mosaic pattern adorns the west wall, and has the 'kalima' writtern in early kufic script, repeated in mirror image pattern.

The mosque is like a whole mini-village with its own library, museum, lecture hall, café, and University of 700 students. However, it is not only the impressive size and exterior for which the mosque is famed - it also supports as an equally elegantly designed interior. The Qibla Wall inside the Main Prayer Hall has many decorated glazed tiles from Turkey and a giant golden crescent in the roof. Underneath the wall are reflection pools which allows for air conditioning by adjusting the water level of the pool. There is a giant chadelier in the main prayer hall which weighs some 7.5 tons and uses 1000 electric bulbs.

There is a Women's gallery which is rare for a mosque; women in Pakistan rarely enter mosques but instead pray at home. Zebra marble and white marble from Greece are used here. The courtyard is paved in Italian granite making it quite an international affair.
http://www.npm.com.pk/islthebeautiful.htm

Maybe that helps? Not sure:

http://www.birdamlasu.com/gemstonesofTurkey.htm

Chandelier at Shah Faisal

Built by the Turkish architect Vadat Dolokay who won an architecture competition, the Shah Faisal mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan is one of the largest in the world accommodating more than 100,000 worshippers in the various halls and courtyards.

In the centre of the mosque in the main prayer hall, suspended from the ceiling is a giant chandelier made of gold plated aluminium tubes weighing 7.5 tons which uses 1000 electric bulbs. The qibla wall (the direction in which prayer is made towards Mecca) is decorated with glazed tiles from Turkey.



Source: Flickr

that Jesus (Isa in Arabic) was one of the great Prophets (peace be upon them all) sent to humankind with the same message of peace, justice and honesty, advising people to abandon falsehood, preaching the belief in One God without partners. Muslims do not believe that Jesus was crucified, rather, and in line with Isaiah 52:13 which says "...he will be raised and lifted up....", the Quran 4:158 reads, "God raised him up Unto Himself".

Never too late to learn something new again!

For Cloaked Saudi Women, Color Is the New Black

By Faiza Saleh Ambah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A01

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Manal Fageeh never liked the abaya, the long black cloak she was forced to begin wearing at 13. She resented the fact that it was obligatory for women in Saudi Arabia, and the black absorbed heat in the often-scorching climate.

When Fageeh, a health industry executive, appeared at a recent business conference in a floor-length white abaya made of light cotton and monogrammed with an M, some of the attendees were shocked, she said. But others were inspired.

An Anatolian nomad woman ready to go on a long journey, packing her belongings in order to find suitable grazing land for their livestock. Women carrying rifles is a common tradition among nomads.
The Anatolian nomads of the sun, mountains and endless winds of the plateaus agreed to let us accompany them for a small part of their journey.

The three days we spent in and around the Aydın and Gülnar districts of Mersin proved insufficient to truly get to know them, but this period was long enough for us to learn to love these people, who are not tainted by obsessions with the trappings of modern life.


Turkish nomads in Anatolia are known as yörüks, and they claim that they continue to migrate in order to find suitable grazing land for their livestock, but could the truth actually be that they enjoy migrating, as suggested by their rush to dismantle their tents before dawn? They set off as if it is their first time on the road, and the journey continues from where it left off the previous evening.

The yörüks of Sarıkeçili, a village in Adana's Ceyhan district, have learned of the many risks of migration. For instance, they may be fined for passing through certain districts in which goat herding is illegal. They are well aware of the risk and have decided to take their chances this year, but what about next year? "Migrating -- we are terribly disheartened by the many risks, but settling is so much more difficult!" one yörük from Ceyhan told us.

It's Monday, when are we migrating?

We were still trying to shake off our drowsiness in the small concrete building in which we spent the night, as we were expecting to set off with the yörük group that would leave before dawn. One of the last April showers was falling. This raised two questions in our minds -- do yörüks set off in rain, and what if they don't and this rain continues for days?

Fortunately, the sun was quick to reveal itself, and we were finally given the good news that we would be hosted in one of the yörük's goat-hair tents. After a mildly tiring trudge up the hill, the tent of Kerim Karadayı's family appeared amidst the trees. The owners were waiting for us in front of the tent. We exchanged smiles from afar, and although everything seemed to be going along just fine, a voice inside of me questioned: "At most, you are going to observe these people and all you will be doing is surveying everything with a curious gaze and trying to attach meaning even to where things are placed in the tent. Your eyes will alight upon everything that seems strange to you and you will never stop asking questions; but will you have understood anything at all about these people in the end?"

The tent had no doors, but there appeared to be room for everyone. In all yörük tents, there are two teapots -- one for boiling water and the other for brewing fresh tea. The one used to boil water is sooty in the bottom due to being placed over the fire all the time, not on a burner as we are used to. The other teapot is about the same size, but it is always kept a little farther from the fire. Once inside, we didn't really want to leave the tent, as it offered an unfamiliar sense of sincerity and warmth. Another reason we were unwilling to leave was our hosts' reluctance to set out on their journey. The reluctance of a yörük to set off on his path is not considered a good sign. It's like goats that stop jumping and running and instead sit lethargically on the ground all day. A yörük should always be on the move.

But what if some officials had outlawed their migration and fined them at every stop of the way for one thing or another? We later found out that the tent hosting us should have been dismantled and loaded on the camels a long time ago, but that Kerim and his family were not sure about migrating this time because of new laws that had been passed on the practice. As we spoke to Kerim, we sensed that he was very pessimistic about the whole thing; he seemed to be seesawing between migrating and settling down, which, of course, both have their pros and cons.

"This entire yörük thing is now a thing of the past. If you ask people what being a yörük means, most will give you incorrect answers. They consider us obsolete now. It's sad but true; this has become our reality," laments Kerim.

"When were these new laws passed?" we asked him curiously, at a loss to understand why anybody would want to change the harmless lifestyle of these people. The yörük tradition is an extension of the millennia-old tradition of migrating. Kerim, just like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather is part of this tradition, but wonders whether it will end with him. With a slightly hesitant look on his face, he finally revealed his real thoughts. "Well, I can't hold it back any longer; since this government came to power, we have been flat broke. Before, people did not blink an eye when we passed by and we did not have any problems," Kerim said. The family doesn't encounter any problems while spending the winter in Mersin, but once they set out for the places where they will spend the summer, such as Karaman, Beyşehir and Seydişehir, they begin to come across gendarmes who are overly eager to enforce the recently passed laws. They are fined YTL 16 for each goat seen near trees; their goats allegedly damage the forest, but according to the Sarıkeçili yörüks, "Our goats have never been observed destroying a forest." Last year, the family paid a total of YTL 3,000 in fines and now feels very frustrated over the laws. "If the owners of this incomprehensibly repressive mindset give us full-time jobs and houses, we will throw away the tents," Kerim remarked.

During one part of the journey last year, they covered a normally seven-hour distance in 14 hours in their attempts to stay clear of gendarmes. This year, they wanted to play it safe. Imagine having to listen for every single engine sound that draws near and fleeing into the hills to avoid security forces, in which case the journey becomes longer and longer. The migration has become so difficult in the recent years that Kerim is seriously considering a settled life. "We are tired of running from security forces," he said. Yet they have many misgivings over changing their way of life.

"If they put us in a cage [he refers to a small house], we will simply die there. They should give us houses with porches in the Konya basin. My trade is not dealing with greenhouses. If they give us livestock, we could do okay," stated Kerim.

"These small houses, they are like boxes. Not a house, a box! They don't even have gardens. They only have a few saplings. How can people live so out of touch with the earth?" he questioned.

And we ask about the finances of the Karadayı family, making the heedless mistake of asking them what function money could have in the mountains as we know that they don't pay utility bills.


http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=142870

are a Turkic-speaking people primarily inhabiting the mountains of the southeast European Balkan peninsula and Anatolia. Their name is generally admitted to derive from the Turkish verb yürü- (yürümek in infinitive), which means "to walk", with the word Yörük designating "those who walk, walkers".
The Yörüks of Anatolia are often called by the historians and ethnologues by the additional appelative ‘Yörük Turcoman‘ or ‘Turkmens‘. In Turkey’s general parlance today, the terms "Türkmen" and "Yörük" indicate the gradual degrees of preserved attachment with the former semi-nomadic lifestyle of the populations concerned, with the "Türkmen" (aside from the word’s other meanings in the international context) now leading a fully sedentary life, while keeping parts of their heritage through folklore and traditions, in arts like carpet-weaving, with the continued habit of keeping a yayla house for the summers, sometimes in relation to the Alevi community etc. and with Yörüks maintaining a yet stronger association with nomadism. These names ultimately hint to their Oghuz Turkish roots. Clans closely related to the Yörüks are scattered throughout the Anatolian peninsula, particularly around the chain of Taurus Mountains and further east around the shores of the Caspian sea. Of the Turcomans of Persia, the Yomuts come the closest to the definition of the Yörüks. An interesting offshoot of the Yörük mass are the Tahtadji of the mountainous regions of Western Anatolia who, as they name implies, have been occupied with forestry work and wood craftsmanship since centuries, although they share similar traditions (with markedly matriarchal tones in their society structure) with their other Yörük cousins. The Qashqai people of southern Iran (around Shiraz), and the Chepni of Turkey’s Black Sea region are also worthy of mention due to their shared characteristics.

http://brunodam.blog.kataweb.it/2007/01

The meaning of insallah means: that's it: Kismet. Fate. Nothing you can do about.

Cadmium and lead contamination in vegetables collected from industrial, traffic and rural areas in Bursa Province, Turkey
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a790130528~db=all~order=page

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18473215

Bursa's Double Image

Bursa's city air pollution, by Stephen Kinzer, N.Y. Times:

The last decade has not been kind to Bursa. The city has grown without much apparent planning to a metropolis of 900,000. Two large auto factories and dozens of metal fabricating plants and textile mills have turned what was once known as Green Bursa into a major industrial center. Residents say that pollution has raised the air temperature so that snows, which used to be knee-deep each winter, now rarely reach ankle height. But in springtime, there are enough trees blooming to show how the city won its fame as an idyllic retreat.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9506E4DE133DF930A25757C0A961958260

Chemistry Department, Arts and Science Faculty, Uludağ University, Bursa, Turkey.

Rapid urbanization and industrial development are the most important causes of air pollution in Bursa. Smoke and sulfur dioxide concentrations were measured at five stations over a period of 20 months between 1986 and 1987; the concentrations of the total suspended particles were determined in the samples collected at two stations in June and October 1986. Some of the trace elements (Fe, Pb, Cd, Zn) were measured in October 1988 by atomic absorption spectroscopy of 28 samples from two stations. The first-order regression equations were calculated in order to find the relationship between the concentrations of smoke, sulfur dioxide, and meteorological conditions. The trends in the concentrations of measured air pollutants were compared by the long- and short-term limit values, as specified in the regulation.

Urban air PAHs: Concentrations, temporal changes and gas/particle partitioning at a traffic site in Turkey

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V95-4M0BH7C-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=20070a225c355ade79d5c90b7d0c23eb


Video:http://www.metacafe.com/watch/719683//