World Women's Day & What Not To Do With Chickpeas

This last week has been equal parts busy, educational, and fun, which is why I am only now getting around to telling you about it.

Late last Tuesday night I sent a very apologetic resignation note to my employers at internship #1 before beginning my training at internship #2 (Helsinki) on Thursday and Friday. In just two days I learned a ridiculous amount about what it means to be a refugee seeking asylum, both in Turkey and abroad. I'll share details with you as I continue to learn more about this diverse group of people and the challenges they face, but for now it suffices to say that being a refugee in this country is a grim prospect, but for nearly all of the people seeking asylum it is a much safer prospect than returning to their countries of origin.

Before and after my internship training on Thursday, I had the chance to unintentionally (and then later intentionally) march in the International Women's Day proceedings. First of all, why in the world do we not celebrate this holiday in the U.S.? Ok, sure, I know it was started by a bunch of Socialists (historically America's favorite political party) in the Soviet bloc, but haven't we gotten past all of that by now? It seems odd, or maybe entirely fitting, that a country which celebrates both Mother's Day and National Secretaries Day (now renamed the more PC "Administrative Professionals' Day") does not carve out a day for other women, for all women. You know, fellas, not all of us are mothers and secretaries anymore!

But, I digress. As I was saying, it was refreshing to see so many women-veiled women, unveiled women, Marxist feminists, Conservatives, queer women, straight women, single women, women with their partners, women wearing all pink, women wearing all black, locals, foreigners, WOMEN!-out in the streets of Istanbul en masse. It's not that you don't see women in Turkey. In a cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, they inevitably occupy a fair amount of space. Nevertheless, the amount of power and public space they occupy in comparison to men is noticeably smaller. Certain places are just not available to women. Barber shops (I think this is like the equivalent of the golf course in America, or else...the barber shops in America), traditional tea houses, the swanky sections of the hamams (Turkish bathhouses),  and most of the public spaces in more conservative areas like Turkey's southeastern region seem to be absolutely devoid of all women.

Women marching on Istiklal Caddesi

Well, on March 8th, a day that I will never again let pass without critically thinking about and being thankful for my wonderful gender (more than I already am), women were undoubtedly making their voices heard and faces seen in Istanbul. Plenty of men joined in as well, whether as ardent supporters of women's rights or curious passersby, but their presence was not needed to legitimize the importance of the day. In Istanbul, Women's Day spanned not just 1, but 3 whole days of marches and protests. Men's Day will now resume for the remaining 362 days of this year. Just kidding?

  In Kadıköy, the weekend after March 8th, women march to protest gender-based murders in Turkey

Because I want to wrap this post up sooner than later, I'll leave you with a few short words of cooking wisdom. This is what you should NOT do with dried chickpeas: soak them in water, leave them unrefrigerated, and forget about them for 3-4 days. Because I do not trust my seed-sprouting skills, I think I'll be sticking to canned chickpeas from now on.

Calls of the Wild

Remember when I said that Istanbul had a booming voice? Well, this includes sounds from humans and non-humans alike.

Right now the most chatty mammals in our neighborhood are the feral cats that line our winding, cobbled streets, hands down. Unlike some of the skeletal cats and dogs that you see so often in developing countries, these felines are well fed by fortunate food scrap finds (we live less than a 3 minute walk from the stationary balık pazarı, literally the fish bazaar) and generous donations made by some of our neighbors. 

As spring takes its sweet time making its way to Istanbul, the cat mating season is already well under way.  The nightly wails of these female cats usually resemble at least one of the following noises: a young child crying for her mother (MAAaaaAAA), a deep moan of ecstasy (MMMOOOHHHWWW), or even a bizarre chirping sound depicting a tragic pain (phonetically indescribable). Indeed, these felines are looking for love in all the wrong places. Even though I really wish that Turkey was better about its spay/neuter policies, I am looking forward to the cluster of kittens that will surely result from these nocturnal love cries.

When this catty, yet effective, open-air feline dating system subsides in a couple of months, I know that I will still be able to count on the local Istanbulian dogs (both stray and domesticated) to keep a healthy dialogue going with...any animal, human, or other inanimate object that comes within a mile radius. This city's stray dogs roam the streets with a swagger that even the most pampered pet dog would envy (except for you, Gerty). Sometimes when a stray dog and a leashed dog meet in the street, there is a bit of a kerfuffle, but usually the wild dogs spend their time howling at the call to prayer (during which they provide a comical backup vocalist role), whenever the Aygaz truck rolls by with its seductive xylophonic tunes (Aygaz is one of the largest oil companies in Turkey), and whenever a group of juvenile delinquents challenge the dogs' authority.

In a later post, I'll return to the topic of non-humans to tell you about exactly which sanguineous creatures might await you at the Spice Bazaar. Hint: Demi Moore swears by these lovelies to keep her young.

I'll close with a quick internship update: I was accepted to the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Refugee Advocacy and Support Program internship (hereafter referred to as HcA, RASP, or Helsinki)! Now all that is left to do is figure out whether and how to balance my current internship. My training with RASP begins Thursday evening and I am incredibly excited to begin working with this inspiring organization. The working language is English, I'll be able to assist with some on-the-ground casework, and the office has stunning views of the Golden Horn, or the Haliç estuary that unites the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.

HOT INTERN, or a Case of Internship Infidelity

Merhaba from the Koç University Library, the research center of the university where Trev and Dumi are such fine models of Master's candidacy. This building is conveniently located just up the street from our flat. More importantly, since the weather took a nosedive with an uninvited snow party today and the sole heating devices in our apartment include a stove, an electric blanket, a space heater that really only works if you straddle it, and my flatmates' body heat (get your minds out of the gutter-I'm talking about simple cuddling, people. sheesh.), the research center is also conveniently the only place I can sit for hours with central heating. First lesson of the day: -2° is cold, whether you're talking in terms of the big F or the big C.

I spent the day trying to figure out just how I can be all that I can be as an intern in this country. Let me tell you, it isn't as easy as you might expect to give your hard work out for free, especially when language barriers are very real, NGOs are so busy helping people that they hardly have a second to train you to take some of the work off of their hands, and, well, basically a big combination of problems I and II.

My wonderful co-workers are doing so much to help torture victims in Turkey, but alas it is only day 2 of my internship and I suspect/fear/feel pretty certain that they cannot yet (and may never) quite figure out how to let me join in the fight. Fast forward to the end of my work day when I interviewed at a different human rights non-profit organization focusing on refugee and asylum issues in Turkey. That's right, I am almost entering the dangerous territory of internship infidelity. Almost. Ideally, internship #2 accepts me just as internship #1 decides what to do with me and I can work at both places with tremendous enthusiasm, but I must admit that there is a distinct possibility that I will jump ships if #1 pans out after all. Shhh.

A picture of me in front of my current internship.

(Just kidding. This is a picture of the hilarious internet cafe two doors down from my workplace.)

**A brief note on why this post and blog is looking a little "tired around the eyes" (blogly as I'd like to think of it): I tried to get fancy (well, fanciER). On a Computer. This is never a good combination for me. The color is all wrong, I cannot figure out which background looks the least cheesy, and I just want to forewarn you that you may be in for some blog-design growing pains during the next few months. Bear with me. 

First or, Rather, Second Impressions

Food. My goodness, the food here is glorious. I am writing as a vegetarian turned omnivore as of the moment my plane touched down on Turkish soil. The last time I was in Turkey in 2011 I stubbornly tried to adhere to my strict vegetarian rules, but this time around I am decidedly, well, not. I can already tell that this is a prudent decision.

Turkish cuisine caters to my carbo-loving, cheese-admiring, fresh-produce-obsessed inclinations with little hesitation, but it also has a way of sprinkling a generous helping of meat into many of these dishes, often portraying meat as the star attraction of a given meal. Even so, the now closeted vegetarian inside me did a little victory dance upon tasting my latest discovery: çiğ köfte (pronounced Chee Koorf-teh), or vegetarian "meatballs." This savory street dish is made up of a bulgur, walnuts, cumin, and spicy pepper paste (which is then compressed into "balls" that have more of an obese squid shape than a circular one in my opinion), fresh tomatoes, lettuce, and a few sprigs of cilantro, drizzled with sweet pomegranate molasses, and sometimes wrapped with a thin layer of very thin pita bread or merely eaten as a lettuce wrap. Is your stomach growling yet?

I am also learning, without any difficulty, to appreciate the ability to have freshly squeezed portakal (orange) or nar (pomegranate) juice on almost any busy street corner. As the daughter of a woman who spent many an Autumnal evening meticulously shucking pomegranate seeds for me to pack in my school lunch (thanks Mom!), I look forward to drinking this magical elixir on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

As I sit and write this post, the busy sounds of the Sunday street bazaar in my neighborhood of Tarlabaşı (Tar-lah-bah-shuh) beckon me. Mountains of fruits and veggies, more lactose than you ever knew you needed, as well as discarded electronics and Angry Birds paraphernalia can all be had for criminally cheap prices. The bazaar opens in the morning, mere feet from my front door, and goes until the later hours of the evening. To anybody who says that this neighborhood is in disrepair (it's true that many apartment buildings around us are crumbling and this area is slated to be the site of the next round of government-endorsed gentrification) , I challenge him or her to walk the region's streets on Sunday and make that same claim. This neighborhood is bursting at the seams with life if you know where and when to look.

I feel like I should talk a bit more about my first impressions, since food can be a somewhat superficial way to measure a city's successes and faults. I suppose if I have to pick another element of Istanbul that differentiates it from other places I have lived in and traveled to, it is the tremendous V-O-I-C-E of the city and its inhabitants. The first sounds I hear each morning are the calls to prayer at sunrise each day, with competing and strangely soothing echoes that bounce with equal vigor off of new condos and decrepit ruins alike. It is such a comfort to be lightly stirred from sleep by these cries of worship, to appreciate the diligence of devout Muslims who spend such significant portions of their days praying to their god, and finally to remember that I still have a few more hours before I actually need to awaken.

Of course, the power of Istanbul's voice goes beyond the call to prayer, which rings five times a day. The greatness of its voice extends to the people who call this city home. Istanbul is indeed a diverse city with upwards of 15 million surprisingly diverse residents who do not always get along. I have taken to calling this city "The Reluctant Melting Pot." Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Arabs, and plain old foreigners like me mingle together to create an unpredictable collage of cultures.

Every single weekend on Istiklal Caddesi (Ees-steek-loll jah-deh-see) there are at least one or two protests or simple demonstrations. Yesterday the Worker's Party was championing labor rights. Today a Kurdish demonstration was staggered against an enormous Turkish protest against a past conflict with the Armenians (probably not the one you're thinking of). The point I would leave you with is that while these groups do not often see eye-to-eye, they speak up when they are discontented, instead of resigning themselves to the apathy that is so prevalent in America today (Occupiers and Tea Partiers aside). I am all for peaceful demonstrations, even when the speech is disagreeable or downright hateful, because I truly believe that free speech and open dialogues make for more interesting, informed, and empowered societies.

A Turkish Adventure & a Blog is Revived

Well folks, I'm baaack. Probably. Hopefully. Perhaps we can keep it as a noncommittal maybe until my blogger sea legs fully return. Honestly, I feel like I should be entering a blogger confessional right now, seeking penance in a dark, oak-scented ancient computer room for the nearly two-year hiatus I have taken from this site. In fact, I think I will probably not tell anybody about the said revival until I've managed to eke out a post from across the pond.

A little more than 24 hours from now I will return to Istanbul to begin a 4-month Turkish adventure. My co-stars on this adventure will be the ever-impressive Trevor Layman, his witty Romanian flatmate Dumi, and the civil liberty rockstars at the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, where I will be interning during my stay. They, along with countless other individuals, will become integral parts of my new, semi-permanent Istanbulian life.

My plan is to observe and participate in equal measure, master Turkish (or at least not butcher the language too badly), and gain some much needed perspective before I return to the U.S. in the summer to prepare for grad school in the fall. I cannot begin to imagine what the next few months have in store for me. There will surely be shrugs and hugs, definitely some plush Turkish rugs, possibly pugs, and definitely not drugs (hey, I've seen [the preview for] Midnight Express [which has been on my Netflix queue for an impossibly long time).

Stay tuned and stay in touch. Telepathy is my preferred method of communication, but, if your psychic powers are out of shape, e-mail should work just fine.