Who says you have to speak the same language?
Thursday, July 27th, 2006From my journal
22 June 2006– I went to the Topkapi Palace Gardens to sit and eat my berry yogurt. I took a shady spot on a bench next to a woman sitting alone, the safest bet for a blondie in a brunette part of the world. It was a place I’d sat several times before, just inside the gates near fountains with playful geese.
The geese skimmed the water and plunged to a stop. Children did laps around the fountains and over the little bridges that crossed between them. The woman on the bench made a comment in my direction. And then she asked a question.
But I speak Turkish only slightly better than the 6,000 or so other living languages out there, so I gave her my I-will-not-be-understanding-anything-you-say-today look complete with a shrug and scrunched forehead.
A man approached the woman with what appeared to be their lunch. Three sandwiches, a couple yogurts and some baklava. The woman ushered the man to sit between us. His English was as good as my Turkish.
He offered me the third sanwich and a yogurt. Having just eaten my 1YTL (Turkish Lira) Kebap sandwich, 3YTL pudding and dirt cheap berry yogurt, I was stuffed. But they both insisted. I couldn’t refuse any longer, and they seemed satisfied as I wrapped up the sandwhich and tucked it in my bag for dinner.
The woman gestured to the man to take a picture of a little boy whose father was holding him over the fountain. The boy splashed his fingers in the green water. The man on the bench next to me pulled out his camera phone and snapped away as the father set his boy back upright. The boy looked at his wet fingers with curiousity.
I read my empty yogurt cup, and tested my pronunciation, “meyveli yogurt.” I asked the man on the bench. “Meyveli yogurt,” I said, pointing at the words.
He nodded and repeated it in one garbled mass of sounds.
“Are you studying Turkish?” he asked in Turkish, or at least that was the most reasonable follow-up question.
And anyway, my pinched fingers held up for them to see as I replied in English, “a little bit,” generated the appropriate response – smiles and nods of satisfaction.
“Merhaba,” I offered my hello.
“Merhaba. Nasilsiniz?” was the woman’s response. “Hello, how are you?”
“Iyiyim. Nasilsiniz?”
She smiled at this, and held out her hand for me to shake, and in English said, “My name is Zahide.”
“Andrea.”
“Andrea? Nice to meet you,” she was back to Turkish.
“Do you like Turkiye?” the man repeated several times, waving his arms as if to encompass the country within them.
I finally understood his question and nodded emphatically.
“Do you like Turkish Baklava?” he asked with a slightly altered set of sounds and a nod toward the box of sticky sweet heaven.
“Are you here alone?” Zahide asked with much confusion, finally holding up one finger and trying her best in English, “friend, mother, father?”
“Alone,” I replied, holding up one finger.
“Are you staying in a hotel?”
Thank god for cognates. “Yes.”
“What area of the city are you staying in? Sultanhamet? Taksim?”
“Ah! Sultanhamet!”
Zahide said something in reference to their being or speaking Turkish and mine English or vice versa. I couldn’t quite make that one out, but I figured I should correct any misconception. I’m not English; I’m American, and honest people deserve honesty in return.
I pointed to myself and said, “American.”
“Oh! American?”
The man said something of which I could only derive, “George Bush.”
The inevitable. Being the environmentalist, culturaly curious lefty that I am, I replied with a shrug and a rolling of my eyes.
They laughed.
They took my picture and I took theirs. When I couldn’t find a pen to ask them to write down their names, and they didn’t have one either, they began asking everyone around the fountain. Finally two teenage girls walking by handed one over and waited patiently as Zahide wrote her name, the man’s name, Fuat, and her phone number on the edge of my Istanbul map.
They finished their lunch and stood to leave, gesturing to the yogurt resting next to me on the bench.
“No thank you. Really, I’m full.”
But Zahide patted her stomach and said something I can only guess meant, “it’s good for you,” or something to that effect.
Zahide held out her hand, took mine and kissed both my cheeks. Fuat shook my hand and they went their way, Zahide insisting I call her later, though what we’ll talk about; I have no idea.
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