My dad tells this story frequently.
When I was about ten, we had a foreign exchange student from France come and stay with us for a couple of months. Sylvie was very shy and visibly miserable. Her family sent her on this program with her sister against her will, and she decided to make the worst of it.
My father is not one to let misery go unchecked, so one day he struck up this conversation as we were getting in the car to go out and he was offering up chewing gum:
"Sylvie, tell me, how do you say chewing gum in French?"
"Chewing gum, it's the same."
"Sylvie, how do you say air conditioner in French?"
"Air conditioner, it's the same."
"Sylvie, how do you say garage in French?"
"Garage, it's the same."
"Sylvie, this language is too damn easy!"
I think of that often in Istanbul. While I will never claim to know any real or usable Turkish, I have noticed that Turkish borrows words and terminology from whichever culture introduced the concept. If you know some French, English and Farsi, you can catch a surprising amount of vocabulary. I look at signs and menus and think things like, "Kek - Cake, it's the same!"
These are a few of the finer points of Turkish that I now know. Kuafor = Coiffeur = Hairdresser. Manikur = Manicure. Pedikur = Pedicure. Pantalons (same as French) = Pants. Accessories = Accessories. Tramvay = Tramway. Bankasi = Bank, Billeti = Billet (French) = Ticket. Sahbzi = Sahbsi (Farsi) = Vegetables. Patates = Potatoes. Dolmates = Tomatoes. Cay = Chayi (Farsi) = Tea (and it's the same exact tea that Persians drink). Okay = Okay.
I'm sure if my Farsi extended beyond food and a few bad words, I'd catch many other things too.
Beyond accessing easy vocabulary, Istanbul has been growing on me. While it's not a city I can imagine living in like Hong Kong or Paris, and it's not a city that's incredibly energetic and exciting like New York, it has a certain charm that has slowly lured me in.
I like how no one knows who is from which country. Istanbul has so many foreigners from tourism and business that it's truly an international city. People have spoken to us in Spanish, Turkish and Italian. It's all a guessing game here.
I love that when we sit in a cafe to work, the music runs back and forth from American pop to French pop to American oldies to French classics. In the span for an hour I heard Lady Gaga, Dean Martin and Charles Aznavour (Oh, Isabelle...). An hour later there were a few Spanish latin songs and then we transitioned to some Sergio Mendes. Walk to the shop next door and people are blasting music to which you could bellydance. Their influences are all over the board.
I am awestruck and amused that on a very nice street in a very nice area, one shop will be blasting a song with the lyrics, "Girl, push back on it..." while religious women covered from head to toe go strolling past.
While five times a day, the call to prayer is blasting out of speakers from every mosque making parts of town vibrate, people walk along and go about their day in their secular attire acting as if their eardrums aren't about to pop.
Men talk on cell phones while they fish off the main bridges in the middle of the city.
Every twenty feet there's a chestnut vendor helping to bring one of the most wonderful smells into the autumn air. Best yet, it doesn't matter which one you buy from, they all make their chestnuts perfectly with skills I'll never have.
People walk past grand monuments and palaces with seemingly no awareness. The giant gates and marble walls have become wallpaper to them. Life is in the present with the people with whom they're walking. Friends of the same sex - both genders - walk down the streets arm in arm. I even saw one group of three teenage boys walking as a chain.
In the evenings, as people get off work, they fill the streets and walk all around catching up on the day and life. Evenings are very social. Aside from a few very professional women in wealthy Nisantasi, I haven't seen many women alone. They walk in pairs and groups - with each other or with the men in their lives.
The feel of streets filling at 6pm is different from other places we've been - perhaps because unlike Greeks and French, these people work.
"Greeks, the people of Yugoslavia and Turks - we are all the same people who have taken this turn and that - but we have the same history, we are the same," one Turkish man told me. "The only difference between us and the Greeks is that Turks work."
Fair enough.
Istanbul is both refined and rough, cultured and blunt. It is secular and devoutly religious. People do kind things to help, and will just as easily plough into you when they get on and off the train. They'll also walk straight into you on a sidewalk or anywhere else that one might choose to veer to avoid personal collision... But if one person knocked you down, the others would probably pick you up and offer you some tea.
In it's contradictions, paradoxes, parallels and parallelograms, Istanbul has caused me to stop being as shocked and to start smiling again. Sometimes, when it doesn't all make sense, it's best to go with the flow and let the crowd carry you along with them. In the oddness and quirks of a culture that doesn't fit cleanly with any other I've encountered, yet has pieces of everything I know, there's comfort in knowing that despite the fact that it's completely different, Sylvie was right - "It's the same."
When I was about ten, we had a foreign exchange student from France come and stay with us for a couple of months. Sylvie was very shy and visibly miserable. Her family sent her on this program with her sister against her will, and she decided to make the worst of it.
My father is not one to let misery go unchecked, so one day he struck up this conversation as we were getting in the car to go out and he was offering up chewing gum:
"Sylvie, tell me, how do you say chewing gum in French?"
"Chewing gum, it's the same."
"Sylvie, how do you say air conditioner in French?"
"Air conditioner, it's the same."
"Sylvie, how do you say garage in French?"
"Garage, it's the same."
"Sylvie, this language is too damn easy!"
I think of that often in Istanbul. While I will never claim to know any real or usable Turkish, I have noticed that Turkish borrows words and terminology from whichever culture introduced the concept. If you know some French, English and Farsi, you can catch a surprising amount of vocabulary. I look at signs and menus and think things like, "Kek - Cake, it's the same!"
These are a few of the finer points of Turkish that I now know. Kuafor = Coiffeur = Hairdresser. Manikur = Manicure. Pedikur = Pedicure. Pantalons (same as French) = Pants. Accessories = Accessories. Tramvay = Tramway. Bankasi = Bank, Billeti = Billet (French) = Ticket. Sahbzi = Sahbsi (Farsi) = Vegetables. Patates = Potatoes. Dolmates = Tomatoes. Cay = Chayi (Farsi) = Tea (and it's the same exact tea that Persians drink). Okay = Okay.
I'm sure if my Farsi extended beyond food and a few bad words, I'd catch many other things too.
Beyond accessing easy vocabulary, Istanbul has been growing on me. While it's not a city I can imagine living in like Hong Kong or Paris, and it's not a city that's incredibly energetic and exciting like New York, it has a certain charm that has slowly lured me in.
I like how no one knows who is from which country. Istanbul has so many foreigners from tourism and business that it's truly an international city. People have spoken to us in Spanish, Turkish and Italian. It's all a guessing game here.
I love that when we sit in a cafe to work, the music runs back and forth from American pop to French pop to American oldies to French classics. In the span for an hour I heard Lady Gaga, Dean Martin and Charles Aznavour (Oh, Isabelle...). An hour later there were a few Spanish latin songs and then we transitioned to some Sergio Mendes. Walk to the shop next door and people are blasting music to which you could bellydance. Their influences are all over the board.
I am awestruck and amused that on a very nice street in a very nice area, one shop will be blasting a song with the lyrics, "Girl, push back on it..." while religious women covered from head to toe go strolling past.
While five times a day, the call to prayer is blasting out of speakers from every mosque making parts of town vibrate, people walk along and go about their day in their secular attire acting as if their eardrums aren't about to pop.
Men talk on cell phones while they fish off the main bridges in the middle of the city.
Every twenty feet there's a chestnut vendor helping to bring one of the most wonderful smells into the autumn air. Best yet, it doesn't matter which one you buy from, they all make their chestnuts perfectly with skills I'll never have.
People walk past grand monuments and palaces with seemingly no awareness. The giant gates and marble walls have become wallpaper to them. Life is in the present with the people with whom they're walking. Friends of the same sex - both genders - walk down the streets arm in arm. I even saw one group of three teenage boys walking as a chain.
In the evenings, as people get off work, they fill the streets and walk all around catching up on the day and life. Evenings are very social. Aside from a few very professional women in wealthy Nisantasi, I haven't seen many women alone. They walk in pairs and groups - with each other or with the men in their lives.
The feel of streets filling at 6pm is different from other places we've been - perhaps because unlike Greeks and French, these people work.
"Greeks, the people of Yugoslavia and Turks - we are all the same people who have taken this turn and that - but we have the same history, we are the same," one Turkish man told me. "The only difference between us and the Greeks is that Turks work."
Fair enough.
Istanbul is both refined and rough, cultured and blunt. It is secular and devoutly religious. People do kind things to help, and will just as easily plough into you when they get on and off the train. They'll also walk straight into you on a sidewalk or anywhere else that one might choose to veer to avoid personal collision... But if one person knocked you down, the others would probably pick you up and offer you some tea.
In it's contradictions, paradoxes, parallels and parallelograms, Istanbul has caused me to stop being as shocked and to start smiling again. Sometimes, when it doesn't all make sense, it's best to go with the flow and let the crowd carry you along with them. In the oddness and quirks of a culture that doesn't fit cleanly with any other I've encountered, yet has pieces of everything I know, there's comfort in knowing that despite the fact that it's completely different, Sylvie was right - "It's the same."
Comments