- Dennis Lee (from "Blue Psalm")

I was asked to write something for the current Ampersand Project quite a while ago, and I've been mulling it over in my head ever since.

Ramadan seemed to be an obvious choice, especially since it's just started, but now I see that she has already done so. I decided to do something different, but that decision presented its own problems. It's a question of quantity: I have many options that it's difficult to choose just one.

Still. My mind kept circling back to Ramadan and my memories of Turkey. I don't often write about our time in Istanbul here. Maybe I should. I have always intended to, but since I know that I can always write about it some day, I tend to stick to the here and now. On the other hand, Ramadan is now, and tomorrow is Halloween, so maybe this is the perfect time.

Turkey is the first country I ever lived in outside of the USA. People tend to express either amazement or sympathy at this fact. "It must have been so hard for you! And on your first assignment out of the country!" And, yes, it was difficult in a lot of ways, but in others it was an advantage. One expects Istanbul to be different. Strange. Maybe a little frightening. Knowing that you WILL have culture shock is, in a way, oddly reassuring.

I have never felt so foreign as I did in Turkey, and I have never felt so foreign since. Most expatriates live along the Bosphorus, to the north of the Golden Horn. We didn't. We lived in the south of the city, near the airport, a few short blocks from the Sea of Marmara. The only other foreigners in our neighborhood worked with Elvis, which left me pretty much to my own devices during the day. It wasn't long before everybody in town knew who I was. This was brought home to me one day while I was shopping downtown at the Egyptian, or Spice Market. The man who waited on me, as it turned out, lived by us and knew exactly who I was. Which was nice, in a way, because I had no intention of paying "tourist prices". It was also rather creepy-- they all knew me, but I didn't know them.

I should not have been surprised: I was very, very noticeable. I have blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin and am taller than the average Turkish male. I positively tower over the average Turkish female. The average Turkish male, by the way, really likes tall blonde women, which presented problems of its own. My mother-in-law even suggested that I dye my hair brown, but it wouldn't have helped all that much. I still would be tall, blue eyed.

Foreign.

Still, I tried to fit in the best I could. I came to Turkey with the strong belief that assimilation is good, and that you can never really understand another culture until you have lived it-- Really Lived it, as opposed to living in some gated compound, complete with stores and restaurants, with a bunch of other expats. I still believe it.

There's something more, though. I didn't want to be different, or not that different. I've passed the point where I truly care what people think of me: I am what I am. Even so, it felt uncomfortable not to belong, to stick out in such an obvious way.

I replaced my summer shorts with long, floaty skirts. I figured out, either with the help of a few Turkish friends or through trial and error, where and how to pay our bills, what kind of stores to go to in order to make what kind of purchase (not always obvious!), and how to make the purchase in question. Taking Turkish classes was out of the question, since all the schools were located by all the foreigners, an hour to hour and a half away. Instead, I studied my Teach Yourself Turkish book diligently. I worked my painstaking way through the newspapers, and practiced every chance I got.

I never did manage to learn Turkish very well: I can conjugate five verbs, and I supplemented them with a plethora of nouns, adjectives, adverbs and gestures. The people I dealt with on a day to day basis, as a rule, spoke no English whatsoever. Still, I managed to buy groceries, pay bills, have the dry-cleaner put the proper amount of starch in Elvis' shirts, and so forth. I wrote out "I need something for diarrhea" in Turkish on an index card and kept it in my purse, for presentation to the local pharmacist whenever the need arose. (And the need arose every three weeks, like clockwork.)

Luckily, I was not illiterate. In 1928, Atat�rk had a latinate alphabet for the Turkish language developed, and mandated that it replace the Arabic script that had been used for centuries. In fact, Atat�rk pushed through a lot of reforms that made living in Turkey less strange to us foreigners, and our lives a whole lot easier. He was a remarkable man, the founder of the Turkish Republic. He believed that Turkey's future lay with Europe and not the other countries of the Muslim world. To that extent, promulgated a remarkable number of modernization and education programs. Even more significant, the Republic he founded was a secular one. Turkey is over 99% Muslim, but, unlike most Muslim countries, religion is firmly separated from the state. If the government in power seems to be getting a bit too religious, the army does not hesitate to step in, depose whoever needs deposing, and rule the country until a more suitable government can be elected. The struggle between the Islamists and Secularists is ongoing, at every level of society, and fascinating. It's also beyond the scope of what I want to get into here. Atat�rk is revered by the Turks, however, no matter what their religious views might be. If you ever go to Istanbul, have a look around you. Every shop, every restaurant, every home-- they all have a picture of Atat�rk, somewhere.

I was at a hyper-market one day, and there were a bunch of Turks swarmed around something, a sign that said "Special Purchase" hanging from the ceiling above them. It was evident there was some fantastic bargain to be had, so I steered my cart closer to take a look. The special purchase was portraits of Atat�rk, with five different pictures to choose from. I passed, although I'm sorry now that I didn't buy one. (End of digression.)

There are, of course, many devout Turkish Muslims. There are also many Turks who are not quite as devout. For example, alcohol is readily available, and is even sold by the State. If you order raki (an anise liquor, like pastis or ouzo) in a restaurant, they will bring you a bottle of it, along with a bottle of water. Tripe stew, a reputed hangover cure, is sold in late night restaurants. Many of the women do not wear "Islamic" clothing, and when the do, they wear colorful headscarves with a long, pastel-colored coat, as opposed to a chador.

A few months after we'd moved in to our apartment, Ramadan started. I had read the Koran-- or, rather, bits of the Koran-- in high school, and I had made it a point to learn more about the religion, and Turkish culture in general, since we moved there. I knew the rules: during daylight hours, Muslims are forbidden to eat, drink, smoke and have sex. If you are not observing Ramadan, I read, it is polite to refrain from doing any of these things in public during the daytime. Avoiding public sex is easy enough. Smoking, eating and drinking didn't present much of a hardship, either-- especially once I realized how little is open during the month. Downtown, where the tourists are, it was no doubt business as usual, but where we lived, stores and restaurants were pretty much closed during the day, especially the mom-and-pop type places, which was most of them. Even the bakers didn't start baking until the afternoon. In addition to the usual breads, they also made a special kind that was available only during Ramadan. I immediately dubbed rama-bread, and got in the habit of going to the bakery at 3 pm, when the first batch came out of the oven.

The supermarket, to my surprise, turned out to be open all day long. I figured I might as well do my shopping early, while the stores were empty, then return to the privacy of my home to eat lunch, chain-smoke and swig diet cokes for the rest of the day. I cruised into the store and I was stunned. The place was packed! The grocery store in our neighborhood had aisles so narrow, they didn't even have carts, just baskets. There were no baskets left, and I had to hang out at the check out in order to get one. I should have just left and come back later, but I was fascinated. I was also afraid there wouldn't be anything left to buy if I waited. Whole families were shopping together. Turks tend to have large families, and each and every member-- right down to the pre-schoolers-- was carrying a basket, and each and every basket was filled to the brim with food.

This is Ramadan, I thought to myself. Shouldn't you people be fasting?

After sunset, the feasting started. In fact, every apartment in our building seemed to be having a party. There was music, and laughter, and people going up and down the stairs until late in the night. Early in the morning, an hour or so before sunrise, I man walked through the streets of our neighborhood beating a gigantic drum, in order to wake everyone up for breakfast. We heard that it was possible to bribe the drummer, to keep him away from your street. As foreigners, though, we felt that it would look pretty churlish to do so. And unnecessary: after a week or so, we slept right through the wake-up call.

As the month wore on, the parties became less frequent, although they never stopped entirely. The apartment we rented used to belong to our landlord's mother, recently deceased, and the median age in the building was fairly high, so it's possible that everyone went to Grandma's for the first few nights, and then took turns hosting dinner. And I know that I would get tired of going out every single night for an entire month. Surely every once in a while, it would be nice to have a quiet evening in. In any case, the grocery stores stayed crowded. Other stores stayed closed, or opened for only a couple of hours a day. The streets felt deserted, deprived of the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

A lot of my foreign friends were amazed at how many people observed Ramadan, even those folks we knew weren't devout. Still, the drinkers stopped drinking for the month, and fasted with everyone else. I didn't notice women who usually went bare-headed wearing scarves or long coats, though. Occasionally, you might see someone smoke on the street-- more often as the month went on. For the most part though, as far as we could tell, almost everyone complied with religious law.

There were some that didn't, however. I remember the comments of a female friend of ours, in particular. "It's all very well if you live in a tent in the desert," she said, "since you would be lying around during day anyway, because it's too hot to do anything else. And I suppose it's all right for shop owners, who can close for the month, sleep all day and eat all night. But some of us have to WORK for a living."