Turkey Through Another's Eyes
By CANSU ORANÇ (PSYC/IV)
oranc@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
In mid-August, an American-Ukrainian friend of mine came to visit me from the United States. We met in Istanbul, spent three days there, and then went to İzmir, my home town. Although I've been in Istanbul many times, this was my first time to be the "tour guide" rather than the tourist. It looks like I did a good job since we don't have any stories of getting lost that can make you laugh. Actually, what I want to tell you about is not how much fun we had but how I saw things differently thanks to my friend. Istanbul was the same city with the same people who live in the same buildings, but this time, it wasn't the same eyes that I was seeing through. She showed me things that I looked but never seen before, told me about history and languages, compared Turkish culture, food, and language with American, Ukrainian, and Russian. It was looking around not with my naked eye but through a kaleidoscope.
When I was talking to her, I had to pay attention to other things than I usually do. She led me to analyze what certain things really are and what they mean. For example, she was surprised at the notion of "dolmuş" where people sit next to strangers in a taxi and pass money to the driver. We thereupon compared social behavior in American and Turkish culture. She shared a great example that illustrates the difference. She associated certain cultures like American with peach; soft, juicy and fuzzy on the outside, but there's a hard seed on the inside. People from these cultures are easy to talk with but hard to truly know. She then associated certain cultures like Turkish with coconut; it takes time to go in through the hard shell but the inside is delicious. My friend's observation was that Turkish people on the streets are mostly grim-faced but when you ask something to them, they try to answer you with a big smile on their face.
Other than observing people, my friend loves trying different food, and she was very brave about Turkish cuisine. She loved rakı, simit, mantı and all other traditional food, but it was funny to see that she was amazed by seeing and tasting the "real" forms of veggies and fruits. She had black olives with pits and fresh figs for the first time, drank fruit juices freshly squeezed right in front of her eyes. We Turks are so used to these that we don't even notice. In İzmir, this became even more dramatic since it's my hometown where I spent 17 years of my life. After a while, I felt myself like a tourist, and I enjoyed our trip even more.
If you have any foreign friends, invite them. You'll have lots of fun, that's for sure. But you'll also notice many daily things you haven't before and after your friend will leave, you'll enjoy the places you've been together even more.