Fernweh und Heimweh: Spare Time

Param yok, zaman çok

Turks ask a lot of questions. Really, they are quite curious about foreigners; they want to know everything. The most common is, of course Where are you from?, but they usually run the gamut: Do you like Turkey? Why did you come here? What do you think of Turkish people? What about your family? Where do you work? Do you live in a hostel? How much money do you make? What did you do before you came here? How much money did you make then? Is it true American people are rich? These are all common questions. Indeed, it is not impolite, unlike in America, to ask all of these questions and more. The bottom line is that they are just curious. When you realize that, it is endearing at first, but as you meet more and more people it becomes redundant. Nonetheless, I am usually pretty honest with people when it comes to such questions, and I try to be truthful and appeal to their curious appetite. It doesn't really bother me how many or what questions they ask me in the end. Lately, however, because someone asked me and a schedule shift at work forced me to consider it, there is one question that I hadn't had an answer to as of late: what do I do in my spare time? Hm.
Well, not what you'd suspect. I don't explore much and haven't gone and seen many sights or done much of the ''tourist thing'', which is hardly ironic because I live in the most historical and touristy area of İstanbul. Maybe that's why I haven't done things like that, because I have too much fun snickering at the sightseers and wouldn't want to become the object of such whimsical scorn. I went inside the Blue Mosque, and that's about it. I know my way around İstanbul fairly well and know where all of the fun and historical places are, I just never take the time to take it all in. In a slightly unfortunate way, I think this has something to do with a first paycheck I am anxiously awaiting.
Of course, those who know me know that I like my alone time for study and contemplation. I have a lot of this because I live alone, and I enjoy it. Usually I read, but since I have a TV, and a strong desire to learn the language to make my life easier, I haven't been reading much. Recently I bought a book that teaches you the basics of Turkish grammar, and this paired with television and a dictionary takes up a fair amount of time the evenings I am home. I am learning quickly, and I have a lot of fun doing it. It's like a hobby for me, like doing a puzzle in a way. Naturally, this is difficult to explain on sheets with sections titled Interests:

You have to start somewhere.....

Here's an interesting word

Arkadaşlar

But of course too much of something is never a good thing, and television and autodidactic linguistic study get boring quickly. Because of this, I found I have been doing something in my spare time that I never did back home: spend time with friends.
I know many people here. Because my name is hard for Turks to remember, I tell everyone to call me Kadir, so it is now my unofficial Turkish name. I chat with a lot of people often; I have both meaningful conversations and piecemeal English lessons with a number of people on a regular basis. Indeed, days are long for this reason - whenever I go anywhere, I am usually waylaid by someone I know who offers me tea and wants to chat for a while. If you share tea and a good conversation with someone and you don't go see them for a few days, they ask where you have been and are curious as to why you don't stop by more often. Really, it's a wonder how anyone gets anything done here considering all the tea drinking and respect-paying that goes on.
Am I friends with these people, or are they acquaintances? I am friendly with them and perhaps in the lame and shallow facebook sense I am friends with them, but not really in the true Turkish way. Really, should you be lucky enough to acquire a real Turkish friend, he will give his life for you should you ask him. When I am not at home, I spend most of my time with my three good friends.

Aladdin

Yes, he has a lamp, but he keeps it at home. And yes, he has a carpet, but he'd rather sell it to you than demonstrate the aeronautics of it. I really owe everything to this man because of all the help he has given me since I got here. I wouldn't be in the position I am right now without his boundless generosity and warm spirit. I don't know how I got so lucky as to stumble upon such a genuine and kind human, but his benevolent heart and enthusiastic joie de vivre has renewed my outlook on humanity; yes, there are still good people out there who help strangers and ask nothing in return.

When I first came to İstanbul I didn't have a job or a place. Coming out of an internet cafe, this man, Aladdin, approached me. I think he wanted to sell me a carpet, but once we began talking he decided that I was someone who needed help (and didn't have any money) and helped me get situated with a safe and inexpensive place to stay and introduced me to everyone so that they might help me. When I was looking for a job, he gave me his phone to use and when I finally got a job, he helped me find a lovely apartment to stay in. And he never asks anything in return. Ever. Sometimes I take him out to lunch or I buy some beer which we drink together, but he never asks. And he always wants to help. ''You ask me to die, I gonna die,'' he often says.
He gambles a lot on horse races, a little too much sometimes, but never asks for money to bet with. Sometimes we split a ticket, and we usually win because he is quite knowledgeable about the jockeys and statistics, although we never win a lot, just 10 lira, 40 lira at a time (Turkish horse racing is a galaxy itself). Sometimes I go work with him hassling tourists (Carpet Sales 101). He likes having me with him because he thinks it makes him more trustworthy in the eyes of the tourists, but I like to do it because it's fun to talk to people and guess where everyone is from.
Originally, he is from Hatay, next to Syria, and is fluent in Arabic. Hopefully I will go there in July because he wants to bring me to his soon-to-be nephew's circumcision ceremony, which is allegedly an ostentatiously grand affair here. He has a family with three daughters, and although I haven't met them, I hope to go to his house soon with flowers and rakı to cook all of them a good meal. He knows everyone in Sultanahmet and has many friends. He keeps pigeons as well, perhaps 30, which he feeds and flies every day. I can always count on him to help me get something done or find something, or be there like a friend should be; If I ever had a true friend, it is he.

A man and his pigeons

Kürşad

A true dude, in the Turkish sense. He is 29 and owns a nice carpet shop called Elegance, and although his English is a bit slow, he hopes that by talking with me often he will get better. He invites me for lunch and dinner everyday, and I usually go if I am around. He was married once, but it didn't work out and after he got a divorce three years ago, he moved into the office above the carpet shop and has been living there ever since (This may sound strange but is not uncommon here: the Turks work all day 6 or 7 days a week, and for this reason they simply end up living at their place of business. Sometimes, if you walk home at 2 am, you can see managers passed out at their desks through their shop windows). He is a very honest guy but has a great sense of humor and likes to joke a lot. Sometimes you can't tell if he is joking or being honest because he has a way of remaining serious while he is pulling your leg. When he wears a turtleneck and sneakers and his hair is tussled, he looks a lot like a Turkish version of Kramer from Seinfeld. He is a very professional and knowledgeable salesman as well, and has taught me much about Turkish carpets and kılıms. He is from Kayseri, a carpet-making region in the east of the country, and has a large farm there with many animals and hectares of land that he acquired through his carpet-selling fortune. The funniest thing about him is that he wants to buy a Lincoln Navigator because he thinks it will help him pick up more women.

A chic gentleman

Selo

It's short for Selahattin, or Salah al-Din, the famous Arabic conqueror. But he's not Arabic; he's Kurdish, from Diyarbakır in the east. Selo and I are the same age, which is probably why we get along so well. He works at a restaurant trying to shuttle people inside, which is where I originally met him; he kept trying to get me to come into the restaurant, but after a while he gave up and we just began talking and became friends. He lives not far from the Hippodrome and sometimes when he finishes work late at night, we go back to his apartment and cook a meal and chat and watch TV together. On the rare occasion he has a day off, or the even rarer occasion we both do, we usually go to a nargileci where his brother works and smoke the nargile (hookah or water pipe) and drink tea and Turkish coffee. The other day we went out for dinner and had lahmacun, something like a pizza on a thin pita bread that you roll up with salad inside, and then strolled around a fish market in Kumkapı afterwards looking at all of the interesting creatures the fishermen have hauled out of the Marmaris. He is really a clever guy and is very fluent in English, and he is learning Spanish as well. He is also a devout Muslim, and prays whenever he can and isn't working. When I think of him, however, I always hear ''Here is better!'', as he always says trying to get people to come into the restaurant.