An evening with the ladies

I was feeding "my" cats some elderly chicken yesterday afternoon when the woman downstairs came by. She's a pleasant young mother of two lively, bright children. We've exchanged greetings on the stairs quite often, and the kids have practised their English on me, but my Turkish hasn't been up to more than that. Yesterday we were able to chat a bit about the cats - how I love cats, and what a good thing it was for me to feed them (sevap she called it, which means an act that fulfils the Muslim's requirement to be compassionate). And then she said it was her daughter's birthday and how they'd like me to drop in in the evening to have some cake.

So I knocked on their door a little after 6 and was swept into their apartment. It was the first time I'd seen the mom without a head covering, and she looked a lot younger and prettier. We spent some time exchanging names - Leslie is a very difficult name for Turks to pronounce. Then the kids wanted me to help them learn the English alphabet. You have to have learned the alphabet in Turkish to appreciate how difficult ours is. There's nothing logical about the letter names. Why "aitch" and "ef" but "gee" and "pee"? And "vee" is surprisingly difficult; the Turkish letter "v" is pronounced somewhere between our "w" and "v" sounds. Most adult Turks can't hear the difference between the two sounds, but I was able to help the kids understand the difference.

And then they put on a video of the mom's home town in the southeast, and when the music started playing they started dancing. First the daughter, who's 12, did quite an amazing belly dance - she can ripple her tummy like the best dancers I've seen. Then mom danced and dragged me into it. Another woman friend of hers turned up and we all danced. The video showed only men dancing together, and there we were all women dancing together - and I realized that here dancing is not traditionally a man-woman thing but something groups of people do together to enjoy the music and the companionship. Turkish society has always been strongly divided into men's groups and women's groups, and traditional people still live that way. If Ron had been able to come (he was teaching) he would have messed up the whole evening!

A couple more neighbour women turned up, and the poor birthday girl just had one friend her own age! But it seems that birthday parties here are for adults, not kids. Anyway, all us ladies chattered away - or they did, and I listened, just letting it flow over me, not trying to decode and translate but just let understanding happen. And for much of the time it did. They talked about the brother of one of them, who'd just died, and about how hard it was for another to find good food in London and not be spoken to in Arabic. Mostly I just enjoyed being in the midst of a group of people who treated me as a friend, one of them. Good thing they didn't expect me to make intelligent conversation, though!

I was there for about 3 hours, and left feeling exhausted but contented. I'm so grateful to have been invited.

Just now I'm sitting near our dear son listening to the Messiah CD he brought along. Evan arrived safely this afternoon and will be here until just after Christmas. "May your eyes shine", the Turks said when I told them he was coming. And indeed my eyes are shining. We're just about to go off for dinner at the Asensör restaurant, and then he will fall into bed. Tomorrow we start showing him "our" city.