Istanbul pictures...finally

Flags hanging inside the Grand Bazaar


This is Zeki, a carpet-seller in the Grand Bazaar, sitting in front of a 100-and-something-year-old kilim (flat-weave rug). Zeki, I'm pretty sure, is the only person in the entire Bazaar who does not try to lure tourists into his shop the way a spider would lure an insect into its web. Most shop-owners are all "Hey, c'mon, have a quick look around, looking is free," until you're inside, and then they basically block the door until you take them up on what is, they assure you, a very special deal just for you, since you're such a special tourist and all. Zeki, however, just gave me tea and educated me in the world of fine carpets for several hours, without so much as a hint of "How much would you pay for this?"


Pottery shop in the Bazaar. They love their painted flatware in Istanbul.


The dome inside the Haghia Sophia, a 1500-year-old church-turned-mosque-turned museum.


Colors and columns inside the Haghia Sophia.


Streams of tourists with umbrellas pouring out of Topkapi Palace. It rained or drizzled or misted literally all day every day while we were in Istanbul. It was like therapy for my skin. It kinda sucked to never have dry feet, though.


Inside Topkapi.


Famous Blue Mosque.


Don't drive your tractor on the bridge.

Too much change, apparently

I have always (okay, not always, but for a good long while, anyway) operated under this paradigm: When I'm around people from other cultures, I try to "do it the way they do it." When I meet my Arab friends, I greet the ladies with cheek kissings and the men with my hand placed over my heart. I always inquire about the family and have a good amount of conversation before ever 'getting down to business.' If I invite them out to coffee, it'll be my treat. And on and on it goes; it could very well go forever.

Why? Because I aspire to be a cultural chameleon. I want to fit in wherever I go. I want to speak a dozen dialects and understand every local custom. I want to see the world, but I never want to be a tourist.

It's taken me years to figure some of this stuff out, and I don't even get it all yet. Americans greet with handshakes; they're direct and confrontational; they split the tab. But when I'm around another culture, I try to turn on the analytical side of my brain and figure out what's happening and why. And a huge part of Arab culture is driven, in my opinion, by hospitality.

Take something normal, like having a guest. Here are some of the things people have told me over the years. First, thorough house-cleaning is an absolute necessity before guests arrive. Right down to moving the couch to vacuum under it. In America, you might offer a drink; in Arabia, you give them one, immediately, and offering is kind of like saying, "I don't really want to give you this; if I did, I would just do it." So you don't offer things; you just bring them. You never, ever, "kick someone out" of your house because you're ready to go to bed. Basically, you bend over backward for your guests.

So, I invited one of my favorite people over this week, and she told me something along the lines of, "Nah, I feel like you're going out of your way too much for this." Then she told me that I was "becoming more Arabic" and that she liked "how I used to be." Back when I was all messy and disorganized and would forget to offer water.

So I told her, "Khalas, okay, come to my house and I won't do anything. I just want to see you." She did and it was all well and good.

But apparently, my strategy of "being more Arab" has both succeeded and failed. Succeeded because apparently I've got some of the rules down. Failed because it turns out, your true friends don't actually mind if you're casual and clueless. At least when you're casual and clueless, you're relaxed and not stressed out.

New paradigm: Try to blend the two cultures together and create a new equilibrium.

News flash

News Alerts: 6 New Results for Beth

Arabic skills recovered in risky search-and-rescue attempt
Authorities have recovered Beth's Arabic skills this week, which miraculously survived after they went missing four months ago. Sources report the second language disappeared in May, when Beth boarded a plane for the United States and encountered a whole slew of people who didn't know what the word "insha'allah" meant. Still, hope remained throughout the summer that Arabic would someday return, as the missing-in-action language gave hints of being alive: Beth mysteriously thanked waitresses with "shukraan" and accidentally commanded children to "yallah." Then today, the Arabic skills reappeared, very much alive and seeming to have suffered no ill effects from four months of captivity. The joyous reunion was followed by a one-hour discussion about education almost entirely without English.

Two people--two!--dream Beth is pregnant; superstitious fears follow
In a somewhat disturbing chain of events, Beth and her close friend both dreamed Beth was pregnant last night, leading to nervous speculations about the state of Beth's womb. Beth entertained thoughts of the power of female intuition; and of how her mother once dreamed a friend was pregnant and then it later turned out that the friend was pregnant, and her mother knew about it first even though they weren't even living in the same state and hadn't even talked in months, and what if this is the same thing? Other female friends were less-than-reassuring about the state of Beth's uterus, claiming they'd actually been thinking about her being pregnant this very week.
If her mother also has had a dream lately about Beth being with child, Beth will probably go ahead and take a pregnancy test.

A whole year after buying her Mac, Beth finally figures out how to scroll
Today, Beth finally figured out how to do a two-finger scroll on her Mac, and the late-blooming skill launched a whole new set of insecurities about how she'll never be as cool as all those artsy, hip-ly dressed, tech-savvy people featured on Mac commercials.
Meanwhile, nagging thoughts that she'll never really figure out Twitter persist.

Beth declares self unfit to mother a cat, much less a child
For the second week in a row, Beth forgot to take her cat to the vet this week, claiming she got "caught up" in her Arabic studies. Since the vet visits her compound only once a week, the unfortunate feline will have to wait even longer before he can get a cream or something for that funky fungus on his leg. Beth lamented her poor mothering skills to Husband, bemoaning her absent-mindedness and asking what kind of mother she'll be. Husband meanwhile hoped this outburst of emotion was PMS, and not a sign of the aforementioned pregnancy.

Refrigerator contains only mustard, capers, lettuce
In preparation for their upcoming trip to Turkey, Beth and Husband stopped buying regular food and intend to attempt survival on a sparse diet of condiments. Beth has subsisted mostly on hard-boiled eggs, mustard and chocolate milk, while Marc has eaten an absurd amount of canned chickpeas. Friends' comments about how hard-boiled eggs with mustard sound like a pregnancy food were not appreciated.

House cleaned in anticipation of cat-sitter's arrival
Beth and Husband spent time cleaning toilets and sweeping for dust-bunnies to prepare for the cat-sitter's arrival this week, in spite of the fact that the cat-sitter is probably the least clean person they know. Still, Beth faced uncertainty about what he would think if he discovered six books, 11 note cards, four Bobbi pins, four pieces of trash, three pens, a pencil, a photograph, a pair of nail clippers, a couple of old to-do lists, a journal, an iPod connector thingy, some chap stick, and her cell phone on her bedside table. Shortly thereafter, she swept all of it into the bedside table's top drawer and called it good.

Couple unclear how it's time for trip to Istanbul, already
Citing a lack of seasonal changes in Saudi Arabia and the fact that "time flies," Beth and Husband both expressed undue shock that their impending trip to Turkey was, in fact, in like three days.
"Holy crap, how is it October?" Beth remarked, nearly a week into the month.
Husband gallantly took it upon himself to write out all the directions to everywhere and check multifarious travel web sites, while Beth borrowed a book called "Istanbul" from a friend and vowed to read it on the plane. She also alerted blog readers that she'd be gone for a week, but she'd reward their faithfulness later with pictures from Istanbul.

The pyramid is wrong

There's a popular idea in psychology called the Hierarchy of Needs. The concept was created by this guy named Abraham Maslow, who essentially ranked human needs in a pyramid with things like food, shelter and air at the bottom and self-actualization at the top. The theory goes that humans begin to fill their needs from the bottom up. Only once they have attained food and shelter can they look for something like a loving relationship. Only once all other needs have been satisfied will they go on a spiritual search for meaning.

I don't know how anyone, having studied a range of human experience, can subscribe to this nonsense.

Case study #1: America. Let's just go ahead and say that country's got it pretty good when it comes to basic needs. Less than 2 percent of the population lives in absolute poverty (less than $1/day). Americans, even ones who have been hit by the recession, are rich people--they've got cars, houses or apartments, and money to spend on $5 cups of coffee. Their children go to school. They wear shoes. They usually do not die because they get diarrhea and can't afford the medicine to stop it.

There's poverty and suffering in America, sure, but I'm just saying that this poverty is relative to the rest of the American population. On the whole, if you're an American, you're probably freakishly rich.

So according to the Hierarchy, with these basic needs covered, Americans are freed up to pursue higher needs: love, friends, family, spirituality, God. But that's not what Americans are doing with their wealth. One recent study indicates that, when asked to identify their priorities in life, the priorities of family and spirituality are both on the decline in America, while priorities of health, wealth, and leisure are climbing.

It strikes me that wealth is an addictive thing: Get a little bit and you'll want a little more. Instead of feeling satisfied with our basic needs and moving on to pursue relationships and then faith, suddenly we put way more things into that "basic" category: the right kind of cell phone, for instance, or a house with four bedrooms, not three. We feel unsatisfied with what we have, materially, and so our focus stays on the material.

Case study #2: Refugee population in Uganda No one can miss the absolute poverty here, and I won't spend a whole lot of time talking about that.

What I will say is that, according to the Hierarchy, these are the people who ought to be consumed, every minute of every day, trying to meet their basic needs: Food, clothing, shelter. But while these people spend insane hours out in the fields trying to meet those needs, I don't think I've ever met anyone who prayed harder. God is like oxygen for them: If He doesn't provide, they will die--and they know it. He's indispensable. He is their biggest need, because they realize that without Him, they can't have any of their other needs met.

On top of that, the people I met put a higher value on community than any American I know. (And the Americans I know value community more than most do.) I had one person tell me they'd rather build relationships with foreigners than have their money. (Read: The community tier is a higher priority than the "basic needs" tier.) And if you want to know what you can do for them, they will tell you: Get to know us. Spend time with us. Show you care.

One thing I've noticed is that humans aren't actually very good at realizing when their basic needs are met. How many times have I heard an American (including, embarrassingly, myself) say: "I wish I were rich"? The more time we spend focusing on our material needs, the more we seem to have, don't we?

No wonder it's hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom.

How to get stuff done

Why is it so hard to do stuff? I swear, when I worked four part-time jobs and took 18 credit hours and volunteered, somehow there were more red check marks on to-do lists and feelings of accomplishment that followed. Now that my whole day stretches out blankly in front of me, somehow the temptation to watch the Food Network for hours on end is way stronger than it ever was before. Maybe I thrive on the pressure and the deadlines. Which is why I've needed to learn to motivate myself, which is a lot harder said than done. But after a year of this, I've finally got a few tricks in my bag.

1. Write out a schedule. Especially procrastinators like me. If I don't plan when I'll work out or write, I'll inevitably push that stuff further and further back until suddenly--WHAT??? HOW IS IT MIDNIGHT?!?

2. Ask for help. You know those quiet, peaceful hours of the morning when nobody's up yet and it's just you, your coffee and the sunrise? Yeah, I hate those hours. However, I get more stuff done if I get up earlier. Knowing how hard this is for me, I've recruited Husband to cajole me by turning on the lights and promising me coffee. I ask friends to meet me at the gym or go to a coffee shop to study Arabic. Nothing wrong with accountability.

3. Make attainable to-do lists. I am queen of mile-long to-do lists. Like, I'll write "Plan Thanksgiving dinner" in early October. Really? Do I need to worry about that now? It's slightly more useful and a lot less discouraging when I only let five things onto the to-do list, which means I might actually accomplish some of them instead of feeling so overwhelmed that I never even get started.

4. Unplug the Internet. I think I have cyber-OCD. Like, if I'm online, I somehow feel the need to check my e-mail every five minutes and then read all the updates on Facebook. Whenever I get stuck on a project, my cursor just automatically drifts toward Firefox before I even know what I'm doing! And every time I do that, I lose like 15 minutes of work time because it takes that long to transition in and out of an activity like Working on my Book. Unless working actually requires me to be online, it is stupid not to unplug.

5. Multi-task like mad. Favorites: Memorizing Arabic verbs on the treadmill. Cleaning house while talking on the phone. Planning plot points as I pick up groceries.

6. Take a whole day off, every week. Which is great, because then I can plan to spend four hours re-reading the seventh Harry Potter book without feeling guilty about it.

"Health" Food

I was originally pumped to hear that the supermarket on my compound would have an entire section devoted to "health food." Then I found out that my idea of healthy food is very, very different than theirs. I mean, I think of organic produce, whole grains, vitamin-rich snacks. Words like all-natural and unprocessed come to mind.

But here's what I find in the supermarket:

An entire wall of sugar-free candy and reduced-fat cookies.

I cannot pronounce most of the items on these ingredients lists. That is never a good sign.

Another entire wall devoted to sugar substitutes.

This would be the wall of chemicals. I'm not even sure if this qualifies for the "food" part of "health food."

A whole wall of jelly.

Why is this here?

A corner devoted to refried beans and processed nacho cheese.

Okay, what the crap?

And finally, one corner of actual health food.