Shooter in hand, garden out back, Uncle John lived alone. His expanse of land flowed into creeks and cows, frames of Cherokee homes and burned slave quarters. For five decades, he tended this land in north Georgia in the American south. His great-grandfather’s plantation home still stands down the road. It’s on the national historic registry. He’d spent summers there as a kid. I spent holidays at his place. Living far from home in Turkey causes memories to stir of family and places that have slipped away, especially before this Easter holiday. The best way I know to share them with our son and my Turkish husband is to tell it like it was, one character at a time. I’d swing on his back porch overlooking the field where, six years younger than my brother, I'd hunt Easter eggs in vain, catch fireflies and eat off his persimmon tree. All year the noisy Frigidaire freezer on his screened-in porch held summer vegetables he’d grown. His jalapeno cornbread sticks made me sweat. And his vegetable soup even made butter beans stand tall. John referred to women he knew – women we never saw – by number. Thirty-eight, seventy-nine, thirteen. No one asked why. But he would share the casserole or meat pie they left behind. His Toyota truck wheels turning over the long gravel drive meant dice games and jokes drier than aged Scotch were on the way. Never soon enough, he drove under 15 miles per hour wherever he went. Sometimes he’d make visits on his Ryder mower, blades up. Sometimes he didn’t return home after nights in town with the boys or any number of casserole helpings. He made most of the furniture in his little sister’s house. He helped her build the place, picking a spot under enormous pecan trees at the base of his fields. She was my grandmother. Her dinner table shone of cherry and mahogany, all linked and notched, no bolts, no screws. In his basement workshop, I was a Cherokee warrior princess fresh from the mountain near his house. There was a lot to learn watching this man at work but I’d usually sit quiet inhaling the wood chips. Then we’d gamble. You name it: Poker, backgammon, gin rummy. Scotch in hand, he’d always ask, “You sure you brought the big dollars. Put ‘em on the table, let’s see what you got.” I would and we’d proceed. This universe was in the back room, a place always open to me, two steps down from the main house – a place where an old lady doll sat in a miniature chair, legs crossed, on top of the toilet. The green felt-top card table under my dirty fingers, pool balls and heavy poker chips made me feel grown, like a man. The fire always seemed to be lit, whistling in code back there. The yellowing piano keys, clunky, some of them dead, were mine to abuse. The pool table was not. Men from all over Georgia had come to this table for decades, where they’d sometimes play for days on end. I’ve never seen them. John’s only rule – if he had others I never heard about them – was that I had to wait until I was as tall as his cue stick before I could play. I was seven the first time I lost sixteen dollars at his poker table. John had a slow Cheshire grin and little stained teeth that lined up like rows of silver queen corn. He always shook the ice in his glass before his turn. And wrote checks come Christmas just big enough to cover my bets.
By Kristen Stevens, published in the Turkish Daily News on March 20, 2008
Every day our baby, like this blank page, requires a good lead, new content, a few standards and some trial and error to engage his older and wiser ways. Until last week whenever concerned elders, friends or his own dad piped up over our child’s immobility at 10 months, I tried to glorify his extreme efficiency or rapt curiosity with the world at his fingertips. He’d rather bob up and down clapping to Michael Jackson. Who wouldn’t, I’d ask. Then we hit a trifecta of milestones this week: Commando crawling, pulling up on everything and a new set of fangs. More carnivore and less baby, chasing skirts seems right around the corner. The chase, in our home anyway, is on. Working from home while watching Max just became a no-can-do. When I returned from the kitchen yesterday, I found my son, this little baby, standing and selecting something from his chest-high box of toys. Clunking his head on a table a few minutes later though, he was mortal again and weeping. His grinning cheeks now pop up over the ledge of the bathtub during “mommy’s turn”. And now there’s no way to hide from visitors or grandma live via Skype that the only thing setting Max in motion are television remotes and cell phones. Busted were we when he then pointed the remote, kumanda in Turkish, at the TV and started punching buttons. His expanded cache of playthings also includes live electrical wall outlets, power cords, running water, glass and all things sharp and pointy. I used to look at parents who let their kids have the remote and think they were suckers or TV junkies. I hadn’t tried prying the thing loose.
Call and response As I marvel at these developments below my knee, my understanding of how Turkish folks interact with families and children is also evolving. It better be: My kid’s first gesture is the standard Turkish “come hither”, the upturned hand motioning babies to “gel, gel” or “come, come”. Often “gel” is a Turkish kid’s first word. I was a bit discombobulated everywhere we went either rejecting this demand on behalf of my kid or handing him over in resignation. It took nearly 10 months for me to figure out that the women in the produce aisle or the mentally handicapped son of the café owner aren’t actually commanding him to leap into their arms so much as teaching babies communal call and response. But if it happens that the odd foreign mom takes them literally, ah well, off they go kissing his cheeks and hands before introducing him to neighbors. And he's better for it, I'm realizing. Men in particular here are different with babies and children. Sadly, in the U.S. and much of the West the male species is becoming more guarded. My husband, a film director, was holding a rehearsal with a group of actors this week in our home. He leapt up when he heard Max waking and brought him, with a hint of biological triumph, to meet the guys. Turkish men, including this group of actors, show babies their sense of wonder and awe mixed with natural know-how. These guys sang sweetly and growled before pouncing on all fours and dousing Max with kisses. Early on I could see a difference in his disposition around dudes. His posture and expressions show he’s relaxed and engaged. It’s no wonder guys walk around here arm in arm – they learn from the start that men are affectionate and fun.
By Kristen Stevens, published in the Turkish Daily News on March 13, 2008.
When I was in Diyarbakir last year working on a story about women surviving with micro credit loans, ice dream vendor Nahiyet Kaya told me that her daughter is proud she can ask her for money now when she needs something. With a piece of chalk her daughter Leyla, 12, had covered the doors of the large wooden dresser – the family’s only furniture – with hundreds of mathematical formulas from floor to ceiling. But Leyla told me she didn’t know whether she would stay in school or not. Her mother, who wears a headscarf, cast her vibrant green eyes toward the floor. Leyla, who sparkled when she said she wanted to be a math teacher, might have to help earn money and do housework instead, like most girls in her neighborhood. “This life is so difficult for women: building a house, cleaning, working… I don’t want to do these things all over again somewhere else.” Across town in the heart of Hasirli, Diyarbakır’s poorest neighborhood, Kadriye Kabak’s sons sell her bread after school in the market every day. They are expected to stay in school, she told me as she worked surrounded by her daughters and other small children. While most people in this country can relate in one way or another to these stories, political and social leaders ignore the real needs of families and daughters by focusing on what young women should wear. Under the current law, young Islamic men are allowed to enter the same state universities that shut the door on their sisters and wives. Perhaps they will never work beside each other because one was denied entrance to a school, an opportunity or a job for wearing a more visible manifestation of her faith. This is an injustice. By not admitting covered women to university, the state gives more value to young Muslim men, perpetuating the unequal footing for women that already exists in too many segments of Muslim culture, Turkish society and everywhere else. However the truth is Turkey’s state universities have seldom tried to keep covered women out of class.
Cast aside Sadly the headscarf issue has emboldened the Islamist-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to talk up liberties while distracting the public and media from rights they trample elsewhere. Article 301 still hovers over free speech and Turkey’s EU path. A month ago the government lowered the bar so that legal underlings of their choosing could be appointed to the judiciary, a change that will deeply affect this country for years to come. The AKP is also behind the investigation, replacement and salary cuts of more than 5,000 teachers who did not serve their interests. Left out of the debates are millions of Turkish girls who don’t choose to wear a headscarf; they are told to do so for the sake of their family’s dignity. They do not choose to stay home instead of going to school where they could learn about other ways of life and self worth through achievement. They do so because they are poor. The headscarf is an easy distraction for people in power who can afford to make choices, and it doesn’t cost a dime. Debates in Parliament and in the public these days should focus on real education reform and the rights of millions of girls like Leyla to make choices about what to study – not whether they will or what they’ll wear.
By Kristen Stevens, published in Turkish Daily News on March 6, 2008.
