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One of the main things I learned by the time I left Turkey in 2005 was how it feels to live in a real community.  Bursa, Turkey, was my home on and off for several years when I was English coordinator for a private K-12 school.  The school rented an apartment for me right across the street from the school in Bizimkent (it means “Our Town”) Complex C, a building with 15 apartments, three on each of five floors.

               Settling into my apartment had its trials.   For the first two days I had to use the old style toilet – a little room with a porcelain fixture set into the floor.  One squats.  Arthritic knees and hip do not like to squat.  I never learned how not to spatter, either, so always ended up rinsing my ankles in the shower.  That was the second trial, because there was no hot water for those two days.  There is nothing like the lack of an essential to cement a phrase in one’s mind:  with every hot shower in my western-style bathroom I murmur, ‘sicak su, I love you, sicak su.’

The word sicak (see JOCK) also means emotionally warm, as in warm neighbors.  The first day here I came back over from school to get something and was invited onto the second floor balcony for midmorning tea with a group of women.  In my very imperfect Turkish, I picked up that on Sundays our building sometimes gets together for a barbecue in the empty field in front of us.

Sunday can be a long day when one is alone.  Anticipating the barbecue kept me going as I dug in and cleaned the place to make it really mine.  I took down the curtains and washed them all, proud of learning the trick of getting the plastic disks on the curtains to go easily into the slides on the ceiling.  Reveling in hot water, I dusted, swept and scrubbed windowsills and floors.  I washed all the new dishes and put them away in the newly scrubbed cabinets.

About 7 o’clock two men carried some plastic tables and chairs out into the field.  A few more men appeared when it was time to light the charcoal.  I stuck to my job until the last tile in the bathroom was clean, washed and wiped from the tub as I stood in it naked, then showered my own self.  I grabbed a plate with some cheese, tomatoes, grapes, and bread.  Too bad I had nothing to share, but I would take my own food and join the group for company.  As I walked out to the street, a 12-year-old boy took my chair and carried it to the women’s table for me.  Men and women were sitting at different tables – not rigidly separated, but rather like evenings when my mother’s matriarchal family got together and the men clustered together for protection.   İ could tell that the men were talking ‘futbol.’

Twilight had become dusk by then and it was hard to see people, but none of them looked like the women I had drunk tea with on the balcony.  Before I knew what was happening my plate was piled with delicious (lezzetli) food.  One man, greeting me in English, brought me a perfectly grilled chicken-vegetable shish kebab.  Other people added spiced bulgar and a salad with cucumbers and yogurt.  I thanked them, tasted, and exclaimed “Lezzetli!” indeed.  Their English – mostly the university students’ --  and my store of Turkish was enough for us all to introduce each other.  Gradually I realized that about half of the people there were relatives from Kayseri.  I had walked into a family party, pulled myself up to the table, and made myself at home.  No one seemed to mind.  Perhaps I was considered the entertainment.

After dinner tables were taken down and we moved to rugs and blankets on the grass.  They insisted that I stay for tea, brewed in an ornate old charcoal-fired samovar.  Currents of cooler air had begun moving.  Stars shone in the cloudless sky.  We talked about Mars which is passing close to earth.  We talked about families and food.  The last calls to prayer began to sound from mosques on three sides.   They asked how I like Turkey.  “Türkeyi seviyorum!” I said.  I love Turkey.  I am savoring Turkey.  But neither my Turkish nor my English was good enough to tell them how much.