Oh, you mean THAT Tanzimat

I took an entrance exam over the weekend to start a graduate program in the history of modern Turkey. The program is excellent, the university is beautiful and - best of all - I love the topic.

I'm sure you will be shocked to learn that I was feeling rather confident when I walked into the exam hall. I've been studying the history of the republic for a few months, I read books, I know stuff. I know about the executive hangings in the 1950s (ouch). I know about the coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980 (can you imagine army generals seizing the White House? Wild). I know all about Turkish-American relations. "I own this," I thought.

Uh, not quite.

The first question asked us to compare the coups of 1960 and 1980. I'm fascinated by coups, so I read that question and felt a little bubble of confidence rise though my chest.

Then I got to the second question. "Courses on the history of modern Turkey begin not with the rise of Ataturk in the early 20th Century, but with the Tanzimat in 1839. Explain, in a historiographical perspective that considers both Europe and Turkey, why the Treaty of Tanzimat marks the beginning of the republic's history."

My mouth dropped.

What the #$%*# is Tanzimat? Tanzimat, Tanzimat, Tanzimat... if I say it several times will it come to me? Treaty of Rome, Treaty of Versailles, Treaty of Nice. Treaty... of... TANZIMAT? Where the hell is Tanzimat? I waited, but heard no bells ringing. And what the hell does historiographical mean? Why don't they just say historical like everyone else? Unless, of course, it doesn't mean historical. Oh Sweet Mother of Jesus.

I considered answering only question #1 and pretending that I didn't realize the exam required answering both questions. Then I looked at the instructions which stated in bold print, "Answer both questions." Damnit.

So I did what I always do when I'm nervous: I suppressed the urge to pee, bit my lower lip and started writing. In six pages, I knocked question #1 out of the water. I wrote names, dates and political and societal implications. On the remaining half-page, I answered question two. I wrote about the history of Europe during the 19th Century and I waffled away about the French Revolution and British hegemony and the "burgeoning concepts of democracy and popular represenation." I was fully prepared to lie my way into some stories about crumbling empires and the desire to spread education to the masses when I remembered that sometimes, there's merit in honesty. So, next to the last word of the first sentence, I made a little asterisk.

Next to the asterisk footnote at the bottom of the page, I wrote, "I am currently taking a course on the history of modern Turkey and while I dearly wish that our course began with Tanzimat, it instead began with the rise of Ataturk in the 20th Century. I will, however, be reading about Tanzimat tonight and, if called into the interview tomorrow, I will be able to discuss Tanzimat extensively."

I got called into the interview the next day.

xo

Shannon

This Place is a Mess. And I love it.

Lovely sidewalk, -Istanbul, Turkey.

I remember sitting at the shores of La Jolla Cove in San Diego years ago with my Senegalese friend, Fady. There was a protest at the cove that day because animal-rights activists didn't like people disrupting seals who had made the beach's "children's pool" into a breeding ground. Crowds gathered about 50 m from the seals while activists held a vigil and drew a line in the sand that implied, "If go near that seal pup, you will rot in a polluted hell."

I like seals. But as Fady and I sat looking at the seals and the fuss surrounding the seals (laws have been made about them, council meetings have been devoted to them), we both started laughing.

"Please," Fady said. "In Senegal, you can ride the damn seal into the water if you want." Here he pretended he was in a seal rodeo with an imaginary seal-pup-whip in hand.

As for me, I admire a society so advanced that it can while away days and dollars discussing seal v. beachgoer rights. But something in me prefers the complete chaos that exists in Istanbul, where I live now. Let's take exhibit A:


This is a boat. Which started sinking to the bottom of the Bosphorus a few weeks ago after crashing into a sidewalk near its boat slip (see picture at the top of the story, notice the boat sinking in the water). This ship is gradually giving up its fight and soon it will probably meet with a tanker that sank in the Bosphorus in 1997 with 26,000 sheep inside (according to a book published in 2004, the tanker was still at the bottom of the Bosphorus, where it will remain indefinitely).

Maybe the yacht above crashed into the shore because of a natural accident. Ask any Turk and they'll give another explanantion, "Insurance fraud," said one. "Drunk boating, definitely drunk boating," said another. "Lovers quarrel, she sank the boat," said yet another. No matter, the thing is still sitting there, amid million dollar yachts in the richest waterfront neighborhood, just steps away from other waterfront buildings that are long abadoned or falling into disrepair amid a lingering inheritance dispute.

And this is just the real estate.

Istanbul is bursting with messy stories of disrepair, neglect and go-it-alone self governance.

Sometimes the water comes on, sometimes it doesnt. Sometimes the mail comes, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you fall into the crater-sized hole in the sidewalk, and sometimes you don't.

There are dog packs, cat packs (you read me right) and illegal houses made of mud, tarp and stakes.

You'd think I'd get frustrated by the disorder, but most times I'm amused. Today, I sat in traffic for 25 minutes because people had decided to turn a one-way street into two-way street. And other people had decided to illegally park on both sides of said street. Finally, one man got out of his car and played traffic director while yelling at everyone. $95,000 cars were squeezing past one another, drivers were saying hi as their bumpers bumped. It was a social affair.

The chaos makes academic life more intersting. Last semester, a woman showed up late to an exam. Then she explained that a pizza delivery guy on a moped crashed into her on the crosswalk. The professor barely blinked.

My friend Zach handed in an application last Friday with eight of the ten required documents missing. The secretary said, "Well, just make sure you have it by next week. Maybe toward the beginning of the week. Thank you."

I sat in on a class earlier this year which was interrupted when a pack of cats chasing a lizard started bolting across the auditorium. The prof casually walked to the side of the stage, opened a door and held it for the lizard and pursuing cats.

The list goes on and on.

One day, when the chaos starts eating me alive, I'll re-join the world of seal rights and children's pools. For now, I'll keep laughing.

A Weekend in the City, photos

A few photos from a weekend in the city. Happy Easter to all!

Bebek, a village near my apartment

Turn your head sideways! This is on my campus at Bogazici with a view of the Bosphorus

Lunch!

View from my friend Kostas' apartment, bridge over the Bosphorus

View of Bosphorus from Gulhane Park

Saturday fruit market down the street

Neighborhood fruit stand (the guy gave me free oranges)

Lights on the ceiling of my favorite cafe

View from the window of my favorite cafe

And then I found out that I'm obese

In a moment of stupidity last week, I stepped on a scale. Not any scale, but a scale that tells you exactly how fat you are through body fat index.

To put you in the moment: I was at a house with two men and one woman. Man A said he bought a schmick new scale. Man B said, "I'm so small. I wish I wasn't so small." Both men whined about their skinny existence while the woman and I considered throwing them out the window.

So the guys pull out the scale, hop on it and start waa-waa-ing about having just 10 percent body fat (these are really skinny guys, Jeff Wegesin style skinny for those of you who know him).

Then I stepped on the scale.

Never do that at the end of the day. Never do it after 3 glasses of wine and a bad mid-term exam. Do it the moment you wake up. Naked, after peeing. Not at the end of a bad week. Never, ever in front of other people- particularly skinny ones.

But I'm just too cocky sometimes.

I stepped on the scale and it gave a little countdown and then issued the magic fat-index number- which I will never reveal in a public forum. The guys looked at the fat-index number and said, "Whoa." Man A leaned in to get a closer look at the scale and then looked at me with a mixture of despair and confusion, like I might have broken his scale or sprouted a third breast or both.

Man B leaned in to give me a high five and then did a quick calculation to see what fractional percentage of my body was pure fat.

"You are X/X body fat. X/X of your body is fat!" he said with a smile spreading across his face, "Wow."

For a split second I thought, "That is pretty incredible. Who knew?"

Then the girl in me took over and right there, right in the middle of people I barely knew, right after a huge meal that topped off a terrible week- I started crying. Not bawling-crying, but kinda wimpering-crying. "I'm fat. Not like zaftig or chubby. Fat."

Both guys started stammering. The other woman walked into the kitchen. Man B raced to the computer, "Shannon, I'll google this. Maybe all girls are that fat!" Man A put his arm around my waist and said, "You're not fat. It's a dumb scale."

After some googling, I learned that women should have a body fat index of something like 22 to 25 percent. 26 to 30 percent is overweight. Anything more than 32 percent is certifiably obese.

Hello my name is Shannon. It has been one week since my last date with the scale. And I am obese.

I don't look obese. I've actually lost about 20 pounds since I lived in San Diego. But obese I am. I've checked that thing over and over again to see if it changes according to time of day, pull of the moon, amount of alcohol in my blood. But it's always the same glaring, reminscent-of-an-elephant number.

Needless to say, I've done seven hours of yoga in the past 6 days. I'm going fishing tomorrow and biking on Sunday. I've walked to and from school and lowered my daily brownie intake (I can't help it, I love brownies, they're my friends).

My goal is no longer to lose weight. It's to lose body-fat mass. And if this doesn't happen in the next six weeks, I'm trotting back over to Man A's house and I'm chucking that piece-of-crap scale into the Bosphorus.

xo

Shannon

The Man in the Room

Let me preface this story by saying that no other person I know has had this happen to them. To repeat: no person- Turkish or otherwise- has experienced this.

Friday night, my friend Alex invited me to his house for a dinner party. Alex lives with his dad in a beautiful home overlooking the Bosphorus, a strait that cuts through Istanbul. Alex's dad, who is away in Egypt, is the head of Save The Children in the Middle East and Eurasia.

We cooked a noodle dish and drank wine and beer until the wee hours of the morning. At around 3 am, a few other dinner guests left and I decided to sleep on a couch because my house was far away. Alex pulled out a spare twin bed and put it on the floor in his room. We fell asleep.

At 5 a.m., I woke up and turned over as if something had woken me up. I looked toward the door and noticed Alex standing against the wall near the entryway. I was confused. Why is Alex awake, I wondered. What is he doing? Instead of saying something, I decided to watch him and see what he was up to (I enjoy watching people when they don't know I can see them). Alex walked to the doorway, then walked back into the room. Into the room and out of the room. In and out. Pacing, watching, waiting. What the hell is Alex doing, I thought.

Then he started walking away from the doorway - and me - and toward the bed where he was sleeping. I watched him and said, "Alex, what are you doing?"

He stopped and looked at me. Suddenly I realized - he wasn't Alex. He was a man with a closely-shaven beard and bald head. He was wearing a thick, black sweater and jeans. He had on dark shoes with rubber soles. He was more muscular than Alex. He looked like the French actor Jean Reno. He looked at me, looked away and turned to walk out the door.

"Who are you?" I asked before he left the room. "Are you Alex? Who are you? Alex, there is a man in this room."

At that point, Alex awoke and said groggily, "What? I'm Alex..."

By then, the man was slowly walking out of the room and down the hallway. A second passed and the front door clicked shut.

In the past, I envisioned myself in high-drama situations. What would I do or how would I react, I wondered as I wrote crime stories as a reporter. I always thought I would be a little dramatic. Maybe I would scream. Or maybe I would be heroic and attack the villain. Everybody talks about fight or flight. Nobody says, "Fight or flight or sit really still to see how the story unravels." As the robber was walking out the door I remember thinking, "Why this house? Wait, why are you leaving? At least say why you're doing this."

That's how I learned what I do in truly frightening situations: basically nothing.

I've been scared before. I was physically assaulted in France seven years ago. That time I screamed, ran and almost vomited. But this time, when a potential-attacker was standing over me, preparing to steal things from a room where I was sleeping my reaction was ... curiousity. In a very even-leveled voice, I said, "Who are you? What are you doing?"

After checking the house, Alex and I called the police. They came, offered to take off their shoes before entering the house (strange politesse) and said there was nothing they could do. They left and we sat, Alex and I, staring at each other. Alex's dad is out of town. His mom lives in the US. His brother is working in Afghanistan. His sister was vacationing in Holland. I told Alex he was basically stuck with me for the next few hours.

Strangely, neither he nor I were in shock. Or maybe we were. We woke up his landlord who patrolled the premises for the next few hours. Alex called his dad. I read a magazine on the coffee table. I joked that if Alex's dad was an undercover CIA agent, he wasn't doing a very good job and if his Dad really was the head of Save the Children, he should work on saving his own damn children.

Then, like other people who have had the shit scared out of them in the middle of the night, we decided to eat. We bought eggs, bananas and strawberries. He chopped everything, I cooked it and we ate a traditional Turkish breakfast (cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese and tea) and then a traditional American breakfast (stawberry-banana pancakes, coffee, toast). I dont' remember the last time I ate so much.

Over our 2-course breakfast, Alex and I talked. Well, I talked. Alex listened. Alex now knows almost everything about my family. He has heard stories about all of you. He knows what I want out of my life and what I'm afraid of. He knows about my favorite food, my first crush and the time I broke my leg in second grade. He has heard all about my need to travel, my dream of writing a book and my tendency to collect yoga videos. He knows that when I'm in shock, I talk and look over my shoulder a lot. I know that when he's in shock, he listens and looks into the distance with a 100-yard stare. (This is not too different from our day-to-day interactions, just amplified.) He knows that I don't want to tell you about this because I don't want you to get the wrong idea about Turkey.

At night we decided to go shopping for a security system. We considered traditional security but decided shopping for a puppy would be more fun. I lobbied hard for a bulldog, but when it wouldn't wake up while we were calling its name, I realized this was not an ideal guarddog (although it could be called IstanBull, "Stanny" for short).

We left the dog store and decided to go to my place to watch a movie. We considered spy movies and scary movies and movies that make you think hard. But in the end, we opted for Finding Nemo. Alex fell asleep on the couch. I went to sleep in my room, down the hall. Not too surprisingly, I couldn't fall asleep. I called down the hallway to tell Alex I was scared of waking up to some man standing over me. Alex told me to think about Rodney Yee's Yoga videos. Somehow, that worked.

For the first time in 48 hours, I fell into a deep sleep. I woke up today and started to write a book. Just the outline, nothing big. But it's good to get a start on these things.

x Shannon