Dogumgünün Kutlu Olsun*

In 1969 my mother and father packed up their four youngest daughters, trunk loads of peanut butter and toilet paper and moved to Ankara, Turkey.  My father was on sabbatical and the Middle Eastern Technical University asked him if he would be so kind as to come teach there for a year and he obliged.

It was a very interesting year.  We packed as much into that experience as we did the trunks that come with us.  We lived on the top floor of an apartment building at the top of a hill overlooking the city – that in itself was rather novel (the apartment living) coming from the suburbs of California.

(Ankara, Turkey 1970 ~ Trish, me, Mom)

We could see the tall minarets of the Mosques from our balconies and hear the call to prayer when the city stopped for a few minutes, five times a day.  We were fascinated by the street vendors with their simits on long poles that could be had for a few kurush.  We very carefully avoided the odd, in the floor, toilet in the spare bathroom.

There were many things to get used to – like never ever drinking the water and washing our fruits and vegetables in a bleach solution before eating them (when we returned home we used to puzzle the neighborhood mothers by inquiring if the afternoon snack offering of an apple had been bleached already). 

We got plenty of advice from other ex-pats who had been living there before we arrived.  Passing on tips and tricks to living in such a foreign environment.  How to navigate the Saturday markets (you hire a young Turkish boy to carry your produce in a large basket carried on his back.  He waits for you each and every Saturday – those boys are very territorial about their patrons).  How to negotiate a good price with the butcher, where to find the butcher.   How much to tip the dolmus driver.  Practical advice.

(Ankara, Turkey 1969 ~ Me, Carolyn M., Trish)

The children of these ex-pats had their own wisdom to share with us – child to child.  Although their offerings were more in the form of dire warnings than actual advice.  Like to always always always stand during the pledge of allegiance at the American movie theater or risk getting thrown into a Turkish prison for the rest of your life. 

Another danger we were warned of was to watch for the gypsies.  Legend had it gypsy families would kidnap young American children and cut off their hands and make them beg (I swear I thought ‘alms for the poor’ was ARMS for the poor for the longest time).  I could not imagine a worse fate. 

One evening my youngest sister Trish failed to return home at a reasonable hour.  We tended to stick together for the most part and never really wandered too far from our apartment building.  No one knew where she was and I started to panic.  I ran up and down the stairs of the building, stopping at all the apartments of people we knew and socialized with.  No one had seen her. 

I ran up the street to the apartment of another American family and they hadn’t seen her either.  I ran down the hill to our apartment building calling out her name and ran up the six flights of stairs to our apartment hoping with all my might that she had returned.  Nope.  No Trish.  It was starting to get dark and I was in a full blown panic by this point and informed my parents that she had certainly been kidnapped by the gypsies.  I was sure of it.  I couldn’t understand why they didn’t share my level of concern – in fact, seemed fairly UN-concerned.  I was trying to figure out how I could alert the police myself when Trish walked in the door.   I threw myself on her, sobbing with relief. 

  She grimaced and shrugged me off and said that she had been at the apartment of an elderly Austrian woman downstairs, visiting her two dachshunds.  For crying out loud.  And you know I never heard the end of it – how silly I was to be so worried.

It really was a fabulous experience – all the sisterly angst aside – we saw a culture so totally different than what we were used to – we spent weeks on the road exploring Europe.  At age ten I could argue with a Turkish cab driver IN Turkish when I thought I was being taken advantage of.   I wish I had been brave enough to pack up my children and expose them to a foreign land when they were young.

(Ankara, Turkey 1969 – Trish)

Anyhoo – Happy Birthday Trish – I’m really glad the gypsies didn’t take you.

*Happy Birthday in Turkish