I was in 3 countries in 3 days, and noticed the Western smartphone and social networking virus had spread East. Just like back home, folks were talking or texting to someone in another place, staring at their phones or computers in rapt interest while ignoring the interesting people around them.
If someone fell over dead, I don't know if anyone would have noticed. It's a little scary in some ways. Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan is as relevant as ever. Love the one you see.
Turkey's Capital, Ankara, as Seen From an Overlooking Castle
1.) Turks are honest, courteous, and hospitable. They go beyond the call of duty to be helpful.
2.) Turkish food is fantastic. Their open bazaars (produce markets) offer tasty fresh food that shames what we buy at Sams or even Trader Joes.
3.) The nation is modernizing but is still resisting the negative features of Western life. Their young people still seem wholesome, innocent, and respectful.
4.) Turkish neighborhoods are relationally driven with family-owned stores for everything within a 1-3 minute walk. People have time for each other and are often seen having tea with their posse of friends at a cafe, or on the sidewalk just outside their place of business.
5.) National life is family-based and multigenerational, with little room for a "youth culture" where teenagers and twenty-somethings stay in their pajamas til 10 am, skate board or video game half the day, and avoid older people like the plague. Older men and women are fully integrated into the life of all age groups, and honored.
6.) Turkey is a visually majestic land, clear evidence of the goodness of the Creator. See my daughter Christina's short video at the end of this post.
7.) You don't need a car to get around.
8.) Everything costs less. Housing offers a 60% discount over US prices, including rentals.
9.) Turkey may be a secular democracy, but most of the people have retained a sense of reverence for God and upright ethics at a level absent in Western nations.
10.) The sense of history comes right up through your feet anywhere you stand. The land is ancient and has witnessed Herodotus' narratives, Hadrian's legions, and Polycarp's martyrdom, not to mention Ataturk's smackdown of Churchhill's troops. The archeology is limitless. Visit Turkey and be changed.
They dominate the sidewalks of Bodrum, much less the streets. You can get clipped by one anywhere. Young and old, rich and not-so-rich, helmeted and unhelmeted - everyone's got one and likes to ride, sometimes three on one moped. Our local convenience store owner delivers groceries and large demijohn containers of water on his.
Guys and girls alike favor the Sergeant Shultz helmet, if they wear one at all. Even though it's been raining 5 days a week for a while, the moped mujahideen are as active as car drivers, and more aggressive. Someone needs to write a book called "The Battle Cry of the Tiger Moped."
Erdwan led Mike and me away from the mosque and into a small Albanian tea shop, where tobacco smoke hung like fog from the ceiling and men in leather jackets pretended to not notice us. We pulled up chairs to a wooden table while he ordered cappuccinos. His brother brought them over.
Our new friend looked both old and young at the same time. He is in his 30s and has a wife and baby. He rubbed his stubble of a beard, inhaled from his cigarette and blew out a blue line of smoke. He was a likable honest man with a challenging life. He talked a while.
"Most people here are unemployed," he said. One of his relatives teaches high school for $400 per month. "The government spends millions on putting up statues but is content for us Albanians to be second class citizens who can't get good employment."
Judging from what I'd seen so far, this was true.
"I and my family have spent our lives here. We want a better life. This is like the Gaza Strip," he said while Mike and I sipped our coffee.
Erdwan had worked as a translator for NATO 10 years ago and hoped for the chance to move to the West. He was a window into the reality of a repressed minority lacking the political power or resources to better its life - motivated but powerless in a region where the strong prey on the weak and fight wars to become stronger.
"Inshallah" (if God wills), "we'll move to Canada or the US."
Erdwan prays five times a day at the mosque around the quarter. When we visited him again later in the week, he anointed our wrists with a fragrant ointment "because of the angels" he said with a twinkle in his eye as he took us back to observe afternoon prayers.
Small mosque near old bazaar in Skopje. Source: CafeBabel.com
Odd-shaped gravestones leaned wearily as my friend Mike and I walked toward the front door of the huge Ottoman mosque. The old building was yellow grey with a soaring minaret and huge courtyard. We were in the Carshia Albanian quarter of Skopje, Macedonia, a warren of tea shops, businesses and homes split by a busy main street. We were visiting Skopje for a week.
Albanian-Orthodox tensions in the Balkans are well-known, headlined by the Kosovo war a decade ago. At that time, Skopje went on near lockdown, with frequent police checks and swooping army helicopters. We didn't know how we would be received if we entered the mosque, but before we could reach the front door, a tall elderly man with a big smile greeted us and showed us around. We took off our shoes and entered the mosque after the mini tour. The mosque is deliberately underlit, with a quiet meditative atmosphere. A couple dozen men already were sitting along the walls, waiting for something. We didn't know it yet, but we had arrived for afternoon prayer.
Suddenly, dozens of men and boys poured in, glad to see each other at this big community event. An English-speaking young man was brought to us to say hello and answer a quick question or two. We were made to feel very welcome among this band of praying brothers, who seemed devout, warm, and in good relationship with each other.
No signs of the dreaded fanaticism emerged, just sincere prayer to the God of Abraham, not the reputed moon god of the desert.
As we left the mosque, a man we'll call Erdwan joined us and invited us to tea. He gave us 20 years of education in 30 minutes. His story will be in my next blog post.
Living on Turkey's Mediterranean coast makes you aware of how long the wheel of history has been turning over the world. The same violent winds blow in every winter under magnificent skies, blowing over and around so many archeological sites the government has no time to excavate them. Peoples and civilizations come and go. You and I are a little drop of water in an ocean that will still be there when we are gone.
Myndos Gate in Bodrum, where Alexander's army fought (Source: Sunsearchinfo)
God has, well, God's view of history and human life, which is only partly knowable to us. We know that his general grace brings rain and good harvests to Turkey (Acts 14:17), a place where Turks perceive God's blessing but Christians and Jews perceive as infidel. Dates, olives and tangerines fall like rain here. The food is awesome and cheap.
There are time periods, even in Israel's history, where God doesn't seem to be doing much. People just live, enjoy life as best they can, perhaps feel after God, and pass on.
In Turkey, one can feel as if one is living in an insignificant way "between the times," in a place filled with so much history that only God is vaster and deeper. Feeling small can be a good experience, if it leads to much prayer and engaging scripture.
Sometimes you realize the hard way that you're not in Kansas when traveling, that it isn't your backyard.
Ben, Liz and I had twice visited our landlord's orchard with his permission. He is a Cambridge grad who teaches computer science in Istanbul. The orchard is off an ancient village road close to the old chapel, and is full of tangerine, orange, grapefruit, and lemon trees. Great fruit, great location, almost romantic.
It was so cool to fill up backpacks with fresh fruit for free, then climb the hill to our house and pork out on nourishing food. We bragged about it to the rest of the family when they arrived, and took them to the orchard as soon as we could.
There were a couple of loud rottweilers in the adjoining lot, safely behind a big fence.
Until they joined us in the orchard, eager for some action of the toothy kind. Well, it wasn't quite this bad, but they were acting aggressive and looking for provo- cation, so I did my best to sound in control and sent our four youngest up separate trees, instructing everyone else to keep picking and not pay attention to the dogs at all.
The rottweilers tried to get a rise from us for 10 minutes, then started looking confused and milled around at the back of the orchard. We quietly got the children down from their perches and slowly walked out in a tight band, only to have the dogs gallop at us and try again to get a response. We ducked low branches, cowpies, and barbed wire, finally getting on the road back to the chapel.
Once is enough. The children will never see that orchard again. There are other great sights in the great nation of Turkey.
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