You start noticing the little boys after the aura of Hagia Sophia and the surrounded Ottoman architecture dims a little. They shiver on a stairwell or against a wall on a sidewalk, selling kleenex packets for a few cents, foregoing boyhood and lots of other things to help their desperate families survive. Torrents of people in this crowded city hurry past these 10 year olds. Only God notices them most of the time.
Last night it was a shivering elderly man selling tissue that got to me. Zdravka and I had come out of a tea and baklava shop when we saw him just up the sidewalk. He sat on the cold concrete, his eyes almost shut with the pain of life. I did the minimum and bought a packet. When we were at JFK the next day on a layover, I realized I hadn't touched the poor the way I could have. Not a good feeling.
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.
