Bayram

After Ramazan there is a 3.5 day festival called Seker Bayram (sheh-KEHR BYE-rahm). It started last Wednesday afternoon and continued until saturday night. Ask any Turk what happens during Bayram and they will tell you that you kiss hands. As a sign of respect, you go around to all the old people you know, kiss their hand and put it to your forehead. Sounds really sweet, like there's a lot of love and respect for old people during Bayram.... Well, what they don't tell you is that the old people put a little piece of candy or some money in the hand you kiss and at the end of the affectionate interchange, it belongs to the young kisser. What people also neglected to tell us is that kids go around to the houses in the neighbourhood knocking on doors and wishing you a happy bayram. Of course, in exchange, you give them handfuls of candy. It's like trick-or-treating at halloween, except in the morning, and without costumes, and "Iyi Bayramlar" instead of "Trick-or-treat".

Let me tell you a little about my first morning of Bayram....

 

First of all, my flatmate and I adopted 2 cats. Shhh..... don't tell anyone. So I was awakened by the cats in the morning. Something had scared them and they came running into my room and under the bed. It was someone at the door. Our doorbell sounds like birds chirping, then the chirping slows down, and sounds like birds dying. One press, and there's 5 seconds of dying birds. Someone pressed 3 times. I dragged myself out of bed (we had gone dancing in Taksim the night bfore and I had only been in bed for about 3 hours at this point). Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed and headed for the door. I took the wadded-up tissue out of the peephole (ghetto privacy) and saw a strange young man. Now bear in mind, it's 7:30 a.m. on the first day of a long holiday. I figure if there is someone at the door, there must be a big problem. I contemplated whether or not to open it, when he killed the birds again. I unlocked the door and poked my sleepy head out. It turns out he has a drum over his shoulder. I then realised that I was standing face to face with the Ramazan Drummer. 

 

During Ramazan, those who are fasting wake up very very early to have breakfast before the call to prayer indicating sunrise. In order to have time to wake up, clean up, pray, prepare breakfast and then eat, they get up quite early, somewhere around 4 a.m. if I remember correctly. However, Turkey being the hospitable place that it is, they aren't going to just assume that you have an alarm clock to wake you up. There's a guy that comes around with a dream, beating on it in the echoey-hallways of your apartment building EVERY SINGLE MORNING of Ramazan at 4 a.m. He doesn't do a halfway job either. He bangs loud enough to make sure that everyone in every flat of every building on his beat is awake. Thank you very much. People who are not fasting are not figured into the calculations here. Therefore, for a month, every day at 4 I was awakened by the Ramazan Drummer. Of course by the time I finally drifted off to sleep after his wake-up call, there was the call to prayer, which, during Ramazan was exceptionally loud, long and hearty.

 

So there, on my doorstep, after I've had 3 hours sleep, is the Ramazan Drummer, waking me up on the first morning that I don't have to be awakened by the Ramazan Drummer. Apparently, it's another Turkish tradition to pay the drummer on the first day of Bayram, in apreciation for his selfless service. Needless to say, I did not give him what I thought he actually deserved. I mumbled incoherently at him and closed the door and tried to go back to bed.

 

I drifted off to sleep, then the dying birds again. I ignored them. Whoever it was was pretty insistent, and after a few more rings of the doorbell I dragged myself out of bed again, secretly wishing I slept as deeply as my flatmate, dead to the world in her room, or her visiting friend, Daniela, our houseguest, also dead to the world. There at the door were 3 little Turkish girls wishing me a happy bayram! OOPS! No candy to give away. I explained to them in stilted early morning Turkish that I didn't know about the candy thing and we didn't have anything to give them. Hoping against hope that they didn't have the tradition of throwing rotten eggs at the neighbours who don't have candy.... Luckily they don't. Over the next 4 hours, the doorbell rang about 50 or so times. When I didn't answer, the kids banged their tiny little fists against the door until someone came. For the first 3 hours, no one else was awake. After that, we got Daniela to go to the door and tell them in English. All the kids in the neighbourhood know that Rebecca and I speak Turkish so having te unfamiliar houseguest babbling to them in English was the only thing that worked. Eventually the dying birds and banging tapered off....

 

Next Bayram I will be prepared with my candy!

 

Oh yeah, and when i caught the bus on Friday, the driver wouldn't let me pay. I asked why and he said that public transportation is free during Bayram. I wish I had known earlier. I would have gone all over Istanbul in the ferry and seabus, and metro and tram, and everything!!!

Gym Jam

(I started this entry about 2 weeks ago now, so just add 2 weeks to all time references in the first 2 paragraphs)

 

I joined a gym a week and a half ago when I came back from Sofia. There was a promotional special for Interlang staff, and I had been looking for one to join for the past month or so. It all worked out perfectly.
On Tuesday I was chatting with a couple of the trainers (the gym, like all Turkish businesses, is very service-oriented. You don't have to think about anything, the instructors are all there for you constantly. I don't even have to get off the treadmill when I run out of water, just press the button and the instructor comes over to you, you ask for water, instructor calls down to the cafe on the intercom, cafe guy shows up 10 seconds later, at your treadmill, with your bottle of cold water! It's great. But I digress.) So I'm chatting with the trainers, and somehow it comes up that I play the violin and guitar. One of them suggested that I bring one of them sometime and play for them. It just so happened that the next day was a Baha'i Holy Day and I would have my guitar because I was going to the gym before the Holy Day  celebration, so the next day I had it there. I wasn't going to say anything, thinking that the trainers were just making the suggestion for the sake of conversation, but when I was leaving, one of them saw me with the guitar and called me back to play something. I went into the office and played a song. Some of you may know that generally when I'm playing the guitar and singing, I close my eyes. This is not out of shyness or anything, it's just that I still have trouble focusing when playing and singing at the same time and with my eyes closed I can concentrate. So I'm almost at the end of the song, and I open my eyes, and there at the door of the office, are 4 trainers, a couple of cleaning staff, and about 6 of the other member who had been working out. When I started the song there were just the 2 instructors there! Anyway, I was quite embarassed, but they all loved it and asked for more. I played one more then packed up. It turned out that one of the other members who was there working out was a professional guitarist and singer. He works in a cafe just around the corner from the gym. His name is Ozgur. He suggested we jam together sometime, and the other members, and the instructors all were trying to be sure it was a time when they could all make it, as you can imagine, it was pandemonium, and all in Turkish! Anyway, we decided to get together at the gym cafe on the following Friday night at 10. Hence the title of this entry :Gym Jam.

On the Friday morning I went to the gym, and one of the trainers told em that there was another guitarist coming. I was really looking forward to it.

Friday after class I headed over to the gym with my flatmate and another English teacher. We went down to the cafe, and there were about 30 people there! I was shocked. There were 3 chairs set up for the "performers" and there it was. We all took turns playing songs, singing, improvising backup, improvising gitar parts, and I occasionally drummed out a rhythm on the body of my guitar when the chords got too far out of my league. We had a great time jamming, and the audience (which I defintely wasn't expecting) loved it! What I was really surprised about was that I really wasn't nervous. That was nice. Anyway, it's encouraged me to play the guitar more and sing more. Ozgur and I are talking about setting up another time to actually work on some stuff together. I'm really looking forward to it. I really miss sitting down with musicians and just playing music together. It'll be interesting being a part of that as a violinist, guitarist and singer now... it's so weird. People at the gym now refer to me as "the singer" (in Turkish of course)....

That was the Gym Jam!