When America's most popular morning talk show came to Istanbul, they asked me and my Expat Harem coeditor Jennifer Gokmen to explain Turkey to five million Americans. Here, we talk with NBC Today Show host Matt Lauer in front of the Haghia Sophia, a 1,500 year old architectural wonder of the world, on a breezy May first.
If the embedded video doesn't work for you, you can view this interview here
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I'll be coproducing a Global Nomad Salon this June at Istanbul's Four Seasons Sultanahmet along with the Salon founder Dutch-Curacaoan banker Janera Soerel. Introduced by various international friends in 2007, Janera and I quickly found common ground: our shallow roots in many different communities and the urge to find the larger meaning in local issues.
Working together long-distance, we are co-producing this cultural entertainment. It's a guided dinner for 20-30 educated, intellectual, opinionated people to discuss concerns of global culture and economics.
Experts who guide the conversation at their ends of the table will include Serif Kaynar (country managing director of Korn/Ferry) and Nese Gundogan (secretary general of the Turkish Olympic Committee).
Along with an online magazine and members-only social network (Janera.com), founder Janera Soerel, a Dutch Curacaoan banker who lives in Manhattan, launched the Global Nomad Salon series October 2007 in Washington DC, then Rome, the Caribbean and New York City. With local co-hosts, Janera’s events are now spreading across the globe. This summer and fall they will take place in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Dubai, Tuscany and London. The goal is to rouse the Global Nomad community worldwide and strengthen the network of its members, eventually with a GNSalon occurring twice yearly in various countries, events populated by Global Nomads both local and from afar.
A message from one of the Expat Harem writers in Istanbul about a couple she met in Istanbul: "A couple visiting from NYC came to Turkey because she, a Bryn Mawr alum, had read about you in the Alumni newsletter when the book came out. She does not know you, but was intrigued enough to read the book, loved it, and insisted that they spend several weeks in this country on their way home from a trip to Ukraine, where she had been living for a few years."
Drawing on my experiences as an expat, a foreign student, and the editor of a book about cultural journeys of self discovery, I have designed and conducted a session on Culture Shock at AISEC here in Istanbul for 75 outgoing international exchange students. Thanks to Ajda Mustafova, Chair, 5th AIESEC National Conference for the invitation.
When did you move to Istanbul? What is the first memory you have about Istanbul? AA: My husband and I moved in 2003 and stayed in Ulus with my brother-in-law for a few months, so my impressions from those days are of the sun setting over the Topkapi Palace far in the distance as the family ate barbequed lamb chops on the balcony, an assembly line of kuzu izgara. Sprinkling dried marjoram and oregano on the chops. But my first memories started when I visited in 2000 ( I felt ages of winter chill emanating from AyaSofya’s old stones as I gazed up at the Byzantine mosaics). Then when I married in Istanbul the balmy summer of 2001, at Esma Sultan in Ortakoy, the memories punctuated by the flashbulbs of a glitzy Turkish wedding. The overall memory of Istanbul? A lot of kisses, for everyone, coming and going, every day, every night.
What does Istanbul mean to you?
AA: Since I have a degree in Classical Greek, Roman and Near Eastern Archaeology, Istanbul’s historical significance as the center of the ancient civilized world is never far from my consciousness. It’s a place of power and energy and ideas, and has been for centuries. There is no mistaking that this is an important place on the globe. But as a New World woman from cutting edge California, I also love that with its heavy history it’s not musty and dead like a forgotten museum. I can appreciate its new layers of lives and dreams, and find modern day Istanbul to have more than its share of fabulous places, people and events.
Which part of the city do you live in? How do you like it?
AA: I lived in bohemian Cihangir for four years and loved my scenic view of the Bosphorus overlooking Kabatas ferry terminal. Perched on the cliff the view had all the energy of a transportation hub but at the same time was completely serene – and quiet, if you don’t count the taxicabs honking at all hours of the night! The proximity to Taksim and Istiklal was wonderful, and with the new tramway and metro extension, it really felt like the center of the world! My husband couldn’t take the commute to his Maslak office though so we just moved to Istinye, where we have a much more intimate view of the bay with its teal-colored water. I’m liking all the hillsides covered in wildflowers. But I’ll miss the cafes of Cihangir, like Miss Pizza, and Savoy Pastanesi for simit toast on Sundays and of course in a neighborhood so full of feisty street cats, the great veterinarians. I adopted my cat Bunny from Kazanci Sokagi, so where ever I go I’ll always have a bit of Cihangir in my heart, and in my home.
How does Istanbul look like from U.S.? Are there any misconceptions about the city?
AA: Physically I think the general image of Istanbul does not include so much water, waterways, vistas of water. The hills are also a surprise to many people. It’s hard to conceive of a metropolis made of so many small villages, how Istanbul can go on for miles and still be Istanbul, even if each kilometer is like a new world.
Do you have any favorite spots in the city?
AA: My favorites are the ones I haven’t been to yet! They exist in my dream of Istanbul. There are so many places I yearn to go. Like the Ilhamur Kosku in Muradiye, the Beykoz pavilion, and Beylerbeyi Palace. The Horhor market in Eyup with its Levantine antiques. A strange restaurant in Gunesli specializing in huge platters of chicken wings. Things you hear about, things you see from a distance, things you have to find a special time to do. The problem is more time I live in Istanbul, the longer my list grows.
Some of the stories take place in Istanbul in the book “Tales from the Expat Harem”. Is Istanbul a good setting for works of literature?
AA: I think so, (and for film too! Why aren’t there more films set in Istanbul?) The Expat Harem tales set in Istanbul show that the city offers a colorful and diverse backdrop for personal histories, and adds true depth to the narrator’s every day life. When a young Guatemalan woman recognizes two hatun speaking Ladino on a Mecediyekoy bus, she feels pride in her Spanish linguistic connection -- and at the same time she acknowledges the chain of history that brought this medieval language to Istanbul. What echoes in that moment is that the Guatemalan came to Istanbul through her own chain of history…
What does Istanbul need? How would it be better?
AA: A more extensive Metro network, servicing coastal spots like Beskitas, Ortakoy and Bebek. Imagine how that would alleviate street traffic!
What are your future writing projects? Is Istanbul somehow in them?
AA: Istanbul absolutely will play a role in many of my upcoming cultural essays, in fact the title of my travel memoir in progress is “Berkeley to Byzantium: The Reorientation of a West Coast Adventuress”. It’s about the physical (and metaphysical!) journey from my utopian hometown in California, around the world through classical Italy and the media worlds of New York and Hollywood, to the plantations and palaces of South East Asia, finally ending up in Istanbul. The challenge is to fully explain how my life has culminated in this incredibly meaningful place. Another challenge is to stay home and write when Istanbul beckons!
What do you think about Istanbul being the “European Culture Capital for 2010”?
AA: It’s about time! It seems to me that Istanbul makes good use of its breathtaking monuments and historic settings for cultural activities (like concerts at Rumeli Hisari and the Aya Irini, and exhibits at the Darphane and Tophane-i Amire, and receptions at Feriye and Dolmabahce), and the yearlong festival will be a perfect opportunity to show off to the world the city’s priceless heritage, and the life that the people of Istanbul inject into these wondrous spots.
How is the expat life in Istanbul? Is Istanbul an easy city for expat living?
AA: There are tons of options for expatriates in Istanbul, social and business clubs and general communities, and lots of support networks and foreign language media. I’ve been an expat in Rome and Kuala Lumpur where I learned some expat survival techniques and put them into practice as soon as I arrived here. I think Jennifer Gokmen would agree that making the anthology helped make sense of our own lives in Turkey as foreigners -- the Expat Harem is an apt metaphor for us. The title positively reclaims the concept of the Eastern harem just as we consider ourselves and our writers inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it, though forever foreign. The virtual walls are there: our initial lack of language skills, undeveloped understanding of the culture, and even some of the ethnocentricities that we cling to. Luckily for us, Istanbul has a long history of welcoming foreigners, and being able to accomodate many different cultures and mindsets.
"This is not just another anthology by expat wives who long to get in print," writes the veteran book author and publisher Jo Parfitt in the Telegraph UK.
"Every essay is spot on, literary and insightful. Grouped into sections, they cover everything from relationships with Turks and non-Turks to the food, the music, the humour and the passion. Be ready to book a flight to Istanbul afterwards."
Thanks, Jo!
From the Expat Harem blog:
We were invited to give a presentation at the Marina Yacht Club for the 7th Annual Ladies’ Lunch, organized by and for the local expat population. The area has about 5,000 foreigners in residence.
Despite heavy thunderstorms early that morning, 120 women streamed into the event as rain and clouds gave way to sunshine. During the Buck Finns cocktail hour on the veranda, we signed books until they sold out.
We were thrilled to meet so many of Bodrum’s energetic and enterprising foreign women.
Among them were event organizers Jane Baxter, Christine Davies, Leslie Joy Rhoades, and Priscilla Windsor Brown, whose voluminous rolodexes played a part in the inception of this annual event; Dina Street of Zephyria Yachting; chef Angie Mitchell, whose book Secrets Of The Turkish Kitchen has been known to save cross-cultural marriages; Victoria Boz, an adventurous New Zealander; translator Antonella Culasso who claims to be “the only Italian in Bodrum!”; then there was fiesty Lucy Nazim, a Turkish Cypriot/British repat, who is following a path in neuro-linguistic programming; Duygu Nayir, the owner of seafront cafe Kırmızı; German yoga instructor and writer Monika Munzinger; one of the four Gillians present was inspired to begin writing the book she knows she has in her.
On Turkey's national TV and radio channel TRT2 News with Isil Okan talking about how cultural stereotypes are a two-way street.
Those poor people, what a work out!
Özge Ovun and Yalcin Sert from Voice of America News filmed the event to air on Turkey’s national TGRT TV and Erju Ackman and his partner Goksin Carey filmed a segment to air on Virginia’s Channel 10 (WSLS NBC). Organized by the ever-supportive Didem Muslu of the American-Turkish Association of DC, the event was held at the homebase of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations — the Türkevi (Turkish House), and was attended by ATA-DC president, Pelin Aylangan (who is currently penning a Turkish culinary history and memoir) and secretary, Patsy Jones (whose Fenerbahçe-loving Turkish inlaws are scandalized by her love of the rival football team Beşiktaş!).
Audience members included: Yalçın Sert, director of student portals at the University of Maryland and owner of various forums and web portals; Ralph and Linda, who are currently enrolled in US State Department Turkish language courses for Ralph’s impending posting to the US Embassy in Ankara as an FDA specialist (both Ralph and Linda told us they wished their entire Turkish class would have attended our event); Turks like Ayşe, a Crimean Turk, and Özge’s parents visiting from İzmit; and other daring American gelins, like Jetta Karabulut who has road trip adventures of her own to tell, like a trip from Istanbul to Mersin in 1968 with her two year old in tow!
We were pleased to be joined by journalists, travelers, culture hounds and artists including: Liz Gracon and Danielle Monosson, friends we met in Istanbul during their posting to the U.S. Consulate there; Kay McCarty, whose daughter has worked in Diyarbakir and Mardin, Turkey (a fan of Expat Harem, Kay bought her 9th, 10th, and 11th copies of the book at Candida's!); traveling an hour from Baltimore was Jeannette Belliveau, the author of soon-to-be-released Romance on the Road, a book documenting the controversial 'sex pilgrim' movement which Anastasia reviews (from an opposite stance) in the upcoming July/August issue of Perceptive Travel; Dawn, two-time visitor to Turkey for classes in the art of glasswork at the Cam Ocagi /Glass Furnace (inspired by EH contributor Diane Caldwell, Dawn may soon find herself relocating to Turkey); and Kirin Kalia, an editor at Migration Policy Institute, who brought the Bryn Mawr alumnae count on this tour to 10.
This is the introduction Jennifer Gokmen and I wrote to the book Tales From The Expat Harem:
The perpetual evolution that travel and cultural assimilation visits upon the foreign born women in this collection echoes the continuous transformation that envelops the entire country. Threshold to worlds East or West depending on which way one faces, Turkey is itself a unique metaphor for transition.
Forming a geographic bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia and a philosophical link between the spheres of Occident and Orient, Turkey is neither one of the places it connects. Similarly, foreign women on Turkish soil are neither what nor who they used to be, yet not fully transformed by their brush with Turkey.
Our Expat Harem women are on the brink of reclassifying themselves, challenged to redefine their lives, to rethink their definitions of spirituality, femininity, sensuality and self.
These are among the Tales from the Expat Harem.
Much like the imported brides of the Seraglio, İstanbul’s 15th century palatial seat of the Ottoman sultanate, our writers are inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it even, yet alien nonetheless.
If a harem in the time of the sultans was once a confined community of women, a setting steeped in the feminine culture of its era, then today’s Expat Harem surely follows in its tradition.
Like the insular life in the Seraglio of the past, foreign women in today’s Turkey can often be a self-restricting and isolated coterie, newcomers initially limited in independence and social interaction due to language barriers, cultural naiveté and a resilient ethnocentricity.
Tales from the Expat Harem reveal both the personal cultural prison of the initiate and the peer-filled refuge of those assimilated. Our harem is a source of foreign female wisdom, a metaphoric primer for novices and a refresher for old hands.
Our Scheherazades, modern day counterparts of that historic Arabian Nights harem storyteller, are drawn from a worldwide diaspora of women whose lives have been touched by Turkey.
When our call for stories reached them, through networks of people and computers, we heard from a multitude of expatriates in West Africa to Southeast Asia to America’s Pacific Northwest, all desiring to be counted and to recount their sagas.
By telephone from her home in California, an artist who studied illuminated manuscripts at Topkapı Sarayı was the first to admit the precious affliction she shares with many of her harem sisters: “Turkey gets into your blood. I’m an addict now.”
For months we coaxed diplomats, nurses, chefs and others to explore and express their truths about Turkey in a culturally balanced tone.
Some were not professional writers and some were unable to commit their tale to paper. Of those who did, only a fraction survived the editing process.
But affinities emerged as each woman divulged her internal journey and lasting emotional connection to the place and its people. Systems engineers and hoteliers, missionaries and clothing producers, artists, journalists, and others each share a fierce affection for Turkey.
Revealing what Turkish culture has yielded in their lives, they unspool humorous and poignant adventures at weddings in cobbled Byzantine streets, Ottoman bathhouses, and boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road.
In atmospheric travelogue through a countryside still echoing the old ways, through Giresun and Göreme, they transport us on emotional journeys of assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood.
Modern women in the real world, they take us along on their quests for national identity, business ownership and property possession.
The country rewards seekers, a veiled place insisting on being uncovered. In the process of discovering Turkey, contemporary women of the Expat Harem unmask themselves as well.
In narratives illuminating imperfect human nature and the fullest possible cultural embrace, our Scheherazades wrestle urges to overly-exoticize the unfamiliar and strive to balance self preservation with the fresh expectations placed on them by Turkish culture.
Some delve deep into interiors of country and psyche, like the shy teacher transformed by the full frontal impact of a 13th century Central Anatolian hamam.
Others teeter on the comic edge of a cultural divide, like the archaeologist who sparks hilarity in the trenches at Troy before language skills supplant vaudevillian pantomime.
A mid-life dancer mincing her way through the alleys of İstanbul’s bohemian Beyoğlu district to the beat of a darbuka drum invokes Mary Oliver’s poetic revelation, one that echoes in every tale from the Expat Harem:
Scroll down for images related to five years of book events...
FIND A COPY You can get this book as a Seal Press paperback through Amazon here
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MEDIA COVERAGE Since 2005 Anastasia Ashman, her coeditor Jennifer Eaton Gokmen and the Expat Harem anthology and contributors have been featured by more than 200 mainstream and independent media sources across the globe in news, travel, literature and culture. Includes New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, International Herald Tribune, NBC TV Today Show, Globe & Mail, Daily Telegraph, National Geographic Traveler, Lonely Planet, Frommer's, Rick Steves' Istanbul, Cosmopolitan (TR), Travel + Leisure (TR), Time Out Istanbul, Mediabistro, Expat Focus, Guardian Abroad and Voice of America Radio. See a list and links here.
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[18 months, 2 expat writers, one feminist travel anthology with three editions. Our first book! A bestseller. How'd we do it? Read the story of making Tales from the Expat Harem]
+"An excellent holiday read." – Lonely Planet Turkey (10th Edition)
+"Beautifully written, thought-provoking and inspiring. Be ready to book a flight to Istanbul afterwards." – Daily Telegraph (UK)
+"Insights from women who learn to read the cultural fine print... Valuable today as an antidote to bigotry, it will serve as an even more valuable corrective to the blinkered historians of tomorrow." – Cornucopia
+“Comic, romantic, and thought-provoking.” – Cosmopolitan (Turkey)
+“Not only aesthetically pleasing but instructive. A great read! Don’t miss it.” – Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
+“Rip-roarer of a guide to understanding Eastern and Western social values.” – The Gulf Today (United Arab Emirates)
+“Charming, warm-hearted and vivid…a definite must-read for everyone pondering the question of what it is we call 'home'.” – NRC Handelsblad (The Netherlands)
This anthology "successfully transcends the cultural stereotypes so deeply-embedded in perceptions of the Eastern harem.” -- from the foreword by Elif Shafak (Turkish editions only) November 2010: Turkey’s most-read author Elif Shafak picks Expat Harem as one of her best five books on Turkey
+Edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen
As the Western world struggles to comprehend the paradoxes of modern Turkey, a country both European and Asian, forward-looking yet rooted in ancient empire, this critically-acclaimed collection invites you into the Turkey that thirty-two women from seven nations know.
ASSIMILATION STRUGGLES
Australian and Central American, North American and British, Dutch and Pakistani, our narrators demonstrate the evolutions Turkish culture has shepherded in their lives and the issues raised by assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, motherhood.
[Hospitality] Delirious with influenza, a friendless Australian realizes the value of misafir perverlik, traditional Turkish hospitality, when she’s rescued from her freezing rental by unknown Anatolian neighbors bearing food and medicinal tea
[Family] A pregnant and introverted Irishwoman faces the challenge of finding her place in a large Black Sea clan
[Cultural Taboo] A Peace Corps volunteer in remote Eastern Turkey realizes how the taboos of her own culture color her perceptions about modesty and motherhood
[Femininity] A liberated New York single questions the gallant rules of engagement on the Istanbul dating scene, wondering whether being treated like a lady makes her less a feminist
AMBITIOUS STORYTELLERS
...from a Bryn Mawr archaeologist at Troy to the Christian missionary in Istanbul, clothing designers and scholars along the Aegean and the Mediterranean coastlines, a journalist at the Iraqi border, Expat Harem's writers revisit their professional assumptions.
SPANS COUNTRY + 40 YEARS
Humorous and poignant travelogue takes you to weddings and workplaces, down cobbled Byzantine streets, into boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road and deep into the feminine powerbases of steamy Ottoman hamam bathhouses. Subtext illuminates journeys of the soul.
ANACHRONISTIC TITLE = WESTERN STEREOTYPE + KINSHIP
Expat Harem notes the erroneous -- yet prevalent -- Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world, while declaring the writers are akin to foreign brides of the Seraglio, the 15th century seat of the Ottoman sultanate:
Expat Harem writers are wedded to the culture of the land, embedded in it, yet alien.
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From the introduction:
Threshold to worlds both East and West, Turkey is itself a unique metaphor for transition. Forming a geographic bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia and a philosophical link between the spheres of Occident and Orient, Turkey is neither one of the places it connects.
EXPAT HAREM WOMEN RECLASSIFY THEMSELVES
Foreign women on Turkish soil are neither what nor who they used to be, yet not fully transformed by their brush with Turkey. Aligned in their ever-shifting contexts, both Turkey and the expatriate share a bond of constant metamorphosis.
Expat Harem women are challenged to redefine their lives, definitions of spirituality, femininity, sensuality and self.
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One editor's story behind the book: THE ACCIDENTAL ANTHOLOGIST by Anastasia Ashman
+++++ HAREM GIRLS: THE MAKING OF EXPAT HAREM By ANASTASIA ASHMAN and JENNIFER EATON GÖKMEN
Eighteen months.Two expatriate American writers in Istanbul.We created a feminist travel anthology, landed a North American book deal and dual language editions from Turkey’s strongest publisher, while winning representation at one of New York’s oldest literary agencies.
How did we do it?
THE SHORT ANSWER:
- We recognized our project’s potential.
- We created a compelling brand.
- We requested counsel, material, and support from family, friends, business acquaintances and complete strangers.
- We refused to let doubts impede our trajectory, infecting naysayers with our enthusiasm.
- We shared every success with a growing contact list, sustaining a positive buzz.
- And we hunted unique marketing and publicity opportunities.
This is the story of Tales From The Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey.
RECOGNIZING OUR POTENTIAL
Writing full-time since 2001, California-born Anastasia’s arts, culture and travel writing appeared in publications worldwide, from the Asian Wall Street Journal to the Village Voice. Soon after she moved from New York to Istanbul in 2003, she met Jennifer, a ten-year expat with a degree in literature and creative writing whose writing career had been on a slow burn since her move to Turkey. The Michigan native had been a staff writer for a popular expatriate humor magazine and contributed to other local magazines. To advance our professional aims we established a writing workshop in Fall 2003 with a handful of other American women writers.
Interaction during bi-weekly workshops revealed our compatibility and vision: within two months it was obvious that the writing group could spawn our first book-length project. Most pieces critiqued revolved around each woman’s Turkish experience and what it revealed about her personally.
By the 2004 Spring thaw we elicited the curiosity of a new Turkish/American publishing house in Istanbul. That was the trigger that launched us into high gear. Translating the small publisher’s casual interest into a writing exercise, we charged the group to fashion a book proposal, but our enthusiasm for the potential project quickly outstripped our group colleagues’ as we targeted what we knew could be a hit.
We had to act fast. World attention was increasingly focused on this much-maligned Muslim country as its new conservative religious party government enacted sweeping reforms to speed the country towards European Union membership. This was heat we could harness for our book.
Although Anastasia had worked in a New York literary agency and was somewhat familiar with the elements of a book proposal, we sought further guidance from published friends and writers’ online resources. Consumed with pushing the project forward, we covered ground swiftly, passing the ball when ideas slowed, inspired by each others’ fresh input.
BRANDING
Since we didn’t have established literary reputations to lend recognizable names, the title of the anthology needed immediate appeal, palpable impact. Something born of the literary circumstance we would collect: atmospheric travelogue; tales of cultural contrast and discovery in the streets, at weddings and workplaces, hamams and bazaars; and journeys of assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, motherhood, citizenship, business and property ownership.
To decide concept and brand, we spun favorite motifs of female culture in Turkey, snagging on the quaint rural tradition of marking one’s visit by weaving distinctly colored thread into a friend’s carpet. But the earnest New Thread on the Loom: Outsiders in Turkish Culture sounded too woolly, academic, unmarketable.
Not a title we ourselves would snatch off a shelf or cuddle up with in bed.
Instead, the theme had to elicit strong response with a tempting metaphor that could withstand scrutiny. We hit on a conspicuous and controversial tradition of the region, provocative enough to intrigue or enflame book buyers worldwide. We created the Expat Harem.
We were banking on the title ruffling feathers. Anachronistic. Titillating. Bound to provoke reaction. We decided to co-opt the word harem, with all its erroneous Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world.
Infusing ‘harem’ with new meaning, we declared our foreign-born contributors were modern reflections of the foreign brides of the Ottoman sultans: wedded to the culture of the land, embedded in it even, but forever alien. Adding to the title’s seduction, we mocked up a book cover with an iconic Orientalist painting by Ingres, a reclining nude looking over her shoulder.
THE FIRST SALE
“We’d love to do this book!” said the owner of a new, young local publishing house, herself an American expat.
She bought the slim proposal composed in six weeks: a brief introduction to the Expat Harem concept, a list of chapters and proposed contents, editor bios, and an essay by Anastasia about a meet-the-parents trip to Istanbul which gave alarming Turkish connotation to her Russian name and urge to belly dance.
Despite the publisher’s limited resources and fledgling distribution network in Turkey and America, that overcast day in April 2004 we were thrilled to have our first book deal.
Undeterred that we bore the onus to propel the project to our envisioned heights, our adrenaline would compensate for all.
DOGGED PURSUIT
Between Anastasia's industry experience, drive, and efficiency and Jennifer's marketing background, local connections and knowledge of the Turkish language and culture, we complemented each other seamlessly.
Having a hands-off publisher was a blessing: it forced us to learn the ropes of book-making.
We called for submissions and publicized the project, set up a barebones website, posted flyers around Istanbul, and announced the book on bulletin boards and online communities of expatriates, writers, women writers, travelers, Turkey enthusiasts. We wrangled free listings in local city guidebooks. By July 2004 we convinced one of the top Turkish newspapers that the project was newsworthy and received a full page in the weekend lifestyle section, the first in a long line of local and international media coverage.
Responses began streaming in from the worldwide diaspora of eligible contributors. From West Africa to Southeast Asia to America’s Pacific Northwest, more than a hundred women sought to recount their sagas. We were overwhelmed with positive reactions to the project, and braced ourselves for darker interpretations. A few people chastised the title as unthinkably Orientalist while others were baited by our sexy cover.
“Wow, I wish I were an expat!” declared an airport security screener in New York.
ASKING FOR HELP
We brainstormed all of our personal and professional contacts—people who might assist us. We approached friends who had published books for their advice on the agenting process and targeting publishers. We sought mentoring from corporate friends on image and branding, marketing strategies, potential blurbists, and press contacts. We requested aid from family members with expertise in promotions and press relations.
With a few ready essays we began sending requests for blurbs to prominent people who had a strong connection to Turkey, like the author of the international bestseller Harem: The World Behind the Veil, and a prominent news correspondent for Le Monde and The Wall Street Journal. Positive quotes spurred reviews from increasingly higher profile experts. In September 2004 an international design team began to construct a cover for the book as a personal favor, including the raves that were rolling in from experts in expatriatism, women’s studies, the Ottoman harem, and Turkish society.
By the Frankfurt International Book Fair in October 2004, it was obvious to more people than just us that Tales from the Expat Harem was a hot property. Our proposal had expanded to 28 pages with seven essays, including tales from an archaeologist at Troy, a Christian missionary in Istanbul, a pregnant artist in the capital of Ankara, and a penniless Australian stricken with influenza in the moonscape of a wintry Cappadocia.
Unfortunately the Istanbul publisher’s catalog for the German fair revealed that our hot property was not being handled the way we thought it deserved. Calling a meeting with the Istanbul publisher, our priorities and expectations didn’t jibe with theirs. Amicably, we decided to cancel our contract.
Meanwhile, we reached out to a literary agent who had been following Anastasia’s writing career, since it was clear the book could benefit from professional representation. Within a month, his top New York literary agency agreed to represent us.
Suddenly several Turkish publishing houses approached us after reading about Expat Harem in the local media and we explored their interest even though we had already set our sights elsewhere. Freed from the limited resources of our first publisher, we aimed for the best Turkey had to offer: Dogan Kitap. The strongest publisher in the country, Dogan Kitap is part of the largest Turkish media conglomerate of television and radio stations, newspapers and magazine holdings and a nationwide chain of bookstores. But we didn’t approach the publisher first…
Instead, we contacted the owner of one of Dogan’s television stations who is known for her active involvement in promoting the image of women in Turkey, which dovetailed nicely with the theme of our project. Through professional connections we also requested aid from the head of Dogan’s magazine holdings. By the time Dogan’s book publishing branch received our request for an appointment, they had already heard about us through those two executives and had seen coverage of the book via three of their news outlets and at least two of their competitors. Our follow up call secured us a meeting with the publisher’s general manager in December 2004.
“You’ve come to the right address,” he declared. Then we didn’t hear from Dogan again.
THE SUBMISSION PROCESS
The vast potential of the project began to dawn as our agent compared it to accessible personal stories of life in the Middle East, bestselling titles like Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Bookseller of Kabul. He began submitting the growing ms to U.S. publishers.
“What could be more timely than an insider’s view of women’s lives in the Middle East—as told by resident Westerners?”
We asked this in our November press release, generated in four languages and sent to foreign press correspondents in Istanbul, followed up with phone calls. Agence France Presse, one of the world’s largest news agencies, interviewed us before an important European Union vote on Turkey, while in February 2005 Newsweek International published our letter to the editor, exposing the upcoming anthology to more than a million readers across Europe.
Meanwhile, in New York, an editor at a publishing house known for its anthologies effusively praised the manuscript but her editorial board demurred.
Turkey was too small a subject they felt, suggesting we expand the book to other Muslim nations like Sudan, Kosovo, and Iran. We countered with a franchise series of Expat Harem books. Too large a project, they said. Editors at ten other New York houses also were split in their reactions, recognizing the appeal of the Muslim setting and the foreign female focus, yet unconvinced that a collection by unknown writers would draw major audiences. By February 2005 all the top New York houses had passed so we targeted more independent houses, university presses and those which had published our blurbists.
STAYING POSITIVE
During the excruciating winter months of ms submissions, sustaining enthusiasm wasn’t easy. Doubts began to multiply. We hadn’t heard back from Dogan Kitap, they weren’t answering our emails, and U.S. publishers weren’t biting. Taking inspiration from a chapter in our own book, one devoted to Turkey’s shamanistic roots and methods of banishing the envious evil eye, we created a ritual to cast off negative energy.
We wrote down fears we had discussed as well as those we would not openly admit to having: ‘We will not find a publisher. We will not finish the book. No one will read it. It will be embarrassing to promote…’
Then we burned the list – and not just anywhere. Since the Expat Harem co-opted the image of the Ottoman harem, we headed to the Topkapi Palace, visited the chambers of our namesakes, and asked their blessings. In an outside courtyard, we literally reduced our fears to ashes.
We also considered the mindset of our agent. It can’t be easy to break bad news to clients so we never expected our agent to be our cheerleader. We responded to his rejection emails with the successes we were achieving on our front.
We invested no energy in the negativity of others. Without rebutting critics, we would smile and say, ‘we’ll see’ as if we knew something they didn’t.
Naysayers couldn’t argue our continued success when they-- along with all our contacts-- received bubbly email announcements every time we appeared in the media, received a new blurb, or made another advance.
MARKETING
We both have professional experience and a personal predilection for marketing and turned our attention to finding every opportunity to get the word out. Before we had one page of the manuscript, we had already perused John Kremer’s 1001 Ways To Market Your Books, were tracking academic conferences in which we might participate, researching comparable books, and compiling lists of audiences and organizations that might like to host us as speakers.
Even so, the book was rejected by fifteen publishers before we tackled the daunting official marketing plan. Most editors commented that they liked the idea but didn’t see the market. Was Turkey truly too far from the U.S.A. to matter to American audiences?
We needed to make our case and identify potential markets American publishers might not traditionally consider.
In January 2005 we defined our main audiences as having something in common with the contributors:
We noted the 1.2 million Americans who’ve traveled to Turkey in the past five years, the 87 Turkish American associations serving more than 88,000 Turkish nationals in America plus tens of thousands of Americans with Turkish heritages, women’s and Middle Eastern studies programs at hundreds of North American universities, and specific Turkophile populations like the alumni of the Peace Corps who served in Turkey. We also compiled more practical subsidiary audiences. Multinational corporations with operations in Turkey, embassies and tourism organizations might use the book as a cross-cultural training tool or a promotional vehicle.
We imagined the book developing a positive image of Turkey abroad, addressing the unvoiced but deep concern of many businesspeople, travelers and diplomats: will our women be safe?
SECOND AND THIRD SALES
Unsure how to interpret Dogan Kitap’s silence, we wondered if they had been serious about our book. After our visit in December, why didn’t they call? Why didn’t they answer our emails or those from our agent? Staying positive, we phoned until we secured follow-up appointments by the end of January, and at that meeting they acted as if the project were already theirs. Contrary to our gloomy speculation, their behemoth operation had slowed their response. Reluctant to misstep, they seemed hesitant to start negotiations until our agent sent them a draft contract in English. Though Dogan originally planned to publish only in Turkish, on the strength of our marketing plan we convinced them that the local English language market was large enough to warrant two editions. In February 2005, Dogan bought the Turkish world rights and the English rights for Turkey.
Success snowballed. On Valentine’s Day, the feminist imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Seal Press, offered us a publishing contract for the North American rights! When Seal’s marketing department presented the book at a June 2005 presales conference to book distributors from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others, everyone was ‘flushed with amazement’ at our detailed marketing plan.
SPAWNING CONTINUED MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES
The marketing never ends! In April 2005 we produced at our own expense 5,000 promotional postcards with our book cover, photos, website address and reviews from scholars, journalists and diplomats, distributing them via our worldwide contributors. When the postcard found its way into the hands of the producer of Publishing Trends, an American book industry intelligence newsletter, Tales from the Expat Harem garnered nearly a page of coverage in the June 2005 issue, winning us the attention of a highly influential international publishing audience.
Our website consistently delivers a stream of queries from people identifying themselves as future book buyers while our web-tracking reveals the growing global audience we’ve created in the past year. Thirty-five hundred visitors from 90 countries have dropped by since we began tracking site activity. To tap into this ready-made market, our publishers set up pre-sales via internet bookstores, while our local speaking engagements have generated offers for additional receptions and book signings.
We kept the pressure on once the book was released in Turkey, using the printed books to seek new media coverage and fresh blurbs in September 2005. Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times Istanbul bureau chief, offered us a quote for the cover of our Seal Press edition. We also turned our attention to the official launch party scheduled for November.
Since our publisher’s launch party budget didn’t cover our starry-eyed fantasy of an event at the Topkapı Palace harem, we looked for a sponsor.
Though we didn’t exactly end up with our fantasy, through fearless soliciting we did land a prominent hostess for our 200 person cocktail at a 5-star hotel—the owner of a Dogan television station who initially paved the way for our book deal. A woman concerned with Turkey’s image abroad, and in particular with the perception of women’s lives in Turkey, she invited her own A-list guests as well as our growing list of international press correspondents, blurbists, supporters, and many of the influential people we hope to cultivate.
The event was broadcast on television news for several days, and featured in newspapers, their glossy weekend supplements, and magazines.
HARD WORK PAYS OFF
At the Istanbul International Book Fair in October 2005, where we headed a panel discussion and had a book signing, our Turkish publisher promoted Türkçe Sevmek, the translation of Tales from the Expat Harem, on a 15 foot illuminated display alongside its translations of Umberto Eco and Julia Navarro.
After hitting the Turkish bookshelves, both Dogan editions sold out within six weeks, with the English edition debuting on the bestseller lists at several national bookstore chains and making its way to the number two spot – beating out two J.K. Rowlings, a Michael Connelly and three Dan Browns.
We have appeared on a handful of national television stations, including three different CNN-TURK shows which were simultaneously broadcast on CNN-TURK radio, and have been invited to appear on several other stations; we were featured in all the top national Turkish and English newspapers, with one providing three consecutive days of extensive coverage during one of the country’s highest circulation weeks; we are sitting for interviews with specialized media; we’re fielding requests for review copies from international culture journals; and, quite edifyingly, we are meeting readers as well as our expat peers in cities throughout Turkey on weekend book tours.
[This article first appeared in a slightly different form in ABSOLUTE WRITE, 2006]
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Excerpts from a joint interview with Zeynep Kilic of the Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly and my Expat Harem coeditor Jennifer Gokmen. See full interview here. Q: What inspired you to start this project? What is your vision?
AA: Jennifer and I created a writing workshop with a few other American women in Istanbul and soon realized we were all writing about our lives in Turkey. We thought if we collected the stories we might begin to piece together the puzzle that is Turkey. It was a ripe idea and the floodgates opened. We heard from more than 100 women from 14 nations whose lives have been touched by Turkey in the past 50 years – and we’re meeting more women of the Expat Harem every day!
Q: In every country in the world the equality of women and men is skewed in at least one or more of these categories: economical, social, reproductive and human rights. What did you find were the greatest challenges for women native to Turkey? The women expatriates? The greatest triumphs?
AA: What’s interesting is to me are personal perceptions about equality. Turkish women have taught us and many of the expatriates in Expat Harem what strength there is in being a woman. Western culture seems to have stripped the power from femininity; it has confused us into thinking that to be taken seriously, we must dress and act like men. The ancient wisdom of Anatolia’s goddess culture is alive and well in Turkey, and in Turkey’s women.
A challenge for Turkish women seems to be attaining the independence many expatriates enjoy. Turkish society is so inter-dependent there are few acceptable lifestyle options for the loner, even in the most modern families.
Q: Your book has become a bestseller in Turkey, was this something that you expected or did it come as a surprise?
AA: The book’s strong performance probably has less to do with our gender than the fact that it taps into an interest great numbers of people have…Turks want to know what foreigners are thinking of them, while expatriates want to see if their fellow foreign nationals have had similar experiences. And people who have left the country (including Peace Corps volunteers who were here 40 years ago) are eager to relive their Turkish memories!
Q: Is there an underlying theme other than expatriation that links all of these stories? What do you hope the reader takes away from this reading experience?
AA: Besides exploring the land and culture, these women are exploring themselves. They’re on journeys of self realization. Turkey happens to be the backdrop. Their tales show how Turkish culture has affected their lives as they navigate their way into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood in Turkey.
AA: Perhaps readers will understand how much another culture can show you who you are, and how you can change, if you want to.
Q: What do you think about how Turkey is represented in today’s world? What do you think can be done to extend the reach of Turkish arts and culture across the world?
AA: Turkey has a dark and contentious reputation, with conflicts like historical ethnic and geographic rivalries dominating news coming out the country. Although it has a rich creative heritage, that’s not the first thing people think of. A fictionalized Oliver Stone movie from the 1970s comes to mind, or a sad report they heard on NPR. Many of the writers in our anthology have had to defend their choice to live in Turkey since friends and relatives back home were worried for their safety – and their sanity!
AA: In this same way, extending the reach of Turkey’s art and culture is a matter of enticement. Enticing people to learn more, and making the introduction as accessible as possible. In Tales from the Expat Harem each writer acts as a guide into her world, and the Turkey that she knows. Readers will go along with her to meet an art gallery owner in Ankara whose ancestors were fortunetellers of the sultan; they’ll whirl through the streets with Gypsy dancers; they’ll be invited into the ritual bath of an Anatolian bride.
Q: What is your favorite thing about living in Turkey and the least favorite?
AA: For me it’s the same thing: the close observation of my life by family and neighbors. For an independent Western woman it can be disconcerting to feel every move is watched – and reported! What time I went to sleep, who came over to the house, things like that. But on the flip side, this very scrutiny is what makes me feel safe and cared for, especially since the motivations for this are not malicious, or even necessarily having to do anything with me. People-watching seems to be a national pastime. If I need help from my family or neighbors I know I can count on them, and perhaps they would even know I needed help before I told them myself. One tale in our book is about that very phenomenon: an ill Australian is rescued by her neighbors who notice she hasn’t left the house in days.
Q: Do you have any recommendations or advice for people planning a move to Turkey or another country?
AA: Take extra care to supply yourself with what you need to be happy, wherever you are. Feeling light-hearted and productive is important when you suddenly are surrounded by so many new situations. You’ll need that inner strength in order to remain flexible about things you can’t control or don’t understand. Try to get up to speed on what life might be like in Turkey. When we were brainstorming the anthology’s concept we imagined it could be a cultural primer for newcomers to the country. It will be wonderful if people actually use it that way. Women about to wed Turks have said the book made clear which aspects of their relationship have to do with the culture and which are individual to the couple.
Q: Do you have any projects planned for the future?
AA: We’ve been asked by our Turkish publisher to consider doing a male version of the anthology. That would elicit a very different set of views on the country… Currently I’m at work on a collection of my own cultural essays Berkeley to Byzantium: The Reorientation of a West Coast Adventuress, a travel memoir charting the peaks and valleys of my life, from mean elevators and subways of Manhattan to the gilded palaces of Asia Minor -- and Southeast Asia, where I lived for five years.
Thoughts I shared in an expatriate group: About a decade ago I lived in South East Asia for five years. I know some of you are longtime, veteran expats and hope you'll indulge me when I share my developing philosophy about being an expatriate.
I have found the more that I honor what is meaningful to me, the more my expatriate life takes care of itself.
For instance, when I moved to Istanbul from New York City, I was committed to writing a memoir. Soon it was supplanted by another literary project which helped me not only create a solid foundation for my life here, but incidentally, for the travel memoir I have now returned to.
Along with a fellow American expat, I edited a collection of true tales of cultural conflict and discovery written by foreign women from seven nations about their lives in modern Turkey.
It's put my Turkish experience into perspective, brought me quickly up to speed on the region's culture, connected me with my foreign and local peers and other personal and professional communities of interest, and has fueled my writing career.
This is a result miles away from the disenfranchisement I felt in Malaysia, languishing in the jungle, attending social events with people marginally related to me and my interests, never quite being myself, never sure how I was going to fit in or if I even wanted to.
We conducted an Expat Harem panel at the 24th Istanbul Book Fair with editors and writers including Kathy Hamilton, Katie Belliel and Valerie Tasiran. The anthology was also launched there, featured at the Dogan Kitapcilik stand.
Calling all women writers who have lived, worked, studied or traveled in Turkey for at least a year: Contribute your voice to a new anthology of foreign women’s reflections on modern Turkey. Deadline: August 1, 2004 TALES FROM THE EXPAT HAREM: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen
The book aims to be a personal, entertaining read for both students and scholars of Turkey as well as armchair cultural travelers, fans of women’s literature, and expatriates of all stripes.
During Ottoman rule, the word 'harem' (from the word ‘haram’, meaning sacred and forbidden) referred to both the population as well as the living quarters of the foreign-born brides and servants of the Turkish sultan. An intimate and confined community of women, it was a place for sharing womanly wisdom and cultivating cultural tradition.
In this non-fiction anthology we invoke a modern day Turkish harem with its chorus of voices and shared female experience -- in the sense that the expatriate population is naturally cohesive and isolated due to the process of assimilation. Newcomers learning to maneuver within a new set of variables and cultural boundaries necessarily experience a limitation of freedom: language barriers act as an obstacle to travel and independence, cultural naivete hinders social interaction, and ethnocentric rigidity impedes dynamic experience.
Taking the reader on humorous and poignant journeys of cultural contrast and discovery, our contributors break free of the confines of the harem, breaching the confined world of the unassimilated to touch the true heart of Turkey. Whether newly arrived or well-established expatriates, or Turks repatriating to their homeland after a long absence, all our contributors are foreign brides of modern Turkey: wedded to its culture, embedded in it even, and yet forever outsiders.
We are looking for high-quality personal essays, insightful flash non-fiction and colorful travelogue--in English, 2,500 words or less. Unpublished work is preferred, although well-crafted previously published work will be considered.
Further information and to submit work please visit the rudimentary site: www.expatharem.com
Inquiries info@expatharem.com
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CHAPTERS:
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TIPS FOR WRITERS
We prefer personal essays with evocative language and dialogue, detailed description that sets the scene and sketches the people. You may have heard this type of writing referred to as creative or literary nonfiction – facts conveyed with the devices of a novelist.
TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.
SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.
BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.
BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.
BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?
POSSIBLE BREAKING POINTS/BOUNDARIES/AREAS OF ILLUMINATION
TIPS FOR NONWRITERS
TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.
SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.
BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.
BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.
BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?
I may live in a plush suburb of Kuala Lumpur, but being a First World transplant in a newly industrialized country, I spend most days simply surviving.
Every step presents an adventure as civilization unevenly veneers wilderness, the ground itself quicksand.
Consider head to toe casualties of an innocuous invitation to lunch, for example, from ego to footgear.
In a booming land often untroubled by zoning regulations, meeting friends at a prominent equatorial hotel may unexpectedly require a swampy trudge through the mosquito-infested construction site separating the elegant establishment from the main road, strappy suede sandals intended for marble floors providing meager protection.
But perhaps even more startling than the region’s frequent ambushes on both my natural instincts and established convictions is the chronic role I play in this survival game:
When planning a whimsical, open-ended trip to Southeast Asia from the dream-factory comfort of my home in Los Angeles, I projected with my sterling education and big city experience I would cut through local rustic life like a machete-wielding explorer clearing a path through ancient undergrowth.
There would be culture shock, surely, but nothing perilous.
How could an entire rainforest of a country, sixty-percent untouched wilds and the rest sparsely populated by 20 million people, compare to the gritty intensity of life in that untamed concrete jungle of New York City, a hotspot I’d already survived, if not conquered?
I not only miscalculated the proportion of predators per square kilometer in this mountainous green peninsula, I misjudged my strengths. Instead of useful skills and equipment, the professional and personal properties I brought with me hindered my progress and exposed me to the bitterest situations.
Once the high-minded “no lying, no cheating, no stealing” system afforded me the freedom to leave my backpack without incident anywhere on the suburban Philadelphia college campus and to complete my exams unsupervised, but it was hardly a weapon – or a shield. Stretches in New York and Los Angeles may have awakened my general security habits, atrophied from collegiate ethics, but I can’t say I’m prepared to face unbridled depredation in the real world.
My classical archaeology degree was no tool of success in a developing nation where the past is swiftly being razed and architectural conservationists fighting for World Heritage status are pests for authorities and property owners aching to level historic and crumbling settlements for profit.
My muscular command of the English language, a skill which had clinched opportunities and pulled me out of tight spots before, won me no particular allies in the Asian tropics nor was it a translation aid in communicating with the natives.
Previous prolonged exposure to professional entertainment media, producing and administrating studio motion pictures, Broadway and television shows didn’t inoculate me against the rabid tradition of amateur hour, otherwise known as karaoke, nor the backward entertainment industry’s endemic third-rate productions and pirated material. Instead, my allergic reaction – symptomized by general irritability and catatonia, lack of enthusiasm while warbling La Bamba into a microphone or pawing through DVDs of the latest Hollywood releases at the pasar malam night markets -- was heightened.
A Northern California background, values marked by non-conformism and far-left political correctness, was no compass for a conservative landscape where children are segregated and schooled by race and religion, and classified ads for jobs, housing and advanced education baldly specify the race, sex, age and religion of those who can expect to receive preferential treatment.
Here Malays call themselves Bumiputera, or princes of the earth, and Chinese people refer to themselves as ‘Chinamen’. That's a term I would have been disciplined for using as a child and when I type it today, my Pacific Northwest spellchecking program reminds me I am way, way out of line, suggesting I substitute ‘cinnamon.’
Here I am automatically designated "white", upsetting a lifelong resistance to America’s own crude race option of ‘Caucasian’. There is no use for my more nuanced self view of being ‘Indo-European’. Besides, what difference could it make to people who presume I’m exactly the same as every other light-complected person who ever set foot in these latitudes, and more recently, whoever crossed their path.
So along with a new cultural classification, I now hold a fresh history. I wear the mantle of red-haired people, Dutch and British and French colonials, stinking privateers and planters, pompous district officers and butterfly-chasing naturalists, decadent drug-addled Orientalist writers, American expats flush with corporate money, and beer-drinking young backpackers who take their tops off after a few.
Here ascetic living is rarely a style choice, plastic is the craze, and harsh green fluorescent lighting is preferred over illumination that might generate more heat.
So, weighed down with impractical baggage and unschooled in the wily ways of the jungle, from the moment of my arrival I have been fresh meat for stealthy indigenous hunters, a wrong-thinking creature captured unaware and defenseless in alien territory. I even set traps for myself, behavior a terrible tangle: Nerves snap when the situation calls for pliancy, I telegraph approachability when being inscrutable and remote would achieve a better result.
If I had disembarked as an insulated expatriate under the aegis of a multinational company, doubtless palms would have been crossed in advance, maps drawn, guides and porters waiting – and, ensconced in a world geared to my needs, none of this would matter.
Instead, I was a corporate nonentity on a tiny budget, accompanying an ethnic Chinese but Malaysian-born companion who had grown unaccustomed to the country after decades abroad. Along with his mother-tongue, he had forgotten many other crucial details, including that the Chinese are second class citizens in Malay-controlled Malaysia.
First, enroute from Tokyo, the national airline misplaced my brand new Ping Zing golf clubs and Plop putter, still pristine in their factory boxes. I promptly filed a claim at the Penang airport and trusted the airline bureaucracy to locate the missing equipment.
Instead, the huge corporation slumbered for weeks, deflecting my earnest attempts to follow up at one branch office after another like an elephant brushes off a tenacious fly. Finally, the mailman brought a form letter telling me what I already knew: the clubs were gone. The sensation of blasé victimization mushroomed when I read the airline’s offer of compensation for my loss: Ringgit Malaysia 48 (less than $20USD) per kilo, reducing the worth of my state-of-the-art clubs to their weight in ultra-light graphite composite.
The vessel that carried all my worldly goods over the Pacific Ocean anchored in the Port of Penang, an island state off the northwest coast. In meetings the weeks before, my boastful local freight forwarder, a chain-smoking Chinese character named K.K., clad in Camel cigarette brand khaki safari suits, dismissed my worried-white-woman questions about port procedure and protocol, saying, “Leave it to me, it’s always the same.”
So I don’t begin to know the details but when he failed to show up at the Penang container yard to represent me and my interests, the unattended household container was ransacked by customs officers with the abandon of rampaging chimpanzees, to judge from the scene when I arrived.
After rending boxes from end to end and strewing delicate computer peripherals and precious belongings across the hot tarmac, like mischievous primates they pilfered lightweight shiny trinkets, Ray-Ban sunglasses and Harley Davidson keychains. Later, when my jumbled container was opened in front of my suburban Kuala Lumpur home, family heirlooms skittered into the sludge-filled storm drain.
The silent Tamil moving crew, neon yellow uniforms florid against their dark skin and bloodshot eyes, pretended not to notice. The only woman on the scene, the only foreigner, the only hysterical person, I climbed down to retrieve my things from the muck, not knowing what dank-living creatures I might meet, nor what distress signals I was emitting to the entire zipcode’s blood-thirsty leeches.
Within a few weeks my new pedigreed puppy, romping in the sunshine of my ‘padlocked residential compound’ known in the United States as a gated front yard, was whisked away in the jaws of another predator. A snapping, snarling Rottweiler of eight weeks, the ink on her pedigree papers not yet dry, the Little Brontosaurus Kid’s fearsome promise attracted the marauder she wasn’t mature enough to dissuade.
Later I discovered they were right, it was to be expected. An article in The Malay Mail, a tabloid newspaper specializing in grievances of the common man, reported that a dog theft ring had been operating out of my suburban, not-particularly-criminal neighborhood, stalking RM30,000 worth of well-bred canines in the time I lived there.
Cut-throat dupings and uncivilized endangerments permanently enflamed my pampered sensibilities.
Soon it didn’t matter whether the offense was personal or to my environment, or to society as a whole. The government, the press, the business community! The health care system, the food service industry, the tourism trade! The injustice, the danger, the rudeness!
I squawked and squealed to everyone who would listen and many who wouldn’t. Some local counterparts who had experienced mountains of loss and hazard sympathized, but no one recognized or mirrored my particularly American need for restitution, for justice.
“It happens,” my boisterous neighbor Tuan Tin would sagely explain, nodding and absorbing my bad news. “You can’t do anything,” she’d finally blurt if we talked long enough, quickly daubing her tears as if her tattooed eyeliner would smear.
But Tuan Tin the Buddhist did think a person could do something. She changed her faith to raise a young son stricken with leukemia, embracing Christianity that offered him a rose-colored future in heaven with the son of God – rather than Buddhism’s projection that if he lost his struggle with this life he might be reincarnated as an ant.
No jungle mother wishes her son to become a lowly ant. And so it is in sink-or-swim Malaysia: certain beliefs offer rosier futures than others.
I had wondered how Malaysians maintained their refreshing naïvete in the face of spirit-crushing jeopardy and now I knew. Benign acceptance of life's treachery is an integral aspect of the sunny Southeast Asian disposition.
Over the years, I must have heard it all.
As much as these scandals were reported in the paper or whispered at kopi tiam neighborhood coffee shops, it seemed no one took further issue with the government or their employer, their landlord or their doctor, no one threatened to sue or strike, quit a rubber-tapping job or moved away from the palm oil plantation.
My resilient Chinese acquaintances, sure to point out that their immigrant brothers can be found thriving up the smallest river in the darkest corner of Borneo, have an expression for this zealous phenomenon. They call it kiasu, “afraid to lose” in the Hokkien dialect.
A survival attitude that can seem like a complete lack of generosity or respect for others, the syndrome is in full flower in Malaysia and perhaps most obvious on the roadways.
An attempt to merge into another lane will compel the car behind to speed up, horn blaring, in order to pass first, as if breathing your exhaust is the kiss of death.
Even down south in the land-poor island republic of Singapore where the culture is kindred but the jungle is less immediate a threat, paved over and fenced in, being kiasu is still part of life. It’s shrunk to a vestigial trait – and likenesses of Mr. Kiasu, a grasping self-centered Singaporean comic book character, grace the bumpers of luxury cars on the republic’s orderly one-way boulevards.
Here in the former Third World the jungle still rules and inhabitants face the endurance game with gusto. I must admire the Malaysian brand of fearlessness, although I cannot help but wonder whether I mean foolishness.
Throwing themselves headlong into traffic circles congested with over-laden, careening lorries and reckless motorcyclists, they navigate situations that give me a vehicular-induced migraine. Faster vehicles bump cyclists and pedestrians into squalid gutters while pedestrians scurry with packages and babies across dusty highways in the blistering heat.
In their neighborhoods they face a gauntlet of hazards while doing errands, going to work and school. In flimsy, open-toed sandals urban jungle-dwellers weave their way through tetanal conditions for which this sissy Westerner considers construction boots sine qua non -- sidewalks blooming with rusty metal stumps of defunct street signs.
But the most consuming phenomenon, at 4 degrees North of the Equator, is the invisible march of the tropics: life and death cycles of spores and microbes, accelerated by a steamy atmosphere.
Microscopic organisms stain the pages of my books with veiny brown splotches, and under the glass of framed artwork, blemish cream-colored matting.
My college diploma now appears to be an antique.
Wood furniture oozes crusty white sap, while piles of sawdust appear on the floor under chairs and couches, microscopic organisms eating everything in their path.
Thick moss grows overnight in the storm drain out front and mildew darkens the exterior of my house, buckling freshly-applied anti-fungal paint.
During muggy New York summers I used to suffer from a seasonal outbreak of acne that I theorized sprang from walking the city streets, sweating and accumulating layer after layer of powdery black carbon monoxide. To cheer myself up, I imagined the worst and called it tropical face rot.
But in the perpetual August of Kuala Lumpur, a trip to my local dermatologist for the same condition gets me no respect and no relief.
Statuesque Dr. Singh, a Sikh in pristine lavender turban and smooth olive skin, holds a magnifying glass to my epidermis and assures me I need no medical treatment. He sends me away with oil-dissolving cleanser.
Dr. Singh knows tropical face rot when he sees it, counting among his patients those in rural Kelantan, the northeastern-most state, victims of the flesh-destroying disease leprosy. Once leprosy patients were easier to find near Kuala Lumpur, leper colonies surrounding the city.
Now dwindling leper villages are taken over by a new growth business, plant nurseries for the nouveau riche.
After decades of beating back the jungle, in densely settled areas greening one’s property is a cutting edge practice. Tiling over their compounds for easy cleaning and felling trees since the shady, oxygen-producers attract loud dirty birds and the egg-eating snakes that follow them, suburbanites repopulate properties with greenhouse-grown varieties of docile plants. Favored is the papery-flowered Brazilian vine bougainvillea since it doesn’t attract birds or bees with a scent, drip nectar or soil the walkway with whatever sticky juice more succulent plants spit.
Envisioning myself the great white planter-cum-naturalist in the denuded suburbs, for my small patch of land I yearned to create a sanctuary of bird-friendly fruit trees and night-blooming jasmines, exotica impossible to grow in cooler, drier climates.
Capriciously, I planted a mountain banana culled during a four-wheel drive weekend trip into the interior. No sooner was it in the ground than it started attracting trouble.
“Evil spirits live in mountain bananas,” my professional Malay neighbor Khatidja warned through our Cyclone fence. “Better to get rid of it, yah?”
But instead of heeding animist jungle wisdom I dismissed her alarm as lowland, big-city snobbery.
Besides, my Collins Field Guide to birds of Southeast Asia said Arachnothera flavigaster, or spectacled spider-hunters, built their nests on the underside of banana leaves at this elevation and I wanted to encourage that. The three foot stalk grew with ferocity, fruiting faster than I could distribute its petite orange bananas or make breads, cakes and frozen drinks. Sturdy shoots with elephantine fronds may look spectacular on a verdant hill-slope or rimming a muddy river but made my place the neighborhood eyesore, tropical equivalent of a wrecked car up on blocks. Within three months the wild baby banana towered nine feet, overtook the yard with new stalks, required constant pruning of dead leaves, cut the light coming into the house, and had to be uprooted by an itinerant handyman with a pickaxe.
But my quest for butterflies, birds and blooms wasn’t going to be diverted by a rogue mountain banana that may or may not have been haunted, so I consulted the experts. The Malaysian Nature Society’s bird watching group publishes a list of indigenous flowering plants and birds they attract. I settled on the sweet-smelling ylang ylang Cananga odorata but for an unexpressed reason nursery after nursery neglected to cultivate the tree. The five foot tall sapling I later planted was shamefully ripped from its natural place in the first growth rainforest by an enterprising garden supplier.
Armed with binoculars, I was now ready to catch sight of Nectarinia zeylonica, the purple-rumped sunbirds that would materialize just as the spindly white flower buds matured. But on the eve of each flower cluster’s opening, its branch was crudely hacked by an anonymous, superstitious neighbor. Perhaps it was that faceless individual across the street who rings an eerie bell five times a day, shadowy figure illuminated by a lone candle, or the middle-aged yuppie who practices his golf swing on his tiny patio every evening. Regardless, I consider myself a failed planter, and no naturalist in my own neighborhood.
I’m no environmentalist either. I have a limit when it comes to legions of bugs.
When I was a California girl I pored over green ways to clean, the awful details of toxic paint, EMFs and sick buildings, but now I contract an exterminator to spray a deadly malathion solution around my house and garden on a regular basis to combat ants and termites, aphids and cockroaches. The fact that the sprayer has three thumbs, a birth defect, serves as a monthly reminder to me of the world I am fostering.
Sometimes the peril for me lies not in being devoured but in finding my own daily sustenance.
Insects and microbes rule so jungle guts have grown as hardy as jungle soles.
Squeamishness could sound a person’s death knell, whether by over-excitement or starvation or both. Detection of the dreaded rat urine-borne Hantavirus at one of the capital’s major food courts did not affect its popularity nor require it to be closed for extermination and testing purposes. Intrepid jungle-dwellers scarf down dishes prepared by sidewalk hawkers who operate without the benefit of soap and running water, without refrigeration, without covering food from the elements – like the concrete dust drifting over from the construction site next door.
Sometimes I wonder if I am overreacting like a prissy Puritan when I cannot finish my meal after a trip to a particularly bad restaurant bathroom, a bare room with a concrete floor and a bucket of water which, when poured on the floor, snakes in an open drain past the cooking area. Or am I simply the insomniac product of alarmist U.S. media?
As an American I admit that I am burdened with an E. coli information overload, but I am not sure if all this science-based survival information shields me from danger any more than the ignorance of it protects the unconcerned people around me.
Despite outstanding questions, I have survived five long years as fresh meat for the elements, the mosquitoes and the microbes, my endurance fueled by the desire to overcome local life’s obstacles, and falling short of that, being mired in the fatalism of the forest.
Every day I undergo a battery of wilderness precautions, slathering on repellents and sun-blocks, strapping on serious head- and footgear. Making sure I'm carrying enough water, towels, extra supplies, I scurry along suburban walls like a rodent, avoiding the midday heat and blistering rays. On trips abroad I trawl through adventure stores for the latest in jungle trekking equipment, floatable sunhats and collapsible canteens.
And, like most of the world’s vulnerable creatures eventually do, I’ve developed a prickly exoskeleton to shield my soft innards. I’ve earned my special place in the ecosystem, striking hard and fast at the first sign of trouble from landlords and airlines and resort-operators. I put my counter-attack in writing and raise the alarm, sending a copy to the paper of public grievance, The Malay Mail. Casting a spotlight stuns the predator and slows the plundering, but I have not found a way to completely stop the human depredation, nor accept it.
Walking around the shops one sun-drenched noon I slipped into a typically uncovered monsoon drain, substandard concrete returning to its slippery component of sand under foot. Just another victim of the country’s noxious civil engineering, there was nothing to be done and no one to call, except perhaps a friend to drive me to the nearest medical klinik.
“Everyone falls in, don’t you worry,” the Dr. Azreena assured me as she cleaned my exotic-looking but painfully pedestrian gash. She's probably right since ungrated three- to ten-foot deep drains surround residential and business blocks like steep-sided concrete moats, separating people from everything they need to do.
A tribe that survives and grows strong on folly like uncovered drains and plummeting elevators, improper food handling and toxic dumping: lawyers. Not like the Malaysian breeds, bogged down in insipid real estate rental agreements or stalking around British courtrooms in powdered wigs and black batrobes, but the hungry, late-night television-advertising ambulance-chasing strain from the U.S. Malaysia is a paradise of prime litigation just waiting for a new rule of law.
In the meantime, when my friends in the States -- who picture me a wild adventuress in a pith helmet regardless of what information to the contrary I reveal about my life -- notice the huge indented mark on my leg, I have the option of glamorizing its far-flung cause: it does look a lot like a shark bite.
In fact, I'm lucky to be alive.
+++ Variations of this appeared in The Expat magazine in Singapore, Men's Review magazine, and Agora web portal for international living and studying.
