The Accidental Anthologist: Creating A Literary Harem

Turkey often makes the news for suppressing its authors. Ironically, as an American expatriate in Istanbul I found my voice -- by creating a literary harem of my expat peers. My third month in Istanbul I found my way to an American women's social club. Milling among the crowd at the consul general's residence, I introduced myself by describing my writing project.

"At 40? You're too young to write a memoir," snorted a white haired librarian as she arranged second-hand books on a card table.

"Istanbul's such chaos, I'd be surprised if you can concentrate," thought a freckled socialite in tasseled loafers.

My memoir was going to happen. It had to. It was the cornerstone of my survival plan.

MY BRILLIANT CAREER WAS PORTABLE. I moved to Istanbul in 2003 so my Turkish husband could take a job in mobile telecommunications. Even though I lacked a formal proposal for my high-concept travel memoir charting the peaks and valleys of what I was calling “an adventurous life,” I already had a literary agent waiting to champion it. I was thrilled my spouse would be developing the kind of advanced cell phone software that excites him and that emerging economies demand. Yet my international move required a defense strategy.

"I'm not going to waste a minute sitting in language classes, diminishing my facility with English," I informed him.

"Whatever makes you happy," he replied.

In my mind I'd be on an extended writer's retreat, free from the daily distractions of our “real life” in New York City, where we had met.

I'd be an asocial expatriate writer who would one day emerge at the border clutching my passport and a masterpiece.

This exotic vision had been percolating since I'd last been an expat—in Malaysia. I’d spent five years rotting away in the tropics like a less-prolific—and more sober—Somerset Maugham.

Foremost to decay in the equatorial heat was my personality—the core of my writing voice.

In steamy Southeast Asia, my first long-term stint overseas, language and cultural barriers prevented me from expressing even the simplest aspects of my identity. When I told people I was a writer they'd reply, "Horses?"

I WAS DECOMPOSING at time-lapse speed. Vintage handbags and L.A. sandals sprouted green fungus overnight, while silvery bugs infested my college texts and a decade of diaries. I was also mistaken for a very different kind of Western woman in Asia, like when a crew of Indonesian laborers working at my house wondered when I was going to drink a beer and take off my shirt.

Three years later, in cosmopolitan Istanbul, I was a resurrected ambitious American prepared for my future. I imagined a successful literary life abroad—supported by a defensive version of expatriatism. "This move won't turn my world upside down," I cockily assured worried friends and relatives, who recalled my anguished Kuala Lumpur days.

Now I was all about the work. My plan to avoid alienation in Turkey was foolproof.

Istanbul, a hilly metropolis of 12 million, made Kuala Lumpur look like the sleepy river town it is. I couldn't envision navigating a car on its traffic-logged streets or squeezing into public minibuses or straying too far alone without a translator. I couldn't wait to hole up at home with my computer, DSL connection and a view of the Bosphorus.

Upon my arrival I joined an expat social club for some English speaking company. There I met the scolding librarian and the socialite. I also ran into an upbeat Michigan writer named Jennifer Gökmen, a 10-year émigré also married to a Turk. She had no doubt I would write my memoir. We both needed some writing support so we created a workshop with a handful of other American women.

Within weeks, the memoir stalled as I struggled to map my entire existence... dear god, what's the arc of my life? Maybe that caustic librarian was right! My resistance to Turkey started to wear down.

Jennifer and I began playing with a proposal of our own: an anthology incorporating essays about our Turkish lives.

I was bursting with that kind of material. The cultural gauntlet I faced on my first trip to meet the family. My glitzy Istanbul wedding. Inspired by the original harem of the 15th century Ottoman sultans, where foreign-born women shared their cultural wisdoms, new arrivals comparing notes with old hands, we figured we formed a modern version: the Expat Harem.

And that’s when the harem walls closed in.

SILENCED BY WHOOPING COUGH: I contracted a mysterious and ancient ailment of the pharynx. Local doctors unfamiliar with the diagnosis prescribed medications for asthma and antibiotics to treat a lung infection, neither of which I had. I passed the cough to Jennifer. For the next six months we were both homebound, hacking to the point of incontinence, succumbing to every little flu. I avoided anything that might incite a new round of spasms, like conversation and laughter, the coal smoke emanating from rural shanties, chills from the ancient city's stone walls, gusts of autumn blowing down from the Black Sea. The only thing Jennifer and I were suited for was speechlessly working, and we only wanted to think about the anthology.

"Embedded here, we're destined to be alien."

I brainstormed in an email to Jennifer, pointing out the dilemma of life abroad—even for those who want to blend in to local culture, it’s near impossible. Our cultural instincts will forever lead us to different choices— from simple aesthetics like lipstick color to complicated interpersonal communications.

"The Expat Harem is a place of female power," she shot back, linking us to an Eastern feminist continuum little known in the Western world.

Harem communities offered women the possibility of power—in the imperial harem, they offered the greatest power available to women in this region. These women had the sultan's ear, they were the mothers of sultans. Several harem women shadow-ran the Ottoman empire, while others co-ruled.

Giddy with our anachronistic metaphor, I replied.

"Ethnocentric prison or refuge of peers—sometimes it's hard to tell which way the door is swinging!"

Like a secret password, news spread as we called for submissions from writers, travelers and Turkophiles. Fascinating women from fourteen nations poured their stories into our in-boxes. They shared how their lives had been transformed by this Mediterranean country in the past 50 years, moments that challenged their values and their destinies as nurses and scientists, Peace Corps volunteers and artists.

These women's tales were not universally known.

Many had never before been published and all were minority voices in a Muslim country with a reputation for censorship.

ALTERNATE REALITIES flooded over me: eerie Sufi pilgrimages to Konya, the intimacies of anthropological fieldwork on the Black Sea, glimpses of '70s civic unrest in Ankara, a wistful gardener's search for the perfect Ottoman rose in Afyon. Many represented a depth of involvement with the country I couldn't imagine: harvesting dusty hazelnuts on a brambly hillside, trying to follow the 9/8 rhythms of a clapping Gypsy, sharing space on a city bus with a dancing bear in the Technicolor 1950s.

I whispered to Jennifer, "Compared to these women, I'm a cultural wimp!"

Their struggles to assimilate nudged me to forgive my own resistance, and inspired me to discover the country, the culture and the Turkish people.

Now I could use the editing skills I had been suppressing since I was an infuriating child who returned people's letters corrected with red pen. From the comfort of my home office-with-a-foreign-zipcode, I was able to shape other writers’ stories. The anthology rewarded me for postponing the memoir, by laying the foundations for a more insightful next book. The joys of collaborating with writers from my home office clarified confusing aspects of my character—like how I am a prickly introvert who nevertheless craves connection with people.

One late winter day Jennifer and I stopped coughing and sold Tales from the Expat Harem to Doğan Kitap, a prominent Turkish publisher.

"That's more like it," snapped the librarian when I next saw her at a club meeting, my reputation somewhat rehabilitated in her eyes.

Four decades’ worth of expatriate self-discoveries earned its shelf space, more than my own 40-year life story would have.

"It's a love-letter to the country. I put it on my house guests' pillows!" shared the smiling socialite.

The anthology became a #1 English-language bestseller in Turkey and was recommended as a social and cultural guide by National Geographic Traveler and Lonely Planet.

My literary career and conflicted mindset about life abroad now had a promising new cultural context in the expat harem.

I FOUND MY THEORETICAL HOME. I arrived an insular writer afraid of losing my voice. In a temporary silence, Turkey suggested an empowering metaphor. It seems the country not only connected me to a worldwide band of my global nomad and expat writing peers, it provided a place to flourish out of restriction -- and raised my voice in the cultural conversation.

[This essay first appeared in JANERA: The Voice of Global Nomads, January 2008]

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What surprise context has your location provided you?

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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]

I Dream Of GenY: In Sync With Today's 20-Something Worldview

If you're over 30 (OK, over 40) you probably don’t yearn to recapture 20-something days of gritty uncertainty. It’s even less appealing if you’re from the tail end of the Baby Boom, a generation gap in itself. My birth year alone meant I’d always occupy an entry-level position in that cultural generation.

Last week a visiting friend and I reminisced about our salad days in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Now Sex and the City types fill its fashion showrooms, art galleries and wine vaults but in the late ‘80s -- when our loft went Hollywood in the film Fatal Attraction and Madonna launched her naughty picture book from the basement nightclub -- it was a no man's land. Motorcycle gangs. Transvestite prostitutes. Bloody meatpackers in white coats and industrial rubber boots. You know, affordable. Plus, our landlady (a dominatrix!) didn’t complain about the party noise.

Unconventional freedom after-hours compensated for our brick-wall career prospects in mainstream media, entertainment, architecture and advertising. Unlike the disaffected GenX slackers a couple years behind us, my downtown loftmates and I refused to embrace the fact we'd never build equity with our marquee employers.

We still had our eye on the ball! Just. Needed to. Get. A foot. In. The door. No surprise the rising tide of GenY and its status quo rebellion has recently uplifted me.

Even with today’s dismal economy, the blogosphere is abuzz with possibility for young adults. A location-independent lifestyle design site launched this week challenges us to “live an awesome life on your own damn terms” while top blogs of young entrepreneurs spearhead social renewal.

The idealistic, brazen careerist mindset resonates because I'm old enough to have faced the corporate cubicle and young enough to frolic with a novel and unbounded reality.

Time travel to GenY’s brand of 20-something grit is a trip I'm willing to take. Ever felt in sync with a different generation?

The Twinge Of Heritage: Ghostly Urges Of A Post-Immigration Life

Since the Ottoman royal harems were filled with women from the Mediterranean and the Baltic -- Italian families even casting their daughters on the Adriatic to be picked up by the sultan's sailors -- my Turkish husband jokes he finally brought me back to Istanbul where I belong. I don’t know, anything's possible. The Turks were also laying seige to Eastern Europe and my Lithuanian family name, echoing a town and river on today’s Belarus border, sounds a lot like the imperial Turkish bloodline of Osman.

For New World types like me the mysteries of our extended lineage often crop up as synchronicity. Wanderlust. Quirks of taste, like ghost urges from genes and culture long ago severed.

Why does this Northern California girl raised on turkey burgers crave the beet soup borscht? When I feel kinship with my Ukrainian, Estonian, Jewish, Italian and Greek friends, what do their wide brows or brown eyes, their stoicism or talkative personality, remind me of? Do they mirror the mix that is me?

You could call me a fourth generation immigrant. My parents and their parents and their parents before them each left their homes in search of safety and opportunity. Moving to Europe in 2003, I completed what we know of my family’s loop. When I slather Aegean olive oil on a spicy bed of wild arugula, I’m enjoying a harvest like a distant Italian ancestor must have -- yet one my closer relatives did not, as my grandmother served Spam in Chicago and my mother laid tofu taco salad on the table in Berkeley.

What ethnic or regional mystery reverberates in you? +++ I remember meeting a blueblood American at a Thanksgiving dinner in Bedford Hills NY and within a minute he had already inquired where my people were from and we’d established that I had only a general idea. As a Californian, a person from a state of reinvention, I remember thinking it was an odd thing to get hung up about. For him, it was a way to know who he was dealing with.

I was just talking with a friend on Twitter about these ethnic stirrings…for many of us it seems nationalism (especially for melting pot nations like America) has been a way to calm those feelings by lumping us together with others who happen to share passports or places of birth — but ultimately it’s superficial to who we are.

Is That A Pain Cry? What We Want To Hear About Death

I don’t see death every day, but I hear it. From where I sit, in my home office overlooking a little Bosphorus bay, the day is punctuated by recess at a large school below. Sometimes through the din I think I hear a high-pitched pain cry echoing in the valley. An intermittent wail. Out on the balcony I listen, some primitive hackle raised. The source: the government hospital on the waterfront. Not a patient. Someone realizing a loved life is over.

I caught a grief panel live-webcasted from The Women’s Conference 2009, America’s foremost forum for women as architects of change. California’s First Lady Maria Shriver -- whose mother and uncle died recently -- and other high profile grieving women talked in raw terms about love and loss. Tremulous voices....courageous for getting on stage in front of an audience of 25,000 for what is usually a private conversation.

Buttoned-down American culture is “grief-illiterate”, they agreed, one woman appreciating the Middle Eastern tradition of ululating which she saw as stress relief. Celebrity means they mourn in the public eye.  Shriver’s iconic clan has had a lion’s share of public bereavement -- it’s practically the Kennedy family culture -- yet she counted it as a benefit: people treated her gently, strangers transformed into supporters.

Many of us grieve in private, our mourning unnoticed outside of networks of family and friends.

Restricting who we talk to about it can cut us off from people unafraid to hear about death, perhaps those even able to console us.

I know when my best friend died -- 15 years ago -- I was on the opposite side of the planet from everyone who knew me, and her, which muffled my pain cry and made the isolation I felt even more acute.

What do you hear about death? What do you want to hear? What do you share?

Spirit Of The Season(ing): Counterculture Recipe For Family Harmony

Blood and marriage draw families together but often whole worlds continue to separate us as individuals. Lifestyle choices. Generations. In-laws. Siblings. Achieving – and maintaining -- harmony is a challenge we all seem to face. Some clans need more help than others. Around our holiday table in 1979, my fractious relatives were gifted with a sudden ability to perceive each other as the loveable characters we truly are, every day of the year. Our secret ingredient for interplanetary peace? An unseen substance in the stuffing.

The basic recipe: Rivalrous teenage sisters. Strait-laced mom. Judgmental 70-something grandparents who abhor visiting funkytown Berkeley (“Nowhere to park the Oldsmobile! Don’t understand the furniture!”).

Add a hefty, home-grown Christmas present from off-the-grid Oregon satellites. Stir: New York Beatnik dad boasting he’s stuffing the turkey with the hippie herb.

At last minute toss in grandparents’ newly widowed neighbor, the sweet and fragile soul Mary Jane. Carve the bird, wait 20 minutes for cosmic family consciousness to settle. Serve in a rosy light.

When Chicken Soup for the Soul debuted fifteen years ago, to my ironic sensibility the upbeat anthology title sounded more like a Saturday Night Live “Deep Thoughts” skit than what would become the bestselling paperback series in the history of publishing. My “Thanksgiving With Mary Jane”**, which appears in “All in the Family” --  the new Chicken Soup volume -- also seemed at the time more joke than enduring lesson about who and what we love.

Orthodox or not, care to share your holiday recipe for family harmony?

**READ FULL TEXT OF THIS THANKSGIVING WITH MARYJANE ESSAY ONLINE at RedRoom, November 2010 or here at expat+HAREM, where you can comment.

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THANKSGIVING with MARY JANE By ANASTASIA ASHMAN

When you're a teenager there are a million places you'd rather be than at a family gathering. However when I was fifteen, Thanksgiving with my relatives was the best turkey day I've ever celebrated. My anti-establishment father put marijuana in the stuffing.

A week earlier the postman had delivered a package from our hippie uncle in Oregon, an artisan potter. Gathered in the kitchen my two sisters and I watched my mother open the Christmas gift from her younger brother. Inside was a witchy handbroom, a leather strap nailed to its handle for hanging at the hearth. Perfect for our 1916 bungalow's fireplace.

While we read the card wishing us a happy holiday in my aunt's blowsy writing, my real estate agent mother unwrapped another present.

A large freezer bag of homegrown Indica.

OUR EYES WIDENED. This was progressive Northern California and we'd seen weed before, but a massive stash had never dropped into our laps. A resinous, earthy green scent overwhelmed the yellow-tiled kitchen.

My mother froze, holding the illegal parcel from her off-the-grid brother and his part-Blackfoot wife. My grandparents bought the younger couple a house just so they wouldn't live in a tent on a Santa Cruz mountain, and stocked my wild cousins with cotton panties so they wouldn't run around without underwear.

Compared to that branch of the family tree, our household was conventional. Mom pursed her lips.

"How am I going to get some of that?" I was thinking.

My sisters were probably scheming to out-maneuver me, our sibling rivalry ingrained. Would our parents let us dip in, simply because it came from a relative? They'd never said we couldn't smoke pot. Only cigarettes were taboo. We girls would be popular at parties if we managed even a minute with the aromatic package. My sullen younger sister could use the social boost in junior high, and so could I in tenth grade with my never-ending mouth of metal. The blonde senior could fend for herself. She'd probably sell it for clothes.

My Bohemian New York father swooped in from the living room.

"I'm going to put it in the stuffing," he crowed, snatching the bag of bud from Mom.

"Oh Charles." My mother sighed as he sprinted up the stairs with the Christmas contraband. A capricious architect, my Lithuanian father liked to bait her about the in-laws.

MY TRADITIONAL ITALIAN GRANDPARENTS DID NOT EMBRACE MY FATHER. They were in the habit of warming to random, respectful young men in crisp, white, button-down shirts when in 1959 my father showed up on their middle-class doorstep an art-school Beatnik in a ripped t-shirt. Still closely shorn from his stint in the Army, where he'd met my mother on a French base, in no other way was he regulation. He snubbed social convention, burying his nose in political paperbacks during cocktail parties with my grandparents' keeping-up-with-the-Joneses neighbors.

Their proper daughter, an elementary school teacher, could do better.

Our nuclear family usually observed holidays at their San Jose ranch house on a cul-de-sac filled with cookie-cutter residences -- Dad gritting his teeth the entire time -- but this year my conservative Chicago grandparents had accepted our invite.

They didn't enjoy visiting "fruits and nuts" Berkeley, our feisty university town famous for sparking the Free Speech Movement and agitating against the government's foreign wars.

My grandfather complained there were never any spots on the hilly, busy streets to park his boat-like Oldsmobile.

Used to La-Z-Boys and sturdy American pieces in walnut at Mervyns, my grandmother found our French wicker chairs uncomfortable and the Joe DiMaggio giant mitt baffling.

"Who wants to sit in a baseball glove?" she protested about the cult classic some Italian designer thought up.

We may have lived an hour apart in the San Francisco Bay Area, but we really lived in different worlds.

Another reason my parents didn't host often: Mom wasn't a cook. In fact, my kitchen-averse mother was so grateful when my father offered to deal with a big bird she christened him the turkey expert and let him do whatever he wanted.

THE TURKEY WAS DAD'S RIGHTFUL DOMAIN, and my grandparents would be eating it. They were also bringing a recently widowed neighbor, Mary Jane.

I can't say I forgot about the surprise stash, but we all dismissed the stuffing threat. Crazy talk was my father's specialty.

On the morning of November 24, 1979 Dad got up at dawn, prepared his poultry and went back to bed. By noon my grandparents arrived with the sweet-natured widow. The eight of us squeezed into our places at the round butcher-block dining table, café chairs grinding against each other.

The turkey was nicely done, not dry. Polite conversation flowed due to the gentle outsider Mary Jane who asked a lot of questions.

I spied a big brown bud on the edge of my grandfather's plate, speckled with bread and celery. I glanced at my sisters to see if they had noticed. Pushing food around their plate with secret smiles, they had.

"Your stuffing is very spicy, Charles," effused the widow. "Is that sage?"

WE KIDS STIFLED GIGGLES. I couldn't look at my mother. Dad was poker-faced.

"Oh, I'm tipsy, it must be the champagne," tittered Grandma, leaning in to shoulder-nudge her neighbor like a schoolgirl.

After my finicky grandfather cleaned his plate he went to recline on the Italian baseball mitt. Soon he was sprawled across the giant glove like Fay Wray in King Kong's hand, snoring. The 70-something dandy in a mint green Qiana shirt and white leisure shoes looked comfortable -- and finally at home in our place.

We devoured the pumpkin pie and Grandma's anise cookies but didn't budge from our rosy circle.

For the first time I saw my family as individuals rather than role players.

In the lanky figure of Grandpa in repose, I recognized the easy character captured in a 1928 photo of him squatting in front of a baseball dugout.

Witnessing chummy Grandma, I understood her life-of-the-party image from a Wisconsin lake in the ‘40s, an arm slung around her ten younger siblings.

Inside my strait-laced Mom I sensed a woman appreciating her daredevil husband's off-kilter view of the world.

I realized my rebel father wasn't really antisocial if he brought us all together.

My sisters. Suddenly they seemed like fellow sojourners navigating teenhood -- simply worrying about braces and popularity and the gauntlet of the right clothes -- as well as my natural allies in this normal-slash-bizarre family. They weren't so bad.

WHEN THE THREE SENIORS SAID GOODBYE, our hugs were heartfelt. My father asked Grandpa which route home he'd take, a mellow and unnecessary exchange between the two men.

"Your family is lovely," the widow Mary Jane exclaimed, kissing each of us. "Today was the best since my husband died!"

As the five Ashmans gathered in the kitchen to do the dishes and review the day's events -- with uproarious laughter and genuine shock -- I found myself thinking of the untamed Oregon folk who couldn't be with us. Their holiday gift ensured they were here in spirit.

In that moment I grasped the meaning of family.

[This essay first appeared in CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL: All in the family, 10/09 and then as a Red Room original, November 2010]

Talking About Commitments To Work, World, & Myself

Excerpt of interview with Expat Harem editors and the women's website CommitmentNow.com, "for women committed to their work, their world, their soul mate, their children, their friends, themselves." 1. Tales from the Expat Harem is a collection of essays by Western women living in Turkey. Where did you get the idea for this book?

Anastasia Ashman: Jennifer and I met at an American women's social group in Istanbul, formed a writing workshop with some of the other members and soon realized we were all writing about our Turkish experiences. We thought they might begin to piece together the puzzle that is Turkey, so we brainstormed an anthology proposal that would encapsulate our work. We imagined the Expat Harem concept as foreign women in Turkey constricted not by physical walls of the harem, but virtual walls. For instance, a lack of language skills, undeveloped understanding of the culture, the ethnocentricities we cling to. The Expat Harem is not a negative thing, necessarily. Most expats will identify with its survival technique. The title also positively reclaims the concept of the Eastern harem. It's been a victim of erroneous Western stereotypes about subjugated women, sex slaves, orgies. In fact, the harem is a place of female power, wisdom and solidarity. Like the imported brides of the Ottoman sultans, we consider our writers inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it, though forever foreign. We put out the call for submissions - to groups of women, writers, travelers, expatriates, Turkey expats, and Turkophiles. We heard from more than 100 women in 14 countries who felt their lives have been changed by Turkey. They came pursuing studies or work, a belief, a love, an adventure: an archaeologist, a Christian missionary, a Peace Corps volunteer, a journalist. Thirty stories spanning the entire nation and the past 40 years share how they assimilated into friendship, neighborhood, and sometimes wifehood and motherhood, and reveal an affinity for Turkey and its people. Not everyone is Western. We have one Pakistani contributor, along with writers from Ireland, the UK, Australia, Holland, Guatemala, and the US.

3. In "Water Under the Bridge," Catherine Salter Bayar laments that although she knows that she, an independent American businesswoman married to a Turkish man and now living in Turkey, would have to adjust to small town life in Western Turkey, she "didn't realize that adjusting to life in a house of fifteen would be a one-way street." Do you think many of the foreign women who have made Turkey their home have found that their adjustments are one-way?

Anastasia: No, I don't think so. It's certainly not the case in my life and for most foreign women I know. If anything we're in a constant state of negotiating which way the street is going at any given time to accommodate both our instincts and those of the people around us! Also, keep in mind Catherine's in-laws are from a rural village in the far east of Turkey with a low level of formal education and that background factors in to their world view and their ability to be flexible to new ways of thinking and doing things. There is a huge spectrum of society in Turkey, all with their own quotients of modernity and comfort with Western traditions. My Turkish family is secular, modern to the point of being trendy, and highly Europeanized. Everyone's mileage varies.

6. In your essays, you discuss your parents' reactions to your decision to marry and live in Turkey. How would you describe their feelings and have they changed over the years?

Anastasia: My mother worried she wouldn't be able to wear pants in Turkey and my father was hung up on news reports about the black market in kidneys, and the reverence in which Turks hold the military. In liberal Berkeley these things seemed suspect. Coming to Istanbul and meeting my Turkish family they were shocked to find a sophisticated, world class city and modern people wearing whatever they wanted. There's a lot to absorb about this complex nation and I think my parents are now better attuned to the limited information circulating about Turkey than they were before. One story, one view does not cover it!

7. Anastasia, it seems as if you acclimated easily to Turkish traditions and customs, perhaps as a result of the fairy tale wedding to your Turkish husband. What is it that you most love about Turkey?

Anastasia: I wouldn't credit my acclimation to a fairy tale wedding! The fact it went so smoothly was an indication of the depth of cultural sensitivity I strove for and my ability to collaborate with my husband. I continue to draw on many hard-earned lessons from my five years as an expat in Southeast Asia in the 1990s, from basic expatriatism techniques to melding with a Eurasian (Turkish) family. However I don't mean to say it's not a fairytale, because it is.

I love Turkey's heavy history overlaid with vivacious new layers of lives and dreams. Modern-day Turkey has more than its share of fabulous places, people and events -- using its breathtaking Roman amphitheatres, Byzantine basilicas, Crusader castles, Ottoman fortresses for cultural activities like concerts, exhibits, festivals. There is no mistaking that this is an important place of power and energy and ideas, and has been for centuries. Istanbul's historical significance as the center of the ancient civilized world is never far from my consciousness and I find that inspiring.

8. How did you decide to make Turkey your home?

Anastasia: My husband and I were living in New York, in what became Ground Zero after September 11th. Transport, basic shopping, air quality, employment: they were all affected badly by the attacks, the dotcom bust and the bottom dropping out of the New York media market. Meanwhile he'd been running the tech side of his brother's Turkish company for years, and when the cellphone work ramped up we decided to give Istanbul a try. The mobile scene here was so much more advanced than in the USA., it gave him more cutting edge opportunity. He was born in Istanbul but moved to Belgium as a toddler when his father took a job at N.A.T.O., so it promised to be a similar adventure for each of us. With my portable writing career and a degree in archaeology it wasn't hard to say yes to a stint in ancient and fabulous Istanbul! We came with the intention to evaluate our options in two years and recommit or make a change. So far nowhere and nothing has been able to top our experience in terms of quality of life: Spacious apartment with an unobstructed view of the Bosphorus and the hills of Istinye which look like Switzerland, organic groceries delivered weekly from the farm to our door plus the secretly-stupendous Turkish cuisine, all kinds of family and community support, holidays on the Aegean and around Europe, a more leisurely pace of life. It's kind of hard to beat.

9. Many of the women in your anthology write about the way women are treated in Turkey - from the role of a daughter-in-law to the rules regarding dating. Do you think being a woman in Turkey is more difficult than being a man?

Anastasia: We might ask that same question about any country in the world. Turkish men have gender and cultural expectations placed on them as well - and expat men here certainly labor under their own set of macho constraints. Although we do enjoy some leeway for being foreign, Western women in a liminal East-West place like Turkey have special confusions - what becomes of our homegrown gender markers of a modern woman like sensible shoes and unadorned faces, doing our own home repairs, not being a docile servant girl? The biggest culture clash we face may be the definition of femininity and the levels of our particular embrace of those definitions. In general I find Turkey full of pro-woman surprises. For instance, the positive attitude about motherhood and breastfeeding here puts America to shame. Cabbie driving too fast? Tell him you're pregnant and presto, he's a model citizen of the road. Several of the country's biggest business titans are women - groomed and promoted by their dynastic families, while female executives abound and women make up the majority of university professors. Turkey's had a female head of state, and awarded women's suffrage fifteen years before France. Is being a woman in Turkey more difficult than being a man? Probably. How much more difficult will depend on your socio-economic background, your family makeup, and your educational opportunities.

Speaking Of Western Women With Eastern Mates

When I’m in China, I tend to turn a lot of heads, especially in the countryside — and that’s not just because I’m a foreigner. It’s because I’m often seen holding hands with my Chinese husband," writes Jocelyn Eikenburg in "On the Rarity of Foreign Women and Chinese Boyfriends/Chinese Husbands" at her blog Speaking Of China. "It’s true — the sight of a foreign woman and Chinese boyfriend or Chinese husband is much rarer than its counterpart, the foreign man and Chinese woman," she writes.

I am so happy to find this blog discussing issues I never had anyone to talk to about in the past, especially when I was living in Asia.

My response:

I grew up in a progressive American town with traditional Asian male role models (my judo instructors). That makes me unusual, I know.

However, I cannot think of a combination more prone to heartache than a typical Western woman and a traditional Eastern man.

You note how hard it is for the Easterners to accept the Western woman. It’s also a real trial for the Western woman to *become acceptable* in the eyes of her Asian mate, and often goes against the grain of everything she’s been taught about her independence.

I spent 6 years with a man of Chinese origin, five of those years in Asia. Hardest thing I ever did. But many of the lessons I learned have helped me meld with my Eurasian (Turkish) husband’s culture and family.

Decomposing Self: Misplacing Your Most Valuable Expatriate Possession

Happily at home in Istanbul in 2007, I flipped through Unsuitable for Ladies. Edited by Jane Robinson, this anthology of female travel writing crisscrosses the globe and stretches back into ancient history. Complete candy for me. Around the same time I was ruminating in an essay for a global nomad magazine why I've come to employ a defensive strategy for my expatriatism.

Sense of self is my most valuable expatriate possession.

During my first long-term stint overseas in the '90s my boundaries were over-run by circumstance and culture. Language and cultural barriers prevented me from expressing my identity. I'd tell Malaysians I was a writer. They'd reply, "Horses?"

I was mistaken for a different Western woman in Asia. A crew of Indonesian laborers working at my house wondered when I was going to drink a beer and take off my shirt.

Like leather shoes and handbags molding overnight, expat life on the equator made me feel my sense of self was decomposing at time-lapse speed.

A thunderbolt from Robinson: "Southeast Asia has more than its share of reluctant women travelers."

She compiled Wayward Women, a survey of 350 female travel writers through 16 centuries so her conclusion about Southeast Asian travelers is drawn from a massive canon. In that moment, my hardest-won lessons of expatriatism felt vindicated.

What happens to your unique travel or expat experience if you consider yourself part of a continuum?

Check out some of expat+HAREM's favorite hybrid life reads here.

Uncool: A Hitchhiking Tale

I don’t hitch-hike for recreation or travel and never will.

Perhaps this is a strange position for me, a child of the radical university town of Berkeley, growing up across the bay from hippie-yippie San Francisco in the ‘70s.

But my big city New York and Chicago parents were more paranoid than many of our patchouli-scented neighbors.

“Who knows what they’re on?” my father would ask, when we passed a row of hitch-hiker desperadoes. Men in Army surplus jackets, bell-bottoms, scraggly beards and aviator glasses. Bra-less long-haired girls with guitars. People with bandana-wearing dogs and kids.

“What a dummy, that woman standing out here at night,” my mother would agree.

These were unpopular views in a time and place when it seemed like everyone was hitch-hiking.

Freeway on-ramps were lined with young and old, thumbs out, brandishing cardboard signs inked in capital letters with their destination.

“EL-A.”

“Vacaville.”

“SOUTH”.

It was a competitive scene. Some people tried to be funny with their cardboards, using popular song lyrics like the Dionne Warwick hit, “Do you know the way to ♪SAN JOSE♪?”

As a car game, my middle-school sisters and I read the signs people held up on the University Avenue ramp to the Bayshore Freeway, a stretch of road said to be the busiest in the entire state of California.

Sitting in traffic along that stretch, we relished spotting the new driftwood sculptures that popped up overnight along the Emeryville mudflats. Illegal art made from refuse, by who knows who.

Hitch-hikers were just another strange thing to watch from the back of the bus.

Cars would slow to pick up spontaneous passengers.

“Right on, man,” the hitch-hiker would seem to say, ducking to grab a rucksack.

I could see the driver rewarded with the hitcher’s burst of gratitude in the front seat, the toss of the bag into the back. Two voyagers united, conserving resources and saving the planet, like-minded kin identifying each other. Jocularity.

We got the finger.

Sometimes curses. Especially when we passed hitch-hikers on hot dusty roads heading to the Sierras, or a rainy winter day at the intersection of Shattuck and University when hopefuls looked -- and probably smelled -- like wet dogs.

Our car made things worse.The family’s white 1969 Volkswagen bus sent the wrong message about who we were and how we lived.

It was always being broken into and ransacked for non-existent drugs. Like that parent-teacher night in 1974, parked outside my fourth grade classroom.

When hitch-hikers spied our VW they must have calculated we were good for the ride -- unlike late model American cars, probably driven by uptight Republicans. Our noisy, white elephant of a car telegraphed we weren’t squares. We were communal folk -- even the German name “Volks-wagen” declared it. My bearded father in a black turtleneck at the big, horizontal wheel would not have dispelled this impression.

Then when we putt-putted past like we didn’t even see them with their “Get me back to BESERKELEY!” sign, suddenly we were responsible for all that wasn’t right in the universe.

We weren’t cool because our family didn’t believe in the hitch-hiking compact. Not in this screwed up world.

The disastrous potential for a hitch-hiker seemed clear to me from a young age. How many stories did we hear about children being lured by a stranger with candy and then abducted in a car? Voluntarily getting into an unknown vehicle didn’t compute. How could these hitchers ignore the reports of bodies found in the hills? The Bay Area’s Zodiac Killer. The Hillside Strangler down in Los Angeles. Hitch-hiking was the stuff of serial killer lore, a campfire staple.

As I hit puberty, classmates without hitch-hiking hang-ups quickly drifted out of my life and toward wherever those risky rides took them.

One afternoon in eighth grade I was sitting in an over-warm social studies classroom at West Campus. Bored. Sure something more exciting was going on outside.

At that same moment, around the corner and half a mile down University, a 15-year old Las Vegas runaway stuck out her thumb.

I read about Mary Vincent in the San Francisco Chronicle later, and saw her on talk shows, fitted with prosthetic arms, warning kids not to hitch-hike.

Lawrence Singleton, the middle-aged driver of a blue American van was described by his neighbors as completely benign.

He was convicted of Vincent’s 1978 kidnap, rape and mutilation. After he amputated her forearms with a hatchet he left the girl for dead. She wandered naked all night holding up her bleeding stumps.

Talk about a campfire horror story. Thirty years later, the image is still burned into my brain. The thought too: if I were cooler that could have been me.

Asked To Contribute To A Hitchhiking Anthology

I heard from Tom and Simon Sykes, editors of No Such Thing As A Free Ride?, a London-published 2005 collection of hitch-hiking anecdotes, essays and observations written by contributors from all walks of life and from across the globe. That book was serialized in the London Times and named Travel Book of the Week by the Observer. They also released Canadian and Australian "Hitchers of Oz" editions and now are aiming to publish a version of the book aimed at a US audience.

"It is clear that hitch-hiking enabled a great number of people to travel great distances, expand their minds and interact with others. Although hitch-hiking is an international phenomenon, we feel its place in American culture is significant and should be recorded."

I replied:

Given the place and time I grew up, I’m afraid my view of hitchhiking may not match yours.

As a young woman in Berkeley California, I was very much aware of disastrous potential outcomes of hitchhiking and they far outweighed any urge to see the world without the resources to do so safely.

One that sticks in my mind are the details that came out during the conviction of Lawrence Singleton for his 1978 kidnapping, raping and hacking off the arms of a 15-year old hitchhiker named Mary Vincent.

She was picked up in my town, on the same street as my junior high school and only a few blocks from where I was sitting at that very hour in my 8th grade classroom being conservative and not running away from home or hitting the open road or just trusting fate and getting a lift from a stranger.

That notorious driver described by his neighbors as completely benign could have picked up me, if I had been dumb enough or desperate enough to try hitchhiking.

In this day and age – as in that one -- I can’t recommend it with a clear conscience.

They replied that the books don't intend to whitewash hitchhiking. So I wrote a piece for them: Uncool.

Expat Personal Branding For Career Success Abroad

In a two-part interview with Career by Choice, a blog run by expat career coach Megan Fitzgerald in Rome, this week I talk about the lessons of Expat Harem in forging my expat writing life. Answering questions about personal branding and career success abroad, I explain how writing about my life overseas and editing Expat Harem connected me to a worldwide band of peers, and gave my career and conflicted expat mindset a new cultural context. Part one Part two

Una antologista accidental

Spanish translation of "The Accidental Anthologist" courtesy of International PEN Women Writers’ Committee which published it in their trilingual newsletter, August 2008 [Boletín Trilingüe del Comité de Escritoras de PEN Internacional]

Turquía frecuentemente entra en las noticias por suprimir a sus autores. Irónicamente, como expatriada americana en Estambul encontré mi voz feminista -- y tropecé en editar un best-seller internacional sorpresa, creando un harén literario de mis pares expatriadas.

Cuando mi esposo turco y yo llegamos de Nueva York en 2003 planeé aislarme para escribir una memoria ensimismada de viaje. No a los días largos pasados en un laboratorio de lenguaje, tratando de encontrar mi equilibrio. Mi vida en Estambul sería acerca de mí, un retiro extendido para escribir. Esta visión había sido filtrando en mi mente desde cuando había sido expatriada anteriormente. Cinco años había pasado pudriéndome en las trópicas malasias como un Somerset Maugham, menos prolífico y más sobrio. La primera cosa para pudrir en el calor ecuatorial fue mi personalidad -- la esencia de mi voz literaria. Cuando expliqué a la gente que era escritora me respondieron, "¿Caballos?" También en Asia me confundieron con una mujer occidental muy diferente, como cuando un equipo de obreros quien trabajaban en mi casa se preguntaron cuándo yo iba a tomar cerveza y quitarme la camisa.

En vez de eso, la tos ferina me silenció a mí y también a mi ego. En el silencio de 6 meses, Turquía sugirió una metáfora para fortalecer mi expatriadismo -- y mis escritos: El Harén Expatriado. Esta reunión contemporánea de mujeres extrajeras podría ser un depósito de conocimiento y poder como lo era en los días del siglo XV bajo los sultanes otomanos.

"Instaladas aquí, somos destinadas a ser extranjeras," ideé en un correo electrónico a mi co-editora, mi colega, la también emigrada americana Jennifer Gokmen.

"Pero está bien -- el Harén Expatriado es un lugar de poder femenino," ella me respondió, conectándonos a un panorama feminista oriental poco conocido en el mundo occidental.

"¡Sí! Cárcel etnocéntrica o refugio de pares—a veces es difícil averiguar en qué sentido va la puerta de batiente," contesté, intoxicada con nuestra metáfora anacrónica. Como una contraseña secreta, las noticias extendieron cuando solicitamos colaboraciones. Mujeres fascinantes de catorce naciones depositaron una lluvia de sus historias en nuestro buzón. Muchas nunca habían publicado antes y todas eran voces de minorías en un país musulmán con una reputación de censura. Realidades alternativas me inundaron, representado una penetración en el país que nunca había imaginado que abrazara. Pero no importó. Si mis aventuras expatriadas anteriores me habían hecho reacia, El Harén Expatriado convirtió mi ferocidad personal en un beneficio: yo podría dar un foro a otras. Sus luchas para asimilarse también me animaron para resistir menos.

La colección premiada Tales from the Expat Harem dio la base para una vida másrica y un libro subsiguiente más perspicaz. La felicidad de trabajar con escritoras de todo el mundo desde la oficina en mi casa en el Bósforo clarificó unos aspectos contradictories de mi carácter -- como que yo pueda ser una introvertida espinosa y también una mujer quien anhela una conexión con personas y el planeta a la vez. Me parece que Turquía no solo me conectó con una banda internacional de mis pares, también alzó mi voz en la conversación cultural. También me ha puesto en contacto con escritoras a quienes admiro, como la novelista celebrada turca Elif Shafak, quien escribió el prólogo para los dos tirajes turcos de mi libro. Ahora mi carrera literaria y mi actitud ambivalente sobre la vida en el extranjero tiene un nuevo contexto cultural más prometedor.

Anastasia M. Ashman, nativa de Berkeley, California, es autora de la novela premiada de Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey la cual se estudia en siete universidades norteamericanas y ha sido recomendada por el Today Show de NBC TV, Nacional Geographic Traveler, Lonely Planet Turkey, el Internacional Herald Tribune, y el Daily Telegraph.

Página de la autora: http://www.redroom.com/author/anastasia-m-ashman Sitio de Expat Harem: http://www.expatharem.com Versión completa de este ensayo: http://www.janera.com/janera_words.php?id=80

Interviewed By Istanbullum Magazine

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.

Spot-On. Literary. Insightful. My Book Expat Harem In Telegraph UK

"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.

"This is a wonderful book; beautifully written, thought-provoking and inspiring.

"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!

Blind Date With Istanbul

I wrote this for the newsletter of the American Women of Istanbul club about the love that brought me to Istanbul (and what keeps me here!) as well as the relationship we all have with the city, and the role of AWI in our lives. Many of you know me as coeditor of the Expat Harem anthology…but perhaps you recognize me for another reason: February marks my fourth blissful year in Istanbul.

From California and the Carolinas, Nova Scotia and New Mexico, I have always sensed that some form of love brought us all to Turkey.

Perhaps it was an attractive career opportunity, or the promising pang of cultural adventure. Or maybe it was your heartfelt devotion to a significant other. All three passions tempted me.

I met my Istanbul-born husband on a blind date in New York. When Burç called to introduce himself our conversation was so intriguing we arranged dinner that very night, even though we both had other plans. Minds had met, agendas were adjusted! After a run-in with a neighbor child I arrived with cherry candy stuck to my skirt. “But you are punctual,” my gentlemanly Turk insisted, “and perfectly charming.”

Later we held hands. Electricity! The kisses, later still, were transporting. Then the next day he was gone: to Istanbul on business. Within the week, on different continents, we threw 30-something discretion to the wind and professed our love.

Something was in the air, or the heavens. Burç happens to mean “zodiac sign” in Turkish, and there was a cosmic explanation for our mesmerizing attraction. A comparison of our natal charts revealed 15 planetary conjunctions, meeting places of inspiration and harmony. “According to the stars, it was just a matter of putting us in each other’s field of gravity,” joked Burç. “And then the laws of physics took care of the rest.”

We married in a fairytale spot (Istanbul, of course!), and later when tech business beckoned him, we moved to the alluring metropolis with its bridges and mosques and vibrant street life. My courtship with the city (and my cherished AWI membership) has spawned wonders, including an exhilarating career in my field of cultural writing and connection to like-minded people locally and beyond. Planning to stay two years, we are now clearly under the sway of Istanbul’s magnetism.

Sound familiar? Istanbul is an irresistible phenomenon for many AWI members. Even if the thought of life in this unknowable Turkish city seems at first a blind date, once you surrender to the enticing field of Istanbul’s gravity you’re quickly stuck on the place.

Happy Valentine’s Day, all you lovers out there!

No Intercontinental Bridezilla

Nine thousand miles from home, I tied the knot like a princess when I married my Turkish fiancé in the moonlit gardens of an 18th century Ottoman palace, surrounded by 160 friends and family. My bridal hand in that perfect Istanbul evening was nearly invisible. No intercontinental bridezilla, instead along with my fiancé I had invited loved ones to contribute what they distinctly do best.

When Burç and I became engaged in January 2001, we led busy 30-something lives in New York City and felt that our official union would be meaningful to us no matter what it was, or wasn’t.

We already had what we wanted, each other. Even so, we appreciated the importance the nuptial ritual plays in our wider community and the potential complications of two cultures meeting and melding.

We decided foremost to involve others in the new life we were beginning. How better to achieve this than give them all a chance to shine? Our plan was to abdicate responsibility to family whose enthusiasm and talent eclipsed ours and to relieve others of commitments they might find a burden. We would be guests of honor. We’d show up, dressed and ready to wed. As a professional manager, Burç was comfortable with delegating responsibility. Normally the micromanaging type (high standards, eagle eye ), I recognized a positive result would be best masterminded from afar.

First we needed to choose a location and the major players. Mapping possible guests, my small nuclear family bunches in casual Northern California, extended relatives in Illinois and New York, friends speckle the globe. My fiancé’s large family cluster in Istanbul and his best friends dot the nations around the Mediterranean. We opted for the most family in one place: Istanbul, Turkey.

The weak exchange rate of the Turkish lira to the U.S. dollar ensured our production costs would be a fraction of a comparable American wedding, and my adventurous relatives could learn more about my new family and treat our happy occasion as an affordable summer trip to the legendary capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires.

Burç’s celebratory family was ecstatic at the opportunity to throw a wedding, particularly his decorative mother Ayten (on her dining table the salt is dispensed from a crystal container in the shape of a swan with silver wings). She’d have a lot of help from her five sisters including Muko, a public relations veteran specializing in staging splashy events. Their taste wouldn’t match mine, but aesthetics seemed a fair exchange for the months of responsibilities they would shoulder. The Turkish siblings prepared for an August date.

In California my family launched into exciting travel research by spring while across the Atlantic, the Turks were already celebrating us a couple. Through Burç, news trickled in. Being handed the reins with such confidence led them to think hard about pleasing us and I sensed his family’s growing embrace of our marriage. The historic open-air setting of the Esma Sultan Palace his family chose felt as perfect as if we had selected it ourselves.

A three-storey colonnaded ruin on the Bosphorus Strait, gorgeously renovated by a luxe hotel chain, it was once the private residence of a particularly brainy daughter of a sultan. The waterside venue seemed like both a nod to my intellectual nature and archaeological studies as well as to the roots of my groom’s culture.

The week before the wedding we hosted gatherings in Istanbul hot spots and spent an afternoon reviewing the proceedings.

The Turkish sisters briefed us: parental receiving line, sunset cocktails, civil ceremony, dinner, dancing, cake at midnight. As long as we were happy with the plans, the sisters said, they were happy. It all sounded spectacular. Mother in law Ayten offered last minute choices. Since I hadn’t exhausted my bridely veto, my few verdicts were accepted with grace. Imagining the ungainly hoisting from sea to land I politely rejected arriving by boat, turned down an offer to shop for a veil, and nixed a noisy plan for fireworks. Ayten smiled and agreed, too noisy. Burç and I composed a blanket thank you card to be printed and sent after the wedding in the Turkish fashion -- not a newlywed minute was to be spent composing humorous letters of gratitude for gravy boats!

In another local custom -- an unconventional twist on the destination honeymoon -- ten camera-wielding friends accompanied us to a resort in Southern Turkey for a week of boating on the Aegean, dining and belly dancing under the stars.

Rather than over-exposed snapshots taken by a rushed waiter, their intimate photos are priceless reminders of our ensemble holiday.

At the airport newsstand, Aunt Muko shocked us with a final memento: glossy society magazines featuring spreads on the wedding. Releasing the notion that our wedding served primarily as a vanity vehicle for us, Burç and I saw a chance to blend our families at their best. Reward for the insight was a fete beyond our imagination.

Expat Harem, The Book

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, numerous online retailers and actual bookstores, the Kindle edition here, for Sony eReader, and as an Apple iBook. For the visually impaired we have a large print version here. It's also stocked in 186 libraries in 7 countries around the world.

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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)

Tales from the Expat Harem (Seal Press, 2006)

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.

Dogan Kitap 4th edition, with foreword by Elif Shafak

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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

editors speaking at Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Washington D.C.

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

Expat Harem envisioned by expat designer Leslie Dann...the book has had at least 5 covers!

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

within 3 months, Expat Harem went to #1 at national bookseller Remzi

“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

Joe McCanta, creator of the Expat Harem martini 2007

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.

speaking at Population Action International, an NGO in D.C.

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

Expat Harem signing for a Munich-based expat group 2007

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

the two Turkish editions discussed on a national literature TV program

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:

• travelers
• expatriates
• women writers
• travel writers
• those interested in women’s and Middle Eastern studies
• people whose lives were linked with Turkey

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

meeting of potential Expat Harem contributors 2004

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

Expat Harem panel, Istanbul Book Fair 2005

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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Hover over the images to see the caption. Click on an image to enlarge.

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Radical About Face: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the General

I want to see a general in the White House. For a woman born and bred in Berkeley, a leading community in any anti-war movement, this urge should generate an identity crisis. But it doesn’t. That disorientation has already occurred. In seeking the presidency, former Supreme Allied Commander Wesley K. Clark fused my conflicted self and brought me back to Democratic ground.

The general and I have a lot in common. Now living in Istanbul, the Turkish site of four recent terrorist bombings, and a former ground zero resident with a view of New York’s smoking pile, my world is a war zone. Instead of activist or escapist pursuits, I choose geopolitical chess.

After September 11 I worried I was turning into a Republican, practically an out-of-body experience. Longtime leftist friends marched in the streets while I was glued to the couch, waiting for the latest Osama tape on Fox.

I was already apolitical, having come unmoored from the leftwing in my twenties, when superficies concerned me most. Ineffectual packaging and delivery of a message, a typical province of radicals, seemed the ultimate self-indulgence and more about making statements than differences.

But then I saw myself acting like someone else. I was displaying the flag in my New York apartment window, on my lapel, and in the car, without a hint of irony and much emotion. Brandishing the flag was a homecoming after a lifetime of being an outsider. There was a time when I felt I couldn’t even buy one.

At a 1975 church rummage sale, my sister and I coveted a star-spangled banner as a bedspread, but the elderly seller chastised our disrespect. I was better educated about icons of Communist China than emblems of the nation, my progressive school abandoning the pledge of allegiance that year for an alternative morning ritual: calisthenics to a scratchy Chairman Mao record.

Most people can’t go home again, but I can’t even visit. My bohemian parents no longer recognize my political identity as an offshoot of their own. One Berkeley notion I’ve sloughed, illustrated by NATO generals at my wedding (groom’s side) is that the military is solely negative.

My Northern Californian childhood was steeped in a fundamental enmity for the armed forces, sinister wing of an objectionable government. Instead of tying yellow ribbons around gnarled oaks, neighbors papered telephone poles to get the U.S. out of Latin America. When my rebellious younger sister requested an Air Force brochure, the corruptive material was confiscated directly from the postman.

However alien in our mailbox and out on the scruffy streets, the service was familiar to me. Counter to Berkeley counterculture, and owing to my father’s drafted acquaintance with Army discipline, I was raised in a spit and shine household. Excellence was the only option, elbow grease the lone method, hierarchy unimpeachable, and punishment swift. Ever grunts, my sisters and I scrubbed bathroom grout with toothbrushes and grew steely with push-ups when afoul of regulations, while good report cards and judo promotions netted weekend passes for R’n’R sleepovers at friends’ houses. I trained seventeen years in boot camp, I discovered in college.  A first year West Point cadet described the climate he was expected to endure at the elite academy. “They take away basic rights and give them back as privileges,” he whined, trying to impress me.

That particular West Pointer failed to stir me, but crisp four star General Clark has. On television after 9/11, Clark anchored my attention with his magnetic and commanding presence, and drew me to his reasoned and reasonable commentary about Iraq, the war on terror, and the importance of the U.N. and NATO.  Later, the grassroots draft of the worldly and diplomatic warrior stoked hopes for a better world.  Eighty year old Midwestern veterans called the general back to duty, West Coast thirtysomethings pledged unemployment checks, and Europeans ineligible to vote declared “the world needs you”.  In announcing his Democratic candidacy, the brilliant strategist and Rhodes Scholar restored my place in that party. I recognize my complicated self in the Democrat he defines, a patriot forged from diverse life experiences and high-stakes demands of our time. Clark’s erudite defense of our Constitution reverberates in my idealistic Berkeley heart.

With the general in the White House, America is my home.

In a brainy, principled, comprehensive Clark world I’m not a traitor because I performed calisthenics to Chairman Mao, and intense athletic and academic achievements made me the stalwart character I am today. Clark’s well-delivered presentation of important issues is standard.

A liberal in conservative uniform, a peace-lover who knows how and when to prosecute a successful war, a thinking man of action whose own self-respect is a pleasure to esteem, Clark is where I’ve been headed my whole life.

Rhapsody In Red: New York's Meatpacking District

Morning comes fast and filthy in the meatpacking district.

“No one beats our meat,” leers the cheeky hand-lettered tagline on a local butchery truck.

It's parked on the reeking edge of 1980s New York civilization, waiting for the goods under cover of predawn murk.

A lightening sky reveals new atrocities, like the cobble stoned gutters of Gansevoort Street where chicken feathers float gracefully on chartreuse anti-freeze.

At the corner of Little West Twelfth, a chunky, sueded ham-bone is jostled from an overloaded Dumpster!

Whispers and grunts.

Local loft residents commuting to art school, publishing work, the fashion biz avert eyes as transvestite prostitutes and teenage runaways service seedy clientele between refrigerated 6-wheelers.

From vans emblazoned with waving Porky Pig counterfeits, gutted hogs bled grey swing in suspended unison on rails toward the cinderblock Pork-and-Pack plant. That’s all for these folks.

Late morning, leather-clad bikers stumble out of Jay’s BDSM bar at Hudson and 14th, blinded, sated, heading home.

Noon.

The end of workday whistle blows and meat packers emerge, steel-stomached servants of a carnivorous society, from chilled caverns through dense polyvinyl climate-control curtains.

Brutal job well-done, in blood-stained lab coats and heavy rubber boots they stroll down the sunny avenue, pockets full of fifths.

+++ This appeared in Versal, an international literary magazine published in Amsterdam

The Boys Next Door

As beleaguered Iraq continues to list, lawless and malfunctioning under ineffective American leadership, I am reminded of a prophetic evening before the war, a dinner of fortune telling and historic premonition, when the guests could not yet envision a positive post-Saddam Iraq, and an Ottoman imperial setting supported the chaos theory. It was a warm autumn night in Istanbul 2002 and I was dining with my Turkish in-laws and some friends, members of Turkey’s military elite.  We sat at water’s edge in the shadow of Feriye, a nineteenth century Ottoman palace now transformed into an elegant restaurant. Over platters of grilled grouper and plates of garlicky eggplant, familiar jocularity soon devolved into graver matters, the geopolitical concerns of soldiers: succession in bordering Iraq.

“There is no clear replacement for Saddam,” declared General Çevik Bir, large palm striking linen. Vigorous and handsome, the sixty-three year old retiree paused dramatically. Candles flickered in the breeze, the black Bosporus lapped at ancient stone embankments. And we, family and friends, waited, forks poised.

The general knows the pandemonium of a power vacuum. Rising to world prominence in 1993, he commanded the United Nations peacekeeping force in Somalia during the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident. He is also one of Turkey’s most engaging dignitaries.

“No one can go in there before the leadership problem is solved.”

Up went a chorus of supportive murmurs. “So right, paşa,” chimed well-wishers who’d gathered behind our chairs, waiters and chefs and other diners charmed by the celebrity of prominent soldiers. Since its founding in 1923, in the democratic, Western-oriented but Muslim republic, the military is especially revered as guardian of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular philosophy.

Bir lifted to his lips a tall glass of milky rakı, the national anise liquor, signaling he relinquished the floor. The crowd, including Istanbul’s chief of police Hassan Özdemir who had drifted over from the next table, returned to their respective dinner parties and kitchen duties.

A wiry guest with dark eyebrows seized his opportunity.  Leaning forward in a roomy navy suit, General Neçdet Timur, former chief of staff of the Turkish army, countered that stabilizing Iraq demands more than locating an appropriate leader, it requires a government palatable to the region. “Arab nations won’t support a new war,” predicted the soft-spoken Timur, in Turkish. Another guest, an elegant woman wrapped in a beige shawl, translated for me.

“Even if the U.N. institutes a democracy, he says, it will be poorly received by those who lack that kind of culture,” she whispered to me as the small man concluded, folding his hands in his lap as pristine waiters swept the table of fish-bones and lemon wedges.

Intrepid civilian from the U.S., drunk on the geopolitical experience at the table, I tried my hand in the debate before considering its strength. “What about that fellow from the Iraqi National Congress – you know, the one exiled in America?” As I interjected, I realized my failure to even remember Ahmed Chalabi’s name signaled that my words did not demand serious attention from the military men. The clueless question hung in the air while the generals turned in their chairs and scanned the terrace for servers with trays of plump figs and oozing, flaky baklava. They had grown bored with the circuitous and intractable issue, one they had undoubtedly pondered many times before.

Sometimes generals just want to have dessert.

These particular retirees have other more satisfying outlets for discussion than dinner with uninformed civilians like me. Alongside fellow generals, admirals, ambassadors and university intellectuals, both men contribute geopolitical and military analysis to National Strategy, the Turkish defense magazine where Bir is managing director.

As a sliver of moon rose above the colonnaded palace the woman in the beige shawl once again came to my rescue, introducing a different subject: the history of the palace.  In the very rooms our dinner was prepared, she explained, in 1876 a disastrous sultan committed suicide after being deposed by reformers known the Young Turks.  I had actually heard of the Young Turks, and was quick to tell her so. Encouraged, my feminine companion glanced around the table for other contributions but no one was listening. The generals had reverted to trading jokes with a new visitor, the stylish Vedat Başaran, Feriye’s chef and general manager, a man dedicated to reviving the glories of Ottoman cuisine.

“With no fitting successor, the empire suffered what we call the year of the three sultans,” my impromptu historian explained, describing a spiraling year of unsuitable and decadent leaders, all quickly replaced.  Her tale trailed off as Turkish kahve was served in tiny cups painted gold with tulips. Thick black coffee was too strong for me to drink at that late hour, but there was no refusing tradition.

When I urged her to finish her story, she pressed on, irony beginning to dawn. She had not succeeded in changing the subject.

“Finally, a liberal sultan was enthroned, and he swore to make a constitution,” she wrapped up tidily, drained her coffee and flipped the cup onto its saucer. Not yet tired of prophecy, one of the generals had offered to interpret our fortunes from muddy grounds.

Later that night, amped on caffeine as expected, I couldn’t sleep.  A quick peek at the Ottoman history books revealed that progressive Sultan Abdul Hamit II -- the broadminded ruler who swore to improve the welfare of the people -- soon reneged on his promise, over-burdened by the task. There was simply too much work to do.

These days it often seems that there is too much work to do in Iraq, from restoring basic utilities to protecting the populace and the economy. But if the generals’ theory and history’s warning that night in Istanbul offer any insight, Iraq is suffering the initial power vacuum of a poorly-planned reformation attempt. Call it “Iraq’s year of the three sultans”.  A time of confusion, danger and spiraling ineptitude, the substitutions certainly are underway in Baghdad as U.S.-appointed interim administrator L. Paul Bremer III swiftly replaced General Jay Garner and local councils emerge, corrupt and disband. Perhaps by this spring a promising new Iraqi leader will be installed, one who will swear to make the necessary changes.  For the sake of his fortune, he better be a student of history.

++ This appeared in The Drexel Online Journal, September 22, 2003.