My Byzantine Princess Project

An art historical soap opera of imperial proportion. (See my Pinterest board of  images related to this particular story here.) I've been developing this story since, while creating an Istanbul walking tour for National Geographic Traveler, I literally tripped over the foundations of a social grudge between my superlative-but-forgotten 6th century princess and Justinian -- which prompted the Holy Roman Emperor to build his world-beating Haghia Sophia Church a mile down the road. The man needed to best Anicia Juliana. See my Pinterest board of Byzantine popular culture trends.

Multiple story delivery methods in development.

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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!

Talking About Cultural Stereotypes On National TV & Radio

On Turkey's national TV and radio channel TRT2 News with Isil Okan talking about how cultural stereotypes are a two-way street.

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.

Going On Record As A Travel Writer With Rolf Potts' Interview Series

Excerpt from a travel writers interview by Rolf Potts at his Vagabonding site, 2006. View the full interview here. How did you get started traveling?

My fascination with a wider world cropped up early.

As a toddler in countercultural Berkeley, CA my favorite pastime was "French Lady", a tea party with Continental accents.

I began traveling even further when I learned to read -- comic books.

Instead of poring over Archie & Veronica, perky storylines that revolved around characters who never graduated from high school nor breached the border of their staid hometown, I was entranced by the global expanse of history and people and culture revealed in the Belgian-made graphic adventures of Tintin.

Tracking a drug-smuggling ring in Egypt, discovering a meteorite with a Polar research vessel, surviving a plane wreck on an Indonesian island -- this was life!

Tintin's travel tales, and many others after them, remain reference points. Last fall at a museum in Nazca, Peru one long-haired, head-banded Incan mummy stirred a pleasant flashback to "The Seven Crystal Balls", as well as the awe of my twelve-year old self. It's no wonder I pursued a degree in archaeology.

How did you get started writing? AA: In the early  '70s I kept a journal on childhood road trips where I recorded preferences for the wildness of Baja's bumpy sand roads and discovering the mother-lode of sand-dollar graveyards in San Felipe to a sedate spin around British Columbia's Lake Victoria and a fur-seal keychain from the gift shop.

Later I was a correspondent, trying to explain my own culture to teen pen pals in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Malaysia, while I searched for clues about theirs hidden in precise penmanship, tarty vocabulary, and postage stamps with monarchs -- some butterflies, some queens.

During a slew of 20-something media and entertainment jobs I wrote and edited for years, whenever the opportunity presented itself, for a book packager and literary agency in New York, and for television, theatre and film producers in Los Angeles.

What do you consider your first "break" as a writer?

AA: Reviewing Pico Iyer's essay collection Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions for the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1997. The newsweekly magazine based in Hong Kong was equivalent to TIME in Asia. I was living in Malaysia and devoting more attention to my writing career, so it was a breakthrough to write for a major publication and huge audience about subjects which mesmerized me.

What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?

AA: Calling up facts. Seeing the larger story. Sitting down and doing the writing!

What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint? Editors? Finances? Promotion?

AA: Publishers and acquisition editors and publicists seem to have narrow expectations for travel literature so for my next book I plan to devote a lot of energy to a detailed marketing plan which will accompany the manuscript in its rounds to publishers. Jennifer and I learned quite a bit about marketing to publishers with Tales from the Expat Harem, which was initially turned down by 10 New York houses who liked it but couldn't fathom its market (Turkey's too limited a subject, they said).

We've since determined that it addresses a multitude of distinct groups beyond the basic cells of travelers, expatriates, women writers and travel writers. In fact, we found enough specific target markets we were able to fill a hundred pages of our marketing plan with actual contacts of potentially interested people and organizations, like Turkish American associations, 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.

And the beauty of a marketing plan which breaks down readerships is that a writer (or if you're lucky, a publisher) can contact all of these people.

Jennifer and I also compiled more practical subsidiary audiences for the anthology, like multinational corporations with operations in Turkey, and embassies and tourism organizations which might use the book as a cross-cultural training tool or a promotional vehicle. We were successful enough in our initial efforts in academic marketing that the book is currently used in at least three university courses and is stocked by more than 100 academic and public libraries worldwide.

Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?

AA: Always. Often my most satisfying work has been poorly compensated. I do believe that will change, eventually! Until then I continue to be a proponent of pursuing the work you love rather than the work which pays best.

An essay about a transformational subway ride which I wrote for an obscure website in 2002 not only led me to be quoted in the New York Times and brought me my literary agent, but it also now appears in The Subway Chronicles book published by the site's creator, alongside venerated New York writers like Calvin Trillin, Colson Whitehead and Jonathan Lethem.

What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?

AA: Recently I enjoyed Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz for its mix of historical research, personal experience, and contemporary journalism.

Historical travel writing also connects me to the lands I find myself in, and points to the parallels which still exist.

My steamy days in Kuala Lumpur were enriched by reading Somerset Maugham, whose Malayan fiction was entirely believable. A series of historical Asian travelogues and contemporary scholarship released by Oxford-in-Asia jogged my imagination and similarly, now that I am based in Turkey, I'll be turning to the Cultures in Dialogue series at Gorgias Press, which resurrects antique writings about Turkish life by British and American women travelers and refreshes them with contemporary academic analysis.

What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?

AA: Advice: Read the bulletin boards at Travelwriters.com. A lot of very fundamental wisdom there about the life and business of travel writing. Warning: Don't post a word at Travelwriters until you've read the boards for a week or two and have a good understanding of what topics have already been covered, and how best to introduce yours.

What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?

AA: Sharing my view of the world with others. Adding to the conversation. Having every excuse to adventure.

Expat Harem Book Tour: 49 Days, 10 U.S. States

We did this and survived to tell about it! Jennifer Gokmen and I spoke in front of more than 800 people in 10 states, including conferences, festivals, a consulate, bookstores, alumnae clubs, cultural organizations, and a cigar factory (that place smelled the best). See photos of this nutty feat. EXPAT HAREM EDITORS U.S. BOOK TOUR SPRING 2006

--13 April, New York City, NY, 7:00PM NEW YORK CONSULATE GENERAL OF REPUBLIC OF TURKEY 821 United Nations Plaza

--15 April, Providence, RI, 1:00PM BOOKS ON THE SQUARE Books on the Square 471 Angell St.

--21-22 April 21-22, Buffalo, NY GENDER ACROSS BORDERS II Gender Institute, University at Buffalo

--April 23, Washington, D.C. 1 PM BRYN MAWR CLUB OF WASHINGTON, DC Private residence

--25 April, Washington, DC, 6:30PM CANDIDA WORLD OF BOOKS 1541 14th Street, NW

--26 April, Washington, DC AMERICAN TURKISH ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON DC (ATA-DC) Türkevi, Dupont Circle

--28 April, Dayton, OH, 7:00PM BOOKS & CO. 350 East Stroop Road

--30 April, Nashville, TN, 2:00-4:00PM CAO Cigar Factory 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle

--1 May, Tucson, AZ, 7:00PM ANTIGONE BOOKS 411 North 4th Avenue

--2 May, Tempe, AZ TURKISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ARIZONA (TAA-AZ) Private residence

--3 May, Los Angeles, CA, 7:00PM BOOK SOUP 8818 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood

--5 May, San Diego, CA, 6:30PM TURKISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO CHAPTER (TAASC-SD) (open to public) Location TBA

--6 May, Irvine, CA, 2:00PM ORANGE COUNTY TURKISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION (open to the public) University of California at Irvine

--7 May, Los Angeles, CA TURKISH AMERICAN LADIES LEAGUE (TALL) Private Home, Beverly Hills

--9 May, San Francisco, CA, 7:00PM CODY'S BOOKS 2 Stockton Street

--10 May, Berkeley, CA, 7:30PM BLACK OAK BOOKS 1491 Shattuck Avenue

--15 May, Lake Forest Park, WA, 7:00PM THIRD PLACE BOOKS Lake Forest Park Towne Centre 17171 Bothell Way NE

--16 May, Seattle, WA, 7:00PM WIDE WORLD BOOKS & MAPS 4411 Wallingford Ave. North

--18 May, Ann Arbor, MI, 7:00PM BARNES & NOBLE 3235 Washtenaw Ave.

--19 May, Ann Arbor, MI, 7:00PM BORDER'S 3527 Washtenaw Ave.

--21 May, East Lansing, MI, 2:00PM BARNES & NOBLE 333 E Grand River Ave.

--May 23, New York, NY 7:00 PM BRYN MAWR CLUB OF NORTHERN NEW JERSEY Private residence

--25 May 2006, New York, NY, 6:30PM MOON & STARS PROJECT'S MAYFEST Middle East & Middle Eastern American Center The City University of New York 365 Fifth Avenue

Academic Conferences featuring EXPAT HAREM contributors rather than the editors:

--30, 31 March and 1April, Valdosta, GA CHANGING TIME(S): FEMINISM THEN AND NOW The Southeastern Women's Studies Association (SEWSA) The Women's Studies Program of Valdosta State University

--31 March-1 April, DeKalb, IL 2006 MIDWESTERN CONFERENCE ON LITERATURE, LANGUAGE AND MEDIA (MCLLM) English Department of Northern Illinois University

--24-28 May, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada THE IMMIGRANT AND ARTISTIC LICENCE AICW 2006 Conference University of British Columbia

Expat Harem Event At Turkish House, Dupont Circle, Washington D.C.

Özge Ovun and Yalcin Sert from Voice of America News filmed the event to air on Turkey’s national TGRT TV and Erju Ackman and his partner Goksin Carey filmed a segment to air on Virginia’s Channel 10 (WSLS NBC). Organized by the ever-supportive Didem Muslu of the American-Turkish Association of DC, the event was held at the homebase of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations — the Türkevi (Turkish House), and was attended by ATA-DC president, Pelin Aylangan (who is currently penning a Turkish culinary history and memoir) and secretary, Patsy Jones (whose Fenerbahçe-loving Turkish inlaws are scandalized by her love of the rival football team Beşiktaş!).

Audience members included: Yalçın Sert, director of student portals at the University of Maryland and owner of various forums and web portals; Ralph and Linda, who are currently enrolled in US State Department Turkish language courses for Ralph’s impending posting to the US Embassy in Ankara as an FDA specialist (both Ralph and Linda told us they wished their entire Turkish class would have attended our event); Turks like Ayşe, a Crimean Turk, and Özge’s parents visiting from İzmit; and other daring American gelins, like Jetta Karabulut who has road trip adventures of her own to tell, like a trip from Istanbul to Mersin in 1968 with her two year old in tow!

Expat Harem Talk, Candida's International Bookstore, Washington D.C.

We were pleased to be joined by journalists, travelers, culture hounds and artists including: Liz Gracon and Danielle Monosson, friends we met in Istanbul during their posting to the U.S. Consulate there; Kay McCarty, whose daughter has worked in Diyarbakir and Mardin, Turkey (a fan of Expat Harem, Kay bought her 9th, 10th, and 11th copies of the book at Candida's!); traveling an hour from Baltimore was Jeannette Belliveau, the author of soon-to-be-released Romance on the Road, a book documenting the controversial 'sex pilgrim' movement which Anastasia reviews (from an opposite stance) in the upcoming July/August issue of Perceptive Travel; Dawn, two-time visitor to Turkey for classes in the art of glasswork at the Cam Ocagi /Glass Furnace (inspired by EH contributor Diane Caldwell, Dawn may soon find herself relocating to Turkey); and Kirin Kalia, an editor at Migration Policy Institute, who brought the Bryn Mawr alumnae count on this tour to 10.

Expat Harem Are Women On The Brink

This is the introduction Jennifer Gokmen and I wrote to the book Tales From The Expat Harem:

If there were ever a place tailor-made to play host to wanderers, travelers and those pursuing lives outside their original territory, surely Turkey is that place.

The perpetual evolution that travel and cultural assimilation visits upon the foreign born women in this collection echoes the continuous transformation that envelops the entire country. Threshold to worlds East or West depending on which way one faces, Turkey is itself a unique metaphor for transition.

Forming a geographic bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia and a philosophical link between the spheres of Occident and Orient, Turkey is neither one of the places it connects.  Similarly, foreign women on Turkish soil are neither what nor who they used to be, yet not fully transformed by their brush with Turkey.

Our Expat Harem women are on the brink of reclassifying themselves, challenged to redefine their lives, to rethink their definitions of spirituality, femininity, sensuality and self.

Aligned in their ever-shifting contexts, both Turkey and the expatriate share a bond of constant metamorphosis.

• Delirious with influenza, a friendless Australian realizes the value of misafır perverlik, traditional Turkish hospitality, when she’s rescued from her freezing rental by unknown Anatolian neighbors bearing food and medicinal tea;
• a pregnant and introverted Irishwoman faces the challenge of finding her place in a large Black Sea family;
• a Peace Corps volunteer in remote Eastern Turkey realizes how the taboos of her own culture color her perceptions;
• and a liberated New York single questions the gallant rules of engagement on the İstanbul dating scene, wondering whether being treated like a lady makes her less a feminist.

These are among the Tales from the Expat Harem.

The titillating, anachronistic title acknowledges erroneous yet prevalent Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world, while also declaring that our storytellers share a common bond with the denizens of a traditional Turkish harem.

Much like the imported brides of the Seraglio, İstanbul’s 15th century palatial seat of the Ottoman sultanate, our writers are inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it even, yet alien nonetheless.

If a harem in the time of the sultans was once a confined community of women, a setting steeped in the feminine culture of its era, then today’s Expat Harem surely follows in its tradition.

Virtual and mainly of mindset, this newly coined community of expatriate women in modern Turkey is conjured by the shared circumstance of being foreign-born and female in a land laced with the history of the harem.

Like the insular life in the Seraglio of the past, foreign women in today’s Turkey can often be a self-restricting and isolated coterie, newcomers initially limited in independence and social interaction due to language barriers, cultural naiveté and a resilient ethnocentricity.

Tales from the Expat Harem reveal both the personal cultural prison of the initiate and the peer-filled refuge of those assimilated. Our harem is a source of foreign female wisdom, a metaphoric primer for novices and a refresher for old hands.

Our Scheherazades, modern day counterparts of that historic Arabian Nights harem storyteller, are drawn from a worldwide diaspora of women whose lives have been touched by Turkey.

When our call for stories reached them, through networks of people and computers, we heard from a multitude of expatriates in West Africa to Southeast Asia to America’s Pacific Northwest, all desiring to be counted and to recount their sagas.

By telephone from her home in California, an artist who studied illuminated manuscripts at Topkapı Sarayı was the first to admit the precious affliction she shares with many of her harem sisters: “Turkey gets into your blood. I’m an addict now.”

As editors we faced the delicate task of administrating the Expat Harem’s stories, preparing womanly wisdom for safekeeping. Managing the epic enterprise with its ticklish spectrum of cultural appreciation and feminine self-portraiture, our nights were nearly as sleepless as Scheherazade’s!

For months we coaxed diplomats, nurses, chefs and others to explore and express their truths about Turkey in a culturally balanced tone.

Some were not professional writers and some were unable to commit their tale to paper. Of those who did, only a fraction survived the editing process.

But affinities emerged as each woman divulged her internal journey and lasting emotional connection to the place and its people. Systems engineers and hoteliers, missionaries and clothing producers, artists, journalists, and others each share a fierce affection for Turkey.

Revealing what Turkish culture has yielded in their lives, they unspool humorous and poignant adventures at weddings in cobbled Byzantine streets, Ottoman bathhouses, and boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road.

In atmospheric travelogue through a countryside still echoing the old ways, through Giresun and Göreme, they transport us on emotional journeys of assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood.

Modern women in the real world, they take us along on their quests for national identity, business ownership and property possession.

What follows is a literary version of the virtual, modern harem’s never-ending gathering of women, day melting into night, a relaxed feast while delighting in each other’s diverse company, acting out scenes of cultural contrast and discovery.

The country rewards seekers, a veiled place insisting on being uncovered. In the process of discovering Turkey, contemporary women of the Expat Harem unmask themselves as well.

In narratives illuminating imperfect human nature and the fullest possible cultural embrace, our Scheherazades wrestle urges to overly-exoticize the unfamiliar and strive to balance self preservation with the fresh expectations placed on them by Turkish culture.

Some delve deep into interiors of country and psyche, like the shy teacher transformed by the full frontal impact of a 13th century Central Anatolian hamam.

Others teeter on the comic edge of a cultural divide, like the archaeologist who sparks hilarity in the trenches at Troy before language skills supplant vaudevillian pantomime.

In attempting to reconcile countless episodes of unconditional native generosity, expatriate women of the harem learn to accept a new emotional calculus.

A mid-life dancer mincing her way through the alleys of İstanbul’s bohemian Beyoğlu district to the beat of a darbuka drum invokes Mary Oliver’s poetic revelation, one that echoes in every tale from the Expat Harem:

“I was a bride married to amazement."

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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Culture, Writing, Expatriatism Interview With The Bosphorus Art Project

Excerpts from a joint interview with Zeynep Kilic of the Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly and my Expat Harem coeditor Jennifer Gokmen. See full interview here. Q: What inspired you to start this project? What is your vision?

AA: Jennifer and I created a writing workshop with a few other American women in Istanbul and soon realized we were all writing about our lives in Turkey. We thought if we collected the stories we might begin to piece together the puzzle that is Turkey. It was a ripe idea and the floodgates opened. We heard from more than 100 women from 14 nations whose lives have been touched by Turkey in the past 50 years – and we’re meeting more women of the Expat Harem every day!

Q: In every country in the world the equality of women and men is skewed in at least one or more of these categories: economical, social, reproductive and human rights. What did you find were the greatest challenges for women native to Turkey? The women expatriates? The greatest triumphs?

AA: What’s interesting is to me are personal perceptions about equality. Turkish women have taught us and many of the expatriates in Expat Harem what strength there is in being a woman. Western culture seems to have stripped the power from femininity; it has confused us into thinking that to be taken seriously, we must dress and act like men. The ancient wisdom of Anatolia’s goddess culture is alive and well in Turkey, and in Turkey’s women.

A challenge for Turkish women seems to be attaining the independence many expatriates enjoy. Turkish society is so inter-dependent there are few acceptable lifestyle options for the loner, even in the most modern families.

Q: Your book has become a bestseller in Turkey, was this something that you expected or did it come as a surprise?

AA: The book’s strong performance probably has less to do with our gender than the fact that it taps into an interest great numbers of people have…Turks want to know what foreigners are thinking of them, while expatriates want to see if their fellow foreign nationals have had similar experiences. And people who have left the country (including Peace Corps volunteers who were here 40 years ago) are eager to relive their Turkish memories!

Q: Is there an underlying theme other than expatriation that links all of these stories? What do you hope the reader takes away from this reading experience?

AA: Besides exploring the land and culture, these women are exploring themselves. They’re on journeys of self realization. Turkey happens to be the backdrop. Their tales show how Turkish culture has affected their lives as they navigate their way into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood in Turkey.

AA: Perhaps readers will understand how much another culture can show you who you are, and how you can change, if you want to.

Q: What do you think about how Turkey is represented in today’s world? What do you think can be done to extend the reach of Turkish arts and culture across the world?

AA: Turkey has a dark and contentious reputation, with conflicts like historical ethnic and geographic rivalries dominating news coming out the country. Although it has a rich creative heritage, that’s not the first thing people think of. A fictionalized Oliver Stone movie from the 1970s comes to mind, or a sad report they heard on NPR. Many of the writers in our anthology have had to defend their choice to live in Turkey since friends and relatives back home were worried for their safety – and their sanity!

AA: In this same way, extending the reach of Turkey’s art and culture is a matter of enticement. Enticing people to learn more, and making the introduction as accessible as possible. In Tales from the Expat Harem each writer acts as a guide into her world, and the Turkey that she knows. Readers will go along with her to meet an art gallery owner in Ankara whose ancestors were fortunetellers of the sultan; they’ll whirl through the streets with Gypsy dancers; they’ll be invited into the ritual bath of an Anatolian bride.

Q: What is your favorite thing about living in Turkey and the least favorite?

AA: For me it’s the same thing: the close observation of my life by family and neighbors. For an independent Western woman it can be disconcerting to feel every move is watched – and reported! What time I went to sleep, who came over to the house, things like that. But on the flip side, this very scrutiny is what makes me feel safe and cared for, especially since the motivations for this are not malicious, or even necessarily having to do anything with me. People-watching seems to be a national pastime. If I need help from my family or neighbors I know I can count on them, and perhaps they would even know I needed help before I told them myself. One tale in our book is about that very phenomenon: an ill Australian is rescued by her neighbors who notice she hasn’t left the house in days.

Q: Do you have any recommendations or advice for people planning a move to Turkey or another country?

AA: Take extra care to supply yourself with what you need to be happy, wherever you are. Feeling light-hearted and productive is important when you suddenly are surrounded by so many new situations. You’ll need that inner strength in order to remain flexible about things you can’t control or don’t understand. Try to get up to speed on what life might be like in Turkey. When we were brainstorming the anthology’s concept we imagined it could be a cultural primer for newcomers to the country. It will be wonderful if people actually use it that way. Women about to wed Turks have said the book made clear which aspects of their relationship have to do with the culture and which are individual to the couple.

Q: Do you have any projects planned for the future?

AA: We’ve been asked by our Turkish publisher to consider doing a male version of the anthology. That would elicit a very different set of views on the country… Currently I’m at work on a collection of my own cultural essays Berkeley to Byzantium: The Reorientation of a West Coast Adventuress, a travel memoir charting the peaks and valleys of my life, from mean elevators and subways of Manhattan to the gilded palaces of Asia Minor -- and Southeast Asia, where I lived for five years.

Shifting From Writing For Others To Writing For Myself, With Mediabistro's First Journalism Bootcamp

My Mediabistro alumni interview with Claire Zulkey for Mediabistro Toolbox. I took Mediabistro's first media program given by creator of the series, Victoria Rowan, in 2005.  

What course did you take, how did you hear about the boot camp and why did you decide to take it?

I took Parris Island Journalism Boot Camp with Victoria Rowan, Fall 2001, eager to reinvigorate – and focus — my writing career after being laid off from a trade magazine editorship.

I wanted to make the shift from writing for others to writing for myself.

Also, like many writers who have not explicitly studied journalism or the business of writing, I knew I could benefit from a more professional approach to the craft.

Did it lead to any assignments, connections or jobs? What did you learn?

Yes. One week we interviewed newsworthy acquaintances and tried to sell the profiles. With that material I published a profile/book review/event announcement in the Village Voice — the managing editor’s hybrid idea when I emphasized the curating work my multimedia poet interviewee was doing at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and an upcoming performance there of a new Brion Gysin book.

Thanks to Victoria’s pragmatic ‘so-what, why this audience, why now’ coaching, emphasizing these elements of my pitch set my subject at the helm of an upcoming event where avant garde artworld legends would be appearing. The right story for the right audience.

I also understood from Bootcamp that I had a time hook most appropriate for a weekly newspaper like the Voice. The editor’s suggestion entailed a lot more work but Bootcamp taught me that if an editor was gracious enough to tell me exactly what he could use all I needed to do was accept the challenge. As Victoria explained, “We’re here to eliminate the reasons an editor has to reject your work.”

MB’s Bootcamp offered operable information about writing and selling in seven genres (personal essays, travel, op-ed, business features, profiles and reviews and tone-dependent pieces like the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town).

The bootcamp also underscored the importance of astute portfolio building to get a writer where she wants to go.

I benefited most from Victoria’s deconstructive clarity about composing and selling nonfiction writing — and today it is appreciable how much I learned about piloting a writing career.

Speaking At The Istanbul Book Fair

We conducted an Expat Harem panel at the 24th Istanbul Book  Fair with editors and writers including Kathy Hamilton, Katie Belliel and Valerie Tasiran. The anthology was also launched there, featured at the Dogan Kitapcilik stand.  

Call For Submissions For The Expat Harem Collection

Calling all women writers who have lived, worked, studied or traveled in Turkey for at least a year: Contribute your voice to a new anthology of foreign women’s reflections on modern Turkey. Deadline: August 1, 2004 TALES FROM THE EXPAT HAREM: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen

The book aims to be a personal, entertaining read for both students and scholars of Turkey as well as armchair cultural travelers, fans of women’s literature, and expatriates of all stripes.

During Ottoman rule, the word 'harem' (from the word ‘haram’, meaning sacred and forbidden) referred to both the population as well as the living quarters of the foreign-born brides and servants of the Turkish sultan. An intimate and confined community of women, it was a place for sharing womanly wisdom and cultivating cultural tradition.

In this non-fiction anthology we invoke a modern day Turkish harem with its chorus of voices and shared female experience -- in the sense that the expatriate population is naturally cohesive and isolated due to the process of assimilation. Newcomers learning to maneuver within a new set of variables and cultural boundaries necessarily experience a limitation of freedom: language barriers act as an obstacle to travel and independence, cultural naivete hinders social interaction, and ethnocentric rigidity impedes dynamic experience.

Taking the reader on humorous and poignant journeys of cultural contrast and discovery, our contributors break free of the confines of the harem, breaching the confined world of the unassimilated to touch the true heart of Turkey. Whether newly arrived or well-established expatriates, or Turks repatriating to their homeland after a long absence, all our contributors are foreign brides of modern Turkey: wedded to its culture, embedded in it even, and yet forever outsiders.

We are looking for high-quality personal essays, insightful flash non-fiction and colorful travelogue--in English, 2,500 words or less.  Unpublished work is preferred, although well-crafted previously published work will be considered.

Further information and to submit work please visit the rudimentary site: www.expatharem.com

Inquiries info@expatharem.com

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CHAPTERS:

• LAST STOP ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS: The last city in Europe and the first city in Asia, arriving in continent-straddling Istanbul, Turkey naturally commits a person to a state of permanent limbo, an ever-shifting flux between West and East. An expatriate can tie herself into existential knots while transitioning into a culture that is itself a metaphor for transition.
• PEDDLER IN THE BAZAAR: From the routine of the weekly open-air vegetable market to the entrancing delights of the Grand Bazaar, Turkey’s brisk street life includes haggling with street peddlers and shop keepers, narrow escapes from aggressive vendors, and sometimes deep friendships established over cups of tea. What makes the difference in still being quoted ‘tourist prices’ or becoming a vendor’s prized foreign customer? Other shopping issues.
• DIVANS, HOOKAHS & COFFEE HOUSES:  Turks are a communal people, opting for interaction and conversation whenever possible, each demographic migrating towards their particular haunts: young people play backgammon in cafes, puffing on fruit-flavored tobacco from huge hookahs, while older men gather on street corners, under shady trees, or in smoky kahvehaneler to play cards and sip from tulip glasses.  In the Ottoman court the divan was the public audience room, traditionally a gathering place of men, but here refers to the social pursuits and behaviors of Turkish men – from football fanaticism and drinking with the lads to their particular blend of machismo tempered by acute sentimentality. How do Turks accommodate social expectations of foreign women, and how do expats adjust to the sometimes exhausting, invasive communal spirit?
• KETTLES & CAULDRONS: Culinary effort equals family devotion and a freshly made dessert signals hospitality for the constant flow of “unexpected” guests. Any self-respecting cook lovingly creates time-consuming meals from scratch, efforts balanced by the lingering pleasure of dinners that last half the night.  Adventures in the kitchen, memorable meals, being a force-fed guest.
• SALVES & SOOTHSAYERS: Since the early days of the Selcuk settlers, Turks have clung to their shamanistic roots, while the folk art of natural healing has been passed down through the generations. Clove for a toothache, licorice root for bronchial complaints, fennel tea as an herbal birth control method. Doorways hung with blue glass talismans for protection, fortunes divined from coffee grounds, supplications made to Telli Baba. Do old wives’ tales—like infertility from walking barefoot on a cold marble floor or jaundice caused by failure to urinate immediately after a scare—apply only to those born into the Turkish culture, or should everyone on Turkish soil heed their witchy wisdom?
• SHIMMY AT THE DRUMBEAT: When a dish hits a restaurant floor, Turkish women will take it as an opening drum beat and get up and dance, so the joke goes. Traditional folkloric music and dance is in the blood, widely learned and performed by young and old, male and female, in formal costumed performances or just around the living room. An innate part of the Turkish psyche, song and dance can erupt at any moment and overwhelm even the most intrepid expatriate
• HENNA'D HANDS:  Courting rituals both customary and modified to accommodate foreign brides and clashing cultures. From traditional village weddings to big city civil services to high society receptions covered by voracious paparazzi, weddings are colorful events in Turkey.  The traditions both high and low, ancient and modern, whether simply witnessed, or lived.
• HAMAM:  The valide sultana, the ruler’s mother, once inspected prospective brides for her noble son in the hamam, the display venue for female comeliness.  It was also a place where women whiled away the hours in each others’ company. The traditional Turkish sauna and scrub remains a complex tradition of beauty practice, female retreat and even matriarchal power base, but our hamam doubles as a metaphor for acceptance into the Turkish female culture, and the value of female friendship.
• PRECIOUS DARLINGS: Worth their weight in gold, children are revered in Turkish society. All segments of the population expect a young couple to procreate and then join together in raising the children, often redefining boundaries for expat women.  Elaborate circumcision customs.  Typical overindulgence of offspring balanced by honoring the homemaker and priority placed on family.
• KEREVANSERAY: Traveling across the country, one witnesses places that still echo a way of life centuries old. Hospitality on the homesteads, natural wonders, historical ruins. Expat adventures across the expanse of the Turkish coasts and heartland.

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TIPS FOR WRITERS

We prefer personal essays with evocative language and dialogue, detailed description that sets the scene and sketches the people. You may have heard this type of writing referred to as creative or literary nonfiction – facts conveyed with the devices of a novelist.

TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.

SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE,  HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.

BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE.   GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE,  A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.

BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.

BE RELEVANT.  HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?

POSSIBLE BREAKING POINTS/BOUNDARIES/AREAS OF ILLUMINATION

•  Code of Ethics
• Morals
• Independence
• Common sense/folk wisdom
• Expectations
• Culture/Social conditioning
• Fashion/trend-setting
• Privacy
• Modesty
• Language skills
• Femininity
• Wifely duties/skills
• Motherly duties/skills
• Domestic skills (cooking, cleaning, shopping)
• Mother-in-law

TIPS FOR NONWRITERS

TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.

SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.

BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.

BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.

BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?

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.

Master Of The Road Takes A New (GPS) Mistress

Most of the time my husband and I work as a complementary team. He trusts my research skills and intuition to invest money and choose gifts for his mother; I defer to his computational and engineering strengths with taxes and misbehaving electronics.

At home in New York City, we face each other at the dining table on twin computers, and in the kitchen, one cooks while the other tackles cleanup.

But when my husband commands the steering wheel of an automobile, suddenly he thinks he can do without me.

"Turn right, honey," I plead, as we pass a landmark in rural New York State for the third time.

"I think that's the way to the bridge," I say, wistfully pointing out the window as our car rumbles straight through the intersection.

The crinkled map in my lap may offer no clue which gray squiggle represents this wooded country road, but I still think we should have turned right. Call it feminine instinct.

The man of my life is not listening. Nor is he watching the road. Instead, he's enamored with a new woman in the car. One hand on the wheel, the other is fondling a small Global Positioning System (GPS) unit mounted to the dashboard, the NeverLost Magellan.

Soon a breathy, female voice intones, "Calculating route. Make a legal U-turn."

My computer-scientist husband swiftly complies, checking his mirrors as if the mechanized woman in the dash can appreciate his rigorous driving etiquette. Chafed, I realize he prefers feminine instinct packaged in a high-tech gadget worthy of James Bond.

"Approaching left turn in one mile," the disembodied lady voice continues.

It's the turn I suggested, but now my husband is convinced. Our car has located the GPS satellites, computed our location, and placed us on the grid. It's all very scientific. My man is bewitched by the small guidance screen highlighting our route in pink. When the car reaches the turn the machine makes the cloying sound of a 1950s doorbell.

Noticing my sour expression, he attempts to lighten my opinion of the device, enthusing over the instrument's slew of advantages: we can clock our time to destination, check our maneuver list, magnify the map. We can locate Chinese restaurants in the region and view the next five exits. And then to add insult to injury, he points out that we can receive all this instruction in seven languages, including French, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese.

But, relieved of my navigating duties and with nothing else to do, I fume. Arms crossed, staring straight ahead, I think, "How galling to be sexy and precise in seven languages!"

For all I care, she and my husband can both get lost. I am jealous of a travel gadget.

"Enjoy the sunset," he finally suggests, sighing, as we approach New York City, master of the road saddled with a crotchety old mistress in the shotgun position.

Then tragedy strikes the happy couple. Hoping to avoid thousands of vehicles entering Manhattan, my husband discovers he cannot suitably query the on-board guidance computer.

The James Bond woman is lacking in dimension and limits him to simple options.

"Shortest Time," "Most Use of Freeways," and "Least Use of Freeways." The expensive little machine fails to factor the rush-hour time of night and the circuitous route we normally prefer to avoid the bottleneck.

Following the robotic navigator's strategy, soon we are mired in traffic near a bridge we wanted to bypass, and then end up in a tangle of New Jersey roadways before office buildings disrupt our signal and erase the on-screen map.

My husband begins to lose his composure.

He's fidgeting with the machine even though the device clearly states when rebooting that "Driver should not program while driving."

This must be the first time he has defied the dame in the dash.

Me, I'm enjoying the dusk as instructed.

We merge into an eight-lane highway heading west to California. An obvious mistake. Springing back to life, the computer offers a solution that seems easy but is impossible to execute among the dense traffic and poorly lit roads. Overloaded tractor trailers blast their horns as our car swerves uncertainly.

"What should I do?" my husband finally wonders aloud.

"Go south, we'll figure it out, sweetie."

The metropolis of Manhattan looms; I am positive we can't miss it.

But the inflexible device contradicts me, insisting in its firm and vaguely accented way, "Proceed to highlighted route!"

My husband, looking more like the man I married, reaches over and shuts off the misleading NeverLost. Seductive voice silenced, the screen goes dark. But as the city lights rise before us, I can still see the ghostly trace of her suggested itinerary.

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This appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, August 21, 2003 and in The Thong Also Rises anthology