Eregli (pron. “Eh-ray-lee”):

We are staying at the Summer apartment of D’s childhood, in Eregli, on a bay of the Marmara sea, about an hour and a half from Istanbul. D—grew up in Izmit, a small city not far from here, which was close to the epicenter of the huge earthquake that killed tens of thousands of Turkish people maybe ten years ago. In Eregli, during that earthquake, only one building collapsed, taking with it the lives of one of D's friends from high school, the friend’s husband, and his entire immediate family. They were sitting on the balcony, eating, at the time.

Eregli, when D- was a child, was a remote and primitive fishing village. The only Summer residence was the apartment building we’re staying in, which was built as a collective project by her father and a group of his close friends and family. An architect relative designed the building, whose balconies all face west, so you can see the sunset from every apartment. The balconies are adjoining, and have rolling screens for privacy. When these are lifted, which they usually are, you can see and talk to all of the neighbors in either direction, which creates an effect something like watching television while looking into an infinitely reflecting set of mirrors. I have become friends with Iris, a four year old girl who lives two apartments over. From her open balcony-wall, when we are on our respective balconies at the same time, she displays all of her posessions one by one: a mirror, a toy pony, two seashells and a coloring book, for me and D- to admire.

Last night there was a village wedding, or circumcision party (we’re not sure which) at a restaurant across the street which is basically a wooden tent (like a big sukkah, for the Judeophiles out there) with a kitchen and fluorescent light-rods hung in the trees. We sat on a neighbor’s balcony with maybe ten people who have known D- since she was born (some of her parent’s generation, some contemporaries, and some of their children), listening to the gypsy music and Turkish folk songs coming from the restaurant. Somebody set off fireworks—big, impressive ones—on the beach and everyone came running, thinking it was gunfire.

A neighbor said that every time the villagers have one of these celebrations, there is a fight. People get drunk, and, inevitably, late in the evening, there is a dispute that ends in violence. Last night’s iteration was a little disappointing: around 11 pm some guy yelled something, and was thrown out of the party. He did a kind of face-saving stagger/strut down the road beneath out balcony, muttering to himself.

Here I am “the American.” People are very kind to me, and burst into peals of joyful laughter whenever I say anything in Turkish. Two nights ago, on our way to Eregli, we ate at the Summer house of the architect relative, Ghengis (“Cengiz” in Turkish. “Atila,” as in “Attila the Hun,” is also a common Turkish name…). His four year old grandson, who had a plastic lightsaber and Spiderman pyjamas, was scared of me because he thought I was Peter Parker, and because I'm foreign. While we ate dinner, he hid inside the house, burying his face in the couch. After dinner, I chased him around saying “The American is Coming!” in Turkish, in a Zombie voice, and we became great friends. He told me, with D- translating, the entire plot of “The Lion King III,” which I did not even know existed.

Eregli is an amazing place. Everybody knows everybody. The young kids, the teens, and the adults are all living their separate realities in full view of one another—the kids running around in packs, shouting, swimming, kicking balls around—the teens drinking, smoking, or just huddling around sullenly in groups of three or four on the beach. The adults sitting on balconies or in the backyards, talking, laughing, and drinking either alcohol or tea.

Last night, D- and I went to sit on a bench by the water, on an unlit stretch of beach. Under two trees behind us sat two groups of villagers at two tables, one for men and one for women (the women all wearing colorful headscarves, as they do), drinking raki (a grape and anise liquor—very much like Greek Ouzo). The men started singing a folk song with a lot of vibrato, one of them doing the stringed instrumental part with his voice, because they didn’t have any instruments. The song, D- told me, is sung by a man to a dark-haired woman who has rejected him, and basically says: “I have built bridges and fountains. Don’t think you’re so special.” And we, the audience, understand why the woman has rejected him.

Ours is no longer the only building on the block. The street is now lined with vacation apartments, delis, restaurants and “tea gardens” (outdoor tea places). The town still feels isolated, peaceful, and primitive, though—you see at least as many headscarf-wearing village women in the streets as you do Istanbul vacationers, and an American in Eregli is still an almost freakish oddity: A couple of teenagers in a tea garden asked me yesterday, incredulously, “why did you come here?”

This situation here is almost inconceivable to me, as an American and the product of a not-very-social suburban family——three generations of people, some of whom have known each other for thirty years, coming to the same place every Summer, watching each other and their children and their children’s children growing up. It is exactly like a huge, extended family. D- has not been here for eight years, yet she fell immediately back into the rhythm of the Eregli lifestyle, running from apartment to apartment to talk to people and to their relatives on the telephone, sitting outside with the “aunts” (the generic term of affection for any woman at least 20 years older than you. If she’s around your age, you call her “sister.”) talking about flowers and what everybody has been doing lately.

A guy just drove by selling peaches. Yesterday a guy drove by selling bleach. I couldn’t understand that. There are delis here—why do you need a mobile bleach salesman? My mother-in-law bought some bleach from him, which was a 20 minute process involving chatting and laughing with the guy so he would give her a better price. In Turkey, you must develop a personal relationship with the salesperson, or you get imperfect products at an unreasonable price. I have been told, by Turkish people, that trying to take advantage of others through trickery is a part of Turkish culture—that salespeople and customers alike delight in gaining the upper hand through small acts of deceit. Caveat Emptor.

A car just pulled up outside with a two year old boy at the wheel, steering, on his father’s lap. D- and some of the ladies are swimming. I think I might join them. So let me end with a story that my father-in-law told me last night—a kind of Turkish Zen koan about Nasrattin Hoja, a wise figure of legend who lived around 500 years ago.

Nasrattin Hoja was walking along the street when he saw two men fighting. He stepped in and pulled them apart. “What are you doing?” said one of the men. “You don’t know what this man has done! He has stolen my cow and insulted my mother!” “You are right,” said Nasrattin Hoja. “Wait just a minute!” said the other man—“You haven’t heard my side of the story! This man is a liar!” “You are right,” said Nasrattin Hoja. A third man, who had been standing nearby, witnessing these events, spoke up: “Nasrattin Hoja,” he said, “It is not possible that this man and that man can both be right!” Nasrattin Hoja considered this. “You are right, too,” he said.