All posts tagged Religion

  • The Transsiberian Railway

    Ulan-Ude’s giant head of Lenin looking imposing.

    The Trains

    The Russian Railway website does not generally work with foreign credit cards, which meant that we had to get friends to buy our train tickets once we arrived in Russia. As it was the end of August — prime vacation season — this meant that the quality of trains we had access to was not… always the best.

    For one thing, the toilets were questionable. On most of the trains that we took across Russia’s hinterland, the toilet flushed with the aid of a foot lever, and “flushing” was a hatch opening up in the bottom of the toilet and spraying your poop directly onto the tracks.

    Because of the risk of contaminating groundwater, you can’t be having poop on the tracks in all regions, so each settlement was flanked by a half-hour kontrolnaya zona, during which the train attendants would come through the train and lock each bathroom until we had safely passed all signs of human habitation. If you had to go? Tough luck. You should have known not to drink any water while approaching a town.

    Occasionally, the trains we took had a mix of older and newer rolling stock. The newer rolling stock had suction toilets of the kind you might find on airplanes, which sometimes made it possible to go to the bathroom even in the station (I say sometimes because, confusingly, these too were often locked). This did not mean they were without issues. At each stop where people got on, the train attendant would go around to everybody (except for us, whom she skirted with her eyes, certain that we would not understand what she was about to say) and say, “the hot water is at the back and NO TOILET PAPER IN THE TOILET.”

    Did the toilet have a bidet or something to make this easier on everybody? Of course not.

    Surprisingly enough, people did not want to toss their noticeably used toilet paper in the garbage can for all to see, so the toilets inevitably broke. Breaking meant the toilet filled with an unflushable amount of water. As soon as it happened, the same train attendant would come back through the car, peeking into each compartment and wagging her finger. “DON’T PUT TOILET PAPER IN THE TOILET.”

    The first train we took, from St. Petersburg to Moscow, was the last train with tickets available, and for good reason. The train didn’t simply go from St. Petersburg to Moscow, but actually from St. Petersburg to Krasnodar, in the south of Russia, close to Crimea. Crimea is a popular vacation destination, and taking land transport from St. Petersburg to Crimea takes a long time, which means it’s an option preferred by Russians of lower economic classes.

    Picture us, innocent, having just bought the last available ticket to Moscow at the train station. As yet, we know none of this. We settle into our berths and get ready for an uneventful trip.

    This was not to be. One of us proposed buying something from the canteen, but the train attendant didn’t have change for the large bills that the ATM had spit out. We decided to ask around on the train if anybody had change, and that is how we met Boris and Lena.

    Lena was a 42-year-old taxi driver and Boris was a 26-year-old of uncertain occupation (his styling was a bit mobster-esque, but he was also cheerful and friendly and loved to cook — “he made all this!” Lena exclaimed, reprising her exclamations each time a new dish was brought out. Their two-year-old, Misha alternately explored the train and gazed out the window and passing trains, gasping after each one.

    Lena and Boris taught us how to do things that are not allowed on trains. Smoking, for example. The technique was to walk to the back of the wagon and go onto the platform where the doors were. After that, you had to go between the cars, where the movements of the floor could chop off your toe if you weren’t wearing proper footwear, and the clattering din was enough to give you a headache if the smoke from four cigarettes didn’t do it first.

    Since so many people were doing it, the train attendants couldn’t do much more than wag a finger and say nielzya (not allowed) because, really, how to kick every single passenger off the whole, entire train?

    Lena and Boris were also generous people who took us under their wing from first “would you happen to have any change?” “Yes, we have change,” they said. “But wouldn’t you like some coffee?” They handed Adem a packet of instant, which we drank.

    Coffee turned into apples and apples turned into sandwiches spread with lard and grated spam, and lard and grated spam turned into shots of Russian homemade vodka samugon. As the bottle of liquor got pulled out, I began to fear potentially going blind from the effects of moonshine of uncertain provenance, so I told Lena that I wasn’t drinking because I was trying to get pregnant, a lie (I didn’t smoke either, though I did allow myself to be shown how it was done.) After she’d had a shot herself, she drunkenly leaned into me and told me in a low voice that sometimes, when you really want to get pregnant and can’t, the problem is that you can’t relax and what better way to relax than to have a drink and forget your troubles? She cited two friends who had tried for a baby for a long time only to finally conceive during a night of drunken nookie and/or a day of drunken embryonic implantation.

    Adem accepted the samugon and got quickly and gloriously drunk as the shots kept getting thrust into his hands. He tried to refuse, but not speaking Russian, had few tools with which to do so. Waving his hands? Not good enough. The only words he knew in Russian were spasiba and nyet, but these two were not enough to communicate. He repeated nyet like a whimpering mantra, but his refusals were refused by an increasingly aggressive and drunken Lena, who had taken out yet another bag of food and busily tried to force a burger past his lips and into his mouth. Hurriedly, I told Lena that he wasn’t hungry anymore and that I quite fancied the burger that she was trying to foie-gras feed him but not before feeling a delicious wave of schadenfreude wash over me. “This,” I would say to a groaning Adem later in words laced with I-told-you-so, “is how foreign people feel when they come to Turkey. Now tell me, again, how wonderful Turkish hospitality is.”

    Lena and Boris gave us one last gift of a dried fish before we arrived in Moscow, a fish we would take all across Russia and back and christened Gagariba (a portmanteau of Gagarin and the Russian word for “fish.”) On the platform in Moscow, we were picked up by the friends we were staying with.

    “We are so surprised about you taking this train!” they said. “How was it? Was it crazy? You know this is the train of Russians who can’t afford to fly to go on vacation?”

    Ulan-Ude


    Ulan Ude, the capital of the Buryat respublika, is a polluted, ugly city. It is such a hole that even Yandex, the Google and Google Maps of Russia, hasn’t really bothered with it. It could not tell us any public transit details, nor was it much help for calling taxis. This was a surprise, considering that Yandex has even mapped dachaville, middle of nowhere respublika. The more we got to know Ulan-Ude, the more we understood. The only ingredients in the food are meat and dough (dill, if you are lucky and cabbage if you are very lucky), our boogers turned black from the pollution, and even in mid-September it was very very cold.

    We were not in Ulan Ude for the public transit or for the taxis or the food, though. We were there for Russia’s Buddhist temple complex of Ivolginskiy Datsan, the only Buddhist spiritual centre of the Soviet Union.

    Our first morning in Ulan Ude, we put on inappropriate clothing for the weather, blew the aforementioned black boogers out of our noses, and took three marshrutki to the complex.

    By the time we arrived, we’d had plenty of time to realize that our summer outfits were unfit for the rainy weather, so we ducked into the gatehouse to warm up and see if we had to pay to visit the complex. The lady inside proposed an English-speaking tour guide, and soon, for the price of 500 rubles, we were being led into the complex by Anna, a guide with a flat voice and a tenuous knowledge of English.

    “Dear our guests,” she intoned for the first time of many. “Before we start the tour, I must ask where you are from.”

    “Turkey,” we said.

    “Oh my,” she said flatly. She turned to Adem. “I have been working here for five years and I have never met anybody from Turkey before.”

    She ushered us closer to the main temple and began. “Dear our guests, please take a look at this beautiful temple.”

    It was, admittedly, beautiful.

    “Here,” she continued, “lives a monk who is the phenomenon in Russia and all over the world. At this time he is 166 years old.”

    Adem would later confess to me that he didn’t hear this part.

    “Dear our guests. Please listen carefully to this history of Buddhism in Russia. Our Great Queen Catherine allowed Buddhist temples to be built during her reign. She was a great supporter of Buddhism.”

    “Dear our guests. Please pay attention to this beautiful Buddhist university. This is where the Buddhist monks in Russia study. There are only men in this university.”

    “Dear our guests. Please pay attention to this beautiful prayer wheel.”

    “Dear our guests. Please pay attention to this sacred rock.”

    The sacred rock was up on a pedestal, looking much like a regular rock. Anna continued, “If you stand ten metres behind this rock, close your eyes, and concentrate on it, then walk towards the rock and touch it, you can make a prayer and it will be answered.”

    “Oh cool,” we said, nodding enthusiastically since we were the only people on the tour.

    “Now,” said Anna. “You must touch the rock.” Stand here, about ten metres behind. Reach your hands forward, close your eyes, and walk towards the rock. When you touch it, make a prayer.

    Adem and I looked at each other in horror. His spatial awareness and sense of direction are only barely acceptable and mine are about as developed as those of a bumper car. Neither of us wanted to embarrass ourselves by closing our eyes, holding our hands out, and walking in a direction that would certainly not be on the way to the rock.

    On the other hand, neither of us wanted to seem disrespectful by refusing to touch the rock. What to say anyway? “Sorry, I am spatially challenged. I must have done something wrong in a previous reincarnation to be so challenged in prayer.” “Sorry, my life is already so great that I literally don’t have anything else I could wish for.” “Sorry, I don’t have any friends or relatives to pray for.”

    Rather than disappoint Anna, we gamely took up our positions ten metres behind the rock. I went first. Adem stood behind me with his eyes open periodically yelling, “Left!” “Right!” “Left!” “Okay, now just left. Just left, no, now right.”

    Finally, I touched the rock. Relief flooded through me. I quickly prayed that I would never have to touch the rock again.

    Adem repeated the performance as I yelled directions behind him. Having touched the rock, he walked triumphantly back to where Anna and I were standing. We looked at her expectantly. Where were we going next? To the Buddhist library, perhaps? As dear her guests, to pay attention to more beautiful things?

    “I think,” said Anna slowly as we looked at her triumphantly, “that you both need to try again.” We blinked. “Sometimes,” she said slowly, “your concentration is just not enough.”

    Adem and I looked at each other. We took our places at the start of the finish line. We concentrated. And, somehow, miraculously, we both managed to touch the rock again without getting directions yelled at us. It was truly a miracle. I didn’t even open my eyes.

    We returned to the guide. “This is the end of the tour,” she said. “But if you would like to go see the phenomenon in Russia and all over the world, I can arrange for you to receive his blessing. He lives in the most beautiful temple, over there.”

    We definitely wanted to see the most beautiful temple in the complex. “Of course we want to,” we said.

    “Great,” Anna said. “That will be another 500 rubles.”

    Adem grumbled something about religion and capitalism while I reached into my purse.

    “Okay,” said Anna. “When you go into the temple there will be a monk. He will let you in. You will take a scarf as an offering to the phenomenon in Russia and all over the world. You will go up to the lama and you will make these gestures. Now, he is in very deep meditation, so you will not be able to speak to him. But, you can speak to him in your mind. You may stand in front of him for as long as you wish and speak to him for as long as you like. Afterwards, ask the monk that let you in for a scarf. He will tie it into a special knot. With this scarf, if you press the knot to your forehead, you can commune with him wherever in the world you go.”

    We nodded. She led us to the temple and waved us in, but stayed outside herself.

    Inside the foyer, we encountered the monk of which Anna had spoken. Though decked out in robes, he was absorbed in playing a game of Candy Crush. He had a plastic bottle of Coca Cola in his other hand. He briefly looked up and motioned with his head that we could go in.

    The inside of the temple was underwhelming compared to its facade. We pressed gamely forward until we realized.

    The phenomenon in Russia and all over the world was at the front of the temple.

    Bald and seated in meditation posture, missing his eyeballs.

    He was dead, and mummified, and obviously so.

    Unfortunately, you are not supposed to turn around in Buddhist temples, so we could not tell if the monk at the back was watching us. So, we stood in front of the phenomenon in Russia and all over the world for a minute, pretending to commune through our minds. After we decided that we had communed for a respectful enough period, we walked backwards out of the temple to the foyer.  The monk had clearly not been watching us after all — he was still absorbed in Candy Crush and, rather than ask him for the communion scarf, we scampered out of the temple only to be once again surprised by the placid face of Anna who had waited outside. She did us a kindness by not commenting on our lack of scarf for future communions with the Phenomenon in Russia and all over the world.

    “You know,” Anna said reflectively as soon as we got out. “Some people claim that he is dead, but in fact, he is alive and just in very deep meditation. Did you know that the monks here even take his body temperature, and it sometimes goes up to 34 degrees?”

    Adem and I nodded. Of course. Even in Siberia, it gets hot sometimes.

    Anna walked us out to the gatehouse. The marshrutka to takes us back to Ulan Ude was already there. “Just a moment,” she said. “I’m going to ask the driver to wait for you. I need you to give reviews of my tour.”

    She waved us into the gatehouse and spoke to the driver while we bought camel-wool socks, then came into the gatehouse waving an iPhone which she put onto video mode. “Do you think you could say some things about my tour in your languages?”

    We both gave a short, complimentary review, and then skipped outside to the van without a door that would drive us back to the city.

    Four Putins

    Travelling in Russia, we knew enough to keep our mouths shut about any political opinions we might have about Russia – at least until we knew it was safe. And so, if anybody asked us if we had heard of Putin or had any thoughts on him, we evasively said things like, “Oh yeah, Putin. I think I’ve heard of that guy. He’s some famous person in Russia, right?”

    We probably needn’t have worried, as not only did we not meet anybody who was a great fan of Putin (I’m not sure what official statistics are saying, but my guess based on the people we met, with whom we mostly only spoke Russian, is that his popularity has taken a dip), but people mostly only seemed to ask us what we thought about Putin in order to tell us what they thought about Putin.

    Lena and Boris said they used to like him, but now think he’s horrible.

    A couple of drunk guys in the dining car of the train who were travelling to the middle of nowhere and were planning to go to the banya and tried to get us to buy them vodka told us that they thought he was horrible, too.

    Another woman, unconvinced by our evasive answers about how much we knew pressed us to tell her what we really thought. “We think,” we finally said carefully, “that he is smart, and cruel.”

    “I agree,” she said. “Anyway, I am not so interested in politics.”

    Finally, in Buryatia, we met a man who told us about his belief in a Russian YouTube conspiracy.

    It is common knowledge that Putin is an ex-KGB agent, and the KGB and its heir the FSB have lots of resources at their disposal. These include plastic surgery and other methods of disguise.

    At some point or other, the world’s best plastic surgeons were tasked with creating decoy Putins. The reason for this is unclear – to protect the real Putin? Just to mess with people?

    Whatever the case, the evidence for this is (apparently) overwhelming. For example, it explains why, even though Putin (allegedly) used to speak German so fluently that he could be mistaken for an honest-to-goodness Bavarian, he has recently been known to make basic mistakes when speaking German. It also explains why Putin and his ex-wife Lyudmila recently divorced.

    I mean, why would Lyudmila claim that Putin was no longer the man she married, unless… he… was… LITERALLY… no longer the man she married?

    I like to imagine this conversation.

    Putin: Lyuda dear, what’s for dinner tonight? Something involving potatoes, kasha, or dill? No, no wait, don’t tell me. It could also involve cabbage, beets, or sour cream. Hmmm…. Even after 30 years of marriage,  you still know how to keep me guessing.

    Lyudmila: Volodka, I’ve been thinking recently.

    Putin: Pierog?

    Lyudmila: I would like a divorce.

    Putin: (surprised) But why?

    Lyudmila: (bursting into tears). You’re just not the man I married anymore! The man I married spoke German like a Bavarian! The man I married came by his good looks honestly! And you speak of surprises. Surprises! After this long! HOW can you POSSIBLY not know after 30 YEARS that I ALWAYS make vareniki on Thursdays? You claim to have been a KGB AGENT!

    In one version of the legend, the other three Putins offed the real Putin. This is apparently why Putin has been acting out of character lately, though it isn’t clear exactly in what way his behaviour has been out of character (except for the German mistakes.)

    We would just like to say

    We were shown around/helped/encouraged by some very kind friends (and some very kind people we met along the way), to whom we owe a lot for the great time we had. Thank you 🙂

  • A Few Specific Muslims I Have Talked To

    Over the course of the last few years, I’ve talked to many Muslim people about faith. For some reason, these are the ones that stand out in my memory for the unexpectedness of what they said, the sincerity of their belief, the difference between my perception of what a Muslim looks like and what they looked like, their personal qualities, or some combination of these things. I’ve tried to write what they said without interpreting it here – although of course the questions that I asked in order to get them to talk more may betray some expectations I may have had.

    Azerbaijan, 2015 – Khalid

    I met Khalid online while in Azerbaijan. We spent a day walking through the old city talking about life in Azerbaijan, life in general. Many people in Azerbaijan are not particularly religious. Khalid was more religious than many – religious enough in any case to feel the need to impress on me fairly early on that “ISIS and people like them are not real Islam.”

    As we were walking through Baku’s old city, he said, “You know, the world is a bit like a video game. Game companies and programmers create video games with certain parameters, and certain rules for winning. I understand that God could have created the world in any way he chose, but he chose this way. So I think that the most important thing about life is to follow the rules of this game, because the rules could be completely different if God had willed it.”

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    Kyrgyzstan, 2016 – Marina

    Marina did my nails at a salon in Bishkek. She was a cheerful ethnically Russian woman originally from Kyrgyzstan, who’d donned a shirt that day which betrayed more than a hint of cleavage.

    “Do you like this job?” I asked her. “Oh yes!” she said. “I love this job. I love making people feel happy and beautiful. It is very interesting and funny for me.”

    “How did you end up doing this job?” I asked.

    “Well,” she said, “I used to live in Dubai. My first ex-husband was Syrian. And I had no job. I was very bored. He said that I would get an education and continue university when I got married to him, but really I was just all the time at home – no education, nothing! And you know, in Dubai you have people to do everything for you so I didn’t even do houseworks. We divorced and I moved back here to where I grew up and got trained to do this job. I’m very happy now doing this.”

    “That’s great.” I said.

    “So where are you from?” she asked.

    “Canada,” I said. “But I actually live in Istanbul with my boyfriend.”

    “Is he Turkish?” she asked.

    “Yes, he is,” I answered.

    “Does his family like you?” she asked. “My second ex-husband was Turkish and his family did not like me.”

    “Oh?” I said. “Why not? Because you weren’t Muslim?”

    “I am Muslim!” she crowed. “I converted before I even married my first husband – and he didn’t even believe in anything, not anything, nothing. He didn’t want me to become a Muslim. But for me being Muslim felt right. My second husband’s family just didn’t like me because I was not Turkish. They wanted to their son a Turkish girl. You must be careful with your boyfriend and his family.”

    “How did you decide to convert to Islam?” I asked.

    “Well,” she said. “It didn’t happen immediately. Actually, it used to be, I used to have a job and on my breaks I would go out behind a mosque… to smoke. And I would hear the call to prayer – you know the call to prayer? And it didn’t happen immediately, but I felt something. I really felt it. And for me religion is something you feel. So I converted. Not everybody understands that religion is something you feel. I tried to explain it to my mother once. I said, “If you named your daughter Ayshe, how would you feel?” And she said, “That name is feel wrong for my daughter.” And I said that if I had a daughter named like “Maria,” or “Anna” I feel myself the same way that “Ayshe” is for her. Then she was understanding me.

    At the end of the pedicure, I asked her if she drank.

    “Of course!” she said. “Yes, of course I drink!”

    “What kind of vodka would you recommend I bring home from Kyrgyzstan?” I asked.

    “They are mostly all nice,” she said. “If you pay a little more, they are better.”

     

    Kyrgyzstan, Ramadan 2016 – Nurdin

    Nurdin was an AirBnB host in his late twenties that I found along the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul. Despite being ethnically Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz people are – at least traditionally – Muslims) he was observing his first Ramadan fast. His parents, brother, and sister-in-law were not fasting, so he spent a lot of time in his room until after sunset when he would come and join the rest of us to eat. I didn’t understand he was fasting until I’d been staying at his place for five days already; I invited him to go hiking with me if he wasn’t busy and he apologized for not coming as he didn’t think he could force his body to hike if he wasn’t eating all day.

    “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I hadn’t realized you were observing Ramadan. Of course you shouldn’t go hiking.”

    “Yes,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t tell you, but I just think Ramadan and religion are private things – you do them for yourself, they are between you and God. It is not good to do them only to boast to other people that you’re doing them. You know, here in Kyrgyzstan we have big problems with radicalization these days – these people are not practicing the real Islam, but I want to practice Islam in a good way. So that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

    Turkey, 2014 – Ayse

    Ayse was an incongruously kind and patient housekeeper for the first (and last) family I worked with in Turkey. She arrived wearing her hijab every morning, but usually removed it to tie her hair back if the man of the family wasn’t home. One day I tried asking her to help me with something in broken Turkish; she asked if it could wait until after. It was then that I noticed she had her head covered. “Oh sorry,” I said. “Yes, go do your prayers. It’s not urgent.”

    “You know the prayers?!” she asked excitedly. “Do you know Ramadan too?!”

     

  • How Reverse Culture Shock Led me to Google “Atheist Yoga”

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    I came ‘home’ last week to a surprise bout of reverse-culture shock; as soon I stepped off the plane in Toronto, a profound feeling of depaysement hit me like an unexpected rainstorm on a sunny day. My flawless Canadian accent and manners seemed but tools in an espionage operation designed to infiltrate Canadian society, not a natural part of my identity.

    I’ve felt out of place before, of course. I feel out of place each time I re-enter Turkey after an extended bout in Canada. Still, Istanbul, with all its charms and flaws, begins to feel like home after a while. And, as I learned as I walked through the Toronto airport, Canada begins to feel like a foreign country after a while too.

    In the lineup to go through passport control, Canadians stood with metre-wide spaces between them and complained about nothing. My inner monologue started working overtime, like a jaded old person who thinks age grants a license to say anything, no matter how mean or unconstructive.

    For example: Shut up two guys with nice clothes complaining about Winnipeg. You don’t understand what it’s like to have problems. I can’t believe you guys can’t even appreciate Winnipeg. Seriously, Istanbul is so much harder than Winnipeg. People from Winnipeg can’t even imagine how much harder life is in Istanbul than it is in Winnipeg.

    Complaining about Istanbul is an unpleasant sort of municipal sport of Istanbulites, a habit I had unconsciously embraced as a confirmation of my belonging to the city.

    An officious woman of Caribbean stock was in charge of making people line up properly for passport control. She bustled her way up and down the lineup of empty spaces like a pacman, opening barriers and zipping them shut, yelling rude things at travellers, which as a recently transplant from Istanbul, I found strangely comforting.

    “You need to keep moving,” she bawled across the line full of empty spaces. “Don’t stop, keep walkin’. And don’t cut in line like dis idiaht heyaah.”

    Over the next few days I felt foreign. I knew people couldn’t possibly because I lived in Istanbul. My inner monologue stayed nasty. To the smiley guy at my local coffee shop, my inner monologue sniffed, “You’ve never been to Istanbul have you? You don’t understand.” To some girls I heard complaining about some love interest, my inner monologue sneered “You are so vacuous and people in Istanbul have harder lives. Shut up.” To the squirrels at the park across the street from me my inner monologue mused, “These squirrels don’t know how lucky they are to have all this green space. Istanbul doesn’t have any places for squirrels. Also, I wonder what they taste like? I bet they’re delicious.”

    The unchecked condescension of my inner monologue was worst at my yoga classes. I have never depended on yoga for anything but exercise, but I was always easygoing and patient when it came to listening to the spiritual teachings of the instructors and unscientific statements they came up with about our bodies. But after Istanbul, I suddenly felt less tolerant.

    Teacher: When we feel stress, tension lands in our hips.

    Inner monologue: YOU KNOW WHAT ACTUALLY LANDS IN OUR HIPS? SITTING DOWN.

    Teacher: We have to remember that it’s love that binds the world together, that amidst the darkness there’s so much light and you can shine that light out onto the world.

    Inner monologue: First of all, that is just a glib thing to say. Second of all, you’re paraphrasing Jesus with that light of the world stuff and not citing your sources. Third, this spirituality is like pablum masquerading as fusion food (Canadian water! Rice from countries that actually grow rice!), a bland mix of West and East cobbled together to create the illusion of effortless self-actualization. Fourth, we all know that most of us are too occupied with our lives to do any major light-shining or contributions to making the world a better place. Our fancy yoga clothes are stitched by children in Bangladesh and that’s just the most immediately obvious problem with our lavish lifestyles.

    Teacher: We come together to take some time for ourselves in this spiritual practice of yoga…

    Inner monologue: CUT THE CRAP WE’RE JUST A BUNCH OF BOUGIES GETTING SOME EXERCISE

    Meditating was impossible; concentrating on the asanas was difficult. Even just showing up at the studio made me feel guilty for the ease of my life in Canada. Everything about the place – the candles, the slick wood floors, the Better Homes and Yoga Studios decorations, the prodigious expense of taking classes – contrasted with the difficulties I encountered every day in Istanbul. These aren’t my own difficulties though (those are fairly minor), but the difficulties of those around me. In Istanbul, I get to see people whose purchasing power is half of that of a Canadian making minimum wage struggle to make ends meet all the time! There are Syrian refugee children begging in the street! Women are treated as second-class citizens! The government likes to arrest anybody they feel is critical of them! It’s a bouquet of daily difficulties that, somehow, made me feel somewhat less guilty about having a comparatively easy life.

    To add to these feelings that nobody understood what I’d been through, I began to feel uncomfortable with the fact that I’d allowed the world’s (and specifically, Istanbul’s) problems to determine some of my feelings of worth. Cognitively I understood that no Canadians were at fault for being born in Canada, that the insignificance of the problems they experience is directly related to being from Canada. I also understood that I shouldn’t feel self-righteous or good about myself for living in a place with problems or for doing things to solve those problems. My own and others’ problems do not exist to make me feel better about myself, and living in a place with relatively few problems like Canada shouldn’t and doesn’t mean that I, and other Canadians, can’t carve out a meaningful existence. Not only are those feelings of self-righteousness and annoyance presumptive, they also exploit the lives of those with major problems for my own gain.

    What a cornucopia of contradictory feelings!

    Another problem: It wasn’t until I came back to Canada that I fully appreciated the worry that my friends and family felt during a Turkish summer that was objectively terrifying. The worst moment, I think, was the airport bombing at Ataturk International Airport. That day, I was flying to Istanbul and I’d mentioned it to lots of people. What those people didn’t know was my flight time and that I was flying to a different airport. While I was waiting for the baggage counter to open, my phone died. Only a few minutes later, the bombs went off in Istanbul. It wasn’t until two hours after the bombing that I was able to get messages out that I was okay. The bombing was hugely upsetting for me, but it wasn’t until I came back that I truly understood how horrible it was for my family and friends, since at least I’d enjoyed the privilege of being aware that I hadn’t died the whole time. And so coming home, which entailed being sucked into a whirlpool of condescending feelings, also entailed feeling hammered by guilt about the decisions I’ve made to live in Istanbul and to have a Turkish partner.

    I’ve been back a week and a half now, and many of the feelings have softened as I’ve readjusted to the ease of living in Canada, but they haven’t disappeared. I still feel guilt about my decisions to put myself in danger that I could just as easily avoid. And I’m still challenged by feelings of condescension for the ease of Canadian life.

    The feeling that has persisted the strongest, oddly, is an utter contempt for yoga spirituality. The other day I found myself thinking of ways to tackle this problem – should I quit yoga and take a different exercise class? Should I look for a dance tradition that’s heavy on stretching? Should I just try to find yoga teachers that are more into the exercise aspects of the practice?

    It culminated in a late-night googling session where I googled many things including, “Non-spiritual yoga,” “yoga for people who just want to exercise,” and “yoga for athiests.” Unfortunately, all I found were the musings of a few angry bloggers about the culturally appropriative and classist aspects of yoga, which was cool because I agreed with them but not that cool because no studio anywhere seems to have embraced a yoga without daytime television-esque spiritual pretensions.

    In conclusion, Turkey and Istanbul have changed me in ways I did not expect. Canada feels like a home again, but a slightly more ill-fitting one. And I might hate yoga now.

  • Kyrgyzstan: Yurts, Russian, and Radicalization Fears and Realities

    As an adolescent, I hated yurts, which smacked of a patronizing variety of poseur-hippie that rubbed me in all the wrong ways. The offensive yurts always seemed to pop up on university campuses, at homeschooling conferences, and random stretches of grass, accompanied by a posse of beckoning dreadlocked evangelists, “Hey, do you want to come and see our yurt? Come inside!”

    It’s not that yurts aren’t cool, it was just that they seemed so cliché.

    With this in mind, it is with a touch of embarrassment that I confess that my greatest goal for my trip to Kyrgyzstan was to, at some point, sleep in a yurt. I knew it was likely to be a tourist yurt, but sleeping in a yurt in Kyrgyzstan makes me less of a poseur than homeschooling-conference hippies, right?

    Maybe not, but people can change.

    Anyway, at an undeniably touristic yurt camp where I stayed, where German tourists flock to bask in the natural glory that are the pastures and mountains of Kyrgyzstan, I fell in with a group of Kyrgyz tourists who, like me, were entirely unused to yurt-living.  They arrived a few hours after I did, and cheerfully plonked themselves beside me in the dining yurt and began chattering.

    almaluu yurt camp kyrgyzstan

    The afore-mentioned dining yurt

    “I slept in a yurt once before actually,” said one of my new buddies. “But it wasn’t as comfortable as these ones. It was a real yurt.”

    “You mean you don’t stay in yurts regularly, not even for vacation?” I asked. “No,” said another girl. “We don’t. We’re from Bishkek.”

    The following night, the same girls regaled me with tales of their daytime activity, a show of traditional horse games and archery. As we ate we watched a young Kyrgyz girl dance to traditional music and then stood while she conducted a “master class” which was supposed to be a way for us to experience Kyrgyz dance, and was definitely a way to make us all look like total idiots. The Kyrgyz women were barely better than me at the moves, which surprised me. I’d thought that they would have at least some background, though movies or a lesson in an elementary school gym class – something. It didn’t appear to be the case.

    We sat down again to munch on cookies and sip tea mixed with jam. The conversation went on in Russian, so I mostly focused on eating because unless I’m being spoken to directly, it’s hard for me to follow. I looked around at them. They comprised a wider variety of ages than I’d first assumed. The youngest girl I met was 15, and the oldest member of the group was in his early thirties.

    “How did you all meet each other?” I asked, as the conversation lulled.

    “Actually,” one explained, “This is a program called Muras and it’s about kochman. In Kyrgyz, kochman means nomad, and this program is about bringing youth who are Kyrgyz but who don’t have their culture anymore to experience the traditional Kyrgyz culture. You know, all Kyrgyz people used to be nomads and live in yurts, but now there are also a lot of people like us who live sedentary lives in Bishkek and speak usually Russian.”

    “Are there any Kyrgyz people who don’t even speak Kyrgyz?” I asked.

    “Yeah, maybe. We go to school in Russian and university in Russian, and maybe there are some parents who speak only Russian at home. In Bishkek, it’s possible. Or people speak Kyrgyz, but not at an academic level. Anyway, with this program we go around Kyrgyzstan for ten days for free, and we see some traditional things like what it is like to live in yurt, riding horses, dances, crafts and things like that. Some of us are writers, bloggers, and journalism students. We take pictures and write about our experience in order to encourage other youth to know more about traditional Kyrgyz culture.”

    “I have another question,” I said. “During the Soviet Union, Kazakh people were forced into collective farming and more or less stopped being nomads. Did that happen in Kyrgyzstan too?”

    “Actually, yes, there are lots of sedentary Kyrgyz people now,” said the woman sitting next to me, a doctoral student called Gulbara. “What usually happens nowadays is that people in the villages have some animals, but instead of taking them to pasture in the summertime they pay another shepherd to take his animals to pasture. So maybe only five people from every village go to live in a yurt in the summer. The rest stay in town and work. A lot of people don’t want to stay in yurts. Moving is expensive, and being in a yurt can be a bit boring.

    Next up was an interview with camp staff, conducted by the journalistically inclined members of the group. The gist of the interview, translated for me later, was that the woman working at her camp loved her job because she saw it as a way to combat the rise of radicalization in Kyrgyzstan. “Why are youth interested in radicalization?” she asked. “Why not be interested in our traditions? That’s why I do what I do.”

    I asked one girl, a journalist called Jibek, about her job outside of this program. “I mostly write about success stories,” she said. “In Russian and sometimes in English.” “Not in Kyrgyz?” I asked. “No,” she said. “Actually, my English is better than my Kyrgyz.”

    At the next meal, I got a question I wasn’t prepared for: “So, what did you know about Kyrgyzstan before coming?”

    I stammered, both because I was expected to answer in Russian because I hadn’t expected the question. “Um, I heard that you have yurts, that you eat a lot of meat, that you used to be a part of the Soviet Union… but you know, North Americans really know nothing about Central Asia. Really nothing. So I can’t say I was raised to think about Kyrgyzstan at all.”

    “Well,” said one of my conversation partners helpfully, “Kyrgyzstan is actually kind of a contradicted country. We are right next to China and we look Asian, but we’re not Chinese. We speak a Turkic language, but we’re not Turkish. Many of us speak Russian and we were part of the Soviet Union, but we’re not Russian either. And we have many different ethnic groups – Kyrgyz, Russian, Uzbek, Muslim Chinese, some Turks and Koreans. And we’re kind of at a strategic location between all of those countries, so everybody wants a piece of the pie – especially China.”

    The next day the group was rejoined by a woman working for UNICEF Kyrgyzstan, and the topic of radicalization came up again. “I work with education and things,” she said, “and some healthcare too. There is a big problem with radicalization in Kyrgyzstan, so we had a measles epidemic recently because of it. There were some people that were telling parents that vaccines weren’t halal, and that’s all it took.”

    It seemed funny to me. Kyrgyzstan seemed utterly different from Turkey; few women were wearing Islamic coverings and I heard the call to prayer drifting from a nearby mosque only rarely. Still, the topic of radicalization had come up twice, and it seemed as though people were talking enough about it that it must have been current.

    I left the yurt camp and my new friends to work for a few days in the nearest large town of Karakol. My homestay host had things to say about radicalization to. “Kyrgyzstan has some very nice, very good traditions and very good things,” he said. “But also some problems. Like radicalization is a big problem. In the south, about 1000 people went to join radical Islamist organizations this year. (Note: I’m just quoting, but this link claims 500.)  It is mostly happening in the south, among young men who are not educated and don’t have anything good to do in their life. Yes, it’s a problem. A very big problem.

    It seemed almost preposterous to me, as on the surface Kyrgyzstan had none of the overt aggressiveness that Turkey sometimes has, particularly when it came to young men. I occasionally got greeted in the street, but nobody touched me or tried to follow me, and most people did not even extend their greeting to flirtation.

    I was standing in line at the airport in Bishkek waiting for my flight to Istanbul when the bombs went off at Ataturk airport. The latest news appears to indicate that one of the bombers was from Kyrgyzstan, so I guess there was something to what everybody seemed to be saying.

    The main gist of the trip, however, was not radicalization but hospitality. And yurts. They were as good as I imagined.

    IMG_3689

  • The Cult of Ataturk

    The first time I came to Turkey to live, I was living in Izmir. Life in Izmir was a constant barrage of Ataturk paraphernalia. People had decals of his signature on their back windshields, tattoos of it on their arms, and pictures of him everywhere – on the wall, on cell-phone cases, on their transit cards, key-chains, you name it. Reading a book about Ataturk in public got me many approving comments and people would stop walking to comment and show me their tattoos/keychains/cell phone cases, etc.

    Once, while at the beach in Cesme I saw a woman splayed out on the beach, blond hair seductively spread out on her towel. Her bathing-suit area was barely covered by a black bikini. She had Ataturk’s signature tattooed on her pelvic bone, angled towards her vulva like a Freudian exclamation point.

    This is an Izmir transit card. The writing says, "Oh Turkish youth, your first duty is to preserve and defend Turkish independence and the Turkish republic."

    This is an Izmir transit card. The writing says, “Oh Turkish youth, your first duty is to preserve and defend Turkish independence and the Turkish republic.”

    From other people, I heard about a fancy dress display in Izmir where the dress on the right was a big Turkish flag and the dress on the left had a giant decal of Ataturk’s face.

    Ataturk's face on a Turkish government building in Istanbul

    Ataturk’s face and signature on a Turkish government building in Istanbul. Izmir is the epicentre of the Ataturk fan base, but his cult extends into many other parts of Turkey.

    This was just my introduction to the Cult of Ataturk in Turkey. Izmir is the epicentre of this, but Ataturk’s popularity ranges far and wide among people of a few different political stripes. Although these people are predominantly secular or secular-ish, the range of their political beliefs can include everything from hoping for Turkey to become more aligned with European ideals (yea) to virulent Turkish nationalism (and it’s bastard child – hating Kurds and Armenians) (nay).

    “But I don’t know anything about Ataturk!” you say. Here is a crash course, because I am less here to talk about the history of Ataturk as I am to talk about his current legacy in Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a military leader who became the first president of Turkey in 1923 after securing military victory against the Allies. He is known for implementing a series of reforms in Turkey. This included changing the writing system of the Turkish language to the Latin alphabet and proposing new ethnically “Turkish” words to replace Arabic or Persian loan-words; secularization of the government and country including banning religious-based attire; and providing civil rights for women.

    Sounds okay, right?

    Ataturk also was a major figure in the Turkish nationalist movement, which gave Turkish people a great common identity but was less beneficial for some other groups living in the former Ottoman Empire, such as Greeks. Much of the “Turkification” of Turkey can be attributed to Ataturk’s efforts, and people who espouse his ideas int he present day are known as “Kemalists.”

    Let’s get back to the matter at hand. When I talk about “The Cult of Ataturk”, I’m not being hyperbolic. As one friend from Izmir explained to me,

    “Back when I was still a believer [in God], every time I imagined God he had Ataturk’s face. And it wasn’t just me. I’ve spoken to other friends about this and they’ve said the same thing.”

    I already believed her, so imagine how unsurprised I was when I had a similar conversation about a month later.

    “We, in Turkey, we need to go back to what it was like under Ataturk – not with any of this Kurdish people playing the victim stuff. When I was a kid, Ataturk was like GOD!

    Ataturk postcards I picked up in North Eastern Turkey

    Ataturk postcards I picked up in North-Eastern Turkey

    A few weeks before this, I had been to the Ataturk mausoleum in Ankara with another Turkish friend. This mausoleum is, no joke, like a Greek temple of the gods, all pillars, statues, polished stone, gardens, and carefully tended grandiosity. We got there late in the afternoon and weren’t able to go into the museum. My friend said, “too bad we couldn’t go into the museum. The last time I was there, and I could see all of Ataturk’s things and his books, I – I really felt something.”

    Ataturk Masoleum

    We got there right at closing time, and soldiers were shooing people out. I snapped this picture as a soldier stared daggers at me for not moving fast enough. Usually, this area is full of throngs of people.

    The other part of the “Cult” part of the “Cult of Ataturk” is most Turkish people’s unwillingness to criticize him or his legacy, even just a little bit. Another friend in Izmir told me,

    “Ataturk is such a huge figure in Turkey, and people treat him like he was beyond reproach. Even my friends are like this. For instance, I think Ataturk was mostly a good guy – but human. He did some good things, but he wasn’t perfect so he did some things that also weren’t that great. But I can’t even say that.”

    Another friend said,

    “Turkey in general is very conservative, but in Izmir there is another kind of conservatism – that is, Kemalism. People just aren’t critical and the devotion to Ataturk prevents people from seriously examining their attitudes.”

    If you don’t believe these people, allow me to show you several screenshots or comments from a blog post that called Ataturk a “benevolent dictator.” To me, this seems fair, as the word “dictator,” applies to anybody who was not democratically elected, no matter how good at governing they are . . . right?

    According to these comments, wrong. Here is one where the person took it rather personally.

    Ataturk Comment 1

    Here is my favourite. Somehow, this ‘anonymous’ manages to hate Racists, Kurds, and Armenians all at the same time! I can only dream of one day reaching such impressive levels of hypocrisy!

    Ataturk Comment 2

    Of course, may of the comments on the site are quite reasonable, and you can read them for yourself. However, most of them are much more reactionary than the post deserves.

    The Problem with the Cult of Ataturk

    It bears saying that I fully support when people are fans of Ataturk because of the good things that he did. Even I think women’s rights and having a secular state are a good thing, and there is no doubt that many of Ataturk’s reforms were beneficial to Turkey in general.

    However, Ataturk is also a powerful symbol of the Turkish Nationalist movement, and I have something of a fraught relationship with the ideology of nationalism in general. At best, nationalist movements can gain rights for people who lack them. At worst, nationalism can create division or violence, particularly when people belonging to two (or more) previously not-so-clearly delineated groups begin to use a particular identity in order to make claims about how another group is a very bad thing, or when one clearly delineated group decides that another clearly delineated group should become exactly like them.

    To add to this, nationalism is difficult to define. In the Turkish case, does being proud of speaking Turkish count? Listening to Sezen Aksu? Eating breakfast for an hour every morning?

    When I write about nationalism in Turkey, I am not simply writing about appreciation for Turkish national culture and language, but rather about cultures of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ specifically regarding Turkish people and Kurdish people. A common attitude that I have observed among Turkish people is this: Traditional non-Turks that toe the line and act like Turks are fine, of course. Kurds, however, are not fine because (and I quote somebody I met) “Turkey has given them so much and then they complain.”

    (Again, it bears repeating before I continue that they are many fabulous wonderful Turkish people who are not like this at all, some of whom read my blog – guys, I don’t mean you!)

    But for those who do think this way, the argument goes like this. Turkey, in its benevolence, gave Kurdish people Turkish passports and the chance to be Turkish (wasn’t that nice of them?) Kurdish people don’t work hard enough and have way too many babies, so they’re poor. If they complain about the fact that they are poor, they are just ungrateful whiners. Some Kurdish people aren’t poor, so that must mean that Kurdish people in general could just be exactly like Turkish people if they would only pull their socks up and behave like proper Turkish people. This includes speaking Turkish, acting Turkish, and calling themselves – you guessed it – Turkish. Also, there are lots of poor Turkish people, which de facto means that things are definitely not worse for Kurds in general in Turkey because if Turkish people can also be poor, discrimination is obviously not a problem.

    What is especially frustrating is that many of the Turkish people I talk to don’t understand that their frustrations with Kurdish nationalism are a result of their own Turkish nationalist ideas. In the words of one friend,

    “I really hate Turkish nationalism.”

    Later,

    “I cannot even believe that Kurdish people want to take their government oaths in Kurdish.”

    If you aren’t a nationalist, why would it matter what language people took their oaths in???

    I am not particularly exaggerating the tone of this discourse. And while I think things get thornier when we talk about the PKK (the Kurdish rebel/terrorist army, depending on who you ask) because they actually engage in combat and I don’t think killing people is ever a good thing, some of the things that people say about Kurdish nationalism seem like non-issues to me. So Kurdish government officials want to take their oaths in Kurdish. If you’re not nationalist, it shouldn’t matter . . . right?

    None of this can actually be said to be Ataturk’s fault, as he’s been dead for nearly 100 years. Ataturk’s legacy, on the other hand, is a major contributor to this as Ataturk advocated for the Turkification of Turkey. And instead of allowing Turkish people to be critical of this “True Turks act Turkish” ideology, the cultish nature of Ataturk’s legacy means that people who express doubts about Ataturk’s ideology or legacy are likely to be lambasted in by similar comments to the ones found in the article I linked to earlier.

    Another problem is that Kemalism positions itself in opposition to strong religious factions in the country. One person said to me, “I don’t love nationalism, but I think it might be the only way to work against the conservative religious factions that are gaining power in Turkey right now.”

    The only way? It was astonishing to me, coming from a country whose national narrative is basically multiculturalism, that he didn’t envision a middle ground.

    Free Speech and the Cult of Ataturk

    “Insulting the Turkish Nation” and insulting Ataturk’s legacy are illegal under the Turkish penal code, punishable by up to three years in prison. YouTube has been banned several times in Turkey, allegedly because some people have insulted Ataturk in the comments. Nobody likes to be insulted, but what is this? Could this post be seen as insulting Ataturk’s legacy? As a Canadian, I am unlikely to be tried in a Turkish court, but could I be denied a visa for writing this kind of thing? I don’t know and I hope not.

    And here we are today!

    Today there are parliamentary elections in Turkey, and I have my fingers crossed into knots that Turkey will elect somebody good to parliament.

    These elections are taking place in order to try and correct a snafu that Turkey has been dealing with since the last parliamentary elections five months ago. During those elections, Erdogan’s party failed to secure a majority, which meant that they couldn’t form the government unless they were supported by another party. Everybody got very excited about the possibility of a coalition, but none of the parties were particularly willing to share the toys in the parliamentary sandbox. Because there was no government, a new series of elections are called.

    My hope is that, instead of people sinking further and further into their respective political corners, pointing fingers and screaming “You’re the bad guy! I’m the good guy!”, making it difficult to come to any sort of meaningful compromise or even form a parliament, Turkish people will elect good leaders today, leaders who will work together for some kind of unity within the country for Turkish, Kurdish, secular, and religious people alike. It’s a high hope, to be sure, but maybe not impossible.

    Polls have closed now, so I’m off to look at the news. Have a good day everybody!

  • Noah’s Ark, Mount Ararat, Drunkenness, Rape, Incest, and Armenian Pride

    Mount Ararat from Armenia

    The snowy peak of Mount Ararat rises imperiously above Yerevan and greater Armenia and, despite being officially on the Turkish side of the border, it is a major symbol of Armenia and has been on the Armenian coat of arms since at least the Soviet period.

    Armenian Soviet Coat of Arms

    Please excuse the checkered background and focus on the hammer, sickle, mountain, and grapes.

    But in this post, I don’t only want to talk about the mountain. See the grapes on the bottom of the coat of arms? Well, those have a special significance for Armenia. A delicious, intoxicating, darkly comedic significance.

    On my way to Armenia, I met a woman on the train. “Armenia’s very famous for its wine,” she said. “It all started in the Bible. After the great flood, Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat, and when he came down off the ark he planted vineyards and made wine. And then . . . well, we don’t have to talk about what happened after that. But wine is still being made there today! It’s delicious. It’s a really great thing about Armenia. You should taste some while you’re here.”

    It’s true. We don’t have to talk about what happened after Noah made wine on Mount Ararat. But we can, because the black humour of this story turning into a source of Armenian national pride is too good to pass up.

    So, as my train-buddy said, tradition has it that God sent a great flood in antiquity to punish a world rife with evil. Noah was the only good person in the whole world, so God let him in on a little secret. “I’m going to punish everybody,” God said, “and send a great flood. Everybody’s going to die. Except you, because you’re righteous. So in order to prepare for this event, build a vast ark and take animals from each species so that they might repopulate the earth after I’ve finished making it rain.”

    So Noah did. Everybody looked at Noah like he was utterly crazy as he was building the ark, but when it started to rain everybody drowned except Noah because Noah was better than everybody else.

    When the waters did go down, the ark landed on top of Mount Ararat. General scholarly opinion holds that, if the flood story is based in historical fact, the biblical Mount Ararat was probably not located in modern-day Armenia. This is not important, however, for the traditional signification of the mountain. In order for the story to take on the trappings of reality, all that has to happen is for people to believe.

    So, let’s say for the sake of argument that Noah’s Ark really did land on top of the Armenian/Turkish Mount Ararat. Noah and his sons climbed down off the snow-covered summit, God sent them a rainbow as a sign that he would never again send such a great flood, and then Noah got down to the business of planting the vineyard that would become a symbol of a small landlocked country called Armenia several millennia later.

    After the grape harvest, Noah made himself some wine and got so drunk he passed out, naked. His son Ham entered the tent and “saw” Noah lying there. Ham went out and told his brothers Shem and Japheth about Noah’s nudity. Shem and Japheth, rather than going in to “see” for themselves, went in backwards with a blanket and covered their father up.

    After Noah woke up from his drunken state, he cursed Ham and Ham’s descendants. Why, you ask? Just for seeing him naked? Well, my heathenistic friends, the general consensus is that “to see” functions as a euphemism for sex. So Ham raped his father.

    If I were told this story about a major landmark of my country, I would be like, “whoa now. We should just get rid of grapes. Like, all grapes. Can’t have things like that happening. Rape is bad. Cursing descendants who didn’t do anything wrong – also bad. Let’s just. Uh. Yeah. No. Okay, if we’re going to continue to have wine in this place, we might just want to keep it on the down-low. You know, because of that terrible bad thing that happened. Which probably happened on another Mount Ararat. Yeah.”

    And yet the Noah’s Ark imagery seems to be everywhere. A major wine and brandy company in Armenia is called “Ararat.” I went to their factory, which contained prominent signage about the origins of winemaking in Armenia being when Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat.

    Ararat Brandy (Distilled Wine)

    Ararat Brandy (Distilled Wine)

    I like to imagine that Armenians, when told this story are all like, “well, that sucks but . . . wine.”

    And so wine and brandy are a great source of Armenian national pride, and nearly every Armenian I meet finds a way to tell me about how good they are. And they’re right – they are good. Just . . . enjoy responsibly and make sure you educate your children to know that drunk means no and …. incest also means no.

    photo by:
  • Turkish Culture: Kurban Bayram (Eid al-Adha) or How to Slaughter a Goat

    *** WARNING. This post contains pictures of a dead goat. ***

    Not being Muslim, I have little awareness of when major Muslim holidays fall, and so I was happily surprised when my friend Oznur in Istanbul invited me to spend “Kurban Bayram” with her family.

    “They’re planning on sacrificing a goat,” she said.

    What a chance! It’s not every day that somebody invites me to a goat sacrifice, so I gratefully accepted. Then I realized I didn’t actually know anything about the holiday, although I assumed it was religious. So I asked Oznur whether the idea of it was to give meat to the poor. She laughed.

    “That might have been the original idea, but mostly these days I think people just put the meat in the freezer.”

    It turns out that Kurban Bayram is the same holiday as Eid al-Adha, which I had heard about before. For the Christians and Jews out there, it is sort of like the Muslim equivalent of Easter or Passover and follows the basic theme of “a lamb is slaughtered in the place of a person.”

    Not Christian or Jewish? Simply confused? Allow me put my bachelors degree in religion to use (for once!) and offer a very simplified explanation.

    Early on in the Bible, God commands a guy named Abraham to slaughter his only son, Isaac. Abraham, being very obedient and devoted to God, begins to obey only to have God tell him that,while he’s actually pretty impressed with his devotion, he doesn’t actually have to slaughter his son. Instead, he can slaughter a ram that has conveniently appeared on scene.

    But wait! There’s more!

    After that, the Israelites become enslaved in Egypt and God tells them that if they slaughter a lamb and paint their door frames with its blood, they will be protected against the Angel of Death. People who do not do this, however, will find their first born son dead in the morning. After that, the Jewish people will be able to up and leave slavery and Egypt because the Egyptians aren’t going to be in any condition to chase them. The Egyptians, apparently, deserve this harsh punishment because of the stubbornness of their Pharaoh vis-à-vis the Israelites. Jewish people still commemorate this holiday as Pesach, or Passover.

    Many years later, Jesus appears on the scene and, after spreading his message, he falls afoul of the authorities and is crucified. Subsequently, his followers lay the foundations for Christian theology, which maintains that Jesus was a. God’s only son (kind of like Isaac) and b. a sacrificial lamb of sorts who volunteered his life to save humankind. Jesus’s crucifixion is celebrated by Christians as Easter.

    One more thing: In the Muslim account, it is not Isaac who Abraham is supposed to slaughter, but Abraham’s other son Ishmael. In the Judeo-Christian account, Ishmael kind of doesn’t count as Abraham’s son because he is his son via Hagar, a slave woman. I have never really understood why it was okay that Abraham accorded Isaac so much more value than Ishmael, but my theological botherations have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

    So while Jews celebrate their version of the holiday be not eating leavening, and Christians by hiding chocolate eggs and waving palm leaves, Muslims, at least in Turkey celebrate it by actually slaughtering an animal.

    Now if you thought that I might think that this is primitive and barbaric, you would be wrong. I understand that if I eat meat (which I do) it has to be slaughtered somehow, and while many a belief system has promoted things that I would consider objectionable, I honestly think a once-a-year goat slaughtrifice is neither here nor there.

    That being said, however, the literalness of the interpretation of the holiday is very different from what I am used to.

    The day before Bayram, we drove to Oznur’s family’s village in Eastern Turkey. On the way, we spied several markets selling sheep and goats for slaughter the next day. We also passed many a goat and/or sheep that had found itself being transported to its death in a variety of (sometimes very funny) ways.

    My favourite was this goat riding in a motorcycle sidecar. His last rites may have been a bit perfunctory, but he sure got a good last ride.

    This is a man. On a motorcycle. With a goat in the sidecar.

    This is a man. On a motorcycle. With a goat in the sidecar. I only wish the picture quality were better.

    That night, as we slept over in the village, the strangled cries of all the animals who would be slaughtered the next day filled the air. I don’t know how they knew they were going to die, but I have never heard a cow make a sound like that before, and I am sure that somehow it knew. This was the most disturbing part of the holiday for me.
    The next morning a few people (not me) took pictures next to the goat, and then the family dug a hole in the ground for the blood to pool, pinned the goat down, and cut its throat.

    This is the goat in question.

    This is the goat in question.

    They continued holding it down until it died about three minutes later. As near as I could tell, the whole thing was about as humane as possible. The goat couldn’t see the knife before it cut him.
    Still, I didn’t take any pictures of the goat during the slaughter.

    After the goat died, he was dragged over to the house to be skinned. To make separating the skin from the rest of the goat easier, they cut a hole in the goat’s leg, inserted a pipe and, I kid you not, blew that goat up like a balloon.

    Seriously! He is blowing it up like a baloon!

    Seriously! He is blowing it up like a balloon!

    With a layer of air between the goat’s skin and its innards, it was time to hoist it up into a tree. This took a bit of effort because goats are heavy.

    Q. How many Turkish people does it take to hoist a goat? A. Three, duh.

    Q. How many Turkish people does it take to hoist a goat?
    A. Three, duh.

    After that, they skinned the goat, removed the organs, and threw the meat into pots to be prepared for lunch. While they were working, they told me that they actually did give a third of the meat to the poor. For some reason, I felt glad and a bit relieved.

    This was the final result.

    Those things that look like ribs in the centre are, in fact, ribs.

    Those things that look like ribs in the centre are, in fact, ribs.

    Thank you very much Oznur, Ozge, and family for the invitation and the hospitable welcome!