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Published in the Enterprise August 13th, 2008.

 Turkish Hospitality Lends Luxury to Spartan Cycling Routine

By Jim Durfey

Five times a day the mellifluous call to prayer wafts across Istanbul.  Imams sing the entreaty to worship from minarets.  Mosques in Istanbul have two of these towers sprouting skyward in front of the domed prayer halls.  Gilded in bronze, silver and gold, the mosques glimmer across the skyline.  The largest rival the magnificence of any European cathedral.

We had seen plenty of mosques in India, but Indian mosques paled in comparison to the huge, exquisitely decorated Turkish halls of worship.  To get here, we had to skip two other Muslim countries: Pakistan and Iran.  While Iran is by all counts safe to visit, doing so for Americans proved prohibitively expensive for our shoestring budget.  We heard mixed reports about Pakistan.  Traveling there would probably be safe, but all the routes around Iran would take too long.  Reluctantly, we booked cheap tickets from Western India to Istanbul.

We landed, appropriately enough , on the very edge of Asia.  Istanbul, for centuries a cultural bridge between East and West, straddles the Bosporous Strait, and is therefore technically half in Europe and half in Asia.  From here we would commence the end of our journey; the final leg that would bring us across Europe to Paris.

My mother Netzy, a special-ed teacher at East Side Elementary, finished class for the summer just before we flew to Turkey.  She is an avid biker and enjoys traveling.  With her summer open, she decided to join us for a month.  She met us in Istanbul.

Though she biked often around Livingston, Netzy wasn’t used to our style of travel.  Especially in Europe, we could ill afford hotel rooms or restaurants.  Sleeping always meant camping.  For meals we purchased the cheapest staples: bread and tomatoes.  We sliced them up and gnawed away while sitting on the ground.

After biking for a day in hot weather, we usually found ourselves in need of a shower.  Lacking actual facilities, we could usually find a friendly homeowner willing to donate a garden hose to our cleanliness.  Already accustomed to bathing every night in whatever water was available at pumps in India, I had economized my bathing procedures.  Some areas get dirtier than others.  Why bother washing clean areas?  Shampoo is heavy and expensive and hair washing requires lots of water.  I had more important things to do, anyway.

From the beginning, Netzy put up with our penchant for camping and simple diet better than most mature, civilized women might.  However, she was not pleased with my hair hygiene.  Every time we passed a barber shop, she chided, “Let’s take you in their and get you cleaned up!”  Eager to maintain sovereignty over my head, I always resisted this offer.

I found it harder to resist Turkish hospitality.  We stayed in Istanbul at three different homes over the course of a week.  We had initially planned to camp on the outskirts of town.  However, Turks we met briefly lost no time inviting us into their homes.  When they learned we planned to camp, they insisted we stay, despite the size of our group and the quantity of our gear.

After a few days of preparation in Istanbul, we left, and Netzy commenced her first long ride with a loaded bike.  I appointed myself navigator, and had to stop often to ask for directions at gas stations and cafes.  When I returned to the road, I inevitably found Netzy sitting down, drinking tea proffered by friendly people relaxing by the roadside. Turkish hospitality, again!

Despite the tea, a full day of biking uphill in heavy traffic proved a rough initiation into our style of travel.  At the end of the day, Netzy was pooped.  All she wanted was a hotel and a hot shower.  However, the small town in which we found ourselves had no hotel-only a steep hill and an army base.  On the edge of town, I spotted a fire station.  No five star accommodation, but they did have flat open space in which a tent could be set up.  I stopped at the gate and used hand motions to ask a bemused fireman if I could camp in the back of the yard.

Before we knew it, we were seated in the fire station lounge, drinking coffee and tea.  All the firemen on duty quizzed us on what we were doing.  Yunus, a man with intelligent, inquisitive eyes hastily tore the August 2008 page out of the desk calendar.  He drew maps on the back to determine where I was from and where I had been.  Metin,  a young, serious officer broke into a grin when he found I was from the U.S.  He flexed his left bicep and formed an even bigger bicep around it with his right hand.  “American firemen strong,” he said.  I glanced at the ranks of muscled men before me.  I imitated his motion and said, “Turkish firemen are also strong.”  Everyone laughed.  The chief chuckled proudly as Netzy admired pictures of his grand children.

Suddenly, Metin rose from his chair.  He mimed water falling on his head. “Douche,” he said.  “Shower,” I translated.  Netzy jumped up and clasped her hands together, “Oh yes, thank you!” she said, unable to remain calm at the prospect of getting clean.  I let her go first.

When it was my turn, Metin led me to the shower.  Before he left, his face lit up with a grin and he handed me a huge bottle of shampoo.  While I might choose to ignore my mother, I have been conditioned to obey firemen.

After we had showered in a real shower, the fire chief arranged for us to sleep in the prayer room of the gas station next door.  We went to bed that night with nothing to complain of: not the cleanliness of ourselves or my hair and especially not the hospitable nature of the Turkish people.

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