The meaning of hospitality
Our group, and hosts, in Nigde
The days have been so long (18-plus hours is the norm, it seems) and so full that I am beginning to fall behind. But this isn’t meant to be a travelogue, so I won’t trouble myself with describing the wonders of places like the Kaymakli Underground City, or the renowned Cappadocia, and will focus instead on the human interactions at the heart of this trip.
As I write this, it is Thursday morning here and we are back in drizzly Istanbul for three more days filled with meetings, school visits and a bit of sightseeing. When last I left you it was Monday afternoon and we had just visited the science high school on the outskirts of Konya. From there we drove about 100 miles east to the town of Nigde, where our group was to stay with host families for the night.
We drove through the gates of the Sunguroglu K-12 school at dusk, lightning flickering in the distance, the damp air redolent of flowers. Rob Bowman and I were greeted by Aydın Demircan, a professor of organic chemistry at the local university, our host for the night, along with his wife, a pharmacist (I am doing my best with names!), for the night. After loading our bags into the family Toyota, we headed into the school. We sat in a semi-circle in the office of , the school’s founder, and introduced ourselves.
Afşar owns one of Turkey’s largest furniture businesses, and is a devoted follower and close friend of Fethullah Gulen. He told us, with evident pride, that he was born in Nigde and grew up poor in Ankara, selling parsley on the streets before school to make ends meet. He barely made it through elementary school before dropping out, but became successful at a young age and has devoted a significant portion of his wealth to the school.
Nigde school founder Celal Afşar, with Ataturk looming
Next, we were ushered to the school cafeteria, where the first in a series of surprises awaited us.
A line of elementary school girls dressed in ceremonial Anatolian garb, and boys in dervish costumes, stood in parallel lines at the entrance, leaving an aisle for us to walk down into the cafeteria, where a sumptuous feast (surprise, surprise) awaited. The girls handed each of us a bouquet of flowers as folkloric music blared over the speakers and the adults clapped rhythmically to welcome us. I would embed a video, but the Turkish government has banned You Tube, a sign that Turkey still has some work to do to be a truly open society. (A video insulting Ataturk a couple of years ago prompted the ban. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, and you do not diss Ataturk.) But here is a link to a video I uploaded elsewhere.
The now-expected feast followed, a multi-course offering of soup, Turkish salad (much like a Greek salad but with ingredients finely chopped), an eggplant and lamb casserole, several other meat and chicken dishes. We sat with our hosts and dozens of other parents from the school.
While we ate, the children performed a series of dances. The boys simulated a Dervish ceremony. Then two groups of girls, one older, one younger, performed ceremonial dances while everyone clapped rhythmically.
After dinner, our hosts showed a 30-minute video that they said epitomizes the goals of the Gülen movement and visits like ours. It featured high schools students from Nigde and Sacramento, Calif. About a dozen kids from Nigde traveled to Sacramento in April, after a year’s worth of web-based communication prompted by a girl who traveled to Turkey from California on a trip similar to ours. The girl, from the Performing and Fine Arts Charter School, was so enthused by her trip that she forged permanent bonds with students and Turkey, and the trip to California followed. “One Voice,” written by students and performed over 10 days, resulted.
After a demonstration of a Turkish painting technique called water marbling, and heartfelt speeches by our host and members of our group, and an indoor fireworks display to cap it all off, we repaired to our hosts homes for yet more food and conversation.
The Demircan famiy
I suspect that to our hosts and sponsors, these late-night chats are at the core of what motivates them to organize these trips. The Demircans welcomed Rob and me into their spacious and spotless apartment as honored guests, as if our presence was a unique and momentous event for them.
In reality, dozens of trip like ours have passed through Nigde each summer for the past few years. Most of these same families share their homes with visitors from the U.S. and other countries at least a couple of times each week. It’s mind-boggling to realize that the elaborate dinner and ceremony arranged for us is repeated, almost as a matter of routine, possibly up to 30 or 40 times between May and September each year. I’m not sure how they do it.
Once settled onto a couch in the living room, I tried to keep my eyes propped open while Aydin talked at length and with eloquence about the importance of family, the need for people to reach across divides of cultural and faith and love one another. We talked about the differences in Turkish and American educational practices and attitudes. We talked about the Gülen movement and its impact on Turkey and people’s lives.
If it was a sales job or a propaganda blitz, Aydin delivered it with great subtlety, with none of the proselytizer’s fervor or aggressiveness.
We had a similar experience last night (Wednesday) here in Istanbul. After a busy day, we were ferried into an expensive neighborhood situated on high ground and ushered into the apartment of Ali, a structural engineer and his wife Melek (which means angel in Turkish). Their apartment features what I can only describe as an eating porch. It’s a long, narrow enclosed porch, carpeted, soft benches built along the walls, pillows everywhere. Three round folding tables were set for dinner.
Melek is a world-class cook. According to Ali, the family (they have three daughters ages 12, 10 and 5) hosts visiting delegations like ours at least once a week, and on other nights welcomes foreign students into their home for food and conversation. Ali described Melek as a housewife, but that’s not really accurate. She is a world-class chef who happens to work out of her home.
Ali and Melek
Those lucky enough to be invited in are treated to vast quantities of food, made from her own recipes. From a heavenly bean dish baked in a tomato sauce (“Turkish dynamite,” Ali called it with a mischievous grin) to grape leaves stuffed with beef and eggplant, to a Turkish salad enhanced with smoked eggplant and yogurt, this was the meal of a lifetime. What was magical about Melek’s food was that you could eat vast quantities of it (our hosts gave us little choice in the matter) and not feel stuffed.
Ali, with Hasan and Alptekin performing their excellent translating, said that his work is important, but that welcoming people into his home and conversing about the need for love and understanding in the world trumps anything he does for pay. There is an Islamic belief, he said, that any blessings you bestow by being a good host are returned by God, magnified 10 times. If that is the case, Ali and Melek have the brightest of eternal futures awaiting them.
The hospitality was genuine. I have never been made more welcome in the homes of strangers than I have on this trip. And even if the hospitality comes with an agenda, that agenda is nothing like an ulterior motive. It’s more a desire to demonstrate through actions the philosophy adherents to the Gülen movement espouse.
Someone with an eye even more jaded than mine might find this all faintly creepy and cult-like. But that’s not how it feels at all. It feels like people who live their faith by bestowing kindness. The subtext is that Islam is not a religion driven by the hatred of fanatics, as people who get most of their information from U.S. cable news might believe. One would have to be deeply cynical to come away from this experience without a deepened respect and appreciation for devout Muslims, especially those from this movement.
We reclined on pillows for three hours after dinner, talking and fighting off torpor. Ali brought out some special dates from Saudi Arabia. Then a second variety. Then a third. He insisted that each of us sample them. Then he brought out hazelnuts prepared two different ways. Then candies from Konya. And finally, the coup de grace, heaping plates of fresh cherries.
“Hasan, make him stop!” pleaded Nezha Hamid, a doctoral student at the University of Denver.
“He will never stop,” Hasan replied with a grin and shrug.
"Turkish thunder" is how Ali jokingly describes this bean dish, one of Melek's many specialties
