The room was quaint and smelled of roses. A glass cabinet filled with china adorned the side wall and a pink rug rested on the middle of the floor. It was a striking contrast to the image of Turkey one gets from the media, though to me the most striking part about it...
During Kurban Bayramı, a holiday celebrating Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice for Allah, I flew to Istanbul instead of sacrificing a ram. In a sense, this holiday is like the American Thanksgiving — everyone goes home to their families, eats a specific animal,...
They call me American. I am not just yabancı — foreigner — but a particular breed of outsider. People back home often ask me what it’s like to be an American in Turkey, fearing the stereotype that the “Middle East” resents the United States and thus its progeny. Don’t...
Today I ate the last of my Reese’s Cups. Usually this would be an inconsequential event, one that would hardly merit a second thought, but this time I ate the last of the Reese’s in Turkey. And Turkey doesn’t have Reese’s Cups… or peanut butter at all for that matter....
Standing still in front of the security line a cushioned sixty minutes before my flight, it was easy to forget that hours earlier I had been frantically cramming long shirts, pants, and dresses into my single suitcase. I knew I should have brought two—one largely...