my Cipro ready. K's mother was very upset that I wouldn't eat and kept
bringing little trays of food in to me. Everyone said it was
definitely the evil eye put on me by someone who was envious. We didn't
discuss who that might be. Father's cure for the evil eye was to pray
over me while Mehmet suggested that we tie 7 knots in a piece of my
hair and knot seven strands of hair from a black donkeys tail, burn
all the hair and bury the ashes. I didn't think the donkey would
appreciate that so much but clearly we needed to take some action so
we opted for mama's cure of lots of sour bitter sumac with an egg
cooked in it. Absolutely disgusting but I think it helped. All the
aunties were swearing that it worked. The plan is for an indoor toilet
for next year which would have helped a lot.
Now I'm sitting under the mulberry tree in the yard with the cows and
very much looking forward to going to Istanbul. It's very beautiful
here and it's like being transported to another age. Time moves much
more slowly, everyone spends a lot of time talking and visiting and
laughing with little to no rushing around or worrying about being
late. K's mama got mad today because the cow ate her big flower bush--
she slapped the cow with a stick. Otherwise not much is happening. I
will be glad to get back to not being a curiosity as the only American
that anyone has ever seen that wasn't on TV. I think I am somewhat of
a disappointment to people outside the family as I don't look so much
like the Americans on TV.
Lots of aunties visited today speaking Zaza and no Turkish so someone
has to translate for them--today that asked me why K hasn't bought me
any jewelry, if we missed each other being apart all day for work and
if my shirt was expensive and they asked about our finances and if
people in America die and what we do with them when they die. We made stuffed grape
leaves, stuffed eggplant and stuffed cucumber today, I have to get the
recipe at some point. The funny part was that I think we got
everything ready to make them and then waited until a bunch of guests
came which made all the rolling, stuffing and wrapping go very quickly!
I'm a bit stressed about all the girls who want to go school and have
careers and aren't allowed. I guess I could file this under 'life
isn't fair' and 'we never appreciate what we have' but I feel pretty
strongly about it. Last time I was here I misunderstood and thought it
was a financial problem but it doesn't seem to be at all. I guess it's
cultural of wanting protect the girls from becoming 'bad' or moving
away from home. Ks immediate family isn't like this as so many of the
kids are educated.
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