I was afraid of this trip. I’ve been to over 35 countries in the last two decades, but now my body feels different. I haven’t traveled alone since I developed a chronic illness, and the medicine to control it slowly drains my vitality, my immunity, in order to keep my sight. The pandemic has dissolved into endemic but is still present in a heightened awareness of every cough around me.
I am extremely sensitive in my mid thirties. To noise, to light, to smells, to triggers known and unconscious. Weddings are one of them, but this one will be different, I tell myself and my therapist. I will be surrounded by my friends, some of the people I love most in the world, who understand and are attuned to me. If I get sick, someone will help take care of me. This time I am part of the wedding, officiating, I have a role to play and will not be all alone, left with my pains of the past. This time it was my best friend getting married, best in the world, and it would be different.
And I will be okay after that in my week traveling solo. The anxiety will dissolve into excitement… what everyone keeps asking whether I am and what I will become… one of these days, maybe on the plane ride.
—
Every place has distinct sounds. I am sure these exist elsewhere, but they become embodied by a particular culture upon my arrival. Turkey wakes up to dishes clanging and the call to prayer.
Like the ebb and flow of the sea. The shuffle and stacking, the scrape and slide, not quite porcelain nor plastic but a mixture of metal and some kind of cheaper clay or glass. Then the wail from the minaret just beyond our block, broadcasting out across the golden horn. How did they do it before sounds carried this way? Does the call translate to meanings we might understand or is it known deep within bones, before language was born?
The prayers enter through the red velvet-cloaked and fig-framed window of the old Şebnem Hotel. The fig that must be older than my great grandmother, if that’s possible; it’s four stories tall. The dishes clang just outside my door. The pattern continues through the morning, the call– of prayer and refrain– clang of dishes. I turn over wishing for sheets and willing my way back and forth from reality into dreamscape, blurring the distinction.
Apparently the call is a reminder but does not require an immediate response. You can pray once a day, combine them together. They warn you at first light and last, so the space between is your freedom, and in it lies both responsibility and flexibility.
Ali introduces us to his country, and how to remember his name— he says that 60% of the men here share it. He leads us to the roof terrace where breakfast will be. I recommend you take this view to start each day. It will affect you. That is Asia. This is Europe, we are so close.
There are two Istanbuls. One is here, above. One is below. I can show you, be your guide. If you like.
We look up the word for thank you, Teşekkürler, and stumble over the syllables, and he smiles.
Istanbul has always been a crossroads, a meeting point and perhaps clashing point of different worlds. We opt for the self guided tour and walk the ancient streets and ruins that have outlasted empires and conquerors.
The mosques feel deeply calm. There are no icons, no images of humans to judge you, to remind you of pain or scorn or sorry. There is a relief in the peeling paint, the stoic marble stone, the golden scrawling scriptures in a language so foreign I cannot feign interpretation. The name is misleading. Hagia Sophia is not a woman but divine wisdom. We created every living thing of water, whispers her fountain.
—
I lost my panties today. Or they were stolen. Both scenarios seem exactly equally plausible and impossible. I could have sworn I hung them in the locker at the hammam, but they were gone when I came back from my massage and sauna. I checked the floor, the trash, too embarrassed to ask if someone had somehow turned them in.
But I did ask if my friend’s massage was different than mine. I had heard his masseuse ask Do you work out? As she rubbed his arms, and his reply I work outside, so maybe his was sensual too.
But how much time had she spent on his inner thighs; did she spread his legs so that his feet fell on either side of the table before digging knuckles into the backs of his calves; had she climbed on top of him? No, nothing like that.
No one had ever rubbed my breasts before and left them exposed long after finishing that area. No one had ever sung in my ear, hummed to the melody of the music playing softly in their native tongue. No one had ever pulled at my hair. Perhaps it is part of this culture. Or some aspect of the “couples massage” we received in the same room to get a free clay mask.
But when I returned to the locker my panties were gone. The woman, who had been called very very beautiful by another customer just before she took me to the back, had vanished. So I wondered.
—-
Then came the vows. Well, not quite, the wedding preparation was such a whirlwind it felt almost like a fast forward. The friends arriving, the reunions, the organized events, the last girls’ night out together, the local liquor, the sparklers at dinner, the waiters dancing in the streets, the street cats, the mangy dogs, the ringworm, the oldest perfume in Istanbul, the figs, the rain, the double rainbow, the seagulls dropping fish heads, the bazaars, the spices, the Turkish delights, the stone towers, the meatballs, the street stuffed mussels, the cigar smoke, the traffic, the catching up, the last minute changes to the final words of the ceremony, the crumble into bed.
Like Istanbul, the wedding was a combining of cultures and a negotiation of values and needs in two languages. Turkish people don’t have a spoken ceremony other than what the government official delivers. For Amy, the ritual was one of the most important aspects of their union. For Yigit, the wedding was not just for them, but his family, to make them proud, to showcase their lives. I never knew how much matrimony was a negotiation and a compromise– especially the wedding itself– until I was part of it.
Then came the day of the wedding. Waking early for hair and makeup. Hair that would stay pinned tight all day and makeup to be re-done before we were whisked into playboy bunny pink robes for the bridal party photos, swept aside in the family room for all else.
Can I have some tea?
Why not madam.
Watching. Watching her become a princess bride. Hour after hour. They layer on the makeup, then the hair, the dress, the shoes, the writing of her sister’s name on the bottom of the right heel as a blessing, a ritual, the best part of the preparation. She is full of grace from start to finish, always. Even as the makeup artist’s photographers circle like moths to a light and cut off the circulation of our true connections as sisters and friends, opting instead for posed photos.
One of my favorite things about Amy is how well she treats strangers— with so much love and deep curiosity for the stories they hold. By the end of the night, her “attendant woman” Zehra is sharing her deepest secrets– that she would kill her stepmother if there was no such thing as prison.
I have always felt deeply special to be Amy’s chosen best friend. Like somehow I won. Tonight, in my way, I get to give her away— to the promise of happily ever after.
Please, turn towards each other and take hold of each other’s hands, as you dream of your forever together.
These are the hands that will tend your garden and build your house into a home. These are the hands that will hold the ladder and the dog’s leash; the hands that will wipe crumbs from your countertops and tears from your cheeks. These are the hands that will catch you when you fall, hold you when you tremble, and push you upward when you need extra courage. Someday, these will be the hands that hold your children’s hands, and your grandchildren’s.
Bu eller bahçenizi yesertecek, evinizi yuva yapacak eller. Ayni zamanda bu eller köpeğiniz Hero’nun tasmasını tutacak, tezgahınizdaki kırıntıları, yanaklarınizdaki yaşları silecek eller. Düştüğünüzde sizi yakalayacak, titrediğinizde sizi tutacak, cesarete ihtiyacınız olduğunda sizi yukarı doğru itecek eller. Ve bir gün, bu eller çocuklarınızın ve torunlarınızın ellerini tutacak.
Yigitcigim, Amy’yi bugündez..? Evet, I do.
Do you Amy..? I do, Evet.
Now, with the power of our collective love and our blessings, we celebrate you- husband and wife, Yigit and Amy Ulucay. You may kiss the bride. The peacocks perch on ancient pines before a sherbert sunset.
Then came the dancing. The bride and groom swept each other into the ballroom and glowed with love and joy. They were perfect. It was perfect. Classic cinema in action. They danced from one table to the next for photographs, then they danced with a troop of female drummers, and then they danced down to the after party. Amy wore the polish off her toenails and her smiling cheeks to the point of pain. But she did it. We did it. Nailed it.
—-
Then came the after party, the group honeymoon. Twenty six of us swimming in the Mediterranean, sipping on Aperol spritzes, eating family style seafood, climbing castles, shopping for towels and rugs and trinkets, jumping off the boat into synchronized swimming circles while a drone watched from above.
Five days of sharing a hotel room with my best guy friend and moving as partners do through all of it. Of riding a scooter through the villages and pomegranate groves, of splitting meals and blankets, of yes ands. Of fighting over hikes or beaches and forcing make up hugs and laughing about it over beers. Five days of looking at us through rose colored glasses. Of nearly everyone wondering what about him? and asking and offering advice and each of my closest girlfriends saying something different.
I thought of my lover back home: charming and generous but sporadic at his best, apathetic and absent and erratic at his worst. The man in bed beside me now met all the needs he didn’t. But my lover met other needs and made me feel differently. So neither was a complete complement, and thus I am always my own plus one. It’s hard to let go, even when you know better, and break those deeply rutted patterns of attachment. The pull and push away.
–
The final night we made it to the Antiphellos, an ancient theater just outside town, and I crept up the crumbled steps, half original, half restored to take in the view from the top. The light poured over the performers: first a violinist solo enchanting, creating the sounds of longing from string tips; then a local band, singing together in Turkish, one playing a giant tambourine crested in little rattling beads, rustling each other jovially. The harbor and waters and mountains and ruins lay beyond. I felt my eyes filling with the same salt of the sea, the surge cresting over down my cheeks. Tears of joy at the sight of this magnificent place, the sounds of it, and the feeling of being surrounded by love. I was overcome by gratitude for this experience, for what I had and what held me in this moment.
Slowly I descended. My best guy friend looked at me as I sat down and said, We really need to get you some good cold medicine tonight. I laughed at him and sheepishly replied that they were tears of joy. That I was happy and grateful and felt loved. He nodded and gave me a shoulder squeeze.
A little later, I looked back at him and said, I need to tell you, You are one of the most beautiful men I have ever met—inside and out. He simply smiled and asked, how many violins do you think these rocks have heard?
