So, this is actually some months ago, but nevertheless a little vignette of Turkish life.
My beneficent employer is built into the side of a hill. When I'm completely well and organized enough to be on time, this is great: I have a thirty-minute walk up a hill every morning, and a lovely view when I get there. Were you here to cup my vigorous thighs, you would be impressed.
Towards the end of last semester, however, I was shamefully running late to a class--we're talking a 1:20 departure for a 1:40 class, something not really ideal in the physical universe in which we live. The sad truth is, reader, that I had to use one of the ubiquitous university cabs to ferry me up the side of what I just actually wrote as "the side of the mountain." (It is not a mountain--it is a small hill. Nevertheless.)
Speaking of commanding heights, I've mentioned before the extent of my Turkish skills, which were actually quite a bit worse back then. To add to the fun, I instinctively seem to look foreign to most Turkish people. From my cabdriver, I heard what I also hear from, say, mall security guards, bus drivers, random people in the street, etc.: "Where are you from?" Which is a perfectly nice, welcoming sort of thing to say--I'm not complaining about that, or at least about the spirit behind it. I will say that after a few months, one does sort of begin to feel rather more exotic than one probably should feel, given (as I've mentioned before) how close one lives to a Dockers store.
Now, at this point, I didn't speak very much Turkish at all--I couldn't even properly say "Kanadalıyım," a very basic way of saying "I am Canadian." (I'll practice my Turkish, possibly making a grammatical error, and inform you that saying "Kanada'dan geliyorum" would also be acceptable--although that means "I am coming from Canada." Additional verb tenses as lessons permit.) So it took me a couple of tries even to establish that I was from Canada ("Canada. Canada! Canada?"), of which my driver approved. We were, even on our short trip, deep in smile-and-nod territory. But I was trying to be friendly, and he was trying to be friendly, and we were nearly 1/3 of the way up the hill. This could be a successful social outing!
This, unfortunately, is where my driver chose to give me his opinion of our students--specifically, our female students. "Sexy," he informed me. "Disco party." His facial expression indicated that he imagined I was a regular attendee at said parties, lithe nubiles draping my arms.
What to do? The Turkish for "Well, actually, I don't really objectify my female students, it's sort of unprofessional, ha ha, we're all friends here, though, and incidentally here's a copy of some early Kristeva I think you'll really find enlightening although maybe you should also have a look at Lacan first" was years away--still is, of course. And I didn't have the forethought for "Evet, erkekler çok sexy!," which is some approximation of "yes, very sexy men!" And I had that smile-and-nod inertia going. Weren't we all friends? Sexy disco party friends?
Reader, I smiled and nodded, waited for the remaining ten seconds, paid, and exited the cab--feeling, might I say, that I had let multiple parties (as it were) down. I worry that I had just confirmed a general feeling that our female students were open for all manner of leering sexual adventure, and worse that our faculty were somehow along for the ride. I worry that, given the choice between being pleasant and spineless and severe and vertebral, I had gone for the jellyfish option. But I'm still adrift as to what I could have done. Somewhere on earth there is someone who would be able to communicate, nonverbally, that they disapproved of what had been said, and that the driver could do better than referring to our female students as easy. (Could that person please write to me, c/o this blog?)
Of course, this could also have happened anywhere--I have had far, far more insane conversations with Chicago cab drivers, all of which also started pleasantly. You all know, yes, the feeling of the agreeable cab ride that suddenly veers into insane-opinion territory? Compared to the man in Toronto who talked about taking mushrooms and coming face-to-face with Jesus, my disco gentleman was quite mild, and trying to be friendly. But I'm an employee here, and it's my job to represent our students as best I can. This was pretty much a total failure, in that regard.
I did arrive to class on time, at least, if pantingly. "My driver seems to think that you like disco parties" I told my students, who seemed to find this amusing. I left out what else he thought of them--and, of course, my shame. That goes on the blog.
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