tea for twelve

I recently attended a dinner party at the home of one of my colleagues. It was different from any dinner party I've ever been to before, and not only because everyone was speaking Turkish and I only had the most general sense of what was going on. For most of the evening, I focused intently on the words and gestures and reactions from people, and kept a running commentary in my mind, along the lines of someone's ill. what a shame, is it someone i know? probably not. is it serious? i have no idea.... something about a film. iran. ok... and? why does she keep saying banana? maybe it's not banana.

The evening began for me as all the guests set off in a cavalcade, children pressing their faces to back windows and waving, adults in the front smiling and waving back, to our hostess' house on the other side of town.

We arrived and left our shoes outside the door. You can always see when your neighbors have guests in Turkey, because there's a pile of shoes by the front door. Or sometimes only a single pair of men's dress shoes with a pointy, slight curled toe, which for some reason I always imagine becoming animate and tapping up to me, heel-toe, heel-toe. Creepy.

Anyway, we were welcomed in, kissed, given slippers, and seated in the living room. I realized that I was the only one wearing jeans, then excused myself to myself, thinking hammily, hey I'm American. Most of the women had made an effort; some had makeup, some had straightened their hair, except for one of the wives, who covers her hair and was dressed simply. The mothers were called at one point to round up their children, and serve them, and settle them in the kitchen, while the table was laid for the adults in the dining room. I stayed in the living room with the men. Being neither a mother, nor a man, I felt vaguely uncategorizable.

Dinner was served once the children were secured. It consisted of various platters: cheese pastries, walnut bread, fruit cake, lentil-cakes, zucchini with yogurt, sweet carrot balls, and glasses of hot tea. Everyone ate slowly and chattered away, while the hostess barely ate but urged more food on all of us and refilled our tea-glasses ceaselessly. After we'd finished, we stayed at the table drinking more cups of tea, talking (or listening), and eating baklava. Later the hostess brought out a remarkable paste she uses as a cleaning product, explaining its benefits to the women of the table, and passing it around for everyone to smell. Yes, it's true.

Some got up to smoke off the balcony. Conversation never faltered for a moment. People joked and laughed, and I smiled, having not a clue what was so funny. Occasionally someone offered to translate a little snippet of the conversation for me. After we had had a chance to digest a bit, a huge bowl of fruit appeared, and everyone set to peeling and cutting apples, oranges, and kiwis on little plates with little knives. The children had finished their meal and were causing a general ruckus by this time. After the fruit, the hostess offered us each a few drops of refreshing lemon cologne for our hands. I was exhausted from so much food and focused listening. Around midnight, the head of the department announced, well friends, it's late, let's go. So we all got up and filed out.

I got a ride home with the head of department and his family, who are all painfully quiet and unfailingly polite, and somehow always leave me without a thing to say. It's his wife who covers her head; they're a conservative family. The children are very quiet and well-behaved. So we drove in silence, and as the car rolled up and down the hills around the city, the radio incongruously tuned to a house station- "Saturday night disco!"- I felt that truly refreshing sensation of finding yourself an incongruous object in your surroundings, of finding the terrain of your own life unfamiliar and inexplicable. I love it when that happens.