March 11-13,
2016
During
the second weekend of March and weekend before my family’s arrival, we traveled to
Bursa, a northwestern city located a few hours away from Eskişehir on the east
and a few hours away from the Sea of Marmara and Istanbul on the west. It was
the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, is the fourth most populous city in
Turkey today, and is known for its rich green beauty found in forests, parks,
and gardens.
We
had reached out to the Bursa crew weeks before to arrange housing. Some were
out of town, but still opened their homes to us. Cicely Hazell, for example,
had personal things to take care of but let us into her apartment, which she
shared with two other Fulbright girls. We had planned this trip with the Eskişehir
girls (Lizzie and Michelle), who arrived a few hours before we did. After our 10-hour-plus bus ride,
we got in late and were super tired so we hit the couches for some sleep.
Saturday
The
next day, we started our day by having brunch. I ate köfte and rice, which was
quite filling. The other girls nibled on small dishes, saving their appetite
for Bursa’s famous iskender kebab. “İskender
kebap is one of the most famous meat foods of northwestern Turkey and takes its
name from its inventor, İskender Efendi, who lived in Bursa in the late 19th
century,” says Wikipedia.
Afterward,
we visited the famed Ulu Cami, also known as the Grand Mosque of Bursa. The
mosque has two minarets and 20 domes, and was built using Seljuk architecture.
Unlike other mosques I’ve visited, Ulu Cami has a fountain (called şadırvan)
inside the mosque where worshipers can perform ritual ablutions before prayer.
Typically the şadırvan is outside a mosque. What makes Ulu Cami so unique,
however, is its 192 monumental wall inscriptions written by the famous Ottoman
calligraphers of that period. According to Wikipedia, the mosque has one of the
greatest examples of Islamic calligraphy in the world.
After
the mosque, we walked to the city bazaar. Bursa is famous for scarves and
especially silk (ipek). There’s a
famous market called “Koza Han” within this grand bazaar where women flock for
scarves in every shape, design, color, and material. It was very overwhelming!
Given that I’ve been buying gifts up until this point, I decided to treat myself
to an ipek scarf, which was quite
pricy (50 TL). The store owner would not budge below that price even though
Lizzie, Alex, Michelle, and I all bought a scarf from him. It was a good
investment I thought. Plus the scarf was so beautiful! It had traditional tulip
designs on it, and was turquoise, which is the color of Turkey. Later, we all
did some more scarf shopping around Koza Han for family and friends and broke bank (but in Alex's case, quite literally).
We
walked through the pazar (food market)
and tasted different fruits and foods, like fresh strawberries, cheeses, and
olives. We ran into two other Fulbrighter friends, Yalova Fulbrighter Sarah
Khalbie (she had visited us in Antalya back in the fall) and Bursa Fulbrighter
Ian Montgomery. As we walked through the streets of the crowded bazaar, someone
brandished a small card in my face. My immediate reaction was to take it so as
to get it out of my way. The card had a dua,
prayer, written on it in Arabic. I thought this was a warm gesture, but then I
saw that the young man who gave me the card started following me. When Sarah
noticed what was happening, she said you have to pay him now, that’s how they
make money. I didn’t realize it was a street beggar who had tricked me into
giving him money. I reached for my wallet to search for some 1TL coins, but the
beggar didn’t seem satisfied with 2 lira I handed him. He kept making a
gesture with his hand towards his mouth and begging for more; he spoke Arabic
and I figured he was trying to say he needed more money for food. I got nervous because I didn’t have a 5-lira bill on me, so I apologized and quickly walked away and caught up
with the group.
Ian
is a tall and animated person, and an absolute sweetheart. He took us to a
place called Tophane, which is a hilltop view of the city. We drank çay and
showed off our scarf purchases from the day, per Sarah and Ian’s request. After
about an hour, we all started walking towards a famous İskender restaurant.
Sarah and I branched off to look through a few shops. When we caught up with
the others at the İskender restaurant, the rotating döner had finished for the
day and they could only accommodate four people. No problem! Sarah and I found another
lovely restaurant and enjoyed İskender kebab as well. At our restaurant, the
waiter came and poured boiling melted butter all over our kebabs—yum yum!
The 25TL meal, which included ayran
(yogurt salty drink) was worth every kuruş. It was also nice to catch up with
Sarah in a private setting and seek advice.
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| With Ian and Sarah at Tophane, overlooking Bursa. |
Sunday
On
Sunday, we had one of the best kahvaltı I have ever had in all of Turkey. Ian took
us and his friend from Turkmenistan to a small village called Cumalıkızık which
is now famous for its breakfasts. Kızık is the name of one of the 24 clans of
the Oghuz Turkish tribe, and Cuma (Jumah) means Friday. Apparently kızık people
gathered in this village on Friday’s for worship. In fact, according to
Wikipedia, Cumalıkızık in specific and Bursa in general is the birthplace the
Ottoman Empire. “The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, Ottoman
Turkey or Turkey, was an empire founded in 1299 by Oghuz Turks under Osman I in
northwestern Anatolia.” That’s pretty cool! In Islamic history, the word
Ottoman is synonymous with “Osmanli,” after the first sultan. 
Our
kahvaltı was huge, it was for eight people. It included bread, jam, honey,
kaymak (cream), butter, tomato sauce, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, gözleme
(similar to Pakistani parathas, flat fried bread sometimes filled with potatoes
or other vegetables), and much more. And we had a whole pot of tea to
ourselves. It was so filling! Kahvaltı typically costs 20TL all over Turkey;
some places like this village serve a ton of food, while other places like
restaurants serve minimal. I love making videos and creating memories, so I
asked if others would be interested in making a small video of our kahvaltı
experience. Everyone agreed. It's too large to upload on my blog, but here's the link.
After our breakfast, we roamed
around the streets of the village, stopping every now and then to admire the
old houses and the deserted buildings, and posing in front of a few. The
village smelled of fresh sheep feces, as well as fresh vegetables, and it
reminded me of my childhood of growing up in the Bandi Dhudan village in
Pakistan. We lived next to farmers who walked their herd every day and
harvested their crops year-round. At one point, the girls found a hungry dog
and started feeding it. Given my fear of dogs and cats, I watched them from
aside, though I did manage to muster the strength to pet one cat with Ian.
We hopped on a bus back to the city
center, where we said goodbye to Ian’s friend and Ian returned home for
personal errands. The girls and I decided to visit Yeşil Camii (Green Mosque),
which is actually kind of blue-ish in reality. This Green Mosque is a large
complex that consists of an actual mosque, mausoleums, madrassah (Islamic
school) kitchen and bath. The mausoleums were exquisite, tombs covered in
beautiful blue tiles with calligraphy written on them. People prayed at these tombs and we paid our respects by
covering our heads and walking around silently. The mosque was also a piece of
art, and very different than anything I had seen so far. Yeşil Cami, for
example, has vestibule at the entrance leading to a central hall, small rooms
tucked away on the east and west sides, as well as a huge iwan surrounding the
mihrab (semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla; or
Kaaba in Mecca). The interior of the mosque is decorated with thousands of mosaic
of blue-green tiles. I suppose every sultan wanted to leave a unique mark as
their legacy, so they all commissioned unique mosques to be built.
Later that evening, we hung out at
Ian’s apartment where a few other Ankara Fulbrighters were crashing for the
weekend. It was nice to see them, but I was preoccupied with our school
situation, which had over the course of the week, gotten out of control. I was
stressed out about the school bureaucracy and the politics between the Turkish
Fulbright Commission and the State Department. Alex took an overnight bus back
to Antalya, while I decided to go to Yalova and spend a day with Sarah in her
hometown.
Monday (Yalova)
It rained on Monday which
contributed to my depression about the school situation, but Sarah was a
wonderful host and welcomed me in her apartment. I purchased a flight ticket
for the next day, and went to bed. The next morning, I went with Sarah to her
school and observed her teach about outer space. She invited me to guest
lecture in a few of her classes, which I really enjoyed. Sarah is a very animated
and spirited person, it was a joy to watch her interact and motivate her
students. For some reason, the students were not as excited as normal, and
Sarah and I later figured out that it must have been due to the Ankara bombing the
week before. We got home around 10 or so, and she made me a kahvaltı with eggs, kaymak
and honey (which she had bought at Cumalıkızık), tomatoes and cucumbers. Her
site mate Keith joined us a little while later and he brought fresh bread with
him.
Despite the rain, Sarah showed me her quaint little town, which stares at
Istanbul from the other side of the Sea of Marmara. We browsed through some
clothes and trinket shops and walked by the shoreline as it drizzled. After
Sarah finished teaching, we headed to a restaurant near the ferry dock where we
ate delicious hamsi balık ekmek (anchovy fish sandwich). I couldn’t help
but start weeping because of all the things that were going wrong at our
school, and lack of support from institutions. I told Sarah I regretted coming
to Turkey, and she tried to console me and help me see the positives in my
experience. She was a great support. I stopped crying before Keith joined us
for dinner. After an hour, I boarded a ferry that would bring me to Istanbul. I
caught an evening flight from Istanbul and was home in Antalya at the wee hours
of the night due to delays. This was a long but wonderful trip – full of
emotions that took a roller coaster ride.
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| "Everything will be okay," whispered the sea. |
