Bayram in Eregle

Last week we celebrated the Muslim Sacrifice holiday. It comes from the bible/koran story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son (Isaac or Ishmael, depending on the holy book) to prove his devotion. At the last minute, God spares the son and an animal is sacrificed instead.

In present-day Turkey many people still make a ritual sacrifice during this time. Some city-dwellers who prefer not to sacrifice animals donate money to charities instead. When a sacrifice is made, one-third of the meat is given to neighbors, 1/3 is given to the poor, and 1/3 is eaten by the family.

My friend, Evren, invited me to take the 10-hour night bus to her home town and spend the holiday with her family. I had heard buses in Turkey are very clean and comfortable. Although that was true, almost all bus drivers chain smoke and turn the heat up so high that it feels like a hamam! The worst part is that the windows don't open, so you are stuck sweating and breathing recycled smoke. I hear that in April the government has passed a law forbidding the drivers from smoking. I'm looking forward to that day.

We spent four days visiting her family and friends, visiting their parents' childhood village, and traveling to the foot of the Taurus mountains to see ancient rock carvings. Evren has two wonderful sisters; the eldest is a nurse, and the youngest is a computer engineer in Ankara. In true Turkish fashion, the family simultaneously made me feel like a member of the family and an honored guest. My paying for anything was out of the question, and I had to stop expressing my admiration for any of the handicrafts lest they become mine. Evren's mother, Zeynip, gave me a beautiful angora scarf that she had knitted; her cousin gave me a black cape that she had knitted that was formerly part of her chaise (wedding dowry). By the end of the week I had collected so many presents from everyone, they started joking that I now have my own chaise.

One of the most interesting things we did was to visit Evren's parents' childhood village. The families there are mostly sheep herders. They live on an arid plain at the foot of the mountains that receives little rainfall but is blessed with a natural spring. Although I don't eat much meat and have had multi-year stints of vegetarianism, I decided to watch the sacrifice of the sheep. They make sure it is somewhere where there is no blood from previous sacrifices, so that the animal won't be alarmed by the smell of blood. It was difficult to look into the sheep's eyes and see a sort of resignation, but the sacrifice itself happened rather quickly, and I think it suffered little. Although the idea of sacrificing an animal may seem barbaric to some, I think it is much more humane than the way we raise and slaughter most factory-farmed meat in the U.S. This sheep roamed free its whole life.

After the sacrifice, we removed out shoes before entering the adobe-like house. We sat in the largest of three rooms on colorful mats covered with handmade kilims (carpets) that lined the edge of the room. The families insisted that I sit in the corner where the guest always sits and asked me questions about the U.S. while we drank chai. One woman's face and demeanor were so interesting, that I wish we shared a language. She was Kurd (an ethnic group that is discriminated against in Turkey) and Aleve (a Muslim sect that has been persecuted in Turkey). Her husband is neither; I imagine it must have been some kind of Romeo and Juliet story (with a better ending) that led them to marry.

Everything was going along well until I ate some of the bread that was offered to me. I had a bad cold and the bread was quite dry; as I swallowed, I could feel the pieces get stuck in my throat. You know the feeling: you are somewhere very quiet and and you feel that tickle in your throat getting worse and worse. The last thing you want to do is have a gasping-for-air coughing fit, but that is exactly what I did. For a few minutes I am sure the people were thinking that this would be the first time an American visited their village as well as the first time one died there. Luckily I survived.