On my last evening in Turkey I run into a couple. The man is the silent, but constantly smiling type. The woman, clearly the talker between the two, tries her laborious English on me. He’s some sort of accountant; she a music teacher.
The conversation rapidly moves to Turkish classical music, which is beautiful, if elegiac. She explains the concept of makaams and how there are 500-odd makaams. From her explanation this sounds similar to ragas as opposed to the scales of western classical music. She demonstrates and sings a song. Her voice is absolutely marvelous.
An example of classical Turkish music she shared with me
‘Why aren’t you a professional singer?’ I ask.
‘Everyone says why I don’t sing more. It’s easy for me. But playing instruments is not. I want people to tell me I’m a good player of the baglama because it is a very hard instrument to master.’
She not only teaches music but is also the conductor of a local orchestra. She proudly showed me videos of her students in concert on her phone.
‘I created a music CD many years ago. It’s not very good. But I want to make better CDs.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘When he makes enough money I will retire & make music. If he makes enough money!’ She laughs. He does too, but doesn’t say anything. ‘I want to go away from Turkey. It’s no good. Erdogan is making this an Islamic country.’
‘But aren’t you a Muslim.’
‘Yes, I was born Muslim, but I don’t believe in religion. Muslims are taking this country backward.’ Then she tells me about her family in Gaziantep. A traditional, large Turkish family full of siblings, dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles. One of her cousins, who was then 20 years old, was engaged to be married to a cousin of hers. But she didn’t want to marry him. So she ran away with a 20 year old school-friend of hers. Of course the family was shattered by her act of rebellion. After a few weeks they coaxed her to come home. ‘We forgive you,’ they said. So this gullible woman came back. Her fiance & her brother picked her up at the bus-stop, took her to a remote location outside town and killed her. They ended up serving 7 years in jail for that, and are now living honorable lives, having cleansed their family of dishonor.
‘See,’ the woman says. ‘I can’t live in a society like that. But I was lucky. My parents were more modern. They let me come to Istanbul & I’ve stayed here ever since.’
In Istanbul, she met a student of music at a conservatory, married him at 18, had a son the following year. Then she went to the conservatory too and studied music. A couple of years later she divorced her husband and raised her son alone, until she met and married her current accountant husband, who kept smiling through the entire narration.
‘Do you ever go back to Gaziantep?’ I ask her.
‘Yes, only for short stays. Any longer and either they’ll kill me or I’ll kill them.’ She laughs.
As we get ready to go our separate ways, she says only half-jokingly, ‘Find him a job in America, please. I want to leave Turkey.’
