Turkish Hospitality

It started with a lot of begging and an awkward phone call.

That's how I got in touch with Onur Salman, my CouchSurfing host for 7 nights- by pestering and pleading to various people in a Turkish mall in an upscale Turkish neighborhood to let me use their phones and then by dialing the number that I had been given on the CouchSurfing website to reach my host, who when I did finally get a hold of him sounded like he had no idea who the hell I was. Probably because he didn't.

For little beknownst to Onur, his friend Murat, mischief maker extraordinaire and in control of Onur's CS profile, had agreed to let two Americans named Berken and Chris stay on his couch. All the more amazing then, that after meeting us at the subway 40 minutes after recieving that call and finding out that we existed, Onur and his roommate Ugur proceeded to provide the best possible CouchSurfing experience an American estranged from home could ever hope for.

They cooked for us. They cleaned after us. They introduced us to their friends and to their favorite local cafe. They introduced us to Turkish customs and played along happily when we introduced them to some of ours (read: high stakes). They entertained us and washed our clothes for us and drank with us. Onur even let one of his guests sleep in his bed on multiple occasions.

There were definitely some instances of culture shock involved. Most surprising was how they wore proudly, as if it were a badge of honor, that dirtiest of all American words, "communist"; it was kind of incredible to see the college-educated, best and brightest of Istanbul- students our age, living a modern life with all the Westernized luxories that come with it- speaking out so vehemently against the evils of greed-and-inequality producing capitalism. Even Turkey's founder/messiah, Ataturk, who I had previously thought infallible among Turks, met a good skewering  in the midst their anti-Westernization rants.

I decided to meet them halfway and admit that capitalism does leave a significant portion of people behind, funneling most of the wealth to the few rather than the many. My worry I told them was that by eliminating capitalism in favor of communism and therefore eliminating any incentive for taking individual initiative, the whole system would collapse and we would all be left to pay the price. They argued in return that the idea that we must all be individually rewarded for our individual successes was a result of a capitalist mindset; if the entire world were to embrace communism, then the culture would be different and each individual would happily accept community-wide rewards, rather than individual rewards, in exchange for their labor and innovations.

I know some conservatives whose heads would probably explode talking to these guys. But regardless of where my allegiances lay (not to communism), I can say for certain that it was an eye opening conversation.

At one point, while walking towards a market, Onur and I saw a tiny ball of fur scuttle across a street in the rain. Naming it Hošef, he and Ugur adopted it, fed it, built it a shelter out of a box, and generally made it feel taken care of. Realizing that the parallels between that cat and I were eerie, I knew it was about time for me to move on.

Finally, a few mornings ago, after seven nights spent easing into Turkish culture under the generous care of my CouchSurfing hosts, I managed to tear myself away. Immediately afterward, as I walked down the street towards the metro station, backpack strapped tightly to my back, I realized that, somehow, the sensation of turning my back on the familiarity and comfort that my hosts offered felt oddly familiar, as if I had only recently walked that same walk, the same emotions coursing through my mind. Some might even call it deja vu.

Never mind that in this latest farewell, my mom, dad, and sister had been replaced by two bearded, 20-something Turkish dudes; never mind that I was half a planet away from everything I had known just a week and a half ago; never mind that even my one vestige of the life that used to be mine- my friends Luke, Alex, and Byado- were miles away as well, in Cappadocia, which may as well have been on another planet; none of these things seemed particularly relevant at that moment.

Instead, I was struck by the fact that, for the second time in 11 days, I was saying goodbye to a place that, however briefly, had become home.