Exploding
Postal Scales and Other Adventures
By John S. Higham
Editor’s note. This article is adapted from the forthcoming book Armageddon Pills, about an American family that took a break from suburbia to travel the world for a year. Read a synopsis of their adventure by clicking here. And visit their website here.
In the main cabin of an all-night ferry leaving Athens, Greece, I observed an elderly woman about 200 pounds overweight going up and down the aisles singing at the top of her very capable lungs. No one paid her any attention, because she seemed the sanest person in the crowd.
This was our first experience with Greeks in large numbers. I was reminded of a scene from the movie, My Big, Fat Greek Wedding, except we were missing the guy with the bottle of Windex.
The four of us — my wife, September, and our two children, Katrina and Jordan — were on our way through Greece and heading to Turkey after spending the previous four months crossing Europe.
Pulling out of port we had to leave behind any notion that we could ever blend in again. Our northern-European skin and hair betrayed the fact that we were not members of the surrounding clan; two little girls, ages about four and five, stood staring at me through wide and unblinking eyes, mouths agape so that I could scrutinize their dental work.
Although we could no longer blend in, fitting in seemed within reach — at least in the midst of a ship full of Greeks. Surveying the scene before me, I could not help but sit back and fully relax for the first time in ages, realizing that my noisy children and our tendency to spread our belongings out for all to trample on would not raise an eyebrow.
Throughout Europe we had felt like water buffalo stampeding through a delicately constructed, proper society. But no worries here; people were setting up little fiefdoms throughout the cabin with blankets on the floor, sleeping bags, pillows, boom-boxes and all manner of stuff. Each fiefdom had its own crowd, and they all seemed to be making political ties with the neighboring tribes. We were hoping to be able to sleep there on the deck, but it was clear that the tribes were settling in for an all-night party.
This wasn’t some college student’s coming-of-age drinking party, either. With each tribe having its share of kidlets, aunts, uncles, and cousins, this was an affair the entire family could enjoy. Although nobody was roasting a lamb on board, if I didn’t know better all the maternal types had brought a potluck dish to share. We saw no evidence of a bundt cake.
We were dumped unceremoniously on a Greek island I had never heard of before at 3:30 in the morning. Rumor had it that at dawn we could catch another boat to Çesme on the mainland of Turkey, 30 or so minutes away.
Ordering a round of hot chocolate
gave us, I assumed, the privilege of sitting at a table in
an outside café overlooking the pier as we waited to
see what might happen when the sun rose. I thought for sure
that the kids would fold their arms on the table, put their
heads down and collapse, but they both put their books in
front of themselves and nursed their hot drinks.
Thus composed, I had a few hours to contemplate what it meant
to leave easy, predictable Europe.
Dangerous Country
We had started our twelve-month around-the-world trip in Europe for a reason — to get into the rhythm of traveling in a place where it is easy to find a rhythm. Ahead of us were a few weeks in Turkey, then the Arabian Peninsula, Africa, East Asia and so on.
I had of course reviewed the current events on where we were heading on CNN.com and various other news sources. It seemed beyond dispute that folks in most of the Middle East were not too keen on Americans at the moment. There was the wretched war going on in neighboring Iraq and as hard as I tried to wish it away, every morning when I woke up it was still there.
Between scenes from the movie Midnight Express flashing through my mind and news stories filling up my inbox from well-meaning friends, I was not feeling completely confident about setting foot in this new land. We were on this trip to get past the stereotypes and prejudices to “know” and “experience.” But talking the talk is one thing; we now had to walk the walk. I was nervous.
While lost in my thoughts, another ferry arrived and with it, a young Turkish woman named Dilara. She asked if she could sit at our table, explaining that it was, of course, rather dangerous to sit alone, outside in the dark, in “the West.”
“Of course!” September answered, as she pulled a chair up to our table. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
My wife excels at extracting life stories from the unsuspecting. Maybe it was because being lost in their books, Katrina and Jordan never entered or otherwise aborted the conversation. Or, maybe it was just because I was too tired to take one of my normal “wireless walks” where I wander off looking for an unsecure wi-fi network. Whatever the reason, I was able to quietly observe an artist practice her craft, and I would grunt approval or disapproval when prompted by the Lean, Mean, Talking Machine.
Dilara was returning home to Turkey with only hours to spare before her visa to study in the E.U. expired. “Some of my family disapproves of my studying away from home,” she explained. “But I want a career in which I can meet lots of different people and do something important.”
She explained that she loved studying in Europe, even though she bristled at the idea of the upcoming “ascension” talks for Turkey to be admitted into the E.U. She was nervous that she would not make it to Turkey that very day because that would complicate matters for her visa.
“When does the Çesme ferry leave?” she asked.
“No idea.” September replied. “The good folks on our ferry gave us a gentle shove down the plank when we asked them that question. We’ve looked, but there is no obvious ferry service, no postings, nothing. The waiter is pretty sure we can find ‘something’ in the morning, though.”
Dilara informed us that she keeps abreast of world events by watching CNN. “I watch it in English to help learn the language better.” Over a period of an hour Dilara gradually approached the subject of life in the U.S. It felt like she was tap dancing around something she wanted to say. Finally, it came out. “Life in America must be… difficult with all the violence.”
That comment caught me off guard, but as usual, I let September do all of the talking for the two of us. I gave September a “one eyebrow raised, one-eyebrow furrowed” look, to let her know to probe deeper.
“You’ve been watching too much CNN,” September replied conversationally; then she shot me a meaningful glance. “A lot of us are guilty of that.”
It was clear that Dilara was proud of her liberal cosmopolitan attitude. She told us that in spite of all the “obvious” dangers, she even planned to visit the U.S. someday. “I’m certain that some parts of the U.S. might be safe,” she explained. “By the way, could you please tell me which parts those might be?”
Turkish Soil
Several hours later we found ourselves on Turkish soil. We hadn’t even gotten through Customs when a machine gun wielding official at passport control decided that eight-year-old Jordan’s blond hair looked too flat and tussled it up. Knowing how Jordan hates this, and trying to keep the encounter positive, I said, “Wow, Jordan. A guy with a machine gun touched your hair. Can I touch your hair, too?”
We had explained to the kids that they have a culturally-enforced virtual force field around them but that the further south and east we went, the more their force field would shrink. “In Sweden your force field was about three feet in diameter. Notice how no one ever touched you? In Italy, your force field was only six inches.” I hadn’t realized it until we had been in Turkey for a few days, but Jordan’s force field had mutated into a tractor beam.
As we tumbled out of Passport Control, I didn’t really know what to expect; this was my first visit to a Muslim country. It was then that I noted September was in shorts.
“You might want to rethink your pant length,” I said.
September merely gave a snort of contempt and reminded me what an effective communication tool eye-rolling is.
The pier and passport control in Çesme is a long walk from anywhere. We started to slowly make our way toward what looked like town. Fresh off of the boat and with no local currency it was, of course, time to feed ourselves. I had a hunch the corner shop by the dock would accept my Euros, but I had no idea what the exchange rate was. I selected a few food items and then handed the guy a 20 Euro note and acted as though this was a perfectly normal transaction. To my relief, he acted the same and handed me a bunch of change.
When I got out of the store, I looked at what the clerk had handed me as change, eager to get an idea what the exchange rate was. To my extreme befuddlement I counted three 5-lira notes, three 1-lira coins, and a one MILLION lira note. Being an engineer, I can only work with two, sometimes three, significant digits. So, as I stood looking at my one million lira note, I wondered why I cared about the simple fives and the ones.
“Check this out.” I handed Jordan the one million lira bill. “They gave me a million dollars.” Over the last several weeks we had been using the word “dollars” to denote the local currency, whatever it happened to be, because at times it seemed like we changed currency types every other day and couldn’t keep track of what they were called.
Jordan eyes bulged to the size of saucers. “COOL! Can I have it?”
What we later found was that Turkey had recently devalued their currency by a factor of one million (!) and that there are both new and old flavors of lira in circulation. The one million lira bill and the one lira coin were equivalent.
The difference between the “new” and the “old” money, however, was lost on Jordan. Over the next few days whenever I got another one (or five) million lira bill, Jordan would hoard it, thinking that the store clerks kept making mistakes. By the time we left Turkey he almost had enough to buy a McDonalds Happy Meal, but to hear him talk about it, Donald Trump had better watch his step.
Namibian Carpet Salesmen
Çesme is a beach town; in late September Çesme was pleasantly warm and the skies were a brilliant blue and the sun seemed to be brighter than normal. After a day of recovering from the all-night ferry party, we made our way to the beach. The streets were lined with vendors of all types. As we strolled along, a man approached us, “Hello my friend!” he said. “Where are you from?”
“California.”
“Really!? Me too!”
I eyed my new “friend” with suspicion. Then he said, “We have all types of beautiful hand woven carpets that will compliment your home in California.”
I quickly learned that virtually all adult males in Turkey are carpet salesmen, or the brother of a carpet salesman, and they are all from California. Eventually, I started to reply to carpet salesmen that I was from Namibia. Suddenly all the salesmen were from Namibia, too.
Once at the beach I was pretty stunned to see local women in bikinis. Not that I am complaining, mind you. Talking to no one in particular, I said, “Check out the bikinis!”
“No thanks. Doesn’t do much for me.” September replied.
“No, that’s not what I meant. Well, perhaps a bit. But I would have never guessed I’d see women in bikinis in a Muslim country.”
“Well, I guess there are Muslim countries, and then there are Muslim countries.”
“Yeah,” I said, “if it weren’t for the five times daily call to prayer blasted over loudspeakers from every street corner, I might have thought we were in Mexico.”
At least I think it is a call to prayer. Of course, I didn’t have a clue what the muezzin, was saying during the call to prayer. In fact, he doesn’t say anything. The call to pray is a song, sung in a bluesy, country-western twang. I speculated that it is really a song about how Mr. Singy-Person lost his job, lost his girlfriend, and has a car rusting on the front lawn. But I didn’t have the nerve to ask the locals what they thought about my hypothesis.
Hostile Hostel
We gradually made it from the beach town of Çesme to Selçuk, the modern city near ancient Ephesus. We settled into a hostel near the bustling town center. One of the hostel workers decided to make it his mission to get Jordan to smile.
Since arriving in Turkey, Jordan was rapidly learning to avoid every adult he saw. Part of the motivation for traveling the world for a year was to give the kids an appreciation of other cultures; this was backfiring in Turkey. Jordan’s blond hair and blue eyes were something of a novelty, and he was getting way more attention from well-meaning strangers than he wanted.
Initially, we were having some success in getting him to smile as he was being patted on the head and told how cute he was. But by the time we hit Selçuk, we were judging these encounters as successful if Jordan didn’t grimace and clench his fists.
Katrina, being a middle-sized girl in a Muslim society, was largely immune to the little pokes and prods, and did her best to protect her little brother by acting as a human shield. September explained to Jordan, “You’re getting this treatment because they love children here, and most of them have never seen blond hair and blue eyes before.”
“I don’t like being treated like a little kid!”
I didn’t want Jordan to have bad feelings for those who were trying to be friendly, but a kid from the U.S. is used to having strangers keeping themselves at arm’s length. Our first goal was to get him to stop grimacing and clenching his fists when he got patted on the head.
Jordan’s Journal, October 1:
