Full bloom

Until I moved to Turkey in 1999, I didn’t fully realize that a person could have more than one home, more than one country, more than one culture. That we don’t have to choose.  Having a personal connection to multiple cultures is the best way we’ll learn to get along with each other on this planet.

Living in Istanbul, we all know the cliche about this city and the country of Turkey being a bridge between East and West. For the year of 2010, to celebrate Istanbul’s status as a European Capital of Culture, there’ve been big banners on the Galata Bridge in Turkish and English proclaiming that Istanbul is “building bridges between the cultures.”

 I’m working to bridge cultures creatively, a passion that I’ve long had, but which has only recently come fully into focus. And largely thanks to that ambiguous, magical catalyst called Istanbul.

The bridge metaphor makes sense to me. But I also like how my friend Tara Agacayak talked about the indefinable Turkey in her post on Turquoise Poppy:

The cliché about Turkey is that it is east and it is west. It is old and new. It is modern and ancient. Europe and Asia.  Religious and secular. The juxtapositions are numerous but they demonstrate something. They show that a place can be both, it just depends on where you choose to draw the line.

She goes on to write that line is imaginary – we can draw it anywhere we chose. And in 2010, I chose to draw it in Istanbul, where all my passions intersect. I can create a life that combines them all: creativity, culture, fiber arts, language, community and of course, love.

The tagline on Tara’s blog is Bloom Where You’re Planted. I’m a late bloomer because it wasn’t until I moved to Turkey in 1999 that I really challenged myself well across all lines, proved to myself that being a hybrid of multiple cultures can only make me stronger. Let me tell you how I got here.

I grew up in a California beach town, Santa Barbara, before it was overrun with celebrities from Hollywood. It was a lovely environment, with whitewashed, red tiled buildings that were required by code to reflect the Moorish, Islamic decorative architecture of Andalusian Spain. But the residents were a little homogenous, a mostly white population, though at least 30% of the residents were of Mexican ancestry. I identified with that Hispanic culture, never thinking it was a separate culture from my own.

When I went off to Los Angeles to study textile and clothing design, I got a taste of what it was really like to live in a multicultural city. My third job as a clothing designer in my mid-twenties launched me headfirst into global business travel, when the president of the company I’d just joined publicly fired the head designer at the first sales meeting I attended, then announced to me and the audience of maybe 100 that I’d be going to Hong Kong in the morning to head up the young menswear division.

Working in the clothing industry was a great lesson in trial-by-fire living, a constant test to prove myself since I was only as good as the success of my latest collection. A designer must constantly reinvent herself, be able to turn trends into something that reflects her customer. Learning that the only thing constant is change truly prepared me for expat life, for living in a global world.

10 years on, after living in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland Oregon, working in about 20 countries and traveling for pleasure to at least 25 more, I returned to UCLA to study interior design and architecture.  These fields still allowed me to work with my three favorite design elements: color, texture and pattern. Those three elements form a universal language to me, whether you’re creating embroideries, mosaic tiles, carpets or stair railings. Understand the language they speak, and you can design almost anything.

But I also learned that just designing something was not enough. You had to know how to build it. The loveliest of environments could live in my head, but if I did not have the skills to make it real, it was only a dream. While I was successful in creating items and environments that suited the needs of my buyers and clients, I’d yet to create a life for myself outside of business that truly suited me.  It took a random trip back to Istanbul in 1998 for me to realize that I could create any kind of life I wanted.  A life whose seeds were planted in Turkey a decade ago.  A life coming into full bloom the spring of 2011.

Putting our lives on video: East meets West

 

When it comes to squeezing your mission in life into a 3 minute video, it's not the simplest thing. Especially since I've never done one before. But I have an urgent need to communicate a really big idea. An idea so big that it consumes my every waking moment, and often my dreams as well. So exciting that I am amazed that everyone else doesn't already know about it, and I really want them to. Perhaps that's slightly egocentric, but I've been pleasantly surprised to learn that, yes, there are a lot of people out there who do think like I do. The girl effect and the hundreds of wonderful words and images out there have been launched, and I happily stumbled into their midst. 

It's important to remember that change for the good can take time...but slowly, it will happen.  

We will be useful. We will make a difference.

                                 

The 'girl effect' hits home

This past winter, as I worked one more time in California to bridge the financial gap that always occurred each winter in Turkish tourism, with economies tightening and a decade that has seen wars, terrorism, earthquakes tossing in more than the occasional challenge to making a living, I decided to work with a life design coach. While I’ll always love finding and selling the vintage textiles of a former generation, I felt it was time to get back to expressing myself directly through making my own work, to clarify my focus. And I felt the need to involve and help other women, especially the strong women of our Kurdish family, who had great crafting skills but had been afforded little education. So if they worked outside the home, it was to do the back-breaking work of picking cotton or fruit. 

The galvanizing moment in my winter work to recreate myself one more time and to do something to help others came when Rose Deniz posted a story on her blog Love, Rose about a 16 year old Kurdish girl in Adiyaman named Medine Memi. Medine had been buried alive by her family. Her transgression? She talked to boys. The media was full of stories about backward Kurds, how Islam made them do it, and how Turkey could never become part of the EU.

One journalist, Mustafa Akyol of Hurriyet, explained such honor killings by pointing to the topography of the southeast “It is a very mountainous region, which is inhospitable to trade routes, railways and highways. Hence its inhabitants have lived almost isolated from the outside world for centuries and have remained largely untouched by modernity.” he said.

Though I agreed with him that Kurds have largely kept to their tribal ways that include many traditions that existed well before Islam, they are not as isolated as everyone makes them out to be. Kurds live all over the country and it's only a small percentage that still thinks in these archaic ways. 

I commented at the time, “I'm in shock when I read of another so-called "honour" killing...there is nothing honorable about it. My heart breaks for this girl. As traditional as my Kurdish family is, I cannot fathom them condoning such barbaric behavior."

And I can't. But I know that education is the key to stopping such horrors, and education starts with the women of the family, so they can teach their children, boys and girls, how to behave as decent human beings. While taking on the problem of honor killings would be a huge undertaking, I knew that if my large family of uneducated women were sometimes having a tough time making ends meet in the sleepy but lovely town of Selcuk, what must life be like for similar women from the east who had moved to sprawling Istanbul? 

Rose wrote in her post about those Turkish women journalists and authors writing about Medine and honor killings that “there are female voices here that are not passive, but strong, and that their discourse must be acknowledged for contributing to building a safe place for women worldwide.” 

A safe place for women. How could I do that? I knew that every woman in my family knits or crochets. Designing knitwear is one of my favorite things to do. I knew we could share the language of craft, even if we barely spoke each other’s language, for although I speak Turkish, I don’t speak Kurdish. I could start a cottage business, and eventually work toward the goal of creating handmade products that benefits not just Kurdish women, but any woman who needs extra cash so perhaps her daughter can go to school, or her son does not have to carry around a scale for people to weigh themselves on the street. 

So this summer my husband and I moved to Istanbul’s Old City, to test our idea to launch a workshop to support these local unsung artisans: women who still weave, knit, and crochet in the traditions of timeless Turkish handcraft. While there are educated women reviving crafts as a hobby or a career here, I’m more concerned about those other women with fewer opportunities who’d like to earn money within a safe community of women. Our workshop will also give traveling women a chance to meet Turkish women through classes we’ll offer and craft tours we’ll host about yarns, knitting, making oya, traditional kece or patterned felt work – there are so many ideas here. We hope to engage hands to learn new skills and teach traditional ones, to spin yarns, clack needles and drink tea together. 

This next decade of my life, I will be a creative force for bridging cultures. Starting next spring in Sultanahmet, we’ll share the common language of craft, tell stories about our cultures, educate against our prejudices, create beautiful new traditions. We'll make a difference in each others’ lives. 

And today, because the Universe always knows what I need, my Dialogue 2010 sisters Rose Deniz and Anastasia Ashman were there to motivate me and reinvigorate my purpose. A world of thanks to Tara Sophia Mohr for inspiring them. 

And to my Kurdish sisters – may your children never experience the difficulties you have, but may they inherit your grace, beauty, compassion and love. 

A verdant world within borders

After nearly 12 years in Turkey and a lifetime of loving weavings and embroideries, I’m hardly an expert despite a formal textile education. In a city like Istanbul, I’m surrounded by generations of rug merchants who could offer the equivalent of a PhD in techniques, styles and the various regions from which their wares come. While I’ve met a few visitors to our shop who have astounded me with their knowledge, most people know next to nothing. I play the role of enthusiast, trying to open eyes to the beauty and history within each unique piece. 

Like this Shiraz carpet from Iran, for example. What attracts me most about this piece are the colors – a warm chocolate brown combined with two vibrant shades of turquoise, instead of  the usual deep red and blue. These hues are offset by the rich indigo – a more typical color, though here it’s only used as a backdrop for the central field. Best is the strong acidic green used to highlight most of the motifs, though a fairly rosy pink is less successful and fortunately not used much against the brown. This weaver was not tentative about departing from tradition in terms of colors, which seem quite modern to my eye.

It’s logical that settled tribal weavers near Shiraz, this southwestern city of roses, poets and nightingales, would choose to create a lyrical garden full of floral, water and mountain motifs. These are arranged in an abundant but formal manner for most of the design, though the flowers playfully scatter at each end. The borders, like the tightly fitting triangular mosaic work for which the city is renown, contain the gardens in a series of narrow and wide boundaries. The remnants of Persepolis and Darius the Great’s Palace are only 70 km away. I like to think the stylized trees of life recall the Lebanese cedar beams and those funny motifs floating on the indigo ground are stylized animals, inspired by the palace’s two-headed animal sculptures.

Lastly, I’m attracted to the Turkish and Kurdish geometry of this piece, even though it’s single knotted in the Persian style, The center diamond-shaped lozenges, typical of the Shiraz style, have stylized crosses at their centers, symbols that have been used as far back as Catalhoyuk in Central Anatolia. This ancient motif protects against evil by dividing it in four pieces. The outermost border reminds me of the stylized bands of folk dancers that ring the outside of Kurdish kilims, heads and shoulders together, binding the community together with movement and music.

What do you see in this carpet?

                                                                                                                             

Building up steam...

Our workshop project has some good exposure this week in Hand/Eye Magazine, a publication about connecting cultures and inspiring action, goals we can really agree with. Read more here:

East meets West: knitting up cultural exchange

We've launched a project on Kickstarter, the creative arts crowd-funding site, to help us fund our East meets West fiber arts workshops, in Istanbul's Sultanahmet, starting March 2011.

• Can fiber arts bridge cultures? 
• Will women from multiple countries knit up new versions of traditional skills?
• Is there a common language of craft?

Read the whole story here and spread the word. Thanks!

Bridge to the future, unknown

Nationalism. Ethnicity. Religion. Economic status. Politics. If I had to pick a way to save our troubled world, to guide us beyond these barriers that divide us, the tool I’d start with to bring us together is music.

Monday night, I was among the 50,000+ people who made the long journey to an isolated corner of Istanbul, to a stadium built for Olympic dreams yet unfulfilled. A good friend invited me along when she realized she had an extra ticket; someone else’s ambivalence led to my good fortune. As trite as it may seem to attend a concert by an iconic rock band, experiencing the phenomenon of U2 was a revelation I deeply needed right now, as Turkey decides its future this weekend, and Abit and I reevaluate our personal and professional dreams as well. It’s a new moon, an auspicious time for beginnings.

On the12^th of September, 30 years to the day of a military coup, Turkey will be holding a complicated referendum in which voters are evenly divided about whether to lessen the power of the military and increase the prime minister’s authority to appoint the judiciary, among many other issues too convoluted to elaborate easily. After 12 years of living here, I’ve got my opinions but no vote, and concern about what will happen after this Sunday. Even a seasoned journalist may not quite get all the nuances of a culture after years of living and reporting from here, if some spirited commenters are to be believed. Is Turkish society so deeply divided that the referendum’s issues will further alienate and stagnate its forward progress? 

 

But this situation is not as baffling as in my birth country, where the population is psychologically terrorized in these days leading up to the 9^th anniversary of 9/11 by a mainstream media obsessed by Koran burning ministers, Obama’s religion and the real motives of a Sufi imam in NYC, because the concept that peace-seeking moderate Muslims exist is impossible to fathom. Turkey’s political issues may be complex, but those in the US are well beyond belief.

This was U2’s first concert in Turkey. They’d stayed away in the past due to Turkey’s troubled human rights record. It is symbolic that they relented during our European Capital of Culture year. Banners on the Galata Bridge in Turkish and English currently proclaim that Istanbul “builds bridges between cultures.” That’s a message I’m sure resonated with the group, ambassadors that they are for fighting poverty, hunger and the elimination of AIDS.  

Turkey has cultural bridges to build within the country, as well as in our troubled neighborhood. Which was why Bono not only called on Washington DC to listen to the people of Tehran and Palestine, and sent a candlelit message to Burma’s Aung Sun Suu Kyi that she is not forgotten, but reminded a Turkish audience about a Kurdish journalist, Fehmi Tosun, who ‘disappeared’ in the southeast in 1995, a public reminder that may get an average citizen prosecuted.

Bono then brought musical legend and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Zülfü Livaneli on to sing his “Yiğidim Aslanım”(My Brave Lion), about a man imprisoned and killed for his political struggles. Livaneli wrote the haunting soundtrack for Kurdish actor/director Yilmaz Guney’s classic and controversial film Yol (The Road), about the aftermath of that September 1980 coup.  

Livaneli said that he and U2 were “song makers”. That’s a humble description for what these men do. To stand among tens of thousands of people singing as one, many with tears streaming down our faces, Bono with his hand over his heart and showing emotion himself, reminded me of the power of music. A song can link human hearts and let us feel that strong current of common connection we all share – beyond those barriers of politics, ethnicity, and religion.  

 

Several songs into their two hour performance, Bono commented that “What is happening in Turkey now is important for the country, for Europe and the world.” That statement was met with cheers and applause. He went on to say they’d walked across the Bosphorus Bridge the day before with Minister of EU Affairs Egemen Bağış, a mention greeted with boos by much of the crowd, since Bağış is part of the ruling party pushing the referendum reforms. A surprised Bono reacted quickly, saying, “Okay okay! I won’t mention any more politicians, but can’t I be a tourist and walk across the bridge? It’s a beautiful bridge. It’s not just from Europe to Asia, not just from the religious to secular, but from the past to the future, from where Europe has been to where Europe needs to go.”

Where Europe needs to go. I wonder what leaders in the EU make of that statement? Real leadership requires visionaries, who sometimes come in the form of rock stars, while we the people get stuck with power-hungry politicians whose vision stops at the size of a corporate donation. Bono meets with politicians like Erdogan and Sarkozy, attempting to sway their views with his charismatic charm braced with knowledge. He champions that all-too-rare belief that with fortune comes the responsibility to give back, setting an example that democracy requires active involvement from all of us, regardless of our economic status.
 
Massive events like this concert are theater, I know. But human beings have been brought together by drama, by comedy, though performance arts since before recorded history. Though melodies and languages change, story-telling through song is in our collective blood. No one is immune. Some showmen are all smoke and mirrors, little substance. We listen for a good time, to dance and sing, to forget our daily lives. But Bono and U2 speak to something much deeper than mere entertainment. Not everyone may like their music, but it’s tough to disagree with the message: We’re all in this together.

Bono introduced “One” by saying, “We're going to change the name of this song to 'The Bridge' ". That metaphor is a cliché to those of us who live here, but that is the role that Turkey could provide with its unique position in the world. “We are one, but we’re not the same”, the song goes. It’s truly as simple as that. One planet, one human family in all its glorious diversity. That we fixate on those differences and ignore our commonalities is unfortunate human nature. But sometimes, even for two hours, a crowd of at least 50,000 people from not only Turkey but all over the world, can be on the same wavelength, can be reminded that there are many in this world we must help, can realize that we are in charge of removing those barriers.

Wherever we are, we are ONE. This is why I love U2 – the music is riveting and danceable, yes – but they have the courage to speak their hearts, and ours.