Nazar or just faulty electrical wiring?
While enjoying a post-dinner glass of wine with my housemate the other day, we both heard a strange explosive noise coming from the kitchen. At first we thought it was just another cat misadventure, but then the power went out, so we went to investigate.
And there it was: a burgeoning electrical fire right there in the kitchen fan. Fortunately, we were able to extinguish it before it spread too far and clear the kitchen of fire extinguisher dust, after which we took a few minutes to ruminate on the possible causes of the fire.
I was thinking along the lines of 1) faulty wiring, 2) blown fuse or 3) old kitchen equipment, but I was wrong. According to age-old Turkish wisdom, it was the good old nazar striking again! And this time it had decided to pick on our lovely new home in Çiçekçi because everyone who has visited it has been jealous of the divine view we have of the entire Golden Horn peninsula. OK then. So basically, if I had stayed in my crusty old area of Kadiköy, which had a rather high maganda count and a view of a ne'er to be completed construction site, and which managed to underwhelm everyone who came to visit me, I would be less happy, but not subject to house fires.
And it wasn't just my housemate either. My gym instructor, colleagues, boss and emlakçi were all of the same opinion. Even the electrician who came to appraise the situation said something like this, “It looks like the fan has collected a lot of oil over the years, and this could be the cause… or it could be nazar.”
Even the rational electrician thought the only way of preventing all manner of catastrophes from befalling my house again was to stick a big industrial-strength blue eye on the front door. And here was me thinking they were just another piece of cheap tourist crap. Well apparently they're not. They have a significant place in the national psyche.
The principle behind “nazar” is that you are particularly susceptible to the negative thinking of others if you have anything new, are beautiful or have had recent good fortune or success because these are the things that attract the most praise, and praise is to be treated with suspicion as behind every comment, even those that are well-intentioned, there always lies an element of jealousy and resentment. Bad luck is not limited to envious thoughts of other people; a person can be affected by the evil eye because of another's excessive love, which is why babies and small children can almost always be seen wearing them. (I love a positive attitude, don't you?)
I must admit that up until now, I had managed to exempt myself from wearing the eye, my reason being that I had naturally blue orbs, and I had heard that people born with blue eyes are lucky and are better able to protect themselves from evil. Ha HA. But post- kitchen fire discussions have revealed that Turkish people are often suspicious of people with blue eyes, believing that blue eyes have the power to damage whatever they gaze upon and cause accidents and damage to people and property. Is it possible then that I caused the kitchen fire myself?
So the upshot of it is that having beautiful blue eyes is a mixed blessing and loving someone very strongly is just as bad as being envious of them. It seems you can't win if you try in this world! Anyway, there is now a big eye taking pride of place on my front door, which makes me smile every time I look at it and think about how much I have succumbed to the national psyche. I'm still not convinced about it, nor am I convinced that belief in such a thing isn't simply the result of Turkish people trying to find a way out of dealing with their own emotional baggage and jealousy issues and… hang on a minute… did that big eye just wink at me?
And there it was: a burgeoning electrical fire right there in the kitchen fan. Fortunately, we were able to extinguish it before it spread too far and clear the kitchen of fire extinguisher dust, after which we took a few minutes to ruminate on the possible causes of the fire.
I was thinking along the lines of 1) faulty wiring, 2) blown fuse or 3) old kitchen equipment, but I was wrong. According to age-old Turkish wisdom, it was the good old nazar striking again! And this time it had decided to pick on our lovely new home in Çiçekçi because everyone who has visited it has been jealous of the divine view we have of the entire Golden Horn peninsula. OK then. So basically, if I had stayed in my crusty old area of Kadiköy, which had a rather high maganda count and a view of a ne'er to be completed construction site, and which managed to underwhelm everyone who came to visit me, I would be less happy, but not subject to house fires.
And it wasn't just my housemate either. My gym instructor, colleagues, boss and emlakçi were all of the same opinion. Even the electrician who came to appraise the situation said something like this, “It looks like the fan has collected a lot of oil over the years, and this could be the cause… or it could be nazar.”
Even the rational electrician thought the only way of preventing all manner of catastrophes from befalling my house again was to stick a big industrial-strength blue eye on the front door. And here was me thinking they were just another piece of cheap tourist crap. Well apparently they're not. They have a significant place in the national psyche.
The principle behind “nazar” is that you are particularly susceptible to the negative thinking of others if you have anything new, are beautiful or have had recent good fortune or success because these are the things that attract the most praise, and praise is to be treated with suspicion as behind every comment, even those that are well-intentioned, there always lies an element of jealousy and resentment. Bad luck is not limited to envious thoughts of other people; a person can be affected by the evil eye because of another's excessive love, which is why babies and small children can almost always be seen wearing them. (I love a positive attitude, don't you?)
I must admit that up until now, I had managed to exempt myself from wearing the eye, my reason being that I had naturally blue orbs, and I had heard that people born with blue eyes are lucky and are better able to protect themselves from evil. Ha HA. But post- kitchen fire discussions have revealed that Turkish people are often suspicious of people with blue eyes, believing that blue eyes have the power to damage whatever they gaze upon and cause accidents and damage to people and property. Is it possible then that I caused the kitchen fire myself?
So the upshot of it is that having beautiful blue eyes is a mixed blessing and loving someone very strongly is just as bad as being envious of them. It seems you can't win if you try in this world! Anyway, there is now a big eye taking pride of place on my front door, which makes me smile every time I look at it and think about how much I have succumbed to the national psyche. I'm still not convinced about it, nor am I convinced that belief in such a thing isn't simply the result of Turkish people trying to find a way out of dealing with their own emotional baggage and jealousy issues and… hang on a minute… did that big eye just wink at me?
Many people ask me how Australians celebrate ANZAC Day in Istanbul. Do we go and visit the Gallipoli site? Do we have our own dawn service? Do we show special screenings of “Gallipoli”? What generally happens?
Personally, I choose not to join the crowds of other Aussies and New Zealanders who love to crash the place, usually dishonoring the dawn service with hangovers. As there are no more ANZAC soldiers left for us to watch parade down the street, I suppose the choice is ours. Last year, however, was different. I had just received news from an Aussie friend that our famous ANZAC biscuit, the closest thing to a national food that we have in Australia, was being packaged and sold in the US under the pseudonym “ANZAC cookie.” Not only this, but they were also being distributed to American soldiers in Iraq. Like many Australians, I was shocked and appalled that our biscuit -- the same one that gave many an Australian soldier a sense of hope during the Gallipoli campaign -- was being sold out for a cause that most Australians don’t even believe in. Furious, my friends and I decided that it was the year to “reclaim the biscuit” and set about baking loads of them ourselves for no particular reason, just because.
I suppose I should give a little bit of biscuit history. There are a couple of different versions of the origins of the biscuit. Some claim that it was the soldiers that in fact invented them, using whatever provisions they could to give them something to do and relieve the boredom of their battle rations. The other version is that they were created by wives and mothers in Australia who wanted to make a treat for their menfolk in the trenches which would survive the long journey to the Dardanelles. Either way, they started their life as a “war biscuit” and this legacy has continued until today.
Anyway, back to the baking story. It wasn’t so difficult to find the ingredients. Native Australian wattle seed is a little hard to come by, but we were prepared for that. Nevertheless, we perused the shelves of the Fenerbahçe 2M Migros and found everything except for the golden syrup, which I have been told isn’t readily available here. Never mind, we decided to experiment with a combination of honey and pekmez instead. A semi-reliable Arçelik oven and a bottle of chardonnay (for us, not for the biscuits) and two hours later the comforting smell of biscuit was wafting through the entire house. There was also a slight smell of burnt biscuit due to a batch that we forgot about because we were too engrossed in our conversation about the latest man my friend had been dating.
The result? Two hundred delicious biscuits which we could easily have eaten straight away but didn’t because (and I most probably have Doluca to thank for this) we had a much better idea. We decided that instead of giving them to soldiers as a way to help them fortify themselves against the Turks, why not give them directly to the Turks -- as a symbol of peace and friendship? And that’s what we did. Our weekend students at English First were the first ones to be inaugurated into the Peace Biscuit tradition. And the feedback? Well, it was very good. The half-honey, half-pekmez idea turned out to be a good one after all and it gave the traditional Aussie biscuit a slightly à la Turca edge. There is even a café in Suadiye that is planning to add them to their sweet menu. I have added a traditional recipe for those who would like to try a peace biscuit themselves. Remember to substitute golden syrup with a half-honey, half-pekmez mixture for a traditional ANZAC biscuit taste.
Personally, I choose not to join the crowds of other Aussies and New Zealanders who love to crash the place, usually dishonoring the dawn service with hangovers. As there are no more ANZAC soldiers left for us to watch parade down the street, I suppose the choice is ours. Last year, however, was different. I had just received news from an Aussie friend that our famous ANZAC biscuit, the closest thing to a national food that we have in Australia, was being packaged and sold in the US under the pseudonym “ANZAC cookie.” Not only this, but they were also being distributed to American soldiers in Iraq. Like many Australians, I was shocked and appalled that our biscuit -- the same one that gave many an Australian soldier a sense of hope during the Gallipoli campaign -- was being sold out for a cause that most Australians don’t even believe in. Furious, my friends and I decided that it was the year to “reclaim the biscuit” and set about baking loads of them ourselves for no particular reason, just because.
I suppose I should give a little bit of biscuit history. There are a couple of different versions of the origins of the biscuit. Some claim that it was the soldiers that in fact invented them, using whatever provisions they could to give them something to do and relieve the boredom of their battle rations. The other version is that they were created by wives and mothers in Australia who wanted to make a treat for their menfolk in the trenches which would survive the long journey to the Dardanelles. Either way, they started their life as a “war biscuit” and this legacy has continued until today.
Anyway, back to the baking story. It wasn’t so difficult to find the ingredients. Native Australian wattle seed is a little hard to come by, but we were prepared for that. Nevertheless, we perused the shelves of the Fenerbahçe 2M Migros and found everything except for the golden syrup, which I have been told isn’t readily available here. Never mind, we decided to experiment with a combination of honey and pekmez instead. A semi-reliable Arçelik oven and a bottle of chardonnay (for us, not for the biscuits) and two hours later the comforting smell of biscuit was wafting through the entire house. There was also a slight smell of burnt biscuit due to a batch that we forgot about because we were too engrossed in our conversation about the latest man my friend had been dating.
The result? Two hundred delicious biscuits which we could easily have eaten straight away but didn’t because (and I most probably have Doluca to thank for this) we had a much better idea. We decided that instead of giving them to soldiers as a way to help them fortify themselves against the Turks, why not give them directly to the Turks -- as a symbol of peace and friendship? And that’s what we did. Our weekend students at English First were the first ones to be inaugurated into the Peace Biscuit tradition. And the feedback? Well, it was very good. The half-honey, half-pekmez idea turned out to be a good one after all and it gave the traditional Aussie biscuit a slightly à la Turca edge. There is even a café in Suadiye that is planning to add them to their sweet menu. I have added a traditional recipe for those who would like to try a peace biscuit themselves. Remember to substitute golden syrup with a half-honey, half-pekmez mixture for a traditional ANZAC biscuit taste.
