Over and over I have heard people speak of Turkish hospitality and the cultural value of welcoming guests as "God's guests" and doing everything possible to make guests comfortable. After seven months of living here, I can state with absolute conviction that this is not a myth. Turkish people genuinely love guests, and from the moment you step into a Turkish home until the moment you leave, you can expect to be pampered, stuffed full of delicious food and all the tea you can handle, and treated to delightful conversation and laughter.
Language and cultural barriers cannot get in the way of this incessant desire to show hospitality. Smiles and "Tarzanca," as my Turkish teacher likes to call the language of gestures, are considered perfectly acceptable means of extending the arm of friendship to anyone who walks through the door. It is a very warm feeling for a foreigner alone in a strange country to have families so graciously bring you in and treat you with such kindness for no particular reason other than hospitality.
And while I greatly appreciate the warmth and hospitality of the Turkish people, there is a dark side to this cultural value. Being a perpetual guest can induce a state of exhaustion as you realize that people are never going to let you pay for dinner, and that an evening with friends is always going to be centered on you, the guest. My stubborn American notion of equality refuses to bend, and it's sometimes difficult for me to graciously accept such generosity, since I feel like I have done nothing to deserve the special treatment.
Tonight was the same as usual: some Turkish friends had invited my flatmate and I out to celebrate the fact that we hadn't seen each other in a long time, and I sat helplessly as they refused to let us pay for our own dinner, but smiled broadly while snatching the bill away to cover the whole thing. We only managed to pay for coffee later by distracting the guys long enough to surreptitiously slip the cashier some bills.
But something weird happened after dinner when we were discussing where to go for the next stop of the evening. We were faced with a choice between hookah bar and coffee shop, and one guy said, "Well, I don't like hookah, but we'll go wherever the girls like. They're the guests." Our other friend looked at him and said, "No! These girls aren't guests anymore. They are just friends. If we want coffee, we can get coffee." And it may sound strange, but this moment made me feel more at home here than all the hospitality Turks have offered up so far. Finally, we've broken through to a point that at least one person doesn't feel the need to extend us the royal treatment anymore because we're no longer visiting "outsiders." Being "just a friend" puts me at a whole new level of comfort with these people who have been so willing to share their country and their culture with us. And that is a wonderful feeling.
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