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KERVANSARAY

Traveling across the country, one witnesses places that still echo a way of life centuries old. Adventure on Anatolian homesteads, intrigue amid Turkey’s natural spectacles, and wonders of the world.  

LOSING MY GENDER AT TROY (MAUREEN BASEDOW)  Digging with rural workmen in the 1990s, a Bryn Mawr archaeologist tests the conventional wisdom of gender relations

DANGERS OF TURKISH TRAVEL (CATHERINE SALTER BAYAR)  The perils a Californian executive encounters on an Aegean trip are pleasantly different than those her well-meaning but ill-informed friends warned of

ORIENTING EXPRESS (JENNIFER EATON GOKMEN)  A dispirited and dependent Michigan woman re-empowers herself, leading her visiting mother through adventurous cross-country road trip

HELLO, I LOVE YOU (AMANDA COFFIN)  A computer specialist in her forties struggles to thwart amorous advances of tireless would-be suitors as she tours Eastern Turkey

CHANGE OF CONTINENT, CHANGE OF HEART (SALLY GREEN)   Impressed by tolerant, ecumenical Turks, a born-again Christian teenager breaks free of a fundamentalist cult during a 1978 trip to Turkey

LAST STOP ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Called Asia Minor by the Romans, continent-straddling Turkey -- the last country in Europe and the first in Asia -- naturally commits a storyteller to a state of limbo, caught in the ever-shifting flux between Occident and Orient.

THE PAINTING OR THE BOY (EVELINE ZOUTENDIJK)  When a devout employee objects to an Ottoman painting hung in the lobby of a hotel, the Dutch owner has to decipher its mystery and decide a course of action

CONVERSION IN ERZURUM (SUSAN FLEMING HOLM)  In the 1960s, a Peace Corps volunteer in remote Eastern Turkey weighs her cultural assumptions regarding female clothing and taboo body parts

THE BEAT OF A DIFFERENT DRUMMER (PAT YALE)  A Briton wishing to avoid a traditional livestock sacrifice as thanks for her new stone home hopes to repair the town’s Ramazan drums instead

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM (NATALIE BAKER)  A shy Englishwoman finds Istanbul’s ferry system a manageable microcosm of the metropolis and its people

HAMAM

Dynasties of mothers once inspected prospective brides for their sons in the hamam. The Turkish sauna and scrub remains a complex tradition of beauty practice, and female retreat.  But far from being cloistered, the impact of women’s culture in Turkey is often full and frontal.

COMING CLEAN IN KAYSERI (WENDY FOX)  In a steamy 13th century Cappadocian bathhouse a morbidly shy English teacher confronts her self-image

HAZE (KATHERINE BELLIEL)  A heart-broken Michigan girl finds closure in Bursa at an ancient Ottoman bath, nurtured by her would-be Turkish sister-in-law

THE GODDESS METAMORPHOSIS (KAREN-CLAIRE VOSS)   Taking part in a traditional bridal bath in 1995, a New Jersey scholar finds aspects of the ancient goddess culture alive and well in a Turkish hamam in Central Anatolia

FEMINISTANBUL (DANA GONZALEZ)  A public relations professional seeking the cure for an intimate ailment in Istanbul agonizes over assumed cultural taboos

WAXING FEMININE (ERICA KAYA)  A Tennessee tomboy who equates primping with promiscuity learns a lesson in the Istanbul idea of feminine from her savvy Turkish sister-in-law

HENNA'D HANDS

Courting etiquette and marriage rituals, from henna tatooing and traditional village bride bargaining to modern civil services of high society, receptions covered by voracious paparazzi. Dating and mating labyrinths.

FOREVER AFTER, FOR NOW (TANALA OSAYANDE)  An African-American thirty-something reviews the rules of engagement of the Turkish dating scene, where rather than playing it cool the men won’t stop calling                

VILLAGE BRIDE (EPPIE LUNSFORD)  In the 1980s, a young woman from rural Tennessee connects to her Appalachian upbringing while participating in theatrical village weddings in Central Turkey

A FINE KETTLE OF FISH (TRICI VENOLA)  Love and chaos are one in the same for a dramatic Kurd and a mid-life Los Angeleno in İstanbul

TYING THE KNOT, OTTOMAN PRINCESS-STYLE (ANASTASIA M. ASHMAN)  A woman from bohemian California finds marrying into the glitzy Turkish culture, surrounded by paparazzi, is the fulfillment of a forgotten wish

DARBUKA DRUMBEAT

An innate part of the Turkish psyche, folkloric song and dance can erupt at any moment and overwhelm even the most intrepid expatriate.

DANCING MY WAY HOME (DIANE CALDWELL)  A psychoanalyst answers the enticing beat of a Turkish darbuka drum and escapes her rigid, twice-divorced life in Seattle

FROM THE HIP (SALLY GREEN)  A writing instructor compares the synthetic, salacious approach to belly dancing in a Colorado recreation center with the spirited communal event she recalls from Turkey

KIN, CAULDRON AND KISMET

 The importance of family and the often fatalistic rules of clan devotion require rituals of repast and a team-like sense of humor.

THE LANGUAGE OF FAMILY (ANA CAROLINA FLETES)  Learning from her polished TV host mother-in-law, a Guatemalan grows into her femininity and her family, speaking Turkish with an unrivalled accent

BOGUS BRIDE (KATHLEEN HAMILTON GUNDOGDU)  When a gregarious local family in central Turkey plans an elaborate practical joke in 1981, a Texan agrees to play the lead role

THE FOOD FACTORY (CATHERINE YIGIT)  In a women-filled kitchen on the Black Sea coast, a pregnant Irish gelin, or bride, helps prepare a feast to welcome the family’s next daughter-in-law

CHERRY PIE (MAHIRA AFRIDI-PERESE)  A Pakistani who never learned to cook defends her American-born Turkish husband’s right to bake when a man in the kitchen upsets his family patriarch

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE (CATHERINE SALTER BAYAR)  A clothing designer sets boundaries in the Selcuk home she shares with her Kurdish husband, his parents, his nine siblings and then some

PEDDLER IN THE BAZAAR

With the historic Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean coursing through Turkey and ending in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, vending is in the Turkish blood. Brisk market scene is a way of life. 

THE BUSINESS OF THE BAZAAR (DENA SUKAYA)  A Seattle retail executive abandons the boardroom for Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar

UNPACKING THE PAZAR ARABASI (VALERIE TASIRAN)  An American-born naturalized Turkish citizen reconciles the meaning of Turkishness with her own misguided assumptions

SALVES & SOOTHSAYERS

Believers in talismans, for over a millenium Turks have clung to their shamanistic roots. Does the witchy wisdom of old wives’ tales and the insight of fortune-tellers apply to everyone on Turkish soil?

ANKARA’S FERTILE GROUND (NANCY LUNSFORD)  A doubly pregnant Appalachian artist blooms in a land of fecundity and fortune-telling, where popcorn is magical and village midwives more accurate than sonograms

A MOTHER’S CHARMS (MARIA YARBROUGH ORHON)  Doubtful of shamanistic charms and rituals in her Turkish husband’s family, a South Carolina woman nevertheless learns to conduct them on her own

EVIL EYE EXORCISM (ANNIE PRIOR OZSARAC)  When a series of accidents befall a young couple in Istanbul, Turkish relatives call in their Black Sea matriarch to perform a shamanistic exorcism

HOMESPUN HOSPITALITY

Konukseverlik, traditional Turkish hospitality, is both legendary and inescapable, especially for expatriates who seek to challenge it.

RESCUED BY VILLAGE INTELLIGENCE (CLAIRE UHR)  Stricken with influenza, a friendless Australian finds surprise succor with unknown Cappadocian neighbors

FLATTERED (LOUISE RUSKIN)  A Briton with a flat tire on an Istanbul road wonders whether she should be alarmed or relieved by the sight of burly Turks approaching

THE HEADMAN’S PYJAMAS (JESSICA LUTZ)  Village men in a desolate, war-torn border town near Iraq in 1993 maintain impeccable standards of civility towards a Dutch journalist who smuggles herself into their lives

HIJACKED (KATHLEEN HAMILTON GUNDOGDU)  Traveling alone by bus to Konya during a military coup, a young American secretary is unexpectedly detoured

HEDIYE (AMANDA COFFIN)  Not bombs and terrorists, but an overly mothering landlady and constant gifts of food pose the largest threat to a peaceful life in Bursa for a lone New Englander

FAILED MISSIONARY (RHONDA VANDER SLUIS)  A Christian evangelist from Iowa is transformed by the compassion of Turkish souls she hopes to save