My Birthday Treat - A Guest Post.

As it's my birthday today, I'm taking a break and giving you a post by my good friend of many years, Angie Mitchell - Author of "Secrets of a Turkish Kitchen."  Angie and I have a lot in common. We both started our careers in Turkey on yachts, we both cook for our living, have Turkish husbands, have a birthday within 24 hours of each other and now Angie is building a house on the Karaova plain,  we are both bona fideTurkish Villagers and entitled to wear flowery baggy şalvars, and own a donkey.  

Village Wedding

The village wedding has changed over the past 20-something years. The first one I attended had the bride-to-be delivered on a horse, straddled over her dowry of rugs, blankets and other hand crafted linens laboured over by herself and other female relations. She sat aloft, quaking; I wasn’t sure if it was because she was scared because she was on a horse for the first time, or just suffering from pre-nuptial wedding nerves. She was very young and quite possibly didn’t know her husband-to-be that well and the deafening sound of the drums and zurna was enough to make the most intrepid spouse–to–be a wee bit nervous. She was dressed in a handed-down white dress, red sash and had wild flowers in her hair. The red sash around the waist was a proclamation of virginity, which was very important. In those days it was mandatory for the newlyweds to offer the blood-stained sheets from the new marital bed to authenticate virginity,  today we don’t hear of this so much.  The wedding seemed a bit misogynistic to me. The men partied with the groom, dancing wildly and obviously very inebriated and high on the occasion and they all seemed to be in a world of their own. The women, quite wisely, stayed apart, knowing they would have to pick up the pieces later. After cooking for a week for the masses it was time to take the back seat. 

Today the zurna and drums (gypsy music) have been succeeded by electronic keyboards, instruments and singers amplified to a ridiculously high volume. There is no chance to have a conversation over this noise – but today no one is here to have a chat, today it is "come and see" time. The youth are starting to make their own marriage decisions, rather than have it arranged by their families; A wedding is a big opportunity to see the local talent. Dressing up has also become an event. Big money is spent on the dresses not only for the bride but for the other female relations and the smaller ones who want their day as a princess. The local kuaför or hairdresser is stuffed full on a wedding day with make-up jobs and glittering hair-dos. But still today the wedding celebration is in the village square and companies lease out lorry loads of plastic chairs for the event.  Most importantly,  the older ladies get a chance to get out and feel proud of the generation they have been responsible for raising. It is their day as much as those of marriageable age.  The local boys come and show off and strut, with their rendition of zeybek but the girls get to do their own dances too, albeit his and hers are separate affairs. Guests still line up and money bills and gold are pinned to the newly-weds, the total worth a tad more than 20-something years ago. 

Leaving the village wedding and on my way back to Bodrum I stopped for a wee behind a bush. Got back in the car and the battery was flat (who knows?) Another car leaving the wedding stopped to see if he could help. ‘Yes it is the battery’ he agreed, made a call to his mate and within 20 minutes I had a new battery and was home by midnight on a Sunday night. Would this happen anywhere else? Nice to think that something don't change over years. This is Turkey!