Cognitive Dissonance

More photos from Istanbul tomorrow. This was taken in The Blue Mosque

We've been in Turkey for two days now, and what I have to say is this:

- Great food
- Breathtaking sights and scenery
- Extremely friendly people, talkative and helpful almost on the level of the Taiwanese

That last one is a bit of a sticker for me.

(By the way, I do link this a bit to Taiwan further down, if you feel like reading that far).

As you know if you read this blog with any regularity, I'm Armenian on my mother's side. Specifically, Armenian from Musa Dagh, Turkey: it's half the reason why we're in Turkey now at all - I'm interested ins seeing the one of the lands I come from. And as you know if you've studied history under anything other than a regime hell-bent on brainwashing young citizens through education, the Turks committed a massive genocide against Armenians in the early 20th century. I exist at all - and am American - because my family (or at least many of them) escaped that genocide. My great grandparents fled to Greece, but as WWII approached they had to leave Athens, as well - my great grandfather had been a freedom fighter for the Armenians, was well-known to the Turks and also to the Nazis. They would not have lived long in Greece had they stayed through the Nazi invasion.

My grandfather was born in Greece between those two flights for life, and as you can imagine, he hates Turks with a passion. Nobody else in the family is too fond of them, either. This might be left to history if the Turks would admit that what they did was commit genocide, and apologize for it. This hatchet might be buried if they'd admit that Ataturk was not only the father of their nation but also someone capable of committing great evil (hell, most Taiwanese, even those who vote KMT, pull no punches when saying the same about Chiang Kai-shek, although nobody sees him as the father of Taiwan and "father of the Republic of China" is a honor given to Sun Yat-sen).

And yet they won't admit this, and they educate the young to believe their side of the story - not that I believe there are sides - there is the side that knows what happened and the side that denies it, and that's all - and so young Turks today still believe that "it was a difficult and chaotic time and many people died but we did not commit a genocide". They will defend this quite vehemently and in Turkey, the law against speaking ill of Ataturk or calling the Armenian genocide a "genocide" is on their side.

This is why I have not told anyone I've met in Turkey of my ancestry. Yet. It's not a fight I can win. It's a fight that can get me in legal trouble.

So in my postcards home I've been writing things about how friendly the people are, and sounding fairly lighthearted about it. Honestly, though, I'm not. I am not remotely lighthearted about it. If anything it's had me a bit on edge since we arrived.

These women were quite friendly to me, and took lots of photos with me because they liked my blue eyes. No joke!

Instead, I'm torn. That friendly fellow in the tea garden who chatted with us, and the nice young boy who served us tea, and the helpful people who gave us directions or gently guided us, or who smiled but did not mock the mistakes we made in Istanbul (like trying to put a token on a card reader in the Metro), the man in the electronics shop who asked if we liked Cappadocia and the women in the Blue Mosque who took pictures with me just for fun, or those who were just plain friendly and welcoming - they didn't murder my people. I can't blame them for something that happened almost a century ago.

And yet they also deny that it happened.

And yet they were educated to believe it didn't happen.

And yet despite that education, they should know better.

And yet, they are some of the friendliest people I've had the pleasure of traveling among.

There's no denying it - so far the Turks have been nothing if not truly hospitable. That's hard for me. Their ancestors killed my people and the descendants deny it happened, and yet I cannot find fault with their kindness. How do I even begin to reconcile that?

Because really, underneath my feeling of warmth for the warmth the Turks have shown us is a bit of a raw scar - a thin line of anger, knowing that that kindness would probably be withdrawn the moment they learned I was Armenian. That kindness is wholly dependent on a pretense - on allowing them their cognitive dissonance. On not upending their belief system. This means that I also feel cognitive dissonance - these people who are so friendly, whom deep down I know would deny a massacre I know to have happened - how does one go about stitching those two things together? Is it really friendliness if it's contingent upon my not revealing a deep kernel of myself? Would it even be appropriate to do so? Is it fair to my ancestors who gave their lives or risked their lives to save others to not do so and to accept this hospitality at face value?

What happens is that I talk with these lovely people, and it's fine, except I feel, off to my side maybe, waves of heat from a red-hot poker, just inches from my skin, threatening to brand me an Unwelcome Other if I discuss my heritage or speak the truth, and threatening on the other hand to brand me a Traitor if I let things be.

It's a hard line to walk and I can't help but feel a little emotional over it. It's not so bad in Cappadocia, but when we hit Musa Dagh I will have to work very hard to keep my feelings in check.

I can see how the same issue dogs many Taiwanese. There are those who came or whose parents came over with the KMT, those who served or whose parents served under Chiang Kai-shek, and those who were killed by the KMT in the wake of 228 and the White Terror. There are many for whom being welcomed by neighbors, coworkers, classmates and even family is contingent upon not upsetting the worldview of others that their political beliefs are correct (and that goes for both sides). It is not so serious as a genocide when someone who is deep green can't reveal to his coworkers who are mostly blue, but there is still a raw feeling underneath the pretense of cameraderie. There is an unspoken understanding that "we all need to get along", so talking about things like, well, the White Terror around people whose parents may have ignored it or even supported it is not condoned. I can very much imagine how those Taiwanese feel, unable to upset the fragile truce of "your parents' party killed my loved ones, and that party won't apologize for it, your parents won't acknowledge the atrocity, and that kills me inside so I won't talk about it. I have to deal with you and I want things to run smoothly so I can't bring it up. I have to pretend it doesn't exist."

I can imagine it because I'm living it right now.

Tastes of Childhood: Making Lahmacun in Taipei

OH YUMMY

I've mentioned before that my mom's side of the family is Armenian from Musa Dagh, Turkey and that this is one of the reasons why we chose Turkey as our next travel destination: to seek out my homeland (or rather, one of my homelands - I'm also Polish, Swiss and generic British/Irish). Of all my many threads of ancestry, my Armenian heritage has always been the most vibrant and the biggest part of my life - I do believe that's because that side of the family came to the USA the most recently, and also because that branch of the family has been the most tenacious in terms of keeping heritage and memories alive. That tends to happen when your family lives through a genocide. When one's great grandfather (in my case, Mehran Renjilian) was a freedom fighter (the Turks would say "terrorist" but they're wrong) in the Armenian resistance...later turned minister. When one's family arrives in the USA after being forced to leave not one, but two countries - the second being Greece as the Nazis closed in.

So, after many years of regaling friends with homecooked Indian food, various appetizers and organizing outings to restaurants, I decided that on the eve of the trip that will mark my generation's first return to Musa Dagh, that I will cook some of the best-loved and most familiar dishes of my childhood.

The party will be in two weeks. I can make some of these dishes in my sleep, quite literally: I've had dreams where I have made hummus from scratch and upon waking up realized that even in my dream I followed exactly the right recipe. I have to admit, though, that there are others that I've eaten plenty of but never attempted to make (such as "fish cookies" which are flavored not with fish but with honey, and derive their name from the herringbone pattern cut across the top), and still others that I've attempted once before, failed at miserably, and never tried again...such as lahmacun.

The last time I made lahmacun, or tried to, I was too scared to attempt the dough, being terrified of trying something that included yeast. Instead I put the tasty topping on soft pita. The pita burned. I took the smoking mess of charred bread and raw meat laid out in a glass casserole out of the oven and plopped it on the counter, where the glass instantly shattered.

You can imagine my trepidation at deciding to not only attempt lahmacun again, but to do so with my tiny electric oven and with real dough made with actual yeast (I'm a great baker of cakes, muffins and such but not so experienced with bread products).

So this weekend was the test run.

My beloved husband helps out in the kitchen as I prepare the lahmacun dough.

I mostly followed this recipe, with a few changes to reflect the flavors I remember from childhood. I would never use ground beef - only lamb will do. Beef is a cop-out. I also added extra garlic, black pepper and allspice to the recipe. The "Armenian spice" I grew up with is made of cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, black pepper and allspice and that's the combination I created and added.

Ground allspice in my tiny marble mortar&pestle.

 Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who, while not exactly a kitchen god in his own right, is very good at helping out in the kitchen - chopping, grinding, peeling, mixing, stirring - whatever I may need when my two hands and one brain just aren't enough.

Lahmacun is not just flavored with dry spices and lamb - it also includes the pungent flavors of onion, parsley, mint, tomato, lemon and garlic (and, of course, salt).

Mint and lemon - yum!

 My mom once wrote a short story of her experiences making lahmacun, lamenting that Nana - her grandmother - could always turn out perfect dough circles but hers were eternally lumpy and lopsided.

I have to say that I take after my mother, but it doesn't matter: I care about taste, not looks.

Sorry, Nana. I hope as you look down on me from heaven (despite my not being religious) I hope you will forgive my horrifically uneven dough rounds).

Creating this dish in Taipei was - and will be, when I make it again in two weeks - a collision of memories. My life in Taipei with our assortment of friends here, our decrepit apartment that we'll soon be moving out of for better digs, our insane cat, Chinese class, evenings enjoying Belgian beer at various Da'an cafes or going out for some of the best food I've ever had from around China and the world... and commingled with childhood holidays where we'd serve typical American food - turkey or ham, gratin potatoes, green beans, tossed salad, apple pie - alongside hummus, Armenian string cheese, cheoreg (my mom wrote that recipe!), babaghanoush, pilaf, fish cookies, olives and lahmacun. We'd eat scrambled eggs with string cheese, bacon and cheoreg the next morning sitting around Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen table in their suburban house that is so typically American that I once saw their living room in a TV commercial (except it wasn't theirs - it just happened to be the same pre-fab living room). Running around the backyard with my cousins, all much younger than myself and helping Grandma make deviled eggs - it took years for her to realize that I was, in fact, capable of cooking much more than that.

Those flavors - mahlab (a spice made from the ground pits of a certain cherry), tahini, aromatic lamb, tangy lemon, earthy cumin, pungent mint and parsley, fiery cayenne - are the sensory receptacles of my childhood and going back from there, of my heritage. Despite sweating in a kitchen in Taiwan over a plastic table covered in parchment paper, whereas my great grandmother would have done this first on a rough kitchen counter in rural Turkey and later in Athens, and later still in Troy, New York, I did feel a connection to the feisty woman who passed away when I was 9 and who never did quite become fluent in English. It was also meaningful to me to share this first batch of lahmacun - the food of my childhood - with my ever-amazing husband:

...who, you know, certainly appreciates good food. We ate it as I always have, topped with fresh vegetables (onion, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, all will do) and a squeeze of lemon.

And it means a lot to me to be able to share this food with my friends in Taipei in just a few short weeks, before we say goodbye until October.

Oh yes, and I made a cucumber yoghurt mint salad, too!