The interior of their home is an 'Ottoman museum'

Sepeda is a professor of art history teaching at the University of Maryland University College's Italy campus, while Manley is a linguist and a painter. Every year, the two spend their three-month summer vacation just outside of İstanbul, in a home overlooking the sea in Şile. This habit brings them to Turkey from the start of May all the way to August. And their two-story home in Akçakese is very valuable to them. What's more, this home, which may appear from the outside to be a typical summer home, is filled with objects central to Turkish history. From the bathroom to the kitchen and the bedroom to the balcony, you can see countless historical objects here.

We came on a Tuesday to see in person the home we had heard so much about. Worried that we would have trouble finding the house, this American couple even came all the way to the campus of Şile's Işık University to meet us and lead us back to their home. We followed their Italian-plate car back to their home. On arriving, one of the first things we noticed was the İznik tiling next to the doorbell, with the word “Allah” written in calligraphy. Sepeda opened the front door of the house for us, a door which itself bears a copper crescent.

Stepping into this two-story villa, there are stairs immediately to your left and a large painting of İstanbul done by Manley himself. The special signet stamp of an Ottoman pasha lies right above this painting on the wall. Both Sepeda and Manley love traditional calligraphic art, as well as the architectural features of mosque domes and minarets.

They spend much of their time in Turkey touring and photographing the countless mosques and minarets here. Manley has even learned the traditional art of calligraphy, teaching himself by carefully examining samples of calligraphy from the past up through modern times.

The second floor of this extraordinary home boasts a large living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and a long balcony. The kitchen opens into the living room. Aside from various electronic items in the kitchen, there are no high-tech items to be found in the house. They purposefully did not buy a television for the home, and they are not hooked up to the Internet here, either. Their cell phones are quite enough for them, and they approach their summer vacations here with the philosophy of not wanting to know what's going on in the outside world.

The kitchen in this “museum-home” features cupboards originally from the historic homes of Safranbolu. Many of the ceramic pieces in the cupboards are from İznik, and Manley has decorated many of the cups with calligraphy. Looking closely at the kitchen, we stumble on a detail that surprises us: Manley has written “besmele” along the wall containing the oven. Perhaps they don't know that saying “besmele” before preparing or eating a meal is important in Islam, but surely this is a reflection of this pair's great love for Turkey. We see “besmele” on other walls of the home, too. On the kitchen counter, there is a large glass jar with a spout that was used as an oil container during Ottoman times. Sepeda notes that since this large jar is quite difficult to clean properly, they use it to hold water now and not oil.

We notice books about the darbuka (a cylindrical drum). Manley says, “I just love the darbuka; in fact, I take darbuka lessons from a teacher in Taksim's Tünel area.”

As you might expect in a home like this, the bathroom has been designed to resemble a hamam. The spigot heads and marble basins here are original. After we tour the top floor, the pair serves us tea on their balcony. Manley points out that the green sofa on the balcony was inspired by a mosque's mithrab and that the two embroidered it with their own hands. Sepeda talks with enthusiasm about her husband's talent for carpentry, telling us that Manley was even responsible for one of the more spectacular gondolas currently plying the waters of the Venetian canals. Manley spent eight months working on the 13-meter-long gondola, which is still in service.

Later, we descend from the top floor to the bottom floor, with its bedroom and guest room. There are images of mosques and minarets scattered along the small hallway that takes us to these rooms. The bedroom itself features a high, small bed, somewhat like those the Ottoman pashas slept on. There is a black design on the white bedspread, a design drawn by Manley. The curtains in the bedroom are embroidered, some with lace and others with special needlepoint designs.

Four summers spent without electricity and water

Interestingly, though everything now appears simple and comfortable at their summerhouse, this Turkish adventure did not begin that easily for Sepeda and Manley. Sepeda arrived in İstanbul for the first time in 1974 and decided immediately upon landing at the airport that she wanted to live in Turkey. She explains, “The moment we landed at the airport, I decided I was in love with the country and its people.” But in those years, she did not have the courage to do this on her own. The second time she came was in 1989. But this time, she had Manley by her side, and the two of them decided on Şile as the spot where they would try to live. Of course, this decision did not necessarily lead to an easy process. The seaside atmosphere of Şile was perfect for them, and they decided to go ahead and set up a small house for themselves near the shore. During those years, the sale of homes along the shoreline to foreigners was illegal, and this of course was the first disappointment. Still, they didn't give up on their dream. Around this time, a former student of Sepeda's, a man named Yıldıray Çamlık, came to their rescue. He bought the plot of land on which their home now stands, and when the laws changed, they transferred the land from his name to theirs. In the end, they finally built the home they had wanted for so long, though for four months they lived with neither electricity nor running water. The electricity problem was largely due to the relative isolation of their home, and the water problem was solved by digging a private well.

They go fishing and wear shalvar

 “When we first arrived, we noticed that everyone used the word ‘Inshallah.' At first we didn't know what to make of this, but then we realized we Westerners like to live our lives as though we control everything, but actually, only Allah knows what will happen tomorrow. When we understood this, we began to truly appreciate the word ‘Inshallah',” Sepeda explains.

“We wake up at 5:30 in the morning, sometimes setting out to go fishing together. We really love wearing shalvar. Even my husband wears them. He designs dresses for me out of fabric we get from different towns in Anatolia, even decorating them with calligraphy,” she adds. “We have great neighborly relations with the people next door, Özgen-Selçuk Şeref. We host them for dinner often. … When we first got here, we would go down to the shore. Later, a family would come and sit right next to us. I used to get angry at this, asking, ‘Why do they need to sit right next to us when there is this whole huge coastline?” But then I began to understand that people would sit next to us because they didn't want us to feel alone. And they would always offer us whatever they had to eat and drink.”