And there it was: a burgeoning electrical fire right there in the kitchen fan. Fortunately, we were able to extinguish it before it spread too far and clear the kitchen of fire extinguisher dust, after which we took a few minutes to ruminate on the possible causes of the fire.I was thinking along the lines of 1) faulty wiring, 2) blown fuse or 3) old kitchen equipment, but I was wrong. According to age-old Turkish wisdom, it was the good old nazar striking again! And this time it had decided to pick on our lovely new home in Çiçekçi because everyone who has visited it has been jealous of the divine view we have of the entire Golden Horn peninsula. OK then. So basically, if I had stayed in my crusty old area of Kadıköy, which had a rather high maganda count and a view of a ne'er to be completed construction site, and which managed to underwhelm everyone who came to visit me, I would be less happy, but not subject to house fires.
And it wasn't just my housemate either. My gym instructor, colleagues, boss and emlakçı were all of the same opinion. Even the electrician who came to appraise the situation said something like this, “It looks like the fan has collected a lot of oil over the years, and this could be the cause… or it could be nazar.”
Even the rational electrician thought the only way of preventing all manner of catastrophes from befalling my house again was to stick a big industrial-strength blue eye on the front door. And here was me thinking they were just another piece of cheap tourist crap. Well apparently they're not. They have a significant place in the national psyche.
The principle behind “nazar” is that you are particularly susceptible to the negative thinking of others if you have anything new, are beautiful or have had recent good fortune or success because these are the things that attract the most praise, and praise is to be treated with suspicion as behind every comment, even those that are well-intentioned, there always lies an element of jealousy and resentment. Bad luck is not limited to envious thoughts of other people; a person can be affected by the evil eye because of another's excessive love, which is why babies and small children can almost always be seen wearing them. (I love a positive attitude, don't you?)
I must admit that up until now, I had managed to exempt myself from wearing the eye, my reason being that I had naturally blue orbs, and I had heard that people born with blue eyes are lucky and are better able to protect themselves from evil. Ha HA. But post- kitchen fire discussions have revealed that Turkish people are often suspicious of people with blue eyes, believing that blue eyes have the power to damage whatever they gaze upon and cause accidents and damage to people and property. Is it possible then that I caused the kitchen fire myself?
So the upshot of it is that having beautiful blue eyes is a mixed blessing and loving someone very strongly is just as bad as being envious of them. It seems you can't win if you try in this world! Anyway, there is now a big eye taking pride of place on my front door, which makes me smile every time I look at it and think about how much I have succumbed to the national psyche. I'm still not convinced about it, nor am I convinced that belief in such a thing isn't simply the result of Turkish people trying to find a way out of dealing with their own emotional baggage and jealousy issues and… hang on a minute… did that big eye just wink at me?
