[Living in Antalya - 17] Living with the neighbors

Most of our expat friends live in gated “sites” in the posh suburbs of Lara or Konyaaltı, complete with swimming pools and 24-hour security. Several expressed surprise that we chose to build our house in city center Haşim İşcan Mahallesi. Our Turkish friends, middle-class professionals, were horrified. “But it’s the gypsy quarter,” they said. Unperturbed, we stood by our choice and now have a great house complete with a garden, albeit overlooked by the some of the surrounding dwellings. Sometimes I envy our friends’ spacious, modern apartments with views over the sea or mountains, the neat and tidy rubbish-free shared gardens, the helpful “kapıcı” (doorman), the safe parking areas and the polite middle-class neighbors. But 99 percent of the time I wouldn’t swap it for the world.

We live in the backstreets in the center of Antalya, an area we deliberately chose so as to be close to the sea, public transport, work, shops, bars, restaurants and (for my husband at least) the Antalyaspor football grounds. We also deliberately chose, rather naively in retrospect, to live in the “real Turkey,” an area populated by ordinary, down-to-earth Turkish people and before moving in, I had visions of evenings spent mingling with the neighbors. Apart from the odd chat with the duck woman and the family who live in the flat above her, the contact with our fellow residents is limited to say the least. This is not just a language barrier -- I can now conduct a passable conversation in Turkish -- but just that culturally we are probably about as far apart as it is possible to get. However, while we may not have become best buddies with our neighbors, there is never any shortage of entertainment to be had -- weddings, funerals, sünnets (circumcision ceremonies), parties and fights all happen on our front doorstep. Life is never dull around here.

It’s not that they (or we) are unfriendly, but as a pair of yabancıs (foreigners) we are clearly “other.” Over the years we seem to have come to an unwritten but mutual agreement to tolerate each other in a polite and amicable kind of way, but I doubt we’ll ever receive, nor dish out, dinner party invitations.

The doorstep

Our house fronts a narrow street and our builder carefully fitted a large old stone doorstep to aid the access to our raised front door. Our neighbors must have been rubbing their hands in delight as they watched. It makes a perfect and surprisingly comfortable seat, especially when warmed by the sun, for any of our street inhabitants to perch themselves on (remarkably, ours is the only front step on the street). It saves the bother of bringing out chairs and gives them a great vantage point to observe the comings and goings of their fellow street dwellers. Sometimes I think we should add a small table, ashtray and a few magazines to make sure they are truly comfortable. Our doorstep has become as much theirs as ours (or is that nearly as much ours as theirs?). So much so that we always use the side garden gate to go in and out, rather than disturbing them. We smile and make small talk on our way past them, but that’s as far as it goes. Once I noticed that someone had written the name Hatice on the step in black marker pen. I asked one of the girls hanging around who did this. “Bilmiyorum” (I don’t know) she replied, a trifle guiltily. “Adın ne?” (Your name?) I asked. “Hatice” she replied. Caught red-handed, I gave her a bowl of water and scrubbing brush and, cheered on by all the neighboring adults, watched her remove her signature.

Party time

Every so often when I come home, I find our narrow street blocked by the infamous off-white plastic tables and chairs. The arrival of these pieces of furniture means only one thing. It’s party time. Working out what kind of party is more difficult, as birthdays, weddings, sünnets and even funerals seem to follow much the same format. The neighbors start to drift out of their houses in the early evening and take up their positions around these tables -- (the overspill ends up on our doorstep, of course). Eventually, the food arrives; I’m never quite sure where from. Often, a band appears and there is dancing until, like Cinderella, at the stroke of midnight everything disappears. The first time we witnessed a party in progress, our doorbell rang and we fully expected to be invited to join in the festivities. We were wrong. It was merely a polite request for us to turn on our outside light so that they could see their food. I’ve got used to not taking part in these festivities and am quite content to observe the proceedings from a safe distance.

The kids

The local kids, whose playground is the street, are braver than their parents, or perhaps just more curious, and regularly find ways to be invited into our garden. “Can we have our football back?” is a common one and seems to necessitate four or five lads of assorted sizes tramping around our garden for 10 minutes or so, pretending to search for a missing ball. For the girls it is usually “kaplumbaları sevebilir miyim?”(Can I pet the tortoises?). Or for those not frightened by dogs “köpeği sevebilir miyim?” (Can I stroke the dog?). Then a procession of pink-and-purple-clad girls trip their way around our garden, usually wearing their mum’s slippers, showing no interest in our garden menagerie but checking out what we are up to in the house or garden at the time. Now and again these same kids play that age-old game of ring the bell and hide. All of the above is fine by me. I feel we fill in a small gap in their lives when they are bored of their street games.

Noise

Living in a Turkish “site” or even back home in the UK, it is possible not to see your neighbors from one year to the next. Here, our gypsy neighbors are always very visible and certainly very audible. The majority of their conversations take place on the street. If an argument breaks out between two families, then everyone turns out to watch and of course add their penny’s worth. Straining to understand what these arguments are about provides excellent opportunities to improve my understanding of Turkish. Mothers wanting to check on the whereabouts of their kids, stick their heads out of the upstairs window and screech, for example, “SEVGİİİİİİ.” This system works well, with the reply being “ne istiyorsun?” (What do you want?) or “geliyorum” (I’m coming). Now and again a round of spontaneous music bursts out of nowhere. A couple of the older kids are excellent fiddle players, one neighbor willingly relieved us of a drum kit we were discarding, and another plays keyboard. These jamming sessions are great and I’m sure don’t happen in the smarter suburbs.

Rubbish

This is perhaps the only serious drawback to our neighbors. Traditionally the inside of their houses may be spick and span, but outside is a different matter. Kids and parents alike drop their litter in the street. Some even leave huge bags of garbage outside to be kicked by passing footballs or mauled by the local cats. Sometimes I don my gardening gloves and sweep up all the rubbish from the street. This often has the desired effect of shaming them to be more careful, for a while at least.