When Osman met Dora: a Turkish love story

Our cattycorner neighbor, Sadullah Ağabey, who also doesn’t own the property, has assured us for some time that it is permissible to plant a garden and build a chicken coop there; in fact, it was his idea, and we have been farming and chickening there ever since. On the occasion which began our story, Sadullah was all in an uproar because there was a terrifying creature in the garden; he needed Lute to come kill it. Lütfü, hoping it wasn’t a snake, leapt over the garden wall to find poor Sadullah protecting himself from, of all things, a wild tortoise. The fearsome quadruped, all of 10 inches or so in length, had probably wandered over from the undeveloped chaparral across the road; Lute and I had seen several of the little beasties whilst hiking. Lute had never let me bring one home because he said, rightly, that is wrong to take a wild animal out of its natural home. Besides, wild tortoises are tick magnets, and we each have a serious aversion to those in particular of God’s little creatures. In the present case, however, and perhaps in collusion with my own self-interest, I was able to convince Lütfü that saving a tortoise from sure destruction by a Turkish shovel changed the rules, and we were now responsible for that tortoise for having interfered with its kismet. Somehow this line of argument was successful, and after checking for ticks (there were none) we removed our new member of the household to his new digs in our front gardens. He is probably descended from the very tortoises Osman Hamdi Bey used for the models for his most famous painting, so we with some predictability named him Osman.

I started to doubt the wisdom of my wily argument within a few weeks of Osman’s residency.  He seemed to be very cranky and not well mannered at all. He stamped around a lot, and wouldn’t eat out of our fingers; he just kept his head in his shell until we dropped the lettuce or grapes or whatever nice treat we had and went away. His appetite was good, and his digestion seemed functioning well; he was just very crabby. We even built him a little exercise route around the garden, which he used with no gratitude but much energy. I thought maybe he was a girl and had babies somewhere that “she” worried about, but we had no idea how to find out; he was brave (or dumb) enough to have crossed the big road at least once, and we had no idea from which part of the chaparral he emerged from. I finally did what I should have done at the first, and did some tortoise research on the web, as to determining gender, habits, etc.

A lonely Osman

It turned out that Osman is indeed a male, although sexing tortoises is almost as difficult as sexing chickens. It also turned out that while all male tortoises are randy, Osman’s breed is even more so. It was now so obvious -- poor Osman was lonesome, and some well-meaning humans with nice food and a tortoise promenade were no replacement for the comforts of connubial bliss. Osman needed a wife, and so Lute and I set out to forage in the surrounding hills for a female, but to no avail. We scoured the Internet looking for tortoises for sale, also with no luck. We pestered pet shops, vets, neighbors. Finally, last Christmas, in 2010, in İstanbul, we met a lovely woman named Julie, a British ex-pat, and her brilliant young daughter, Yasemin. The mention of our Osman problem elicited an eager response from Yasemin (which means “gift from God”); she knew of a place with lots and lots of tortoises, right in İstanbul! She and her mother had been there, in fact, the previous night, so the news was fresh; the tortoise mother lode was at the Crimean Memorial Church, officially known as Christ’s Church, in good old Beyoğlu (see Today’s Zaman June 28, 2008, Crimean Memorial: in memory of fallen British soldiers).

Lütfü and I made a couple of trips to do some recon; the church is not that easy to find. Eventually we found it, but there was no one about. We (duh) figured out it would be open on Sundays, so on Easter Sunday after Mass we scurried down İstiklal Caddesi from Saint Antoine’s to Christ’s Church, and sure enough, there were folks about, socializing after the Easter liturgy. We asked a very nice young Sri Lankan man if the priest were available. He asked us (we thought) what we wanted the priest for. We explained it was about the tortoises we had heard about. He conferred with a couple of his buddies, also Sri Lankans, and then took us to the rectory and let us in! He gestured to the back of the house, and then (we thought) he said there were more on the second floor. (Oh, my, thought I, they certainly take good care of their tortoises at this parish; they must bring them in for the winter; maybe we should have done that for Osman.) I was just heading up the stairway and Lute was headed towards the back of the house, when a group came through the door by which we had just entered. Among them was a jolly man with a Roman collar, although of course he was Anglican, and of course this was the pastor! In a kindly but firmly British tone he basically asked us what we were doing in his home, making ourselves so free? Our Sri Lankan guide spoke up, and Father Ian, for that was his name, relaxed, laughed and said of course we could use the restroom. Uh, the restroom? And it all became clear, to me, if not to Father Ian, so I sputtered that we hadn’t wanted the restroom, we had come about the tortoises. Father had returned his attention to his friends, but the “tortoises” bit re-caught his attention, so we explained our mission. He heard us out, and then said we should come back in a month, because his tortoise flock was just starting to emerge from their hibernation. In a month they should all be up and moving around, and we would talk about it.

When we duly returned a month later, we had a chance to talk to Father Ian a little more, and found out that his church, like many in Turkey, is involved with refugee work; the charming Sri Lankan gentlemen we had met the month before, who were now madly playing cricket in front of the church, were some of them. Father was very involved in introducing us to the tortoises that live in his garden; he told us that the local street kids find the tortoises in perilous situations in the alleys of İstanbul and bring them to Christ’s Church for sanctuary; apparently Father Ian has quite the reputation for granting shelter and succor to whomever or whatever needs it. In this case he appeared knowledgeable and concerned about his reptilian charges, not-so-gently scolding Lute for terrorizing one tortoise by turning it upside-down. Lute dutifully held the beasties up over his head from then on, to perform the arcane art of gender determination.

We eventually found one tortoise we were almost for sure positive was a female, and by then Father Ian had apparently decided we qualified as adoptive hosts. His decision to part with one of his lovely reptilian guests was due mainly to the sad predicament of our lonely Osman. As a compassionate man of the cloth, he recognized the need for all God’s children for companionship with their own kind, and gave us his blessing to remove the lady tortoise to her new husband’s home, all the way in Kocaeli. We asked Father to give her a name, and he named her Dora, which, like Yasemin, means gift.

Dora was quiet in her box all the way on the Tünel, the ferry, the train and the dolmuş. When we put her gently into her new garden home, she showed great aplomb, walking away to explore. As we left the garden, we noticed movement from a far corner, and there he was, the bridegroom, on his sturdy way to meet his true love.

That was almost a year ago, and I can honestly say the newlyweds seem to be a good match; Dora has produced a couple of eggs, which we unfortunately turned up in the fall soil preparation; hopefully we replaced them correctly, and will surely be more careful next time. Although Osman favors blackberries, Dora’s favorite seems to be nasturtium leaves and flowers; they both love to eat nectarines. They are good-natured and chase each other all day long over and around the track we built for them. They often rest beside each other in the parsley patch. It appears to be a match made in Heaven, or at least in a welcoming church in Beyoğlu. Father Ian would be proud.

*Elsie Alan lives in Gebze with her husband.