Of course the old men are only letting off steam. On the other hand there are days when even we resident expats find ourselves struggling to understand the sudden blindness that seems to afflict some holidaymakers when arriving in what is still an essentially conservative village. Few things could be more incongruous than the sight of a beşalvared village matron, wearing a long, white “modesty” headdress over her usual scarf, strolling past a tourist clad only in the skimpiest of T-shirts and cheek-revealing shorts. Most of us who live here quickly learn to tone down our own wardrobes. It’s not that anything is said to us, just that we soon come to feel more comfortable fitting in as best we can with local expectations. But most of us still draw the line at wearing a headscarf. Just once I put one on after a neighbor invited me to a mevlit (prayer meeting). The scarf I wore was a yemeni, a square of gauzy cloth with beading stitched around the edges. “It suits you,” my neighbor said rather wistfully, and in that wistfulness I heard a half-hope that I could be persuaded to wear one more frequently.
“Yes, but I’m English,” I replied gently, and that was the end of that.
Göreme is a microcosm of Turkish society at large, and even the locals wear a variety of head coverings, with the yemeni by far the most common. Individual women wear their scarves in many different ways, sometimes with a corner swept up and secured on top of the head with a pin, sometimes simply draped and hooked back behind the ears, a style which makes the wearer look rather like one of those painted faces on the cases of Egyptian mummies. The idea is clearly to keep the hair concealed, but most women seem relaxed about the odd locks that make a break for freedom. Just a few wear scarves designed to prevent any such mishap, but they are balanced by the few who wear no head covering at all.
My neighbor would feel naked if she didn’t wear socks in high summer. On the other hand when, before a trip to Iran, I put on an all-encompassing black robe, it provoked universal merriment and cries of, “But you’re not a Muslim, Pat!”
Live and let live then, for the most part. Of course the question of how to dress to avoid giving offense is mainly one that concerns females, but once I bumped into some male cyclists who were heading for Göreme. One quick look at their lower halves and I heard myself stuttering that perhaps, just maybe, the village wasn’t quite ready for their choice of in-yer-face, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination lycra cycling shorts.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
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