“Well, of course!” I said, then mentally stepped back a bit to ask myself if it really was as simple as that. But, yes, even on a rethink, I thought it would be possible, for several different reasons. In the first place, there have always been two separate sets of rules operating in the village, one for the locals and one for yabancıs (foreigners). When I first came here I lived upstairs from a Göremeli family, and it was made clear to me that bringing men to the house would be completely unacceptable since it could compromise my neighbor's honor. Then one day a particular friend was coming to visit, and I really wanted to show off my new home and all its Anatolian features. “Would it be all right if a man friend from İstanbul comes to visit me?” I asked my neighbor cautiously.
“Is he a Turk or a yabancı?”
“A yabancı.”
“That's all right then,” she replied.
At the time, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. Did she mean that my friend Paul was somehow less of a man for being a foreigner? But in the end, it didn't really matter since the upshot was that he got to see the inside of an old pasha's house, which was all I really cared about.
But at the same time, I've often been struck by the gulf between what I'm told applies to village life and what I've actually seen in practice. According to the theory, it should certainly be very difficult for a divorced woman to remarry, especially if she's a Turk, but I know of several local women who have had no trouble finding new husbands; even a second divorce doesn't seem to be the absolute barrier one might glibly assume. I remember sitting boggled-eyed one evening while a friend's father-in-law reeled off his own marital history. It turned out that he was onto his fourth marriage, and when I asked what had happened to the three previous wives, the answer was consistent: they had all remarried, albeit not in Göreme.
On the other hand, Göreme is something of an anomaly - - an Anatolian village, true enough, but one that is now into its fourth decade of dealing with tourism. As a consequence, it has had more exposure to outside ideas than villages quite nearby that just didn't have the good fortune to be blessed with the landscape and historic buildings that bring foreigners flocking in. Twenty years ago, no doubt the rules would have been more rigorously adhered to than they are now when many, if not most, families include at least one member who was born outside Turkey.
So a foreign woman who wanted to remarry here could no doubt do so in theory. The real problem is one that is by no means unique to Göreme, and that is the tiny pool of serious and available suitors.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
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