Teyze Terzi Determination

I’m used to their fatalism. It’s just this way. Little effort to control their environment and lots of resignation to the way things are. As Americans we are constantly controlling, changing, rearranging. At McDonalds we rearrange tables and chairs to accommodate our large group. We actually refrain from dumping our trash on the side of the road or driving through a red light even though everyone else does. We either believe we can make a difference or someone might learn by our example. Passive teaching or just plain passive aggression.

What I’m not used to is determination and resolve to get something done. I’ve never encountered persistence. And certainly didn’t expect my first experience to be with an older woman.

Having recently found a neighborhood tailor, I had gone in and out of this woman’s musty basement workroom several times. She was a sweet aunty kind of lady. Not old enough or sweet enough to be a grandmother, no longer a mother. When I first went to her with 2 pairs of pants to be hemmed she drew a curtain partition from her brother working in the back and had me undress in the wide open front room. For some reason I didn’t care. Modesty is a relative emotion and far less important in a foreign culture.

So when I went back for the third time, I brought a new pair of my son’s jeans that still had the plastic security clamp on them. I had just bought them in the States and didn’t notice it until we were back in Turkey. I thought maybe she would know what to do. After all, she was an aunt in the “clothing industry.”

She was just opening up for the day and still had her purse hanging from her shoulder. Slightly gasping with surprise, but not missing a beat, she reached into her bag and pulled out a garment with the same security clamp on it! In the following minutes I didn’t quite catch why she had this shirt in her bag, but I did understand that we were going to go together to get them “fixed.” And I was driving.

Pushing groceries aside, she slid into the back seat of my car and directed me to the nearest clothing shop that would surely be able to solve our problem. Of course, the entire way she excitedly mused how we had both gotten out of the store without the security alarms going off. I mean, that is what the clamps are for! I naively assumed she too had been surprised to discover the clerk’s negligence when she returned home.

She took the jeans and at the first store went inside for what seemed entirely too long for the task at hand. I caught a glimpse of her shuffling through clothes on the sales rack and then, coming to the doorway, held up an outfit for me to see. As she returned to the car, unsuccessful, she handed me their card and said they were having great sales on kid’s clothes!

She was equally unsuccessful at the next 2 stores until we stopped at a mall and she finally found someone to release the clamp on her shirt. But the jeans were still as they were. In the brief drive back to her workroom we began to brainstorm options to release these jeans. We were in a parallel brainstorming session as she suggested breaking or smashing it off and I alternately proposed I send it back to America for my Mom to take care of, neither of us seriously entertaining the other’s offer. Although, when I understood her to say the word hammer, I stiffened and imagined my son wearing jeans with a gnarled mangled plastic apparatus protruding from beneath his shirt.

In front of her shop she quickly jumped out of the backseat, jeans in hand. We had grossly under estimated one another. I was out in a flash, trailing behind this small stout Turkish aunt. She was already on the floor, jeans splayed over a block of wood and a miniature sledge hammer poised in the air. What was I to say? I had never encountered such determination in this culture before! I was speechless with awe.

Smash! Three times she wailed on the plastic security device. Like an expert? I knew my son would never wear these jeans. And then, lo and behold, voila`! She had done it. It popped off and went flying across the room just missing a small dirty fish tank in the corner. She beamed victoriously and handed me the jeans.

Had she pinched my cheek right then it would have been a perfect Turkish ending to this whole experience. Truly my teyze (aunt), in affection and patronizing pride she would have sent me on my way. It was not to be and so I took my jeans and my doubt and kind of floated back to my car. My son would have no idea the surreal beginning to the jeans he pulled on a few days later.