Every day is a Turkish Day

It was a day filled with Turkish.  Nerlin and I started the day excited to go get our American coffee—because Turkish was way too strong and bitter—at a coffee shop near Sultanamet Square called Denizen Coffee.  We were determined to learn Turkish.  With all the shopping we were planning to do as well as the fact that kept on being told I looked 100 percent Turkish, we needed to learn the basics.  We stopped by not really sure how to approach what were then complete strangers.

We had our basic introductions down—“hello,” “how are you?” “I’m doing well, thank you.”  We recited them all the way up to the coffee shop.  Confidence high and ready to go, we spotted our first target standing outside the shop drawing the menu sign.  We approached him cautiously and at the same time.  Our determination clouded us from realizing how close we actually stood in front of him without saying a word.  When he finally tilted his head up to see two women looking at him we just blurted out all the words we knew.  Waiting for his response, the man gave us a perplexed look and with a kind smile said “What?”

The American accent was very welcoming.  At first it took me a while to process what had just happened.  This guy definitely looked American, so what was he doing working here?  The man, Ken, offered us a seat and asked us where we were from.  We asked him what Turkish phrases he knew that he thought would be helpful and laughed when he told us that he only phrase he knew was “Sorry, but unfortunately I don’t speak Turkish.”  He did, however, refer us to his friend Salim, who seemed to be the owner of the place. 

What started as a casual conversation, turned into a full out grammar and Turkish language lesson.  Salim was very helpful and eager to teach us as much Turkish as he could.  He lent us books, wrote down different phrases, made us repeat several words over and over, and even borrowed someone’s laptop to give us some helpful sites.  His hospitality was comforting and his enthusiasm to teach was sincere.  We learned a lot that day, though we never actually got to have that coffee.