Topkapi Palace , Part Two: Harem Culture Shock

Entering the Harem

from the Courtyard of the Black Eunuchs

Visiting the Harem portion of Topkapi Palace was so darn interesting that when I finished I could have gone round again and seen it all and listened to the descriptions all over again. Why? Because visiting the Harem is unlike anything I've experienced. I had as many questions when I left the Harem as when I started. 

Keep dreaming, lady.

There's no way you're getting out of this place.

I realized later that one reason I was so intensely interested in the Harem, is the the women enslaved there were like me. When I visit a slavery exhibit in the United States, I have empathy for the slaves, but I don't identify with the slaves because they were people of color. I'm not a person of color so I see the exhibit knowing I could never have been in that position. Here, in the Harem, the slaves were white Christian women (Islam forbids the enslavement of Muslim women). They were people just like me! I'm soooo not okay with that. Here's to a future where no one of any sort is enslaved.

One of the female slaves, Roxelana, a Ukrainian Slav, grew up to marry a Sultan. She was the only concubine in hundred of years of Ottoman history who did.  The Sultan nicknamed her "Laughing Roxalena" and at her gravesight there is a sign saying something to the effect, "do not judge Roxalena by today's standards. When she lived, becoming the chief concubine to a Sultan was the most a woman could make of her life." Well I don't judge her, but I have to judge the period. White people in my country were wrong to enslave black Africans and Ottoman culture was wrong to enslave white Christian women too. Turkish people have their own reasons for judging Roxalena (which is a whole other story).

The initial entry into the Harem.

The tile is so achingly beautiful

it literally took my breath away.

Unlike most slave quarters, the physical space for the Sultan's harem was very beautiful. I am head-over-heels in love with Turkish Iznik tiles and the tile work throughout the Harem was exquisite.  So these may be some of the best-looking slave quarters built. Like all apologists for slavery, I read or heard somewhere in this exploration, "these women were probably better off than if they had just lived their normal lives wherever they were born." I don't believe it. It's still slavery, however gilded.

This ceramic tile is famous all over the world.

Turkish Iznik tiles were manufactured

at the height of the Ottoman Empire.

The audioguide explained there was a strict female heirarchy with the Harem with the Sultan's mother described not only as the most powerful lady over all of the others - it sounded like she had quite a bit of power over the Sultan as well.  Well gosh, no wonder the Empire declined! Imagine your mother-in-law having a say in running lands from Lebanon to Libya - and she didn't get out of the house much or was was even all that educated.

 I tried to think of any female heirarchies that occur naturally, and I couldn't think of any. Can you think of one? Female heirarchy seems unnatural to me.

The pebbled path was for the Sultan's horse

so he wouldn't trip as the Sultan

made his way from his Quarters

through the Harem to the outside world.

The path led to the Black Eunuch's courtyard.

The door to the Black Eunuch's dormitory.

If you don't know what an eunuch is,

you'll have to look it up in the dictionary.

Yes, they really existed. That wasn't an urban legend.

Gorgeous detailing

 over the door to the dormitory.

It's magnificent, isn't it?

Here a younger eunuch

is instructed by the Chief Eunuch,

who apparently yielded enormous power.

Topkapi Palace barely grazes the Eunuch's story.

Both their dormitory and their mosque are off-limits

to visitors.

I find their story as fascinating as the harem slaves

and wish Topkapi had shared more about the entire

Palace community, especially the Eunuchs.

I mean, it's not everyday one learn about eunuchs.

Which path should the Sultan take into the Harem?

The Eunuchs were posted around the clock

in this small antechamber

to protect the Harem women.

They used these two facing mirrors

to see down the various passageways

so they were forewarned if someone was coming.

Looking back on the Black Eunuch's courtyard.

Isn't that portico so classic and contemplative?

The path leads to the Sultan's horse mount

outside his own chambers.

This is called the Passageway of the Concubines.

Just like a solitary confinement prison, the prisoners

were not allowed interaction with the guards.

The eunuchs would leave the food for the ladies

on the counters on the left wall and then leave.

This is the Courtyard of the Concubines.

If a women bore the Sultan a son, she hit the big time

and could get a window with a view...onto this courtyard.

Imagining their plight...

what do all prisoners do, but look to the sky.

The harem has many parts that are off-limits to guests. The private quarters of the Valdin Sultan (the Sultan's mother), the Harem hammam, the Eunuch dormitory and mosque, plus the concubine's dormitories. At any one time, the Sultan had 300 concubines.  Only one of the Harem's six levels is shown to the public. Why do they charge extra to see this portion of the palace? It lessens the number of visitors. But then, maybe that's the idea.

The young women who were sold into the Harem were often sold by their parents for cash or grain. What's your opinion? Do you think they were better off as gilded Ottoman slaves?

You might enjoy my first post on Topkapi Palace:

Topkapi Palace, Part One: Would This Environment Keep You Conquering?



Talking About "My People," Iowans, to the Travel Junkies

"American Gothic"

by Iowa artist Grant Wood 

If you live away from where you grew up, have you ever received an invitation to talk about "your people," those that raised you and the culture you grew up in? I can't say I had before. But one of the pleasures of living in Istanbul and having so many expat friends is that I interact with a variety of international people everyday.

My Internations travel group, the Travel Junkies (who I will write more about in future posts), began hosting evenings where individual members shared about the place they came from. The woman who spoke immediately before me spoke about her homeland of Iran. I joked it was just a little intimidating to follow an 8,000-year-old culture to tell about my home state of Iowa, which became a state a mere 166 years ago! 

 

 Repeat three times please: Iowa = corn!

The first things I wanted to teach my friends was to never mix up Iowa, Idaho, and Ohio ever again. Americans always confuse the three and ask Iowans about potatoes and Idahoans about corn.

The President of Iowa State University

at the National Archives in Washington D.C.

celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act.

The Morrill Act gave every state in America

that wanted to participate

30,000 acres of federal land to use for a university to

uplift the population.

My hometown of Ames, Iowa, was the first

place in the nation to accept this land grant.

The result today: Iowa State University,

one of the world's most successful

agriculture and technical research universities

in the world supported by a mere 3,000,000 Iowans!

I then was deeply proud to share about Iowa's educational legacy. One of the best things I've ever read on just how good Iowa public education was in Tom Wolfe's book "Hooking Up," a series of essays about American culture. In it he wrote an inspiring essay detailing the impact Iowa public education had on Robert Noyce, a founding chairman of Intel, and a man frequently described as "the father of Silicon Valley."

 Besides describing Noyce's educational experiences growing up in Iowa and at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa specifically, Tom Wolfe made the case that the business casual dress popularized the IT industry was just Noyce's Midwestern lack of fashion pretense institutionalized into Silicon Valley culture.

I love that story, as one would never imagine Iowans having an impact on fashion. We are not a fashion forward people. But we are a deeply democratic people. There is no "us and them" in Iowa, when I grew up there, we viewed ourselves as "us."

Iowa has the highest per capita number of high school graduates of any state in the nation (as well it should since it was the first state in the nation to insitutionalize high school), the highest literacy rate of any state in the nation, we have two cities out of the top three with the most number of PhDs per capita (Ames, Iowa and Iowa City, Iowa share that distinction with Boulder, Colorado).

The beautiful law library

at the Iowa State Capitol building -

frequently used as a television backdrop

for Iowa caucus reporting by national news organizations

Indeed, literacy is so darn important in Iowa, that our recent first lady, Christie Vilsack, visited every single public library in the State because she considered public libraries the most important provider of culture in each town. Some of those libraries were probably one room! She still visited them because those libraries brought their citizens the greater outside world.

Iowa's appreciation of reading and literature is so profound it's even been recognized by UNESCO. Iowa City, Iowa was named a "City of Literature" by UNESCO along with Dublin, Reykjavik, Melbourne, and Edinburgh.

After all, the University of Iowa (where I received my M.A. in Library and Information Science) is home to the Iowa Writer's Workshop, the very first creative writing program in the nation. It draws not only nationally-famous writers, but internationally-known writers. For example, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel laureate for literature, has spent time at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. UNESCO speculated Iowa City may be the most literary spot in the world for its size.  It has a mere 67,000 people and was recognized with those large world-famous cities!

"Spring in Town"

painted by Iowa artist

Grant Wood, 1941

In addition to our educational values, I thought our next most important deeply-held value was in feeding the world. Iowa is first in the nation in corn production, first in the nation in soybean production, 1st in the nation in hog production (the most searched for recipe on the Internet in America is for pork chops) 1st in the nation in egg production, and 2nd in the nation in beef production. Indeed, 90% of all Iowa's land is used in farming which resulted in Iowa contributing $4.5 billion in exports to help America's balance of trade in 2005.

Notice the precise geometry

of Iowa farming.

It's a sublter beauty than mountains and oceans,

but it is beauty, nonetheless.

My friends were fascinated by the combination of a highly agricultural state combined with a high level of education in the general population. Most Iowans live in cities. It's hard for folks who come from countries where agriculture is all about peasant traditions to imagine a place where high education levels and ag can be combined.

Dr. Borlaug

Iowans care about feeding the world so much there is now a prize coming out of Iowa started by one of our own, Dr. Norman Borlaug, the ag scientist who is credited with saving more human life than anyone else who has ever lived in the history of the world. Coming from a small farm in Cresco, Iowa, born of Norwegian heritage, Dr. Borlag helped farmers globally increase their yields. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

The Iowa-generated World Food Prize is a mere 22 years old, but hopes to be recognized as the "Nobel Prize of Food," honoring those innovators in politics and science who find new ways to feed humanity. The Secretary of State announces the winner every year and the Secretary General of the United Nations comes to the awards ceremony each year. I hope, gentle reader, that you will care as much about who wins this award, as any other. I think it is that important, don't you?

A talk about Iowa wouldn't be complete without an explanation of the whole Iowa presidential primary caucus system. I think Iowa maintains its first in the nation status for selecting the president through a primary caucus for a very important reason. The first place to get a crack at judging future presidents should not only be highly educated but small enough for retail politics. Iowa is both. Candidates have to interact personally with Iowans, instead of selling themselves in paid media campaigns.

There is even a joke about it. A presidential candidate asks an Iowan for his vote in the upcoming caucus and the Iowan says, "I can't vote for you yet. I've only interacted with you three times." When I was a county chair for Bob Dole when he was running for President, it was fun to host Elizabeth Dole in my mom's living room where she preceded to tell us why Bob would make a great President.

Iowa (97% white), literally made Obama a star, when in 2008, chose him above everyone else as the winner of the Democratic caucus. He finished his 2012 campaign in Iowa too, combining sentimentality and swing-state saavy.

I described three Iowa companies I thought would impact the entire world culturally: Pioneer Hybrid for genetically-modified foods, Pinterest, a social media company for sharing visual media, and Dwolla, a brand new financial services company that makes money transfers inexpensive between people and companies.

The Iowa butter cow,

and her current sculptor, Sarah Pratt

Since my friends were travel junkies, I wanted to make sure they knew the four most important tourist things to do in Iowa. First is riding on RAGBRAI, the 10,000-strong annual bike ride across Iowa that occurs every July. The second is driving the Iowa River Road along the Mississippi, what National Geographic Magazine calls as on of the "500 Drives for a lifetime," third is spending a day at the Iowa State Fair with a special look at the sculpted "butter cow," and my last suggestion was renting a houseboat to float down the Mississippi.

You don't have to be in Istanbul, or even an expat, to carry out this idea of rotating travelogues from natives to friends. I've loved attending each one (usually presented with a meal that matches the country) and so far I have learned about Trinidad and Tobago, Lebanon, Sudan, and Iran.

Just gather a bunch of international friends and put on evenings for each other. I felt deeply honored that my friends cared enough about me to learn about "my people." I had great fun and renewed passion for my birthplace putting my presentation together. Yea Iowa! That's where the tall corn grows.

Here are four other Iowa-related posts I wrote you might enjoy:

You're My Al Bell!

Enjoying Hometown Friends in Istanbul

Dvorak Embraced Spillville, Iowa; Spillville, Iowa Embraced Dvorak

UNESCO Names Iowa City, Iowa a "City of Literature"

Follow me on Facebook at: Empty Nest Expat

"Been There, Done That," only in present tense

At Topkapı Palace

with a trusty audioguide

around my neck

Wow! How exciting. I'm part of a trend documented with a three-page travel story in the New York Times. What is it? Solo travel. According to the article, Google reports that solo travel searches are up 50 to 60% and becoming larger all the time. Women make up 70% of solo travel, although men do more solo adventure travel like mountain climbing. The article also explains the difference between solo travel and single travel.

 Where does the article recommend a solo person go if they want to explore a new city? Istanbul! I'm here, I'm doing that! Click here to read the entire article.

Enjoying Hometown Friends in Istanbul

 Brian Smith and me

One of the fun parts about living in Istanbul is so many friends come through town as tourists. This summer it was my  Ames, Iowa high school classmate Brian Smith and his very fun wife Fazia Ali. So many giggles! Brian is so in love with Fazia. It's moving to see. They have been married for 19 years.

Family friend Bahar

and Brian's wife Fazia

Brian is a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer. His first magazine photograph appeared in LIFE Magazine when he was a 20-year-old student at the University of Missouri.  Five years later, Brian won the Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Yes, that's right, at age 25!

Because Brian started achieving so early and for so many years people are always asking him for advice and he is happy to provide it. Here's an example from his blog where he shares Secrets of Sports Photography: his favorite Olympic Moments.  It is great storytelling of jawdropping images we will all remember.

Lately, Brian has specialized in celebrity portrait photography. I love hearing him talk about his book project "Art and Soul: Stars Unite to Celebrate and Support the Arts." The book grew out of the desire of entertainment professionals to share in a deeply personal way how they had been impacted by the arts. Truly, some of the most iconic celebrities are featured. I dare you to look deeply into Ann Hathaway's eyes in Brian's portrait and not want to say "yes" to whatever she asks for! You can thumb through 15 of the portraits on the Amazon site and vote for the ones you like. All of these portraits were also featured at the Library of Congress. The stars hand-carried the book to Congress to advocate for more funding for the arts.


















This fall Brian will have a new book coming out called "Secrets of Great Portrait Photography: Photographs of the Famous and Infamous." Along with instantly iconic photos like this cover shot of billionaire space entrepreneur Richard Branson, Brian shares the stories behind the photographs and how he connected with his subjects to create such unforgettable images.

I admire my classmate's work and his willingness to mentor so many young photography professionals coming up. Brian gives speeches all across America on photography topics but also on just getting started as a professional. I enjoyed the storytelling in this webinar: "Stop Waiting for Your Big Break." He frequently is invited to share on this and other topics in person.

After coming to Istanbul, Brian and Fazia went on to Athens. I LOVE this photograph he took of her there.

"My Goddess Rocks the Acropolis"

Brian Smith on Twitter: @briansmithphoto

Brian Smith on the web: http://briansmith.com/

Breaking the Silence on Street Harassment in Istanbul

Sessizliği Sen Boz,

Break the Silence

about Street Harassment

Street harassment is a human rights issue. It's also a business issue because street harassment costs businesses big money. I haven't felt harassed on the streets of Istanbul. I know, however, that I am not the target demographic as most young people harassed are ages 16-24. I have young friends who have experienced both rude, disgusting comments and groping.

If you think about it, street harassment is probably the number one reason women would not contemplate becoming an "Empty Nest Expat." It's an informal ghettoization of women that keeps them home: whether it be in their actual dwelling, their city, or their country because exploring their world looks too scary.

While fear of harassment has not kept me from exploring my world, street harassment still effects my spending decisions, which is why I emphasize the business consequences of street harassment in this post.

In 2011, I wanted to go to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's flat in the central Taksim area of Istanbul. When my Turkish male friends heard this, they resoundingly said, "you absolutely must not go." Why?

They said, "on New Year's Eve all the village yokels come into Istanbul. They've never seen a foreigner, they are drinking, they assume all sorts of things, and our news the next morning is filled with foreigners who were treated inappropriately on New Year's Eve because of this. Your smiling foreign face would be misunderstood by villagers."

So two hours before I was to leave, I made the decision to stay home and miss my friend's party. Between taxis and hostess gifts of wine and such, the amount I would have spent that night had I gone adds up to about $100. I am just one woman. Think of that decision multiplied by thousands of women. It becomes very easy to see what street harassment costs an economy.

In many ways, Istanbul is benefitting because street harassment is so much worse in other places. One of my friends recently moved here to Istanbul from Cairo. My friend, a highly educated and successful Arab author, said after living in Cairo for two years that it feels completely lawless. She would never move about Cairo proper using a regular taxi. It had to be her regularly-used taxi service, because a woman couldn't even trust licensed cabs in Cairo to keep her safe.

Another story of Cairo street harassment that stunned me comes from one of my favorite blog writers on Islamic spirituality. What are the business implications for a country like Egypt with so little control of its own streets?

For starters, a lot less tourists. At one time, Turkish and Egyptian populations and economies were roughly equal. But now, Turkey receives more than double the tourists Egypt does even though Egypt has the sphyinx and the pyramids and the Nile to offer.

There's a website called Hollaback! that works to document street harassment all over the world so that women know places to avoid within a city. It is also localized to document cases within Istanbul itself so people can see where most harassment occurs.

Avoiding places is a 20th century solution. Women won't settle for that anymore. Women deserve, demand, and will work for safe streets all around the world. We are half of the world's population. We aren't going to remain silent anymore.

Tourist and retail business people should appreciate and fund activists like the Istanbul Hollaback! team because they are working to create an environment safe for people and frankly, local businesses, to thrive.

Click on my title to check out the Istanbul Hollaback! website. You can share your story, check the map of harassment locations, and learn Turkish to help defend yourself. You can also learn how you can be a badass bystander who helps diffuse situations!

It's exciting to see tools like this develop to help women go out and explore their world. We didn't have something like this when I was in my twenties. A worldwide network of Hollaback websites helps give women courage. Set sail, explore, see parts unknown! Don't let street harassment keep you from exploring beyond your street, your city, or your country just like anybody else.