(in)authentic Bellydancing

I was issued my official Turkish cell phone today. Having a cell phone in your pocket, even if it's one only a handful of people can actually call you on, really produces a level of normalcy that is comforting. If all else fails, I can pull it out of my pocket and push some buttons, even if I can't actually use it to call anyone at home :)

Our big event for last night was a dinner in Taksim Square, at a restaurant called Sultanas. The sub-title is "1001 Turkish Nights," if that gives you any sort of idea. Taksim Square is a major tourist destination in İstanbul, and Sultanas couldn't have been more kitschy. But a good sort of kitschy :)

It started with a long bus ride from the Asian side of town to the European. This took me once again over the bridge that crosses the Bosphorus, which is easily the coolest thing I've ever seen so far. Since I don't have any photos of it yet, just go Google İstanbul and Bosphorus. We're taking a boat tour today, so that should afford me plenty of opportunity for fantastic pictures.

Traffic in İstanbul is terrifying. Cars dart in and out of each other with little regard for who's around them. There's no such thing as traffic lights, absolutely no attention paid to painted lane lines, and a lot of honking. It's also congested, which is why we eventually found ourselves stuck next to another bus to our left, full of Turks. Some of the girls behind me got a little giggly, since apparently there was a young Turkish guy on that bus looking into the windows of our bus and smiling. Eventually I looked over, deciding that the rule about not making eye contact with male Turks is probably safely ignored if he's locked in another bus next to mine. He's already looking at me, and pointing to me. I point to myself.

"Me?" I'm clearly indicating.

He nods. Then he makes a hand gesture, sort of a fingers-to-thumb Italian looking gesture, then points to me again. I immediately turn around and ask a more fluent speaker of Turkish on my bus what that means.

"I think it means you're beautiful," she said.

I looked back at him, pointed at myself, and he nodded. So I gave him a thumbs up and a smile, and we pulled ahead. Another girl on the bus noticed the gesture we were recreating, and looked shocked.

"That means fuck you!" She said. Say whaaaat?

So after a series of arguments among the students who had been to İstanbul before, each of us on the bus creating the hand gesture and probably getting laughed at by the guy in the bus next to us, it was finally determined that it does, indeed, mean "You're beautiful." I was pleased. Not that it would have really mattered either way, but you definitely get a sense of the deep chasm of language and culture that rests between Americans and Turks when you have to spend ten minutes debating whether a guy has just complimented you, or insulted you. I like to think it was the blonde hair.

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Dinner was, apparently, inauthentic. Not that I'd have any idea, mind you, but according to the well-traveled among us, it was far from legitimately Turkish. But a busty lady shook various body parts at us while we loaded up on food and I tried to choke down some rakı, so I can't claim it wasn't an altogether entertaining evening. Another blog very shortly, as I'm finishing this one having just returned from my first major excursion out into İstanbul. Güle güle for now!