The Iraqis in My Office

& other new-office anecdotes.

As of last Thursday, I've been shown to Bahçeşehir's prep school, (where I will be working), which is just over a mile from my dormitory, met Çiğdem, my contact at the prep school through Zeynep and was introduced to Mehmet Bey, the director of the prep school. He spoke flawless English and came across as extremely straightforward, efficient, and involved- without a doubt a stark contrast to the director at TOBB. We chatted about my experience, expectations, and goals, as well as his, and I was shown to the Learning Center.

The Learning Center is basically just a large office, with two proper desks, three student-use desktop computers, and perhaps a dozen small tables pushed together to make one long one. The walls are bookshelves, each section filled with extra materials and marked for student or teacher use. Essentially, the purpose of the Learning Center is to provide a resource for students who want or need extra help learning English. Like TOBB, the university has a A and B level classification based on language comprehension, and the long makeshift table is mostly covered with stacks of extra-help worksheets neatly organized according to difficulty level, including their respective answer keys.

I've been given a murderously slow desktop PC and a "spot" - not a desk, exactly, more like a reserved chair- where I spend most of my time surfing the internet. I've tried to battle with the PC but it's generally a mean-spirited beast and the internet here is slow enough without having to resurrect Internet Explorer every six minutes.

On my first day, Mehmet Bey told me he would introduce my officemates and supervisors, Serap and Amal, to me, and had mentioned that they were Middle Eastern in origin and spoke fluent Arabic. He said I should greet them in Arabic- they would love it, and they'd be more than willing to help me relearn if I was interested. Unfortunately, having been roughly a year since I put any serious effort into spoken Arabic, calling myself "rusty" is definitely an overstatement- but I figured I'd attempt the basics. However, when we walked into the office, I didn't say anything to the fair-skinned, light haired fiftysomething women I was presented to. Mehmet Bey then prodded me, telling them I had studied Arabic, at which point I realized these were the people I was supposed to say something to. I blurted out an awkward "Marhaban, ahlan wa sahlan" - they were delighted. Mehmet Bey wished me well and left, Serap offered me tea, and Amal introduced me to one of the half-dozen student assistants who rotate through the office throughout the week. Over the next few hours, I learned that they were both from Baghdad, which Serap (who is 56) left in 1982, eventually getting a master's degree in London, having a family in Istanbul, and a daughter now in Montreal. Amal is 62, (they don't have the same hang-ups about age that Americans do), and she left Iraq in the late 1950s, around the same time the monarchy was brought to an end by military coup. Her arabic is less fluent than Serap's, because she has been away longer, but her Turkish is better for the same reason. Amal has two daughters, one who is getting her masters in Poetry and Performance Art, and the other who works in Animation- she claims, however, not to have an artistic bone in her body. Serap and Amal worked together previously for 10+ years at a different university, and when Serap retired, Bahçeşehir offered her a newly-created position at the prep school. A year into her work here, she needed a second person, and Amal joined her, and so they've worked in this office for 5 or 6 years since then. They have a hysterical rapport, constantly teasing each other and laughing. Because Turkish is just as much a second language to them as English is, it's not a strain for them to joke and tease in English for my benefit. They're both kind and good at finding little things for me to do so I don't die of boredom- Serap has hunted down two speaking classes for me to substitute teach, so I've actually gotten to meet students, even though my regular work won't start til mid-February. I've also met every Arab student in the prep school, since they frequent the office whenever they have difficulty with the lessons- which is often, since they see no need to learn Turkish. Serap and occasionally Amal explain the finer points of the English language to them in Arabic, and I get to listen and test how much I can pull from the dredges of my memory.

Speaking of students, they've been a blast. Bahçeşehir students have been irresistibly friendly, openly asking all kinds of questions- no pulling teeth here. I know part of it is because I am a novelty item at the moment; unlike TOBB, I am the first co-op student here and they can all immediately tell I'm young (despite my most desperate attempts to dress "grownup"). There are a half dozen Americans working here full time, of whom I've met two, and also several Brits- so while I'm not the only "native speaker," I am the youngest and the newest. But they've been polite and fun, interested in what I have to say and willing to answer questions. I got into a great conversation in one class when a student asked me what I thought about economic and technological developments in Turkey- true, several less advanced students promptly fell asleep, but a handful of us had an interesting discussion about the differences between rural and developed Turkey, how it becomes a problem, and what needs to be done about it.

So there's my glowing report so far. Yes, I fully recognize all the dreadfully "honeymoon-ish" attitudes I have now, and between my roommate (whose hair is again a deep pink) and imprisonment by snow, I'm sure the "negotiation" (aka the "keep-your-stupid-culture-i-don't-want-it-anyhow") phase of culture shock will hit me soon enough. But in the mean time, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.