A community unto themselves
October 2006. YupNo and I wandered around the old walled town of Antalya and stumbled onto a shaded square with a couple of tables and a few women sitting around benches chatting. Let's stop for a coffee, she said. Ok, I said. Wearied legs whimpered their cases and we sat down.
Turned out we had stumbled onto the garden of one of the few Christian churches in Turkey. It was a Saturday afternoon, I think, and the bees were creating their schizophrenic music among the flower beds. The pastor's wife ambled over to us and suggested that we have the carrot cake. (Actually, she suggested the carrot cake after she saw my eyes widened into saucers when I saw the menu.)
It was the best carrot cake ever. Family recipe, she said. From Michigan, I think. Her husband and her established a toehold in this fiercely secular republic and devoutly Muslim country 17 years prior. Their flock consisted of expats and a few locals. Faces smiling in crinkled photos posted on the cracked walls.
We chatted. I suppose she was glad from some company from America. She said her children went to boarding school in Germany. "The school system here is very skewed," she said. By skewed I think she meant biased and very Muslim. She flew out every few weekends to visit them. "Tough schedule," I said. She spoke softly, in the usual manner that optimistic pastors' wives do. "How can I leave," she laughed, and with a sweep of her arms, she canvassed the clambering vines, the drooping elms, the deep Mediterranean sky-blues and the smell of the salt-sea.
"What about your neighbors," I had asked. How do they feel about a chapel that has penetrated the daily cries of the muezzin from the surrounding minarets?
"Oh, I think we get along nicely," she had responded. "We are establishing a community here where everyone is welcomed."
A few weeks later, I was back in Istanbul. While I replenished my book supply, the store clerk engaged me in conversation. You're American? he asked. I study in America, I said. I hate Americans, he said. Actually, some are friendly. But you know, those Christian evangelists. I hate them. They smile at you but underneath they lie. They just want to convert you.
Hate was a strong word, and I remembered that the vitriol knocked me back a little. Especially when I had encountered kindness and hospitality everywhere I went.
This memory came today, when I read C-Note's post about the murdered missionary in Turkey. Christians are caught in the cross-fire between nationalistic forces seeking to retain Ataturk's secular republic from growing Islamic pressures.