Free Ride

On winter nights, the main road is dark. You can barely make out the white trunks of the eucalyptus trees and you only know the lemon trees are there because of the fragrance. I had to squint to read the sign on the dolmuş, but one going my direction soon rattled along and I held out my hand. Getting a dolmuş to stop is usually easy. Sometimes it's almost too easy: even when you don't want one, the driver honks and waves as you walk along the road, minding your own business. If you happen to catch his eye -- it is always a man -- the dolmuş will instantly stop with a squeal of brakes and a spray of roadside gravel. Sometimes they even do this even when you're going in the opposite direction. This is because there are more dolmuş than there are people who want to ride in them, and they tend to be eager for passengers.

This one stopped so fast it made me jump. The driver was obviously eager for passengers.

I reached for the door handle, but oddly the door was already open. Which was weird, because you usually have to heave like nobody's business to wrestle the sliding doors open. I got on, bending and twisting myself into the classic getting-on-a dolmuş crouch. Then, because I am the sort of person who cannot resist shutting doors or turning off lights behind me, I tried to shut it. Too late, I realized it was an automatic door; it was shutting on its own. And too late I saw it: the dolmuş I had gotten into was a fancy, luxurious one.

The driver was wearing what looked like a clean shirt and pressed trousers instead of the grubby sweatshirt and greasy cap the usual drivers wear. Dangling from the rear view mirror was a single tasteful strand of beads, not the gaudy jumble of dice, prayer beads, and tinsel that dominate 20% of the average dolmuş windscreen. It was also eerily quiet. Most dolmuş drivers wouldn't think of cruising along without arabica blaring from their CD players. And there were hardly any other passengers. No cackling grannies with their bulging bags of vegetables and bundles of old cloth, no headkerchief-wearing housewives gossiping, no giggling schoolgirls or intense young men with noisy mobile phones. The seats were different too; only the dark had prevented me from noticing it right away: there were no tears in the clean, new-looking fabric. I patted the cushion surreptitiously and no cloud of dust puffed up. Most worrying of all, there was no price list.

Uh oh!

No doubt about it: this was going to cost me three times the normal rate. I got on one of these fancy dolmuş last year and I vowed I'd never do it again. My lucky night.

Five minutes later, half a dozen people got on. By the time we were near my stop, a respectable number of passengers had joined us. A man in the front seat tapped the back of the driver's seat. "Oi," he said waving a note over the driver's shoulder, "Let me off here."

The driver stopped, took the man's note, and gave him a handful of change. The man got off, but before the driver could pull away, the newly departed passenger rapped the driver's window and called something out in Turkish. The driver muttered something back. Reaching into a pouch, he handed the passenger a bill. Fancy as the dolmuş was, it was still too dark for the driver to see he'd given the wrong change.

Two girls got off next. One of them handed the driver a five-lira note and got back a handful of change. Hooray! It looked I wouldn't to have to fork out triple after all! I took four lira out of my wallet and let out a sigh of relief: I'd really lucked out.

When we reached my stop, I handed the driver my four lira and waited for my half lira change. He looked at my money, frowned at me at and muttered something in Turkish. I smiled and shook my head and he fumbled in his pouch for my change, then dropped the coins into my hand. It felt like a lot of change considering, but it was too dark to see.

When I got home, I looked at the coins in my hand. Five lira.

Instead of paying triple the fare, I'd had myself a free ride. In fact, it was better than that: the driver had actually paid me one and a half lira for the privilege of riding in his fancy dolmuş. I practically skipped the rest of the way home: it really was my lucky day.

Cat Scratch

The hospital porter gestured through a fog of smoke to a pair of grubby-looking swinging doors and a sign that read CASUALTY. "What wrong?" he asked, waving his cigarette.

I showed him my right hand. "Kedi," I said, making a scratching motion with my left. He nodded and pointed at the doors.

The waiting room was so small it only had three chairs in it. A bored-looking 20-something woman sat in one, communing with her mobile phone. Next to her sat a middle-aged man in a shabby suit. The third was taken up by a stoop-shouldered elderly woman in a headscarf. In a corner of the room stood a very skinny old man who at first sight seemed to be clutching his crotch. I took a surreptitious look and decided he must be trying to hold up his trousers: he was so thin they were in danger of sliding right down his legs. The mobile-punching woman and I were the only ones in the room who didn't look ill.

Immediately after me, a woman came in with two young children. The kids were covered with blisters daubed with some sort of white ointment, and both of them were screaming their heads off. The woman looked the way you look when you've been taking care of sick, cranky kids for far too long. No sooner had she steered her shrieking kids into a corner than the door swung open again and a man on crutches hobbled through, followed by a woman, veiled from head to toe and carrying a tiny infant. I looked at the healthy young woman who was busy punching buttons on her mobile, but if she noticed the man on crutches or his encumbered wife, she never gave the slightest sign.

I looked at the tiny scratch on my hand. What was I doing here? Who got lockjaw nowadays anyway?

The elderly man who looked like he was clutching his crotch talked softly to the children, as though he was trying to stop them from screaming. They didn't pay him the least bit of mind.

A door whipped open and a harassed-looking doctor stuck his head out and barked something in Turkish. Two of the seated people got up and followed the doctor through the doors, their movements sluggish and pained. I expected the woman with the baby to sit down in one of the chairs, but she remained standing, scowling at everyone in the room, her baby sound asleep in her arms. She stayed there even after her husband hobbled out of the room.

Hardly a minute later, the swinging doors creaked open again and a man in a business suit came through. The doctor's door swung open again and the couple who had been sitting walked out. The doctor spotted the man in the business suit and fired a question at him. The businessman held out his hand. My eyes popped: his hand was the size of a boxing glove. It was swollen to twice the size of his other hand, his knuckles round and smooth as glass, the skin tight, dark red and shiny. The doctor poked and prodded it, all the time staring in fascination; we all did. I winced, half expecting it to burst open. The doctor said something to the man and he left, taking his fascinating hand with him.

The doctor disappeared through his door just as another man rushed through the swinging doors, holding his hand high over his head, his face drawn and white. He was dressed in a mechanic's jumpsuit, black with use, and his hand was wrapped in a dirty-looking blood-soaked bandage. The doctor poked his head out again and beckoned him through.

I now felt completely out of place. What in the world was I doing among all these people with genuine complaints? Should I even be here? With all these ill and injured people, I would be here for ages before anyone could see me! The fully cloaked and headkerchiefed woman stared at me sullenly through narrowed eyes. I fought the urge to bolt from the room.

The man with the bandaged hand came out of the treatment room, a clean white bandage on his hand. The doctor beckoned the two screaming children and their mother. After they left, the waiting room got a lot quieter. The girl with the mobile phone continued to sit, and the woman holding her baby continued to glare.

Half a minute later, the two children came back into the waiting room, still screaming, followed closely by their long-suffering mother. The doctor crooked his finger at the crotch-clutching man who disappeared into the treatment room with him.

The woman with the baby scowled a little more deeply and I stared back at her, trying to make my expression kind but firm. I have a right to be here too. I haven't had a tetanus shot since God-knows-when. And if I were the one sitting in that chair, I'd have gotten up the minute you came in!

The woman's face did not soften.

No sooner had the crotch-clutching man pushed through the swinging doors than another family came in, composed of a granny in a headscarf, a middle-aged laborer dad, comfortable-looking mother, and two sullen teenage kids. The doctor stuck his head through the treatment room door and noticed me for the first time. "And you?" he said in Turkish, frowning.

I sucked in my breath and showed him my scratch. Never mind that it had bled copiously earlier; never mind that it was deeper than it looked: my blushes were a lot deeper. I almost expected the doctor to burst out laughing, but he nodded and motioned for me to follow him.

The linoleum floor inside the treatment room was sticky and the examining table was spread with a stained sheet. I sat down on it and waited while the doctor rummaged around for a tetanus vaccine. Opposite me lay a young man on another examining table, his outstretched arm being tended by a nurse with a pair of tweezers. A mess of bloody dressings spilled out of a stainless steel basin placed nearby. I tried not to stare, but it was a compelling tableau: the man's face was turned away from the nurse, his eyes dull, utterly without expression.

"I'm so sorry," I babbled as the doctor rubbed my arm with alcohol. "The cat is usually very polite." He stared at me uncomprehendingly, and I could hardly blame him. "I didn't even want to come here," I went on, watching the doctor depress the plunger. "I mean, it's not really much of a scratch." The doctor frowned. He looked a lot like my students do when I'm not explaining things well: it was obvious he didn't understand a word.

On my way out, the family of five had been joined by a father and his teenage son. The woman with her baby was still standing; the girl was still bent over her mobile phone. They looked up at me and I felt my cat scratch shrink into a mere pinpoint.

I could hardly get out of there fast enough.

East: Far And Near

For the past two weeks we've been trying to get letters from our local muchtar so that we can apply for residency permits. A muchtar, as far as I can tell, is a neighborhood official whose job is sorting out all the paperwork and odd bits no one else wants to concern himself with. We've been trying to meet ours for the past three weeks and he's been an elusive guy to hunt down.

The first time we went to his house, we had a Turkish-speaking friend with us. We were on our way back from work and had all the kids in the car with us. Two of them were not on speaking terms with each other (or us) and all of us were tired and hungry. My husband and I picked our way over broken concrete paving in the dark, past pots of geraniums and portulaca. The air was scented with rotting citrus and jasmine and the smell of someone's laundry detergent.

But the muchtar was not at home. His little boy had a fever and he'd had to go to the hospital with his family. We talked to his neighbors instead. They were eating dinner, but seemed friendly.

"Maybe next week he will be home," our friend translated. "Inshallah." God willing.

The second time we went to his house, I had a fever myself, but thankfully we didn't have the kids with us. I huddled in the car, shivering, while my husband went to talk to the neighbors who at least spoke a little English. Again, they were eating dinnner. The muchtar still wasn't at home.

The third time we went to the muchtar's, our Turkish-speaking friend could not go with us. With some embarrassment and great trepidation, we went and knocked on the muchtar's neighbors' door. They were all eating dinner again, but the mother of the household obligingly got up to take us over to the muchtar's house. It was dark and I stumbled on the uneven pavement.

The muchtar was not at home.

The next time we went, he wasn't home either, but the neighbors, once again, were eating dinner. They invited us to have a cup of tea. We declined.

There are times we find ourselves wondering why it always has to be so hard at first. And we've had to remind ourselves what it was like when we first went to Japan with a nine-month-old baby.

During our first months in Tokyo after our eldest was born, we stayed with friends while I went to work and searched for suitable housing. My husband was not employed at the time, and although my school gave me a generous salary, unlike a lot of other companies, they would not sign on as rental guarantors. It is very difficult to rent in Japan if you don't have someone to agree to be your guarantor, so the only places we were able to consider were those so old and dilapidated no one else wanted them.

For three weeks, I made the rounds of every real estate agent in our area. Sometimes they took one look at my face and wanted nothing to do with me.

"No foreigners!" several called out as soon as they saw me at the door. Most were more polite, but you could see it in their eyes: they were certain we would not be able to communicate and dreaded engaging in tedious bilingual wrangles. I quickly learned to barge right in, speaking Japanese, before the agent could open his mouth to send me away. That way I was able to tell when the prejudice against me was nothing more than a perceived language barrier. Once we'd started talking and the estate agents saw that my Japanese was sufficient, everything was fine. The only problem was getting around that pesky guarantor issue. The minute prospective landlords heard we had no guarantors, they got cold feet.

After two months of imposing on our long-suffering friends, worried sick that our baby was keeping them up nights, we were ready to give up and fly back to the U.K. And then one day it happened: we found a house with sympathetic landlords whose daughter had studied abroad herself, in Vienna.

"We know how hard it is," the wife murmured. "Looking for a place to live in a foreign country."

"Our daughter has some real horror stories," the husband agreed. "It's not easy for someone who plays the piano to find a place. And I imagine it must be a lot harder with a baby."

Three days later we had moved in. That house was our home for over nine wonderful years.

Last night we went to the muchtar's house again. It didn't look like he was at home, but he was.

"Come again tomorrow and I will give you the letters," he told us as we stood in his veranda, surrounded by washing on the line and his children's scattered tricycles.

We've got our fingers crossed.

American

I never felt much like an American until I first visited Mexico and Guatemala in my early twenties. In the market in Oaxaca, I suddenly saw it. Everything about me and the friends I was travelling with said American. Our obvious health and height, our well-nourished bodies and superior dental hygiene: all of it screamed our nationality and privilege. Anyone who looked at us could not help but see the patently obvious: a group of people born with more than their fair share of advantages. Up until that moment, I had been happily haggling with the market vendors, trying to get the best possible deal for my purchases. Once the reality hit me -- that I could go back to the States, and, student that I was, still live better for less work than 99% of the people around me -- I stopped trying to get bargains. If a lady took one look at me and said she was selling something I wanted for sixty pesos, then sixty pesos it was.

Even when I generally paid the first price someone asked, I still got some very good deals. When I went back to San Francisco and saw the same shawl I had bought in Chichicastenango selling for over ten times the price I had paid, I tried to imagine how the woman who had woven it would feel seeing her work in a fancy boutique in North Beach, selling for more than she would spend on a couple months' worth of groceries.

But being an American is more than economics and better-than- average nutrition: it is attitude. And this attitude is manifest even in the most trivial details.

Once in Tokyo, I spotted a cluster of people standing together at the station. I was a hundred feet away from them, but I knew they were American even before I heard them speak. How? They were all Asians; physically they resembled all the Japanese around us. I watched them discretely, trying to figure out what had given them away. And then I saw it: the casual way they stood, the broadness of their gestures, the loudness of their voices. Nothing says "American" like the brash confidence that comes from living in a country where opportunity and the pursuit of happiness are taken as much for granted as the necessity of a car and the right to a daily hot shower.

I have been an expatriate American now for as many years as I have spent in my homeland. Frozen in a time warp, every time I go back, I feel a little more distant, a little more conscious of how long I have been gone. Where are you from? a cashier asked me some years back, when I went home for my father's funeral. America, I told her, and her response was, Yes, but where were you born? Somehow, among my fellow Americans, my natural brashness and sense of privilege has worn off: they take me for a foreigner, or at least foreign-born. After two months in America, I stopped counting how many times people asked me what country I was from.

That last trip back was an eye-opener for me. In many ways, I felt like a stranger, but I knew that I could fit right back into the world I had left and be perfectly happy. It was wonderful to be able to strike up conversations with perfect strangers; to be spoiled for choice in restaurants, served with friendliness and kindness, and surrounded by people of all different nationalities and backgrounds. "Americans are so nice!" my husband and children kept saying, and I could have burst with pride. I did not leave the States for ideological reasons; I left to see the world and have adventures, and my expatriate status has more to do with serendipity than it does with making a conscious decision not to live in my country of origin.

Over the years I have met other American expatriates who irritate me by railing against the shallowness and over-indulgence of Americans and who claim that they prefer to live in countries where there is a greater sense of history and 'more culture.' While I certainly agree that most of us could learn to get by on less energy, I think the rest of this is nonsense. As far as I can see, we're no more shallow than the rest of the world. We've got plenty of history and culture, too -- we just need to learn how to preserve it better. And we ought to appreciate and support it more, too -- especially those of us ignorant enough to deny its existence.

In Japan, and now in the U.K., I have gotten used to my status as spokesperson and (sometimes unwilling) interpreter of all things American. Here my accent -- which I have never made any attempt to hide or change -- gives me away every time. You're American! people say to me, as though they have discovered something I'm anxious to keep under wraps. Even when many fellow expatriate Americans muttered that they were going to buy shirts with Canadian flags on them after two embarrassing and disappointing national elections, I have never denied my nationality. Yes, I am an American. I don't plan on changing my passport, and although you'll never catch me waving a flag or beating up someone who disses my country, I'm every bit as fond of America as the next guy -- probably more so after all these weary sessions explaining and defending from abroad.

Being an American doesn't mean that I will defend everything Americans do or stand for. It certainly doesn't mean I'm behind our president or his war, and although I share the national passion for a decent hot shower, thank God being American doesn't mean that I have to be a super-sized gas-guzzling consumer who wolfs down her weight in hamburgers. No, I'm the worst sort of American: the kind who's convinced that she's as good as the next guy and has a right to fight for her ideals. Who firmly believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. My country was one of the first places where anybody in the world could find a home and prosper: I've done my family's genealogy, and I know for a fact that this really happened.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to do some research on how to fit solar panels onto a Victorian style roof. Our hot water supply needs a little help.