Travel Reference
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Calling the party to order, the oldest couple looked happily at the young
bride and groom and shared a local blessing: “May you grow old together
on one pillow.”
Whenever there's a family festival, village Turks turn on the music and
dance. Everybody is swept onto their feet—including visiting tourists. It's
easy: Just follow the locals as they hold out their arms, snap their i ngers,
and shake their shoulders. During one such Güzelyurt party, the man of the
house came over to me—the foreigner—and wanted to impress me. Waving
me to a quiet corner, he said, “Here on my wall, the most sacred place in my
home, is my Quran bag, where I keep my Quran. And in my Quran bag I
also keep a copy of the Bible and a copy of the Torah—because I believe that
we Muslims, Christians, and Jews are all 'children of the Book'…children of
the same good God.”
Leaving the party, I walked down the street. h e town seemed cluttered
with ugly uni nished concrete buildings bristling with rusty reinforcement
bars. While I love the Turks, I couldn't help but think, “Why can't these
people get their act together and just i nish these buildings?” h at was
before I learned that in Turkey, there's an ethic among parents—even poor
ones—that you leave your children with a house. Historically Turks are
reluctant to store money in the bank because it disappears through inl a-
tion. So instead, they invest bit by bit by constructing a building. Every time
they get a hundred bucks together, they put it into that ever-growing house.
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