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Susan Holm, right, is pictured in Istanbul, Turkey, with a friend from her college days who is married to a Turk and lives in the city. The tallest building in the background is the famous Hagia Sophia.
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Susan Holm, the Dorothy
Donald Professor of Modern Foreign Languages at Monmouth College, wrote
one of the 32 chapters of "Tales from the Expat Harem," an anthology
that was published in the U.S. by Seal Press in 2006.
Edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen, the book is
subtitled "Foreign Women in Modern Turkey" and features essays written
by women who are not Turks but who have lived in or who live in Turkey.
Holm’s chapter chronicled her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in
Erzurum in remote eastern Turkey, where she taught English at Atatürk
University from 1966 to 1968.
Turkey’s status as the last nation in Europe and the first in Asia puts
visitors in a state of limbo between the Occident and the Orient. Holm’s
chapter touched on the country’s unusual setting.
"Erzurum had been for millennia both the crossroads and the site of
human civilizations, in one conversion after another – Urartus,
Cimmerians and Scyths, Medes, Persians and Parthes, Arabs, Mongols, and
Seljuk and Ottoman Turks," she writes. "It had been an outpost of the
Romans (in fact, Erzurum means ‘arsenal of the Romans’). Parts of the
old city were still surrounded by deteriorating Byzantine walls, which
peasants were now converting, stone by stone, into their dwellings."
Holm’s essay starts with a description of an incident that occurred
early in her Peace Corps experience, observing mothers breastfeeding
their children during a religious service.
"I describe my immediate understanding of or reaction to the
experience," said Holm of the essay. "Then I look back briefly to
develop an overview of why we had joined the Peace Corps, why we had
specifically gone to Turkey and a background of Erzurum with its
historical significance and its roles in the modern Turkish republic."
Holm’s was the only essay of the 32 written with such a gap in time,
allowing her to touch on her life between 1968 and the present.
"I was able to focus on my response to aspects of the roles of women in
American/Western culture that I understand differently because of my two
years in Turkey," she said. "I end the essay with a look back at the
situation first described and my reaction at that time, and I see it
anew with different understanding and insights."
While her contribution to the anthology falls in the "old news"
category, Holm’s story has an update. Gökmen keeps tabs on the 32 "Expat
Harem" authors with a blog, and Holm was profiled in an entry dated Dec.
24, 2007.
"In a heartwarming chain of events, the Expat Harem anthology brought
Susan Holm back to the ancient Eastern Turkish city she fell in love
with – and renewed her philanthropic ties to Turkey," wrote Gökmen.
Holm, who also lived for a year in Ankara and northern Cyprus in the
mid-1970s, traveled to North Carolina in 2006 to give an "Expat Harem"
reading. There she met Emin Pamucak and Ismail Arslan of the Bridge to
Türkiye Fund (BTF), a charitable organization supporting disadvantaged
segments of Turkish society.
Holm had already scheduled a one-month return trip to Turkey and Cyprus
in 2007 as part of her sabbatical project, which examined how women’s
lives in Turkey have changed over the past 40 years. Through her
connection with the BTF organizers, she also spent part of her stay
touring a school outside Erzurum that BTF helps.
"Emil and Ismail arranged that trip and several other adventures for me,
including meeting the family and the physicians in a cleft palate
surgery project, also supported by BTF," said Holm.
Holm joined forces with BTF to participate in a playground project with
her circle of friends. Recently completed, the Çiçek Playschool
Playground in Mamak, Ankara, provides a safe environment for toddlers of
socio-economically struggling women.
"The preschool playground project came about through one of the women
who helped me in Turkey, Dr. Shirley Epir," said Holm, who had met Epir
in 2002. "She introduced me to several of the projects accomplished by a
women’s center/foundation in Ankara, and one of the projects just
getting off the ground was a secular preschool for children of working
mothers."
Holm explained that the preschool would be allowed to open on the
condition that it got a playground up and running that met government
standards.
"I was able to round up about $1,000 and BTF supplied the other $500 to
get the playground established," Holm added.
Besides that highlight, another more personal one occurred for Holm as
she searched for the Sevgi family, who were featured in her "Expat
Harem" essay. After searching three-and-a-half days, she finally found
them.
"So many Turks helped me find them and took a personal interest in my
search," she said. "They walked me up and down streets in the city
asking questions of shop-owners, examined lists of citizens looking for
the names of any of the seven children I had remembered and asked me
again and again when they saw me if I’d been successful."
Holm finally found the apartment building where one son and his family
lived. An unemployed construction worker who had spent the morning
walking through rain and mud with her, said, "You can take it from here,
can’t you, hodjam (teacher)?"
"I climbed to the fifth floor apartment, knocked on the door and started
to explain to the wife of Erdal Sevgi – the son whom I’d known as a
little boy – who I was and how I knew the Sevgis. She had never met me
before, having married into the family years after we left Turkey. I got
about three sentences into my explanation when she threw her arms open,
hugging me to her, and dragged me into the apartment. She showed me to
her elderly and unwell mother-in-law, who did remember me very well,
called her husband home from work, and it went from there."
Holm concluded, "The next day when I was returning to spend another
afternoon with them, one of the muhtars (city aldmermen) shot out of the
teahouse where he was drinking tea when he saw me, calling out, ‘Hodjam,
hodjam, did you find them?’"
"Tales from the Expat Harem," which has been a bestseller on a number of
lists, including the No. 1 book on Turkey description and travel, is
being used as a text on Turkish history and culture at a number of
universities. More information on the critically-acclaimed anthology is
available is at www.expatharem.com.
