oa publishing

When the black cab dropped me in leafy Notting Hill on a shiny September day in 1968, I had no idea that my life was about to change forever. I merely saw some jerry cans and a length of rope near a loaded mini-van and thought I must be in the right place. Looking about for signs of life, I made my way to the front door and rang the bell. A young man opened up and gave me a cheeky grin as I hesitantly asked,

“Did I ask your opinion?” I thought, but said nothing. He bounded ahead of me with all the assurance of a newly elected politician. Though slim and good-looking, he was dressed like a tramp. A homemade sweater, knitted from bits of leftover wool, was full of dog hairs, and I could see mismatched socks showing at the back of his Swedish clogs. The noisy chatter of many voices emanated from the rear and echoed along the corridor as we approached the kitchen. It seemed that most of the other travellers had already assembled and were enjoying a toast to the coming journey. Introductions were made, and it was at this point that I learned that Hakan was a Turk, something I would not have guessed as he had fair skin and dark brown hair, which fell in a shock over his forehead. I was surprised that he didn’t have black hair or a moustache. I thought all Turks had moustaches - and wore curly-toed slippers. I didn’t know anything about Turks. I knew even less about Turkey.

As he laughed and joked with everyone, it was clear that Hakan was comfortable speaking his own brand of rough-and-ready English. His dark almond-shaped eyes flashed with mischief and hinted at ancestors from the eastern steppes. He exuded easy warmth that drew people to him, and I could see that he enjoyed being the centre of attention. At this point, I was getting my bearings and wanted to size up the company before plunging in, so I sipped a drink and watched the proceedings from a quiet corner.

“Oh, that,” he chuckled. “This is not dog hair. It’s mohair. I’m making up sheepskins in the basement.” He began to tell me about WML (Worldwide Merchandise Ltd), the import and manufacturing business in which he was partners with a Kiwi called Ken. This seemed to consist of bringing sheepskins from Turkey and making them up into coats and jackets for sale in Carnaby Street and the Kings Road. Hakan was friendly, open and extremely flirtatious. While teasing me about my floral suitcase and my American accent, he asked me many questions and wanted to hear what had brought me to London. In a short time, we managed to exchange a remarkable amount of information. I didn’t know what to make of him as I found him by turns to be impressive and delightful, presumptuous and exasperating. Despite myself, I was disappointed to learn that Hakan would not be joining us on the imminent expedition.

As far as I was concerned, this trip was probably my last adventure before returning to America. I came from a close-knit family and had grown up in a small town in western Pennsylvania. After high school, I moved across the state to get my BA and then to teach primary school. A year in that role convinced me that I had chosen the wrong career, so I switched from a suburban classroom to the personnel department of a large insurance company in Philadelphia. My position there was full of exciting projects and glamorous travel, but as this work ended, I found myself, age 24, office bound and suffering from terminal dissatisfaction. When an opportunity arose to spend July and August in London, I leapt at the chance, put the contents of my city-centre apartment into storage and quit my job. I would do what I had always longed to do: travel abroad. While the rest of the world watched the first man land on the moon and then enjoyed the “summer of love”, I spent several self-indulgent weeks greedily exploring one of the world’s great cities.

The time turned out not to be enough. Despite having made numerous excursions around the country and further afield to the continent, these experiences only served to whet my appetite for more. However, as my funds were running out, I realized that I would have to get a permanent job or return home. I dreaded being forced to take the latter option, as I was simply not ready to go back. Although I had applications out at several places, I was not confident of success. Jobs at that time were scarce, and no one was eager to hire a foreign professional who would need all kinds of paperwork in order to be legally employed. I had determined that instead of sitting around waiting for what would probably be rejections, I would take this final trip to the very edge of Europe and then see what waited at the end of the month. And so on that autumn day, twelve of us left London to camp our way overland to Istanbul, taking a week to get there and a week to return, with a week in the city itself. Although I had gone expecting to be intrigued, I was unprepared for the seduction that followed. Charmed by both the city and its people, the trip did nothing to prepare me to return to the USA.

Hakan was a friend of Steve, our driver and tour organizer. Since he lived with Steve and his family, he was there to greet us when we got back. I was ecstatic to find that I had been offered a job after all and would be able to stay on indefinitely. Hakan had apparently been keeping himself informed about my situation and was quick off the mark to ask me out. As I got to know him, I discovered that he was ambitious and hard working, someone who thrived on challenges and competition. His effortless confidence was bolstered by utter self-belief. He was naturally exuberant and upbeat, and I knew that an evening with him would centre on pub gatherings, parties and friends. He knew an endless variety of people, all of whom were subject to his fearless conversations and joking chitchat, which could be wildly provocative, but never cruel. He was fun to be with, and we always had a good time.

I understood that Hakan was smart, with the sort of shrewd instinctive intelligence that enables uneducated people to survive against the odds. I had been surprised to learn that he had finished law school in Istanbul. Someone less lawyer-like I had never before encountered. He was a businessman through and through, and all that he told me about his life and his family confirmed that he was never cut out for anything else. He had learned his English during a year at the University of Berkeley in California where he had been a student at the time political unrest over Vietnam started on that campus and moved across the US. When we discussed the protest movement, he said that he had been far too busy having a good time to do anything as important as demonstrate.

But I found another side of Hakan when I watched him with Steve’s children, one of whom was severely disabled, and saw that he was both kind and compassionate. He had a knack for honing in on what makes people tick and a gift for making them feel special. With me, he was romantic and attentive. As far as I could see, about the only difference between us was that he was more conservative than I, especially where politics were concerned.

As our relationship developed into something serious, we took the decision to live together. Although this would have been considered a bold move – a very bold move - back in the USA, it was, in Swinging 60s London, if not the done thing, certainly not uncommon. Free from the constraints of our small town backgrounds, we revelled in the privacy and domestic bliss this arrangement gave us. In the meantime, however, clouds were forming on his horizon – our horizon. Every Turkish male must complete military service. It is compulsory for everyone, and citizenship is at stake. Hakan had devoted a great deal of time and energy to postponing the inevitable. When we met, his British visa was expiring and the Turks were pressing him to return and fulfil his obligations. Not to do so would mean that he could never go home again, not unless he wished to spend time in prison.

Like the decision to return to Turkey, again there was no real choice. Over time, we had discovered that we shared the same values and wanted the same things out of life. I trusted him completely. We were madly in love, the thought of separation too painful to contemplate. With certain inevitability, we agreed that I would go with him and live with his family while he played soldier. In order to mark this momentous event, we became formally engaged (complete with a small sapphire and diamond ring), a ritual that would do much to ease my place into his family. Given their cultural views regarding the importance of the bride’s purity and the fact that, though sleeping together we were not yet officially wed, a ring would convey the sense of commitment that would make me (hopefully) more acceptable in their eyes. Opportunities for romantic interludes and intimacy would be limited but not impossible.

Grace Beyler was born and grew up in the US. Most of her adult life has been spent in London, which she regards as home and where she sees her most important roles as those of wife, mother and grandmother. Now a retired businesswoman, her first priority is family and friends, but she also enjoys her volunteer work, travel and writing. From a young age, Grace always wanted to travel, and she feels that her decision to settle in London has enriched her life beyond measure. Not only are there limitless possibilities within the city itself, but it is also a stepping-stone to the rest of the world. Grace says, “Since we pass this way but once, it is important to me to do whatever I am doing well. I do not want to look back and have regrets. Life is about contributing, about making the world a better place. We owe it to those who come after us to do our best now.”

We don't seize the past. At best, we get a picture of it, and a couple of chances to revise the picture. And the past, in E. Grace Beyler’s memoirs, becomes a figure for a whole series of separations and gaps, places where the mind or the memory can't quite reach the other side, as if the ferry were becalmed, or the tunnel not complete: between then and now, of course, but also between there and here, between them and us, between her and him, between any event and the chance of our understanding it.

"Forty Camel Girl Letters from Turkey" is like a gloss on a series of letters ranging across several different aspects of Turkey. The book is asking a question both to the writer and to reader. Her answer is more than modest, but her initial metaphor is surely too confused. "How do we seize the past? How do we seize the foreign past? We read, we learn, we ask, we remember, we are humble; and then a casual detail shifts everything." All letters are realistic, and "the foreign past," for E. Grace Beyler, as for her husband and for us, is delicately weighted with a double meaning: the past of a foreign scene or foreign writer, and the past of our own life, marriage, or love, which, as E. Grace Beyler said, is a “Forty Camel Girl” in a foreign country.

"To read, write and research are indispensable for cultural continuity!"