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'The Self as Instrument,' or 'The Importance of Brown Window Frames'

Posted August 15th, 2009 by Emine

 

 

A journal entry of sorts:
Hilmi Bey:
As soon as he said ‘Wait! First let me tell you how we built all this,’ I knew I had made a big mistake by pulling out the house plans. Hilmi Bey was a 79 year old man I had just met and I knew his age because he’d already told me it was his birthday. I really should have been able to figure things out by that immediate personal revelation. After all, my commitment this trip was to learn to fly better at all altitudes.
I went to see Hilmi Bey with my friend Turhan. We were trying to understand and soften the tension that had been building between the architect, Selim, who was renovating the summer house I bought last fall, and the Association that runs the development. He is its president.
The house is on a beautiful island off the Aegean coast, in Turkey. It is part of a development of 80 houses which sits in the middle of a National Park, surrounded by pines, olive trees, wild sage and the incredible blue that is the Aegean. I fell in love with the place the minute I saw it. No one had done any work on the house since it was built and so I decided to undertake a thorough renovation. Things did not go as smoothly as I would have wished.
At first Turhan and I thought we would go to the management office and request a meeting. Then we decided (wisely it turns out) to call on him at his house. Hilmi Bey was quite charming, clearly happy to see us, and not at all like the author of those excruciatingly terse and bureaucratic memos leading up to his Report to the Municipality. That report had caused the municipality to fine me a hefty sum.
He had never formally responded to Selim’s submission of the renovation plans, and then had actually thanked Selim for the job he was doing, but later had told him to change the white window frames back to brown. Overall, he had instructed Selim not to change the exterior of the house and to organize the interior layout as we saw fit. But then he had reported us to the municipality for the internal reorganization. What had me upset was the fact that the municipality fined me not because of the renovations, but because the original building was not in keeping with the plans submitted to them, 29 years ago. Selim was beside himself with anger. I was totally confused and hoping to make sense of the events. Turhan had come along for moral support.
And, yes, things clicked when he said ‘Wait! First let me tell you about how we built all this.’ It dawned on me that we needed to get to know each other first. We had to establish a second person relationship before he could possibly construct a framework within which he needed to place me. He needed to see if I could become one of ‘us’; whether I would fit in. Meanwhile, I had pulled out the house plans and started talking business five minutes after meeting him. What a gaffe!
So: I gratefully accepted the coffee and cookies his wife offered us (Turhan refused the coffee and asked for some water, but got served coffee anyway) commented on how absolutely beautiful ‘our’ development was and asked him to tell us the story.
He told us how he – ‘a civil engineer and Special Consultant to the Ministry of Rural Affairs’, and his friends –‘all high level Ministry bureaucrats’-- had found this beautiful spot and bought it (for a song) from the local villagers. They then had ‘moved heaven and earth’ to bring public roads and infrastructure to the site, as well as to get building permits when the whole archipelago was declared a National Park. It was a story of mythic proportions and he was proud.
He wanted me to know the stories of how this community had come to be. I found myself thinking about the series of favors and patron-client relationships they would have needed to activate to get all that done, most likely not quite legally. Turhan shot me a glance that I know questioned his ethics. We did not say anything.
He then chastised me for not coming to meet him before, for being impossible to reach (though it seems he did not really try), and for leaving him to deal with an unresponsive architect. I began to understand that I ought to have paid my respects to him much earlier and that I simply had failed to impress him. More importantly, I had made him feel uncomfortable. He had begun to fear that I might break all the rules, construct a house that did not conform to the others, and claim all the nearby common space for my own. He had begun to see red. And he had acted to corral red: first testing the waters, then slamming down via terse bureaucratic language and ill constructed legalities.
At that point I made my second mistake. I apologized. I apologized for not having thought to seek him out earlier. Visiting him is what amber norms would have required, but apologizing actually worsened the situation and I did not quite understand why. Was I one-down in a red power struggle by admitting a mistake? His arbitrary use of power would have been consistent with red too. At the same time, I was aware that the social stratification the amber world relies on needed to be mutually defined. I pushed back with a diversionary power threat of my own. I told him the reason the municipality had fined me was because the original building was inconsistent with the plans approved by City. ‘It seems all the home owners need to pay such a hefty fine,’ I said. He was taken aback and confused. Just then his wife stepped in saying I had probably been too busy to drop by, what with all the demands on my time. To my surprise this calmed things down. I began to think making excuses was more acceptable in his world than taking responsibility and apologizing.
I am still not quite sure what happened, but I think the explanation is something like this: apologizing implied either I did not know what was required of me (in which case I could not be a serious candidate for the community) or I knew what I needed to do but I disregarded it (in which case I was bucking amber norms and signaling red). Making excuses, on the other hand, implied I knew what I needed to do (good) fully intended to do it (very good), but I simply could not get around to it, ostensibly for reasons beyond my control (bad, but acceptable and face-saving, especially if I could also demonstrate some power.)
Then his wife said they had heard wonderful things about me and were very excited that such a respectable person was to join them in this community. Just as I was swallowing hard and drawing a blank, Turhan came to the rescue and gave a brief biography underlining all the points they might indeed consider respectable: that I have a Ph.D from MIT, that I live in the US, and that my mother was the ‘most famous’ Turkish sociologist (and his own Ph.D adviser). I feared he had gone overboard. How would they react to the alphabet soup? But it seems professors and special consultants to a ministry were welcome to sit at the same table.
I noticed a tightening in my stomach and realized I felt deeply uncomfortable even being in the presence of such an assessment. There was a sense of guilt associated with being judged ‘respectable enough’; an inner rebellion on behalf of those who might not be so judged.
With the preliminaries settled to his satisfaction, our relative positions well established, and with no more threat of red coming from me, Hilmi Bey began to lower his guard. It was time to enter the inner circle more fully. He told us of all the responsibilities and limitations the municipality and the Department of National Parks put on him, and he told us what little real power he actually had. And it was his duty to preserve the National Park; he had given his word to the Minister back when. He complained about how it was impossible to control everyone; that if he gave anyone an inch, the others asked for two inches.
His wife, in charge of the family’s social life, said she thought he was much too strict and was becoming the ‘bad guy’. He agreed some of the rules were ridiculous, but threw up his hands. She said if he did not respond to the jealous grumblings, others would report directly to the authorities and undermine him. People were terrible she said; they would smile at my face and talk behind my back.
It took me a while to realize that this was a roundabout apology (excuse?) of sorts: Others (who might now smile to my face) had reacted with jealousy; he’d had to report me to the authorities on pain of losing his status. She seemed genuinely sad that I had been unable to undertake the one layout modification I wanted to do. ‘You’ll do it later’ she said, even though that was what her husband had ostensibly reported to the authorities as a breach after having verbally approved it.
This all seemed to be an attempt to draw me into a closer ‘us-ness’ and was quite discomfiting. I literally could think of nothing to say and instead crossed my fingers, hoping that not everybody in this community enacted what to me seemed such a hellish world.
After we drank our coffee and ate our cookies we all went to my place to sort out the issue of semi-private hobby-garden vs. common space. He told us all the things we should do with the space – retaining walls, low fences, tall trees… a whole lot more than what we had previously proposed and he had totally rejected. I was clearly ‘in’ and of ‘us’ and we were beginning to construct a patron-client relationship of sorts along the lines of leniency/protection for loyalty.
 I noticed another contraction, this time in my chest, and noted a part of me was rebelling at such a subjective/arbitrary application of the rules, as well as the loyalty that might be expected of me. Could he enact rules and regulations more objectively, from a more consistent third person perspective, or was his vision really limited to applying rules within the context of each second person relationship and thus being buffeted about?
As I understood better later, the situation in the community was an unhealthy amber/orange mess mostly stemming from an inability to apply the rules consistently. There are always differences between laws, rules and implementation, but here things seemed to have gotten totally out of hand. Shifting leniencies based on degrees of us-ness and status created a vicious cycle when some folks wanted special treatment based on orange or amber status (income and individual expression/professional standing/respectability), and others responded by demanding (amber) conformity or (orange) equal privileges. Healthy orange governance would have required equal treatment of all; healthy amber governance would have required consistency in line with the social stratification, ideally based on commensurate responsibilities and privileges. Healthy green governance might have explicitly considered the special circumstances/contexts of each house and household. This was none of the above.
There was a momentary set back when Hilmi Bey realized I knew all the workers on site by name, I joked around with them, and they referred to me as Emine Abla (meaning older sister, even though some of them are actually older than me). This is a form of address that eases transition from smaller kinship communities to the large anonymous groups of modern cities. All kinds of strangers become aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and even mothers and fathers, setting kinship definitions and boundaries to relationships that might otherwise become confusing and uncomfortable. Addressing me as ‘Ms’ would sound cold and distant in that world, and ‘Emine’ would sound just too familiar and disrespectful. Emine Abla, sounds both warm and respectful.
That a boss, especially a woman, should know and fraternize with construction workers most of whom are uneducated, recent arrivals from the villages did not seem to sit well in Hilmi Bey’s world, a world threatened by red rebellion and stabilized by social stratification; but, thankfully, after a moment of frozen shock on his face, he relaxed and seemed to take it in stride.
Selim:
Selim, on the other hand, has no difficulty calling me Emine Hanim, somewhere between Emine and ‘Ms.’, conveying equal degrees of warmth and respect in his world; it is also the society-wide norm. He and I had already worked on 4-5 renovation projects. He is an extremely talented young architect with a very clear modernist bent. Like most professionals in Turkey he comes from a modest background and does not have the cultural roots to produce any urban style authentically, except the modern. He has no patience with architectural or decorative nostalgia. His talents, applied to older, more traditional houses produce a kind of tension that deeply appeals to me. He and his team of workers are a part of my everyday life in Istanbul. I run into them routinely as I go about my business at the office and call on them whenever anything goes awry at my house.
Selim was very angry and deeply offended by Hilmi Bey’s inconsistencies. ‘Nothing rational about the man’ he kept muttering, once he had left. ‘I did everything by the book and he did not even respond properly to my reports or requests.’ Apparently all Hilmi Bey wanted to do was to tell Selim ‘how they built all this’ too. ‘I am a professional’ he kept saying, ‘why does he go on with meaningless stories and who is he to order me to come and present him the project? There is not a single renovation project on the site that is more professional, more considerate of others and of the environment than ours!’
 I could see how the relationship between Hilmi Bey and Selim had become so explosive: One for whom nothing quite fits without the background of a face-to-face relationship and another for whom objective professional measures are the only ways to assess anything.
Ferhat:
Just as I found myself thinking ‘orange,’ Ferhat came up to me. Ferhat is in his late 20’s, hails from the Eastern province of Kars and is preoccupied with Heaven and Hell. He is devout, controlling of his wife, and concerned about doing the Right Things. While the other workers tease him about his religious rigidity and mythical/magical beliefs, I have a sense he is questioning a lot of his upbringing, and having a hard time. He is also our talented painter and the jokester of the team. (‘This paint job is so smooth; not even a fly could find traction!’)There is always a dancing light in his eyes and a mischievous smile on his lips.
‘Emine Abla’ he said ‘I really don’t understand these people. The other day this woman stopped by and complained about the white window frames. She said they had to be brown to match all the other houses. I told her nobody would see them behind the brown shutters. But she would not even listen. She was so upset. So I said to her: of all the things going on in the world and in your life, how important are brown window frames?’ We laughed.
I noted that he had not referred the woman to Selim or to me, as one would have expected, but had defended the project himself. Was this due to personal/kinship loyalty? After all, how important are white window frames either. Or was he championing individual expression against conformity, his own as well as mine (even if hidden behind brown shutters)? I also noted that I had not seen this kind of spacious wisdom in him before.
Turhan:
That evening Turhan and I went out to dinner to one of the fish restaurants along the waterfront. Feta cheese and stuffed squash flowers, octopus and mackerel, fava beans and arugula with raki (ouzo), followed by mastic flavored ice cream– it was a typical Aegean dinner.
Turhan was only a little less upset than Selim. ‘You see these assholes?’ he kept saying. ‘Do you finally see them for what they are? They have the power of the state behind them and they use it to con the poor villagers and enrich themselves. They think they can use power with complete impunity. L’Etat c’est moi -- that is their life philosophy. They will do anything to maintain that power, including inviting the military into politics. Can you see now why (the Islamist) AK Party gets all the votes? These guys don’t have a worthwhile thought in their brains. The AKP is breaking brand new ground!’
Clearly we were not talking just about Hilmi Bey and his friends anymore. They had come to symbolize all the secularists/ Kemalists / old elites in Turhan’s green world of oppressor and oppressed groups. We were back to our old argument.  It was my cue to say something like ‘while Hilmi Bey is of the secularist establishment, his mindset is not necessarily all that different from a lot of the folks running the AKP’. There is religious as well as non/anti-religious amber in my teal world.
But I was tired and I had questions of my own: What are the potentials and limits of individual or social translation at any given level of development? And just how important are brown (or white) window frames, anyway?
Lila, I thought, the Kosmic dance, and drank the last drop of raki with a smile.

 

 

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1 out of 1 members found this useful.

Great story

Posted August 15th, 2009 by Anne Tyler Lord

Emine,

That is really a great story!  I appreciate your careful attention to the details of the interactions with each person.  You have great insight into the intricacies of what was going on, and great patience to work with the the people at different levels.

What an interesting experience to be in a place with such a different culture and history.  And, such a practical application of integral lines of development - to get your house done, and become accepted within this culture.  You gave a good example of how folks in second-tier can observe and navigate through those in first-tier spaces, even when they are unhealthy, and have an impact on their world, even in seemingly routine interactions (which really don't exist).  How different this would have turned out if a person in your position would have responded with emotional reactions, judgements, and self importance.

Thanks for sharing your story, I really enjoyed it.  And, WOW!  I can't imagine having a vacation home on the Aegean!  You will have to host an Integral party and invite us all over sometime! 

 Anne Tyler Lord
Storytelling from the space of Integral Consciousness
Integral Poetry, Prose