When the coffee is drunk and the talking is done and the young man’s father has asked the young woman’s father for his blessing and the young woman’s father has given it, the ceremony ends. Like most Turkish ceremonies, the soz ends abruptly.
The comfort with abrupt endings is something I like about the Turks. They are proud of their ceremonies. They are proud of their celebrations of life. They like to think they sit around together eating and drinking and dancing all through the night like a bunch of Italians. But the reality is that events end early and they end abruptly. It’s not a rude abruptness that requires apologies, it’s simply an abruptness that says, “We’re done here, thanks everybody, move on.”
After the soz the young man and the young woman are not engaged, but they are exclusive, and an engagement at some future point is assumed. It’s like being pre-approved for a mortgage, plus both families will make sure neither of the two young lovers starts stepping out on the other. After all, by approving the match the families also make a commitment to watch out for and honor each other.
This was the ceremony my girlfriend and I would go through in order to make our relationship official in the eyes of her family and friends. But in a proper soz the kids basically sit back while the parents do the heavy lifting. If you’re the young man, you don’t need to work up the courage to ask your girlfriend’s father for her hand in marriage, because your dad’s going to do it! What could be better than that?
I was on my own in Turkey though. My parents were very supportive of our relationship, but they weren’t planning to come visit for another few months, and my girlfriend had made it clear to me that the soz couldn’t wait until then. She and I were spending a lot of time together, I was coming over to her parents’ house to visit on a regular basis, and her extended family and family friends were starting to ask questions. One day she finally said to me, “My parents would like to know why you’re here and what your intentions are. It’s time for the soz.”
Part of me was mildly insulted, thinking, “Wait a minute, I’ve thrown everything to the wind and I’ve moved halfway around the world, and they’re not sure why I’m here?” But I knew how important the soz was, and one of the reasons I had come to Turkey was to properly ask my girlfriend’s parents for her hand in marriage. So soz time it was.
On the appointed day I dressed up in a suit and tie, bought some flowers and a box of chocolates, and hopped the bus over to their side of the city.
When my girlfriend’s parents greeted me at their front door, they too were dressed to the nines. I had seen them dressed nicely before, but I had never seen them dressed up quite like that. As I stepped inside into the entryway I felt even more puny, alone, and intimidated.
The five of us, my girlfriend’s mother and father, her younger brother, and she and I, sat down in the living room. I felt awkward, sitting so formally on the same couch my girlfriend and I would lounge on together on any other weekend. The five of us made small talk for a bit, and then my girlfriend stood up and disappeared into the kitchen to make the Turkish coffee. I tried not to fidget, sitting there alone on that couch, everyone all dressed up, everyone knowing exactly what we were there to do but not doing it yet.
Finally, when my girlfriend had finished serving the coffee and had taken her seat next to me, an expectant pause fell over the room. I turned to my girlfriend and whispered to her, “Can I start now?” She nodded yes, so I put down my coffee, straightened my tie, took a deep breath, and opened my heart.
This is an excerpt from Matt Krause’s book A Tight Wide-open Space. In 2003 Matt met a Turkish woman on a flight to Hong Kong. They started going out, and within a year Matt found himself adjusting to a new life in Istanbul. A Tight Wide-open Space is about that adjustment — going through the culture shock, becoming one of the family, learning to love the country. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and for the Kindle.