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rubiesand
05-19-2006, 08:45 PM
(It's quite a long read, but well worth it imho)



My Nanna's Turkish Neighbours

By Paul Chandler


For Waleed Aly and other muslims offended by George Pell's recent blast from the safety of USA.

My grandmother was married in 1915, and she and my grandfather moved into the house in Arncliffe in Sydney where they lived for the rest of their lives. Most of the houses in the street were built at the same time, and my nanna's life-long best friend moved in next door on the same day; I forget her name now. One afternoon in 1968 I wanted to show off my just-bought first car, a 1954 Renault 750 - I called in on Nanna unexpectedly and discovered the two of them in the lounge room eating cake and sipping away at a bottle of sweet sherry. It was a memorable revelation of neighbourliness and enduring friendship.

Nanna was the sweetest of grandmothers. She always gave us scones with jam and cream. She seemed to have a preternatural ability to whip up a batch of scones in no time, baking them up in her ancient Early Kooka stove with the beautiful enamelled kookaburra on the oven door, which she refused to trade for something more modern because "you get to know a stove". It was only as I grew older that I realised that she had a tough old coot side. She was not as indulgent to her children as she was to her grandchildren. There was iron in her from poverty and depression and war and widowhood.

I remember her grief when her next-door neighbour died. The two of them were the last of the old-timers in the street. But there was worse to come: the house next door was bought by foreigners and her new neighbours turned out to be Turkish. She was indignant. Her sweetness and indulgence evaporated in a litany of complaints of a bitterness we did not expect from her, mingled, I realise now, with grief and loss. There were too many of them. They wore too many clothes. They were not even Christians. They didn't speak English. Smells came from their kitchen. They should go back to where they came from. This went on for years. The side fence through which friendship had flowed backwards and forwards for fifty years became a thin demilitarised zone between her and the enemy camp.

But there was still worse to come. The Turks had some family occassion and barbequed a lamb on a spit in the backyard, which would have been alright except that they brought the lamb live and slaughtered it in the street. Blood and flies were everywhere, Nanna said in a cold fury. With the flies came the police and the council inspectors and other anti-lamb-slaughtering officials.

Inspection revealed illegal chickens and other outrages. The whole street was up in arms. Hostilities deepened.

Nanna was around eighty by then and growing increasingly frail. She took in a boarder - such a lovely girl, she always said - who stayed for a time, and then she was on her own again. Then one day, suddenly, a whole contingent of Turkish women appeared on the verandah. A little girl translated for them. She was too old to be living on her own, the Turkish women declared, with no-one to look out for her. Every morning when she got up she must hang a tea-towel out the window , and if it was not there by breakfast time they would come in to check on her. Nanna professed indignation, and said she put out the tea-towel only to keep them away.

Pots of food were now occassionally appearing on the verandah, exotic fragrant casseroles, I suppose, to be gingerly tasted before they were gratefully eaten. And I like to think there were plates of Turkish Delight thickly covered in icing sugar, but I'm not sure, I've made that up, but you'll have to allow a little artistic license. Soon we were being told with sweet authority over the scones and jam that you could have no better neighbours than Turkish people, who were the best neighbours in the world.

I like this little family story. I like it that persevering neighbourliness defeated the side fence. I like it that my nanna went from hostility to gratitude. It is a small window not only into the history of this country but also into its future, a story that has been played out countless times and in countless ways, and one that we cannot afford not to repeat.

I sometimes think about the little girl who stood on my grandmother's verandah and translated from Turkish to English and back again. She is probably a neurosurgeon or something now, and soon enough will be operating on my head. It is not a light burden to negotiate between two cultures, but many people have done it, and they have made our future. I wish I could thank her and everyone like her.


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