Sirman A. Celâyir, "Diary of an Immigrant Family"
(3 Volumes, 675 pages, July 4, 1997)

Volume 1
Assimilation
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Front Cover 1 (Use <- Back on Browser to Return here!)

Dedication 2

Technical Stuff on the hardbound Book 3

Foreword 4

Preface 11

Author's Note, Linguistics 13

Anatomy of a Lâz Clan (Now Part of Lâz People & Language) 15

C h r o n o l o g y (Now a Separate Document) 18

1. Kismet 29

Freedom versus Structure 41

Individualistic Immigrants 52

2. Alienation 63

Tuzla, Istanbul 65

America, First Impression 72

4. Incongruities 139

5. American TV and Movies 159

6. Making Sense of the System 173

7. Second Advent 198

8. Déjà vu 240

9. Epilogue 276

This diary may tell you a little about your own past. If you are a native American, you may not be able to identify immediately with our background and environment, the inner struggles and transformation we experienced. If the description of some of our experiences seem harsh, this is because they were trying. Assimilation is not just acclimation and acquisition. Invariably it entails giving up or replacing a cherished habit, custom, tradition, or trait with something alien that is not necessarily always better or for the good. For example, we could not adapt to privacy, as privacy is defined and exercised in America. Assimilation can proceed only by overcoming inner resistance. This is not a smooth process, nor invariably a successful one. Assimilation strikes the core of one's being and attempts to mold the personality. Only "first generation" immigrants can empathize with this process, whereas others can at best "understand" it. But someone in your past, perhaps your grandparents, came to this country from another land and culture. Much of what pertains specifically to us is probably similar to the thoughts and feelings your folks experienced after they arrived in this country. Their experiences probably had an effect on the way they raised your parents who raised you. So do not be surprised if something in our lives that seemingly has nothing to do with you rings a bell.

The story does not reach, or aim for, a conclusion or target. There is no "happy ending," nor an unhappy one. Life is not a movie. It is a continuous process with ups and downs. The ups do not cancel the downs. Both accumulate and form the foundation of how one feels about something, if one is happy, unhappy, or undecided. This is why assimilation is seemingly a never-ending process. My sisters and I have adjusted to this country. However, our parents have floundered since we arrived in America in 1958. Their labors exacerbated our own effort. Our foreign friends have expressed similar feelings. It is clear to us that many immigrants are going in circles in search of lost identities in America. Why this may be so after almost four decades in the United States (in our case) has something to do with the American culture and environment. The almost unanimous consensus is that "something is missing here." The missing thing is an assortment of tangible and intangible things that eventually grow into a large hole in a foreign soul.

Americans look at the numbers of people who come to this country and the long waiting list and make a case of "is this a great country or what?" Perhaps it is. But this admission does not contradict the reality that many immigrants are nagged by the question if this was the right decision, especially when some of them were already well-off in their original countries, like us. This feeling is not unique to immigrants. Several American movies have delighted audiences with the wholesome story about the inner struggles of someone from small town America contemplating and then declining a promotion to a large city. These audiences should consider the situation of a foreigner in America. Unlike the movie, the immigrants cannot just pack and return, after having invested so heavily to uproot their families. Many immigrants wrestle with their assimilation for so long that they cannot go back and be the people they were. They endure, with dangling souls. This may also explain why many Cubans, Greeks, Jews, etc., though they are American citizens, seemingly remain Cuban, et al. at heart, why some groups have been influencing American policies to the benefit of their native countries, whether or not these policies serve this country.

The theme of this book is partly in the realm of Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," but it also evokes the insight (and perhaps the eloquence) of Heinlein's "A Stranger in a Strange Land," Thomas Mann's "Tonio Kröger," and Camus' "The Stranger" and "The Mythos of Sisyphus." There are reminders of Lederer's "Ugly American" and "A Nation of Sheep," as also Kennedy's "The rise and Fall of Great Empires." All of America's a proscenium, and what transpires on the stage is grotesque, also symbolic, colorful, outrageous, ribald, clever, gimmicky, poignant, and somnolent. The book also intends to reintroduce Americans to America, by scrutinizing this land from a different cultural perspective.

The story comes from the mouth of someone who learned English as a second language, in my case as a third language. It rambles at times, about our thoughts and senses while we were being acclimated, and dynamic and fluent other times, like a musical piece flowing through adagio to prestissimo moods. The chapters unravel the many stages and dimensions of assimilation. Passages and pentimenti of our life in Turkey, also in Germany where I attended the gymnasium, and Saudi Arabia where I was an advisor, offer cultural contrasts.

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Turkish is a phonetic language. Each sound is represented by a distinct character and this character is spoken the same way, always. The alphabet includes the following special characters: "Ç/ç" for the "ch" in "check" which would be "çek" in Turkish; the "I/_" ("i" without the dot) is like the "e" sound in "butter," which would be "batIr"; the "G/g" (soft "g", with a cedilla over it) is similar to the "th" in "neither," which would be "niGdIr"; the "Ö/ö" is the "u" in "fur," which would be "för," or the "i" in "sir" which would be "sör"; "S/s" (with a dot below) is the "Sh" in Sharon; the "Ü/ü" is like the first "u" in "future," which would be "füyçIr" or "füçIr," as also the "ea" in "feature," which would be "fiyçIr."

Note that the "ç" represents also the "t" sound in "future," as it does the "ch" in "check." However, it cannot represent the "ch" in "chord," because the latter "ch" sounds like the "Kh" in the Arabic name "Khaled" for which there is no alphabet in Turkish. It would be estimated by "kord," because "kh," equivalent to "ch" here, are not used together in Turkish. (Turkish relies on clear sounds.) "Beautiful" would be "biyutiful," which also shows that in Turkish words are generally a series of consonant-then-vowel combinations. (The "y" is always a consonant in Turkish.)

There is no "q" or "w" or "x" in Turkish. "Quit" would be estimated as "kuit," "what" as "huat" or "uat"; "sex" would be "seks," xeriscape "seriskeyp," xenophobic "zenofobik," the latter three duplicating the English sounds exactly. The "â" (soft "a"), though not an alphabet, is used in pronunciation, like the "a" in "la" in "do re mi fa sol (la) si do." In Turkish, the "a" is the hard "a" sound of "u" in "but." English "bet" would be the same in Turkish, "ate" would be "eyt," "byte" or "bite" would be "bayt." However, Turkish cannot reproduce the "ae" sound in "bat." It would be explained parenthetically, like "ä" from German. The hard "g" in "gun" would be the same in Turkish: "gan." However, the "g" in "gentle" would be spelled with "c" as "centIl," as also the "j" sound in "JR" in TV's "Dallas" which would be "Ceyar," duplicating the English sounds exactly. (Turkish "j" is pronounced like "je" in French.) The "i" in Turkish is pronounced like the "i" in "bit." However, the long "i" sound in "pier" or "peer" would be spoken as "piyr" or "piGr" using "y" or "G" to elongate "i," but perhaps also with a second "i" as "piir," like Turkish "(sh)iir" for poem.

Therefore, our last name "Celâyir" is pronounced in English as "Gel.a.Year," my first name "Sirman" as "Siermann." The Turks readily adopt words, things, trends, values, views from other cultures. The language is very rich and florid in the way people use it colloquially, especially for gossip and casual interaction. And they have an infectious sense of humor--but less so if the humor is at their expense.

It would seem to the Turks that the English language has built-in "learning disability," because it assigns different sounds to the same alphabet, or the same sound to different alphabets, causing children to learn words twice: by their spelling and pronunciation. Imagine a child--or immigrant--trying to make sense of daughter ("doGtur") and laughter (laftIr), steak ("steyk") and bleak (bliik).

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For me, this was a time of inventory taking. I did this especially at the end of a major phase in my life. My mind can compartmentalize itself and I am generally busy on my computer. So the inventory and contemplation did not require dedicated time. They flashed through me while I did other things, sometimes even while I slept. I had just come out of a gauntlet of a relationship, the most substantive one in my life, including my two marriages. I did not contemplate the relationship itself. It had been part of a much larger context of background, upbringing, religion, values, lifestyle.

I was evaluating the events since 1986, trying to resolve the intrinsic conflict between the ideas "man makes his destiny" and "karma ultimately decides the outcome." Apparently other people were also aware of this conflict, for Mother often cited her own version of the mantra attributed to Thomas La Mance: "life is all those things that happen to you when you were planning other things." This idea probably had no direct bearing on the lives of people who lived on a straight path. But for me this pithy wisdom summarized and augured life better than any other insight. This was also true of Parents.

I was inclined to believe that neither theory was true alone, that both ruled life. Karma decided from the outset the genetic makeup and environment, including parents, the financial means of the family, and all sorts of other benefic and malefic elements. Despite these differences, most people had almost limitless opportunities to pave their destiny. And if karma did not interfere, the outcome could be extrapolated. But karma did interfere, sometimes suddenly and drastically, other times subtly and over an extended period. Jim Brady was an excellent example of how karma could overrule self-effort and decide life. He had made his destiny until karma changed that destiny, unless what happened to him was his ultimate destiny. That is, Jim Brady's ultimate destiny was not in public relations but in gun control. Karma had selected him as an ambassador and through him prompted America to deliberate the ramifications of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If so, karma or God had caused injury to Jim Brady to achieve a greater objective. A sudden stroke and Jim Brady was not wounded but born again in front of millions of people. Neither the audience nor Jim Brady knew this then. The evidence came several years later when the Brady and the Crime bills were signed. Karma could doom some people while it blessed others and obviously it was not predictable. Albeit, what ultimately happened to Jim Brady had nothing to with self-effort; it had everything to do with karma.

I evaluated the premise of my thoughts. By presuming that there was a purpose to every person and to everything that happened to this person, I was introducing something like superstition to my thinking. Was this so? Did every person serve a purpose or only some people? What was the purpose of a child who suffered from the Down's syndrome, a punishment for past misdeeds of one or both parents, or even grandparents? People were mere peons in the games karma played. It randomly elevated some people while it canceled others. If God and karma were the same, or if karma was a tool of God, did this mean that God was cruel? Was it cruel when lions ate a gazelle that died by virtue of being eaten?

"Luck" may have been one of the first intangible words invented. The ancient people must have felt an urge to describe the seemingly random process by which karma picked victims for its entertainment. Although luck was not yet associated with karma, luck defined what karma did or brought. Accordingly, people were allowed to reap the benefits of their effort until karma interfered. Then, they were cursed or had "good joss." And karma could play odd jokes, like letting a person win the lottery at age 67, after a lifetime of hardship. Ancient people must have felt totally exposed to karma. Their helplessness probably consumed and terrified them. Some of them thought of appealing to karma to bring them good luck, hunting, harvest, something, but nothing bad. Someone decided to define these wishful thoughts as hope. Wishful thoughts evolved into mumbled voices. They were the beginnings of what people called prayer later.

I was not sure that my "theory of purpose" was correct. However, obviously karma played a decisive role even if purpose did not. Americans, who like to understand and dominate nature, could not allow something so arbitrary to interfere with their pursuit of happiness. So they confined karma to the dictionary and proposed instead the "man makes his destiny" theory. "Effort" and "will" were the tools by which man actualized destiny. Americans were not wrong. People could fashion their destiny, and many did, unmolested by karma. Just in case, Americans also prayed. When karma interfered in a big way, the incident was categorized as fate, tragedy, misfortune, "twist of luck," windfall, force majeure.

I sensed a correlation between my theories of karma, purpose, luck and superstition and then religion. In spite of all the progress humankind made, most people still felt at the mercy of karma, ultimately as much as they had been initially. In a recent television documentary, Ancient Prophesies, David McCollough stated "ever since the earliest civilization, man has studied the past, lived in the present, and feared for the future--a future so elusive, so unknowable, that he has sought help in divining the secrets of time, often turning to the workaday prophets for hire, the fortunetellers." He did not mention who the latter were. Astrologers, psychics, etc. only, or also the ministers of organized religions.

Until we arrived in the United States, religion had not been an issue in our lives. We became a curious audience to the way America practiced religion and later found ourselves on the receiving end of intolerance, which fueled our curiosity even more. America was undeniably a very rich, powerful, and advanced country, but we did not feel in an enlightened environment. Intolerance was one obvious contradiction and even now, thirty years later, it had undermined and ultimately doomed my relationship with Sharon.

Born a Moslem, I had attended a private Jesuit school for five years and had spent four years among predominantly Catholic people in Germany. My first wife had been a Protestant American, my second wife, also an American, the offspring of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. After fourteen years in America, I had lived among the Saudis for five years. And I had spent the last seven years in a marriage-like relationship with this Fundamentalist Christian woman. Since religious compatibility had never been a consideration before, I viewed it as an invented obstacle, not worthy of educated and enlightened people. As far as I was concerned, all organized religions were fake insurance policies against the fear karma induced. Advanced societies indulged in them with modern tools on TV; primitive people did the same with smoke and bones in the jungle.

Although the American TV shows Moslem people seemingly always at prayer and talks a lot of Muslim Fundamentalism as if every Moslem were a Fundamentalist, the (large) majority of the Turkish people do not even say the daily prayers in words, let alone go to a mosque and perform the rituals. The people shown on TV are orthodox Muslims, like orthodox Jews and Christians. Modern Turks are educated, enlightened, and sensible. They perceive a logical inconsistency in the notion that Allah rules everything and the fact that the good, kind, and generous Allah then turns around and does horrible things to people, and for no apparent reason. However, they cannot escape the fact that unusual and horrible events do occur. For them, "kIsmetmi(sh)" attributes these events not to Allah but to the realm of the unknown and inexplicable. They know that religion, regardless of the dialect, has no control over this even more powerful realm of kismet. And if religion does not protect people against bad kismet, the only explanation as to why it exists, they reason, is that religion is a technique of brainwashing by which various religions enslave people, in the name of God, to their ministers, how these organizations built their empires.

Of course, these enlightened people keep their thoughts to themselves, knowing how cruel and bloody the other side can be when openly confronted. Salman Rushdie's situation only confirms their fears, but they know this can happen also in America. If a presidential candidate were to declare "religion is a joke," he would sacrifice not only his candidacy but also become a target to gun-toting fanatics. They know even America cannot equate "freedom of religion" to "freedom from religion."

Like most Westerners, the Turkish people also see self-effort as the essential determinant of what a person can achieve in life. However, they would construe the American suggestion, "man makes his destiny," ultimately as arrogant, indeed heathen, nonsense. The reason is obvious. If Allah/God does exist, the last thing people would want to do is to anger Allah/God by insisting they have equal power, that they can decide everything that happens to them. No Turk would be this brave. So since "man makes his destiny" advocates categoric denials of both God and karma, the Turkish people live life instead by something like "man makes his destiny, but . . ." Kismet replaces the "but" part of the statement. It represents all the things over which people have no control.

All religions must ultimately conclude that kismet is also a word in their vocabulary and way of life. This includes Americans, regardless of their jabber about man and destiny, if they are truly religious, i.e., not merely enslaved to a preacher or church. In daily life, kismet is often synonymous to luck or lack of luck, why some soldiers in a group die while others in the same group survive. Self-effort, religiosity, prayer, being a "good" Christian-Muslim-Jew-Hindu, etc. have nothing to do with where the killing mortar shell falls. Kismet is what happened to Jim Brady; it is also buried in Mother's mantra.

Expanding on kismet's significance, everything about every religion is subject to debate, including faith which is often malfunctioning common sense, and the subjective interpretations of God by the Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc. There is no such incongruity in kismet. No religion or philosophy can refute it: events beyond control do happen and can be more consequential than things people do on their own. Even atheists cannot deny kismet, for kismet encompasses these events whether they occur randomly or by design.

If it is assumed that kismet is not an autonomous entity but under the control of higher system, perhaps a tool of God, it follows that God is universal, because kismet functions everywhere without boundaries. But if God is universal, then everything about any religion is detail, invented or irrelevant detail. Or kismet is autonomous. That is, one can pray to God and hope for the best, or not pray and hope. Kismet seems to work regardless and always unpredictably. Surely many Jewish people were praying very hard when they were being led to concentration camps; surely many were not in a position to pray when they were finally rescued.

Most enlightened Turks arrive at these conclusions instinctively. Education helps as also the fact that they are not enslaved to a minister. Thus, although they are Muslim on paper, most Turkish people are really universal in outlook. They are among the most tolerant of all cultures. It so happens that they also follow most of the Ten Commandments, not as "holy" rules, but because they make sense. In my case, I found kismet logically consistent. Rather than choosing atheism, I accepted the idea of a universal God, perhaps a higher order, and broadened it, in terms of "Phases of Existence," to Hindu karma. Phases of Existence is the idea behind Gail Sheehy's "Passages" which she probably borrowed (and westernized) from Hindu philosophy. As for the beauty of philosophy in practice, no religion can match the simplicity and dignity of the American Indian way of life. The idea of oneness between man, nature, and the Creator seems the most sensible and complete formula. Americans should be proud to have such a dignified and enlightened culture in their midst.

As immigrants, we had to assimilate to America in part also through our neighbors. Assimilation does not proceed in a vacuum. It is assisted and hindered by experiences. So when intolerance surfaced and we became aware of the degree of xenophobia in America, experiences, incongruities, and things we witnessed began to interfere with our assimilation, sometimes causing regressive assimilation. We felt what we had was infinitely superior to what we were seeing. On the one hand Parents (especially) wanted to hold on to their existing identity and culture; on the other, they were in America. This conflict became our story in America. We began to debate the distinction between superstition and religion, wondering if America qualified as a religious or a superstitious country. As in Turkey, many gullible souls in America hugged religion supposedly to escape superstition, to belong to something, to bribe God, whatever.

Reviewing what we knew about how religion evolved, it seemed to us that the medieval people were more sensible than their counterparts today. Surely they were more courageous. This is when religions were emerging as empires and were the most brutal. Yet, some people had dared to oppose religion even then, and others were not totally convinced, though they were threatened with "hell" and eternal burning. Somehow the clergy could convince people that this cruelty had something to do with an understanding, forgiving, generous, and kind God. The mere suggestion that God would do such things was already a blasphemy and floccinaucinihilipilification (rendering worthless) of God and religion. But such details did not concern the clergy. They knew they owed their existence not to God but to decent people who were scared and gullible.

The real intention of these threats was to enslave people to the clergy. If the skeptics were not conquered, there could be a mass exodus from the empire. Hell and fear of excommunication put the "fear of God" in the masses, but they did not deter the sensible infidels. The recalcitrant had to be dealt with in a way that would teach the survivors a lasting lesson. People were burned, tortured, quartered, ostracized, robbed, and punished in every way the demented clergy could imagine. Sometimes entire nations were decimated in the name of God. In the end, the clergy could claim that unlike superstitious people their flock was religious and thus presumably not superstitious. The masses were now separated by a semantic boundary. This artificial separation later became a mire of prejudice and discrimination.

Religious atrocities happened also in America, when America was already a nation. For example, how many citizens in this country of fair-minded people, excellent scholars and free press knew or cared about the history of the Catholic Church in America, say of the lovely Franciscan missions in and around Santa Barbara? Supposedly they were built by the mellifluous Catholic missionary Junípero Serra (Miguel José Serra), also known as "the Apostle of California," in the period 1772 to 1784. Americans cried over the Alamo, in the Cyclorama in Atlanta. Who cried over Santa Barbara? Did the residents, millions of visitors, and aficionados of missions know or care that these quaint temples of God were indeed memorials and headstones to the thousands of Chumash Indians who were decimated building them for Serra? After being enslaved and tortured for years, the Chumash were buried by the thousands in mass graveyards nearby, some of them in the mission gardens. Perhaps America was being wise and prudent to keep quiet about these atrocities. Obviously it was too late to xeriscape the landscape of the blood. Outraged Americans might embarrass the archbishops, and the next time the Pope visited, they might not vertiginously celebrate him like a rock star.

While these inhuman acts continued, emperors, kings, and wealthy people volunteered the funds to erect castles for the sophisticated witch doctors. Artisans from every trade devoted a lifetime to the decorations. Everyone believed they were building monuments to God, as if God or his humble son needed such domiciles. No one dared to suggest they were only building homes and museums, equivalent to the ancient pyramids, for the clergy. The same two original sins, gullibility and fear of karma, perpetuated also religions. Together they defined the same thing: superstition.

If they were around today, many religious leaders who made religions what they are probably would have been hunted down as criminals. Their deeds continued for centuries and until they became civilized, religions and religious leaders caused unbelievable bloodshed. Yet these leaders somehow managed to be remembered as holy and wholesome historical figures. Hollywood contributed to this myth with heartwarming stories about early Christianity and peripatetic old men who scurried hither and yon spreading the word. However, even Hollywood could not imagine a wholesome epic about Christianity after that. ("Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" said Blaise Pascal.)

Although movies continued to portray a monopolistic relationship between miracles and prayers, reality contradicted this relationship and the audience could be fooled only for the duration of the movie. Everyone knew that miracles and misery came to people who prayed and did not pray, just as randomly as karma always had wrought them. When the "Cardinal" (Henry Morton Robinson) and "Thornbirds" appeared, the church was already ubiquitous, very powerful, immensely wealthy, and well established. Now it did not matter that most people saw the church and its leaders for what they were, though they kept their thoughts to themselves. There were always more superstitious people and new generations to attend and innocent cultures to convert. And the church was finally doing also some good deeds.

Religion did not have a monopoly on smart rulers. As people became more enlightened, a few capable leaders on the outside decided to untangle the state from the claws of the church. However, this separation was only a perfunctory arrangement, even in the United States of America. A declaration and a few written laws could only achieve a most facile separation. These gestures did not separate the society from the clergy. Leaders were elected by people most of whom followed the dictates of a church. People who regularly went to church would not vote for a president, cabinet officials, senators, congresspeople, governors, mayors, and other leaders that did not share their beliefs. Educated leaders spoke proudly of "our Judeo-Christian heritage." People "redeemed their soul" in churches and then formed a state that was putatively separate from church. As if millions of Christ protégés and protégées would allow any leader to really purge Christ from the affairs of state. . .

Either this arrangement was oxymoronic or people who ran for leadership positions and many of the voters were Expedient Christians. That is, they went to church and acted Christian, because this was the thing to do, how they got votes and acceptance. Only one nation had succeeded achieving a true separation: the Soviet Union, by outlawing religion altogether. The Russians understood that people could not serve two contemporaneous empires and not clash. Their separation did not survive, but only because the USSR did not succeed economically and had to cater to the West, and its churches, to start over. This was still no victory for the United States. Its society was divided by seemingly perpetual clashes among fractious and disconsolate flocks of Conservatives, who claimed to be religious, and enlightened Liberals. They arm-wrestled ad infinitum over values, family, prayer, abortion, sex, and everything else.

The scientific community was also helpless dealing with karma. It could not even define it. A few mathematicians developed a "Model of Chaos" which supposedly anticipated chaotic events. (Karma must have smirked at this tool too.) Curiously, although scientists borrowed freely from all previous achievements, they decided to shun the oldest of all sciences: astrology. Religion had emerged as an insurance policy against bad karma. Astrology did even better: it claimed it could predict how and when karma would strike. This was potent medicine. Moreover, astrology relied on tangible tools and lent itself to tests. The clergy were scared and immediately declared astrology as "false prophet." They got help from an unexpected source: scientists, perhaps because they paid some of them. Of course, these scientists were being disingenuous. If "science" was the basis of their criticism of astrology, it made no sense for them to remain silent about religion, which was even more dubious scientifically and much more widespread and consequential.

Over the years, we have visited, together with enlightened Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc., mosques, cathedrals, and temples around the world and admired their architecture and the art in them. We listened to Kathleen Battle's tapes of church songs, because we liked their melodies, as we did Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?". The quaint scenes of people emerging from churches on Sundays and sound of church bells also pleased our senses. We were convinced we had a solid spiritual foundation, because we exercised spiritual freedom, everyone in our family. Toleration was a minimum standard with us; we abhorred intolerance in any form; goodwill was our greeting card. Without native biases, we were free to interact with other people without prejudging them. This is not what we found in America.

It was not until Aug. 20, 1976 that I witnessed something that held me spellbound like this again. This happened in Mecca. I saw thousands of people covered by a white towel-like material walking stoically around the Kaaba. I was told that they were required to walk around it seven times. Some people circled it continuously. There was no TV or artificial contraptions around. For a moment I felt as if I had been taken back to the time of Mohammed. Like their American counterparts, these decent people thought they were pleasing Allah. None of them had the independence of mind to ask why Allah would care if people walked around a stone. Like the Jews who kissed and prayed to a wall in Jerusalem, they had been told this was the thing to do and they were doing it, forsaking all common sense. Here I could not blame a minister. I blamed religion: the way people practiced it, the way people had been taught to practice it.

I met my first American girlfriend through my sister Femsi, in the dormitory in 1962. She was Janet (18) from Wheeling, WV. Her parents were warm and friendly. By 1963, we were inseparable. One day, she said she wanted me to accompany her and her mother to the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. A famous Evangelical minister who had rehabilitated gang members in New York was going to preach about young people. This was an opportunity for me to assimilate deeper to the American culture. I accepted the invitation as an experience. We sat next to the stage. The minister was inspiring and the occasion was educational. Then came the final part. All young people who had sinned were urged to come to the stage to redeem their soul, whatever this meant.

People were congregating on the platform. I had done nothing beyond what young men normally do. I did not know what I should construe as sinned. This man was asking me to come on stage so that I could redeem my soul. I did not see a connection. I knew by then that many American phrases sounded profound without saying anything. While I stood there puzzled, my girlfriend and her mother began to pull and push me to the stage. I did not feel a void in my soul and refused to be moved. My girlfriend started to cry and beg me. I became angry and asked her "are you telling me this man is a novice and cannot perform these miracles if we remain seated?" We made a scene. Everyone probably thought I was a hard case who should have grabbed this chance. Finally, she walked alone to the platform and prayed for both of us. This was only my first experience.

In June 1981, I was visiting my friends Ken and Nancy in San Diego. Out of curiosity I accompanied their nephews and nieces to a Bible-reading class in a church. There were more than a hundred people there. The Bible part was fine, but then the minister started a sermon about foreigners. The speech continued about five minutes and he was speaking predominantly to a young audience. I could not believe my ears. This man was impressing on them in a hateful tone why they had to avoid non-Christians. The group around me was embarrassed. At the end of this poisonous service, the man waited outside the door and shook hands with the attendants as they emerged. He extended his hand to me. I gave him a cold look and said "I am one of those foreigners you spoke about; the last thing I want to do is shake the hand of someone like you." The artificial smile on the man's face froze for a moment, but he was an experienced charlatan. The smile came back as he shook hands with the next person.

This had not been a small incident. Over his professional life this one minister would pollute thousands of souls. I already knew by then that America had a large population of xenophobic Christians. I began to despise these ministers for what they were doing. The "kids" eventually stopped going to the Bible class and to church. I thought it was healthier for them to grow in an environment that did not shove sin, guilt, and hate down their young throats. Be as it may, this was not yet my most memorable experience with Evangelical ministers.

Since religion affected people at soul level, we were not comfortable with what we were seeing and experiencing. Independence and freedom had to mean more than mobility and pursuit of happiness. The mind had to be independent and free before any other freedom could be exercised freely. Even democracy could not function properly without common sense. What I saw on TV in United States and what I witnessed in Saudi Arabia later were not religion. They were instances of acutely malfunctioning common sense. As far as I could discern their motives, these pusillanimous people were trying hard to endear themselves to God and bribe their way to heaven.

The skepticism had its roots in our experiences in America the first time. When we arrived in 1958, our loneliness and isolation began to interfere with our assimilation. Perseverance is said to be a good trait, perhaps because everyone must endure something, sometimes continuously. In a two-hour movie or three-day book, the story of endurance evokes romantic feelings, especially if it is bundled with some sort of "happy ending." In real life, the story lasts and drags, seemingly without the promise of an end. It is not a romantic trip for many people for whom there is no end. Parents also persevered, but only after we left Father alone in America and came to Germany. Although my sisters and I were happy in Germany, Mother and Father struggled with "what have we done?". Mother and my sisters returned to America two years later. By then the worst was over and our situation began to improve.

Our achievements came after enormous costs. I could not dismiss the costs as part of a wholesome perseverance process. So already at age 16 or so I perceived an analogy between conventional aspirations and a straitjacket. People volunteered for unbelievable burdens to pursue formula definitions of fulfillment. Then they trained themselves to redefine happiness by a proxy that measured the degree of mobility they achieved in their straitjacket. I did not presume that everyone was wrong and I was right. However, I made a mental note that I would not blindly conform to this norm, though I did not know then how I could deviate from it. After I received the offer from Saudi Arabia, I knew, but this happened years later.

The mood in America in the 1960s matched mine. It was clear that something was happening to the social stitch and Puritan values in America. Young people were challenging formula definitions of success and happiness. Americans had been signing up for lifelong commitments before they were even aware of their own identities. "Mid-life crisis" was a hot topic, as also divorce, marijuana, and happiness through fads. The Playboy provided love to love-starved Puritan males. Books like "Transactional Analysis," street-corner philosophies like "I am Number 1," and psychologists and astrologers became popular prescriptions overnight. Alvin Toffler spoke about transiency. Depending on where one stood, America and American values were either awakening or degenerating. The true cost of past achievements surfaced. People began to sympathize with blacks, American Indians, and themselves; religion lost pertinence.

Then came rude awakening, the realization that there were no viable substitutes for the formulae. I did not anticipate the next phase then, though what followed was a natural extrapolation of what was happening. The exuberance of the 1960s was replaced by contemplation in the 1970s, perhaps partly due to Vietnam. A job was necessary and it defined all else. America was back to square one. With innocence gone, apathy, selfishness, and greed came with the 1980s. People began to live off the future. So did their Government, in part to recapture the eminence and coherence of former days. Four trillion dollars later, America entered the 1990s with increasing self-doubt and confusion about direction and remedies, looking forward to the 21st century burdened with an eight trillion dollar debt and perhaps some panic.

I had a traditional upbringing. The normal process leading from education to job was also my starting gate to life, not only because these steps led to a financial foundation but also because they were worthy ambitions. I reached financial independence at age 38, eight years after I graduated from the university. I had 4 degrees, two of them advanced, in mathematics, engineering, and economics, and I was an advanced programmer on computers. However, I did not insist on becoming an expert in any one of them, but not because I saw myself as "jack of all trades." I knew there was an opportunity cost even to success and recognition: success or failure in other things. In view of my technical background and proficiency with languages, I aimed prudently for a career path that would encompass the university, industry, and government sectors. I did not perceive my future as a formulaic set of goals. My aspirations would grow with me. Along the way, I would discard some dreams, replace others, and conceive new ones. I defined freedom as the liberty to do these.

Financial freedom was the first thing on my agenda and I was careful about commitments. Marriage meant family, children, and investments in children. These underlined the importance of a job. Family also meant home, mortgage, cars, insurance, health plan, and all sorts of corollary commitments which made a job even more important. People had no choice but to devote a lifetime to a job, make it a career, and become specialists, at least of endurance. I understood this is how "happy" families and the society prospered, but I did not want to define my freedom and individual rights in context to a formula that could be also the worst form of enslavement.

Things worked out somewhat differently. I was married already at age 24 and again at age 29. The first marriage put me back on the right track from which I had deviated. Both marriages were enjoyable and my wives were lovely women. However, both of them also confirmed my worst fears about premature commitments. Moreover, unlike my American peers, I had grown up in three very different environments on as many continents. Although I knew and liked most parts of the United States, I did not want to live in small towns and suburbs and considered only Washington, New York, and San Francisco as liveable places. Job prospects in Lawton, OK, Ashland, KY, or Boondocks, USA did not interest me, whatever the income. So faced with such potentials, I enrolled in other programs and continued my education.

My second wife and I arrived in Washington in the summer of 1972. I found a consulting job where I was required to write proposals for Government contracts. I could not imagine anything worse for a foreign-born person. Although several of my proposals won on technical merit, I was spending weekends and evenings in the office, writing proposals or meeting deadlines. I understood what "selling one's soul" meant. My wife and I had started like soul mates at the university. Here we were out of our element. Gayle wanted us to move to Scranton, PA, her hometown, and start a family. Supposedly this would rescue us. But I was already too cynical, and I had not come halfway around the world to be buried alive in Scranton. Marriage, family, children, mortgage, greed, and debt were tools by which the system controlled people and made them into productive citizens. The nation prospered but I wondered if people did, despite two cars and two of everything. I was at a crossroad: either I would pursue happiness according to this formula or I would become a nonconformist. On Oct. 14, 1973, I extricated myself from my wife to be free to make my opportunities. Marriage did not enter my mind again until thirteen years later.

In the spring of 1975, I watched a 45-minute show on WETA about Saudi Arabia, called the embassy, obtained a few addresses, and wrote applications. An envelope arrived at work on Jan. 16, 1976. I had an attractive contract on my hands: my income had tripled and I had many fringe benefits, including much longer paid vacation. The job was also much more meaningful, something I could look forward to as a career if I wanted. Two hours later I quit my job. The president of the firm wanted to add bonuses and more to my salary. I smiled. I would not have stayed if he had exceeded the Saudi offer and made me a vice president.

A few days before my departure, I received a call from the Federal Communications Commission. A vice president at work, Curtis Bushnell, who had retired from the FCC, had recommended me. I had an offer at GS-14 level. However, I was already dreaming of camels and sand dunes and declined. I arrived in Riyadh at 2:00 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1976. I had won the lottery. The period after my divorce had been promiscuous. Karma had also prepared me for Saudi Arabia.

Free to roam, my mind wandered to other directions. How would Miyamoto Musashi's ("Book of 5 Rings") theory of success function in an arena in which the system denied feedback, reinforcement, even opportunity and chance to the person, I wondered. Then it dawned on me that rather than being handicapped I was elevated. I did not need Musashi, Tony Robbins or the system. To start with, I had no debts and enough funds from Saudi Arabia to qualify in the upper 15 percent of America. So I could experiment, was free to chart my own path, dance to my tune. I envisioned my dreams as a series of mutually-exclusive sequences of incarnations. After a hedonistic yet purposeful passage in California, I started a software business in Washington in 1986. For seven years, it supported all my expenses and some luxury. And there were psychic fringe benefits and more cycles to come.

My girlfriend Sharon who had shared my life on and off for the last seven years had left on a two-year duty to a foreign country. I was enjoying my aloneness. We began very attached, but it was from the start a miscegenation between a fundamentalist Christian woman and an ultra Bohemian man. The attachment became sticky like a misplaced bubble-gum. I watched a benign young woman transform to a dyspeptic, peevish, and a pernicious bitch, while her soul plunged into the yawning abysses of space. The transformation happened with me, but I was not the cause.

Sharon grew from an insecure bucolic girl with limited job prospects to a woman who enjoyed a lucrative position with the Federal Government. She did not like the work, but it provided her with more income and status than she could find elsewhere. Saudi Arabia had been my lottery, this was hers. And she was surrounded by dozens of attractive prospects. I was in the middle of the clash between the romantic young girl and the opportunistic woman. One held on to me while the other ranted her vitriol onto me. In view of my programming tasks, sometimes I participated in the drama, other times I was an affable audience. People everywhere regard a marriage or a substantive relationship as an integral part of their happiness. Yet, more often than not, these same bonds eventually become also a major cause of much unhappiness. It seemed to me that in exchange for a short period of magnetism, romance, and shared interests many people endured misery of much longer duration. I contemplated the wisdom of this barter and considered other options.

Pablo Neruda describes the result of the transformation from love to indifference as "we of that time are no longer the same." This jeremiad is usually the voice of addiction that remains in one partner who was less ready for the break. After it was over, I was not sure how to respond to my own inquiry: "was it worth it?" The best answer I could give was something like "much of it was, but a lot of it was not." I thought of her often, but I did not miss her.

The dictionary definitions of "romantic love" do not include the word "addiction," as in "addiction to another person," which anticipates correctly the selfishness inherent in many bonds which people equate to love. Sharon saw her strong attachment to me as an affliction and fought desperately to overcome it. She ballyhooed over a farrago of invented resentments and cowed and snarled ultimatums. Although I did not abuse her, we acted many Fellini-esque scenes. She wanted to be in charge of her destiny, me, our relationship. I gave her freedom when she wanted to be free. She always came back, sometimes hating me and herself for returning. Already after a few months with her I knew this was not "true love," or what supposedly happens when Mr. or Ms. Right is found. However, it was true passion. Love and hate dominated her concomitantly. Our bond ended because I did not quite fit the mold she had in mind of her knight. Sharon was compulsive. She insisted on an exact duplicate. I told her that her cast was faulty. We could not grow so we stagnated until things turned vitriolic and "we of that time" were different.

As I evaluated my imperfect bond with Sharon, I decided that in spite of these imperfections this had been a "true love" experience, perhaps superior to the one endorsed by the society: love in marriage. Sharon was turbulent. I knew after a month or two that marriage was out of question. Her mood fluctuated so abruptly and vehemently that often we could not plan the weekend before us, let alone marriage. On the other hand, our bond had spice, potency, passion, turbulence, variety, obsession, jealousy, misery, elation, and everything else sane and insane people can introduce to a relationship. Our senses were alive; we were alive.

Now it was over. I wanted to sift the variables and then decide if marriage made sense for me, or for anyone else for that matter. Was it essentially an obsolete institution, like the British monarchy? My relationship had ended but also many marriages. Did so many marriages and like relationships fail because people were always imperfect or because marriage promised this outcome for most people? Was transiency the more natural affair than permanence? I did not want to evaluate this simplistically, like a dialectic about preferences between Murphy Brown and Dan Quayle.

I thought of scrutinizing true love from a poetic perspective. Poets felt things deeper than most people and seemed to exaggerate, but they were not dishonest. They would not endorse artificial emotions. Their love was a potent passion that included a romantic beginning and a shattering end, a combination of elation and heartbreak, as if both ingredients had to be present for the experience to qualify as love. The most notable love stories in fiction and movies ended in some sort of tragedy. It was frequently the tragic end that made them memorable, guaranteeing an audience and lasting impression: "Splendor in Grass," "Love Story," "The Way We Were," etc. Even the ultimate American epic story ended (did not continue), as also "Casablanca" and "Lara's Theme." These stories, real or fiction, were transient loves, but every one of them had been true love; millions of people around the world confirmed this repeatedly.

This meant the reality and illusion of love I shared with Sharon, Suzette, Janice, Jules, Elizabeth, Barbara, Gayle, Judith, Janet, Rita and others of lesser duration were nothing less than round-trip poetic journeys. I had found true love not once but often. However, somehow these "loves" did not quite fit the ethereal cast of true love endorsed by the society, exemplified by the Nelsons, "Father Knows Best," Lucy and Desi, "Bewitched," "The Brady Bunch." It seemed that unless love led to marriage and included formal declarations of "forever," "in sickness," children, etc., it did not qualify as "true love." This bundle was still not complete unless it received official sanction, usually by a stranger. Surely poets could not have concocted this definition of love.

True love, as endorsed by the society, was essentially an idea invented by social engineers and buttressed by the clergy to achieve stability and a grand objective. All major religions equated love to sin, if the former deviated from the one in their design. And they could force people to "suffer" love. Sometimes the suffering reached grotesque levels. Those who were found guilty of forbidden love were stoned to death in some places. The men of some societies found other ways of protecting their fragile egos. They circumcised women while they were still babies. The Catholic church did not allow divorce or abortion, as if unmarried men who presumably never touched a woman since their breast-feeding days and never raised families could judge such matters. Yet millions of women adhered to their directives or sinned, instead of excommunicating their priests. While scientists spoke about impending climate changes, overcrowding, starvation, and worldwide triage, these men, joined by Muslim and Jewish men, shifted from reality to its idiom and spoke of a world that could feed an infinite number of children. Perhaps people needed a doomsday to come to their senses and start "kicking butt." The schemers who defined love in these corrupt ways had to be men.

I tried to reconcile love and love in marriage in other ways. How many fights and separations were allowed? If change was the companion of growth, things people expected to find with, in, and through another person also changed. For some, this eventually could mean a different partner. Problems surfaced when one partner was ready for the change and the other was not, which was usually the situation when marriages and relationships broke up, or when either partner resisted the call to avoid hassles. The latter situation led to some sort of compromise and required periodic appraisal of the relationship. In time, it could be crueler than a permanent breakup, for then ennui, frustration, adultery, affairs, separations, abuse, neglect, child abuse, alcoholism, violence, and other symptoms entered the scene.

Many of the less-than-fifty-percent of marriages that seemingly survived did so by enduring a combination of these manifestations. These symptoms continued for years or even for the duration. For these couples, the institution of marriage hardly qualified even for the dubious praise given to democracy. Yet, in spite of all these realities and although the definition of true love was not clear, people were told to find love in marriage. Relationships without license would have ended in most of these situations. Marriages continued, in part due to barriers to divorce and partly because marriages promoted dependencies, habits, and responsibilities beyond those found in relationships.

Love, true or passing, added a great deal but it had also the potential to subtract a lot. In view of the odds, confining true love to marriage did not seem to make sense. What was it that people insisted on finding? True love, as defined in context to marriage, required unconditional love and total commitment from both partners. Although people generally believed they had these potentials in them, they had them perhaps only under utopian conditions. Obviously everyone did not have them. An individual alone could not plan or prepare for this state. Two people with this potential already in them had to cross paths first. Then both partners had to pray periodically that external forces did not interfere too severely. Even then, there was no way of deciding beforehand "this is it." The success became evident only in the end and in retrospect.

So even when the ingredients were presumably there, true love in marriage was as chancy as winning the lottery. But unlike lottery it demanded a huge investment. People in business probably would not assume such risks in business, although obviously they did, and with some success, in their personal lives. The analogy to the lottery had interesting ramifications. Everyone did not win the lottery. Did the few marriages that survive happily to the end succeed due to effort alone or primarily by sheer luck? Lottery winners did not ridicule people who also tried. However, married people tended to patronize others who did not succeed. Did the people who tried and failed have a reason to feel shame?

It could be that true love was not a packaged ingredient at the start but something that evolved from commitment, trust, loyalty, etc. Perhaps. But a few personality traits had to be present at the start. Like talent in mathematics, some people had these ingredients, others had less of them, and some did not. Since people were not clearly labeled, only experimentation could provide empirical evidence of their true personality, alone and in context to a particular companion. Moreover, many writers, musicians, and other creative people suffered from manic depression and this was said to be the source of their creativity. Perhaps some people required a little turbulence and variety for their happiness and creativity. I tried to imagine Dan Quayle dictating "family values" to Picasso--and Picasso's response.

And many second and third marriages among older people had nothing to do with family values. This was a way for them to escape loneliness and find companions. Yet their numbers were included in support of "family," as also people like Elizabeth Taylor and Femsi and her second husband. If these types of "companionship" marriages were also discounted, how many marriages remained to support family values? And how many of these continued because both partners and the children were happy and flourishing?

Even the marriage ceremony did not make sense. I watched the wedding of Charles and Diane on TV and thought wonderful weddings should be left to Hollywood and people should marry in real life. And there were no divorce ceremonies, only red tape. Marriage and divorce both marked the beginning of an important phase in one's life. It did not seem fair to favor one over the other. I thought that at least the family and close friends should get together and mark divorce with as much happiness as they did the wedding. People insisted on living their lives according to congenital biases and illusions. My first marriage took place in front of a minister and a dozen friends. A justice of peace, two witnesses, and we participated in the second one. It bombed too. So did Femsi's marriage, after 27 years. Her marriage began with a large shindig at the Tradewind Hotel in Niagara Falls.

It seemed that large wedding ceremonies confirmed the illusion that the sum invested in ceremony represented the investment in the marriage. Apparently people made such ludicrous connections. Or people thought they were marking the occasion in a memorable way. Perhaps Charles and Diane had thought this too. (Surely their ceremony will be forever remembered.) For them, the British people paid the bill. In most weddings, the parents paid the bill. I could see how this occasion could qualify as memorable. Families spent substantial sums on artificial clothes and to hire a minister, photographer, jockey, florist, dress maker, caterer, and hotel, hotel rooms, etc. to impress, feed, and entertain many guests half of whom they did not know. And they would probably not see most of the other half ever again. Since people did not commit such idiocy normally, the ceremony qualified as memorable.

Perhaps they thought that a church, minister, flowers, and wonderful music made the occasion into a holy event that had God as a witness and sponsor, though God had not endorsed the story-book ceremony of Charles and Diane. The presents could have been purchased from the money spent for the ceremony and small and tasteful party could have substituted for the shindig. This would have still left a significant amount that could have been invested for a variety of meaningful purposes. To be sure, the outcome of most of these arrangements rendered these ceremonies a joke. It seemed to me that the only time a marriage deserved a ceremony was at the end, 40 or more years later. Karma and self-effort, as always, would decide the outcome.

I participated in more than a dozen weddings. In retrospect, only a few of them were memorable. One wedding took place in Arhavi, in 1953. My sisters and I were children then. We drove a day to get there. Only about fifty immediate clan members attended. The wedding was simple, warm, sincere, and entertaining. My sister Gülhis' wedding was nice too. It took place at our home in Waynesburg, PA in 1972. Only the immediate family and a few friends attended. The ceremony was marked by simplicity, warmth, quaintness, dignity, and not money: very fitting for two real artists. It has survived for 24 years. Another occasion was a simple small town church wedding that involved Naim, my Palestinian student and friend from Salem College, and Barbara, his young "gold mine" American wife, in Buckhannon, WV in 1975. I visited them and their four all-American kids in Navarre, FL 20 years later.

In pioneer days, which includes the time when Father and Mother married in Turkey, couples were expected to be together forever, despite hardships and differences. They did not rely on psychologists, counselors, ministers, astrologers, or psychics. Many succeeded by will, effort, and a sense of joint purpose. Whether they found happiness depends on how happiness is defined. Today people were free to emphasize the happiness ingredient, including many hedonistic and transient components. When problems surfaced, many found it more expedient to switch mates. This rejuvenated them, at least for a time.

These trends were probably more pronounced in America, also because individual rights--in contrast to social rights--proudly flourished as the paramount right in this country. Americans were conditioned to equate individual rights also to expediency. So even if the Religious Right came to power and drafted new standards, Americans would continue to live their lives expediently: happily married couples would remain married, and unhappy couples who did not have to stay together would eventually divorce, regardless of the conservative or liberal milieu. Therefore, it did not seem plausible that a redundant crusade like "family values" could make a dent: it was a superfluous message for happy marriages, an irrelevant one for unhappy marriages. And people with adventurous genes would continue to disregard such crusades. Very practical.

It could be that "family values" was nothing more than a nostalgic outcry. The Christian Right and its Trojan entourage bemoaned the present and were trying to recapture the glory days of the 1950s, or at least the imagined eminence of the 1980s. They could not bring themselves to gainsay that the opus of the 1950s was gone forever and the 1980s could be reached perhaps once more, even if their choristers ruled the government. Apparently only the Concord Coalition and a few others anticipated the next anomaly in the channel of American destiny, say by 2015.

However, by returning to Washington in 1986, I placed myself in the most structured and success-driven environment. Sometimes my convictions wavered. Support came in a variety of ways, foremost from Mother and Gülhis, friends, and fellow travelers. For example, on Aug. 30, 1994, Mother cited to me, in German, the following words by Christopher Morley. "Es gibt nur einen Erforg: auf deine Weise leben zu können." (There is only one success: to be able to live your own way.) In 1996, in Miami Beach, I read David Weeks' "Eccentrics" and felt reassured again, for I read it as "Individualistic." It was easier to exercise freedom from a platform in America. I was where I wanted to be, for now.

I had dreamed about freedom for most of my life and had found it. But there were so many dimensions to freedom that I could not decide. Going over scenarios, I even tried to imagine myself as a member of the Rainbow Family, "shacking up" with a 19-year-old in a tent in the Osceola National Forest, until I thought of a question: "how long?" And I was no groupie.

So instead of scenarios, I evaluated myself. I was too intense to approach things whimsically, but I also did not insist to make everything I liked a permanent part of me. Some of my journeys had been wonderful because they had happened there and then and not here and now. Money was merely a tool that supported my freedom and travel. Since I did not need external structure to fill my life, I divided my time between personal projects, which made my computer a wonderful friend, and shared experiences with travelers who followed similar paths. My life accentuated simplicity and blended introverted cycles with extrovert ones. I made sure that I did not mislead people about what I was, made no promises I could not keep, and did not fail on promises I made. As far as I was concerned, these attributes made me also a fine Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, animist, human being.

Freedom also meant not being encumbered by guilt feelings, but not by becoming a callous person. I had been burdened by guilt and remorse in my marriages and extended relationships. They consumed lots of energy until time eventually rendered them docile. My life in Saudi Arabia from 1976 to 1981 had introduced me to an interesting substitute for relationships. There was a paucity of eligible women there and the opportunity for romance was restricted. A few airline hostesses, nurses, sisters of friends, etc. happened and ended unpredictably.

However, I traveled often for extended periods then, like the 56-day business trip to 13 countries in Africa, two weeks in the Far-East, a month in Europe, and other trips of various durations. I had also a 30-day paid leave. These trips were like a series of Roman Holidays. I had encounters with a 19-year-old Australian girl in Alexandria, a young French woman in Bombay, another on the Niger river, a British student at a forgotten airport, an American student in Banjul, Gambia, a Brazilian secretary at the Amtrak station in New Orleans, and others in novel places.

These women were "young and restless" types. They were my kind of people, but more courageous. They worked and saved for six to eight months and then they traveled. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. My interaction with them lasted a day, a weekend, or sometimes a week. They never lasted long enough, but while we were together everything was all-out and on the surface. No single encounter can match the happiness of a cozy cycle with a wife or girlfriend, but a dozen of these encounters together in a year were as happy as any one year I remembered with my wives or girlfriends. Indeed, although individually they were not as happy, they were also not as unhappy. Time was too brief for real differences to emerge. External variables were supportive and the environment was ideal. Banal things did not interfere. There were also no hurt, guilt, and sin in these encounters.

Unless one insisted that a happy encounter was not complete until it culminated in marriage, this "Fearless Traveler" lifestyle seemed like an optimum solution for me, though I could not recommend it as a universal prescription for everyone, in part for selfish reasons. I did not want to be surrounded by adventurers on packaged vacations. I knew most parts of the world, had lived in the desert like a Bedouin, slept in total darkness in the Amazon, surrounded by sounds. This type of travel followed an on-the-go itinerary. If a fellow traveler had a better destination and this was an interesting person, the schedule changed on the spot and with little regard about time, comfort, and sometimes safety. Adventure was not always there to be found. One had to be curious and had to have the personality to create and enjoy it. This required much ingenuity and daring. Sometimes nothing helped. This made dealing with boredom the only adventure, which occasionally led to real adventure.

I met Sharon by coincidence on Nov. 11, 1985, when I was ready to start my software business. She exited my life on Aug. 17, 1992, almost exactly when I finished my work and was ready to move on. When I met her, the programming work was the first thing on my mind. Everything else would be a subset of this context. This project could conceivably demand several years of concentrated effort; there would be no time to wander off. Although I can be an excellent loner, I knew that a suitable companion was essential then. Gratitude (to karma) and appreciation, goodwill, and friendship (to Sharon) were the initial elements of my relationship. She did not display her materialistic and turbulent traits then and the earthy side she did show captivated me. I felt very fortunate that I could pursue my work and simultaneously grow into a wonderful bond. Sharon had some of my ingredients. She did not like the structured work environment and found a childlike joy in simple things, like taking long walks and observing nature. Albeit, things evolved strangely over the following years.

During the day, Sharon went to work; I stayed at home. Since programming demands acute concentration, I wanted something else as a diversion. My second wife had been into astrology. I had dismissed it as nonsense then. But now that I had time on my hands I decided to test its validity. I did, meticulously over seven years. Sharon was neutral at first, until she mentioned my work to her mother, a blind Fundamentalist who claimed she was saved. Sharon's mother and her two preachers, one at home in West Virginia, the other in Washington, warned her that she would not be saved if she continued to associate with me. Sharon suffered intensely under the pressure of these dire predictions. For a year, she attempted to convert me to Christianity to please her mother and preachers. I felt sad for her, but pointed out that the mind had to be free to investigate any phenomenon. I assured her this was only a pastime, that my personality would not allow me to live by formulae once my research was over. Nothing helped and, indeed, I spent more time contemplating her religion, beliefs, values, and fixity. I had been so open-minded with her that I had often accompanied her to Sunday services just to please her. I appealed to her that surely she could tolerate some of my harmless eccentricities. Sharon rebelled and accused me of attempting to change her beliefs and being, stating that her religion demanded intolerance of false prophets. I had never met such a mindset, not even in America.

In the end, her efforts to convert me to Christianity failed. Instead, Sharon gave up religion and turned into a wanton woman, perhaps also to punish me. Her mother and preachers were overjoyed by the fact that Sharon was finally showing backbone. They did not know that she called me at odd hours to cry silently on the phone, hanging up without saying a word. This was a soul committing suicide. I could only watch.

By then, I detested all Evangelical ministers. I had crossed paths also with tolerant Christians and liked them very much. There was a decency about them that I did not encounter in any other culture or religion. Only Christian cultures fashioned men and women like Mother Theresa and spawned people who served as Peace Corps volunteers all over the world. My cynicism did not blind me to these facts. I was concerned that Sharon had lost also some of the wonderful ingredients that came with Christianity. I hoped that she would find them again some day, but without blind Fundamentalism.

As for my research of astrology, while I could discern evidence that planetary patterns played a role in human behavior, there were too many unknowns and gray areas in astrology. Exogenous factors, such as genetic characteristics, upbringing, environment, and even circumstances obviously played crucial roles. For example, no planetary pattern in Jeffrey Dahmer's natal chart categorically showed why he would murder and then eat the flesh of young men, that people with similar charts would invariably also do these things. Because astrology could not take external factors into account, astrological predictions were doomed to remain generalized statements. It certainly could not be used for counseling or as a tool of destiny, though cycles of heightened aggressiveness, sexuality, etc. could be flagged out.

By the end of 1993, I organized my findings in a 358-page book, "Your Guide to the World of Astrology" (Oct. 18, 1992), and uploaded my 16 megabytes of software and the book on CompuServe and my own bulletin board in San Diego. As I had promised Sharon, this was the end. However, I left one door ajar: a study concentrating exclusively on serial killers and mass murderers. I wrote a proposal to the FBI and received a volume of material in return. I scheduled the study for sometime in 1997.

Being so near to Parents and Femsi gave a new direction to my freedom. If I was going to write a book about our experiences in America, this was the time to do it. I would be almost finished with my "personal projects" and be really free, perhaps also to live in other countries. I felt like writer Paul Bowles. When asked if he would ever come back (from Morocco) to the States, he said "I hope not." Yet, I knew a part of me would always want to return to America, if only to escape again. I molded my schedule to Parents' routine. After I concluded my astrology research and book, on Mar. 12, 1994, I initiated my next "Phase of Existence." I turned to our family history. Like Ian Frazier, I wanted to find a meaning of life for the family, clan, and our friends, "a meaning that would defeat death," (from his book "Family," by F. S. Giroux). In view of our rich background, I envisioned a comprehensive and multipronged aim.

I began to scan the photos and documents, 2750 of them, in our family albums, also enhancing the images and imbedding identifying text--date, place, people--on them individually. Then I prepared a two-hour slide show of 1191 selected images on the computer and transferred it through an off-the-shelf digital-to-analog signal converter onto a VCR, producing my own version of the Civil War series by Ken Burns. For sound effect, I synchronized various musical pieces, like Albinoni's "G Major," and some spoken parts to the slides from different distinct eras in our lives. We mailed copies of the video to family and friends on three continents.

While working on the video, every weekend I interviewed Parents to obtain information about our past. Mother's phenomenal memory did not leave many gaps, no missing dates. Things she did not know directly I obtained from folks in Turkey and Jordan. I compiled this information in a manuscript of our history in Turkey, covering the period from the 1880s to 1958, including passages from our family's involvement in WWI and indirectly in WWII. For example, while serving on the Yemen front, Mother's father, Dr. Ha(sh)im, had helped also the other side. When "Imam Yahya," the Yemeni leader, fell ill, he asked for a Turkish doctor who could speak Arabic. Grandfather came, operated on him under Yemeni guns and saved his life.

Mother reviewed the manuscript to make sure that the information was correct. Then we began to document a dictionary of the Lâz language, a dying dialect that is spoken only. (See the Appendix.) We included every word and phrase Parents could think of, spending a month on the grammar, including conjugations, verb tenses, idiosyncrasies, etc. I added the dictionary as an appendix to the manuscript, as also two family trees. The name "Celâyir" dates to year 1385 when the "Celayirliler" dynasty occupied parts of eastern Anatolia. Father's traceable roots begin in 1650 and somewhat fuzzily connect to 1850. Mother's family is from Latakia, Syria, though the main branch of her family is now in Jordan. Mother was born in Aleppo when Syria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Her tree begins in Syria in 1820 and spreads out to Turkey and Jordan--and to Bulgaria and Russia, though the latter two branches and some family members in Syria were lost due to WWI and WWII.

I had worked on the trees from Jan. 12, 1989 to Dec. 11, 1990, as an elaborate spreadsheet on "Lotus 1 2 3" instead of using a genealogy software. Each branch of the family contributed to this effort, as also clan members in Arhavi and Mother's cousins in Jordan. On both trees, I identified the birth/death dates, professions, the maiden names of all the women, many from other Lâz clans, who joined the family. And I included brief life-giving anecdotes about some of the more interesting people and incidents. Since most of these people from 1918 on were also included on the video, in effect I had immortalized them. I finished this work in Washington on Jan. 13, 1995.

In May 1995, in Miami Beach, I began our diary (this book) in America and finished it on Apr. 12, 1996, also vacationing somewhere in the Caribbean for a week each month. This left only the project of "burning" all this and my software, etc. onto a CD-ROM, and having a book printer produce a hardback of our lives in Turkey (Volume I), including a jacket for the CD-ROM on the inside cover. I decided to try to have Volume II--this manuscript--published while I finished the remaining parts of my project, say in 1997. And since my work in astrology had brought me in contact with people from 46 countries, and I was a "sysop" (bulletin board system operator), I decided to have my work available on selected bulletin boards around the world, mine too, some of it also on the Internet. While I worked on my projects, often my mind traveled, sometimes on an island-hopping excursion to Indonesia, also to enjoy Bali again. There were inducements for other trips. For example, Jung Chang's book, "Wild Swans," gave the impetus to an extended tour of China.

On Saturdays, at 10:00 a.m., I left Washington on the Orange Line metro from McPherson Square and arrived at Dunn Loring station 22 minutes later. A short cab ride brought me to the clinic: Yorktown 50 on Route 50 West. Mother always sat next to the large window facing the street. She came to the entrance to greet me, adorned with a happy smile. Over the years, we had met this way at hundreds of locations on three continents. Our arrivals and departures were well-rehearsed rituals. It did not matter that I had done this only a week ago, would do so again next week. We hugged and kissed as if we were greeting after a long separation. It was all heartfelt, for this gentle and decent doyenne of Celayirs was my best friend.

Then I went inside, to the dialysis section, to say hello to Father. He was usually asleep or in a sleepy trance, nursing his thoughts. If his blood pressure was not excessively high he was more relaxed. Otherwise there was a rash on his cheeks and he looked worried. I had seen him also when his blood pressure was very low and he looked asleep. I may have saved his life a few times, when I sensed something was not right and alerted the nurses. Father did not speak much; he never did. I made conversation for both of us, chatted briefly with other patients, then returned.

Mother and I have similar personalities. Variety and mobility are essential to our happiness. Gülhis feels the same way, but she is married and raising a son. These limitations also apply to Mother who is taking care of Father. Mother and Gülhis' needs for variety are limited to travel, mental stimulus, and congenial friends. The last element proved to be elusive for both of them in America. I require much more and I am free to indulge in my plans, whims, and sometimes eccentric notions. Father and Femsi view settling down as a higher form of happiness.

Mother is the most sociable member of our family. Both of us are animated and talkative. We gesticulate and modulate our voices to accent and emphasize. Since Father's stroke in 1989, she has had limited social life. Her children and grandchildren are the only company she has. She entertains herself by reading a great deal, solving "cryptoquizzes," and watching the news shows. The 17 isolated years in Waynesburg, PA had conditioned her to aloneness, but ultimately Mother likes it when she can talk to someone. Femsi and Gülhis are also sociable, but they are employed and have families. So I am always welcome.

The interaction between us grew considerably after I returned from Saudi Arabia. Before we left Turkey in 1958, Mother had been socially very active with her many friends, especially the girls with whom she had attended the American schools in Merzifon and Üsküdar (Scutari, a historical section of Istanbul). When she returned to Turkey the first time in 1968, she continued amiably, as if there had been no separation. However, the ten years in America had made a mark. Mother still enjoyed the social life but now also looked forward to her private moments. Her conversations with family and friends accentuated a common past, in part because they had less in common at the present and faced a different future.

We began our osmosis by discussing the highlights of the previous week. Since Mr. Clinton became the President, Mother adopted him, Mrs. Clinton, and Al Gore and his wife as our extended family. So she usually condemned everything derogatory written or said about them, defending her brood by using (Turkish) vocabulary that would have qualified her automatically as a sailor in any navy. Mother never uttered crude four-letter words but used artful substitutes, poetic descriptions, metaphors, analogies. She was a sight in this mood. My sisters and I enjoyed her colorful expressions. Father, always a gentleman, usually responded by raising his eyes to the ceiling and swallowing hard. He did not make a comment, for he knew better. Mother would tell him not to complain, pointing out that she who was raised very properly learned to talk this way out of frustration about his silent ways.

When the weather was fine, we took walks around the clinic grounds, sat under a cherry tree, and continued our conversation. In May 1993, we located blackberry bushes nearby and ravished the berries as we had in Turkey four decades ago. The topics we discussed jumped from this to that. We did not elaborate on them, for we knew our views. For example, if Mother mentioned something by George Will or William Safire about the republican agenda or the Reagan years, we knew they would not say anything even remotely critical. Instead, if their focus was on the democratic agenda or Mr. Clinton, invariably they had nothing positive to say.

To us, these pundits of profundity, with superb command of English and a flair for composition, often used selected facts and craned reasoning to support their right-veering logic and carved-in-stone opinions. Obviously they were informed, but we did not find them enlightened, rarely enlightening. Indeed, we wondered if people with set views could qualify as pundits in the first place, irrespective of their learning. They could be also crusaders, shepherds in search of sheep, not an uncommon vocation in America. In contrast, although other writers also criticized, their criticism, or praise, emerged from a well-rounded analysis. The results were not preordained. They did not skew their report to support preconceived notions. This made a crucial difference to us. A fair coverage that looked at an issue from several dimensions enlightened the reader. In turn, skewed coverage was generally a pretense to push opinions, often flabby ones.

We felt most Americans followed the views of only the pundits they liked. Then, fortified with one-sided information, they argued with the other side. This was clear from the calls to CSPAN and the talk shows. Americans thought such exchanges qualified as debates. We did not agree. America was already overburdened with pro something and anti-the-same-thing groups that did not give an inch to the other side. These "debates" were nothing but clashes of tendentious opinions and biases that divided the American people further into my-way-or-no-way camps. We did not see how America could reach sensible solutions to problems this way. The partition in the leadership mirrored the division between the people. Except in case of an emergency, gridlock or watered-down perfunctory bills seemed the only natural outcome of this system, for resolute bills seemingly always had resolute opponents. Problems continued to fester until they reached a crisis stage and a determined bipartisan solution became imminent. Many serious problems were simply ignored, public education one of them. Instead of preventive medicine, the American system practiced emergency care, crisis management.

I observed Mother's response to Father's ailment and learned more about love, duty, responsibility, and devotion than I knew of them from my own life. They were in full view every day, every moment. I spent my life in pursuit of experiences, variety, and adventure in their transient forms, but I also appreciated these more enduring forms of attachment. I projected the bond between Parents to Femsi's marriage. Her marriage of 27 years had ended in 1991. Although the writing had been on the wall for 27 years, I was perplexed. Such things happened to me. Femsi and Gary were both my opposites. They were a perfect match, though Femsi was much more giving. Both liked the package of job, home, family, children, and stability that came with the conventional lifestyle. Their two children, Debra and Glen, were all-American kids. Gary and Femsi even climbed to the roof and repaired shingles together. Because of my two divorces and the adventurous way I lived life, they had regarded me as irresponsible.

After Father's dialysis, we came home. Father sat at the kitchen table, sometimes moaning from excessive water loss or blood-pressure fluctuations, while Mother prepared his meal. For some dishes, Mother is the best cook there is. Father favors his simple but tasty Lâz dishes, like "makvali quali t(gh)aney" (eggs and cheese and hard corn bread sautéed in butter and spiced with garlic salt). He washes them down usually with a syrup of canned fruit, preferably figs. The rest of us are not as careful about our eating. Fortunately, we have the metabolism of a humming bird, though Mother is overweight. I usually maintain an athletic weight, except when I am busy with a personal project and live next to my computer. Mother and I eat for the joy of eating. We do not worry about losing a few years from the end of our lives when we can enjoy the rest more.

The domestic scene changes once or twice a year when Parents travel to California to spend the winter with Gülhis, her husband Michael, and their son Cavit Michael. Gülhis ("Gigi" in America) is a part-time instructor in art history at a college nearby. So she is especially busy when Parents are there, synchronizing Father's dialysis with her class schedule, Cavit Michael's school work and band practice, etc. This trip also enables Parents to interact with Michael's parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Monezis who became friends over the years.

Albeit, these circumstances are an ideal retirement arrangement for Parents, though sometimes I am despondent. I spent many hours examining Parents' old photos and feel as if I knew them also before I was born. They arrived in this country when Father and Mother were respectively 8 and 13 years younger than I (1996). Now, 38 years later, they had aged. I decided golden years or not "aging sucks" and told so to Mother.

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The Golden Years did not begin goldenly. This phase had a distinct starting moment: at 9:50 p.m. EST on Dec. 4, 1989. I was sitting at my desk in the apartment in Washington when I received an urgent call from Mother in Istanbul. She said that Father had a stroke minutes earlier. Although he was feeling a little better now, they did not want to take chances. Father was approaching 77 and he was a medical doctor. Mother told me to come to Istanbul immediately, in case he did not survive. I informed my sisters about the situation and 36 hours later landed in Istanbul.

The circumstances that permeated our lives in this period are important. Since his retirement on July 11, 1978, Father wished to move to Turkey; he did not want to stay in the States. This was not new. In 1969, when we were in Waynesburg, Parents decided to purchase a property at a place called "Mercan YuvasI" (Coral Bed), located next to the village of Tuzla, a resort subsection of Istanbul, about 45 minutes of driving distance to east of the city. Our villa was built in 1970. This would be our vacation home in the summer months, but I suspected even then that Father also envisioned his retirement there eventually.

When I sold our home in Waynesburg on Oct. 21, 1981, our summer villa became Parents' main home. Father confirmed my suspicions from the 1970s. He refused to buy another place anywhere in the States and talked constantly about Tuzla. This was his usual "wearing down" technique he used on Mother. On the surface, she was willing to go along with whatever Father decided. However, Mother did not want to be away from her children and grandchildren and knew that we could come to Turkey about once a year and for only short visits. Parents were more migrant. By 1988, they lived in Turkey for about eight months, sometimes until January. I sensed that Father was pressuring Mother about moving permanently to Turkey. He was unhappy in the States and by his demeanor he made sure that all of us knew this.

Father's chemistry added to Mother's dilemma. He is a cerebral person who can tinker with things all day without saying a word. He had been more sociable before we arrived in America, but years of isolation, spiritual hardship, and disappointments had taken their toll. In America, tinkering was a therapy. It was also a substitute, for things Father wanted to do once he arrived in Turkey. The location made a significant difference. In America, Mother had to beg Father to take her someplace; in Turkey, Mother merely mentioned it and Father was already in the car, waiting for Mother.

Mother appreciates her private moments too, but being a voluble socialite, she likes congenial people and spontaneous chats. She is also up-to-date on the news and world events and watches cultural programs. Although she followed them on Turkish television and read the Newsweek, Time, and Cumhuriyet (Republic), the best paper in Turkey, they were not adequate for her. In America, she could discuss them with us; in Turkey, conversations were always congenial but they lacked depth. Friends got together to socialize and to have a good time. As a rule, they did not bring up controversial topics that could spoil the mood. This was especially critical in our case.

By the late 1970s, much of the glow and deference the Turkish people felt toward America had evaporated. The punishing ways in which America pursued its objectives in Vietnam, over the objections of all other countries, had turned people off. They had seen an America they did not like: a giant beating a child, and for no reason. America's incendiary "paranoid style" was under scrutiny and people impugned other things America did at home and abroad. Recent American policies toward Turkey were on everyone's mind. They were in a fabulous fit of pique over this betrayal, by a friend whom they had supported unconditionally as far back as the Korean war. The idea that America would sell out a friend to appease a handful of American Greeks set a dangerous precedence in their minds. Although our friends did not hold us responsible for America's purblind schemes, they still avoided the topic. Perhaps they thought it would be bad taste to corner us. So everyone concentrated on having a good time.

Ultimately, Mother's chemistry was the deciding factor against a permanent stay in Turkey. Unlike Father, she has the genes of a gypsy. After hibernating in small towns in America for years, now Mother wanted mobility, variety, and travel. From 1982 to 1985, our situation had been ideal for her. They spent the summer in Turkey and then divided their time in the States between Femsi in Niagara Falls (later in Virginia), me in La Jolla, CA, and Gülhis in Columbus (later near Los Angeles). They also traveled frequently during this period, to Alaska, around the world, to Panama, along the Danube, in Russia, England, Europe, and in the States. I spoiled this rhythm on July 15, 1985, when I sold my home and left California to move to the east, first to New York. I was no longer a suitable destination for them and they began to stay longer in Turkey.

Tuzla can be reached from Istanbul by car or public transportation. Using public transportation, the trip from Istanbul starts on an ageless Bosporus ship between the old Galata Bridge and Haydarpa(sh)a train station in KadIköy, a major hub for trains and buses. This part of the trip takes about 15 minutes and offers fantastic views of Istanbul, which is internationally recognized as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. From KadIköy, one can continue by train or bus, which depart about every twenty minutes. Both pass through resort villages to the right and silent hills and new and old construction on the left. At each train station, shaky counters loaded with wares act as mobile businesses. Sounds of migrant men, women, and children briskly selling various items they carry with them are reminders that this is a developing country. These people face life with dignity and courage. Give them a tiny occasion and they respond with a quick wit and genuine smile.

The Turkish social system tries to prevent defeatism. Although there are occasional beggars in the city, there is no such thing as "homeless people" in Turkey. Everyone has a place and someone to return to in the evenings. Old and sick people who have no families to fend for them are looked after by the State. So severe depression and hopelessness that burden people who are left alone are also rare in Turkey. About half-an-hour later, the bus arrives in the middle of Tuzla, the train at the station on the fringes of Tuzla. Either way, a scenic taxi ride bridges the distance of about two miles to our home.

We drive to and from Istanbul in our car, about once a week, generally to visit friends and relatives, to attend a party. We have acquired a habit which we exercise meticulously every time I come. We go to the Hilton, either for lunch or for the late-afternoon tea hour. Three decades later, the Istanbul Hilton is still the most beautiful Hilton in the world, unsurpassed in location, elegance, and ambiance by any hotel we have seen. It is as much a landmark in Istanbul as the Blue Mosque. If we are there for lunch, it is for a specific dish: "döner kebap" (the rotating kebab), which is sold as gyro in Greek restaurants in America, as if it is a Greek dish. If gyro is delicious, the döner, especially at the Hilton, is "out of this world."

The drive through the city is an experience not easily forgotten. Istanbul is a vibrant city in which every neighborhood of hundreds of residential apartment buildings, small shops, stores, and restaurants is a beehive of activity. Classical Turkish music on the radio and from tape players in old-fashioned cafes and restaurants fill the air and remind the Turks with Western longings of their Arabic ties and Islamic heritage. The traffic sometimes looks like a single tangled mass, but it is a moving mass. The Turks hate to be stuck in stop-and-go traffic. So they are constantly on the lookout for a way of not stopping. If the only detour is over a sidewalk of storefronts and scattering people, it is taken, often by millimeters. Scenes of historical Istanbul compete for attention with modern parts, until the Bosporus comes to view. The city becomes irrelevant then, except the parts that line both sides of this water passage between the Black and Marmara seas, the boundary between Asia and Europe. The road leads to a huge suspension bridge that is the third longest in the world.

When on the bridge, all chatter stops as if everyone in every vehicle has received a simultaneous signal. All heads turn to one or the other direction, even heads who have lived in this city for decades and cross this bridge several times every day. This is not merely a rare scenery to be captivated by but also a spiritual experience. When times are difficult and the future seems hopeless, more people turn to Bosporus (than Mecca) and seek salvation from the view. They want to reassure themselves that Allah who gave them this surely would not turn his back on them permanently.

The bridge connects to the interstate highway between Istanbul and Ankara. The road runs parallel to the railroad track for most of the way. There are two Tuzla exits. The second exit is used by people who live in the village. We take the first exit. It curves around the shipbuilding facilities of Tuzla and joins a dike of about two hundred yards (built of rocks and covered by dirt) that leaves the Marmara Sea on the right and a swamp-like bird sanctuary on the left. This path leads directly to Mercan YuvasI and our home in five minutes, two miles from the village center.

Tuzla is still an unspoiled place where mornings are announced by roosters, signaling to various mobile vendors, some with carts pulled by donkeys, that is time to start their trade. They scatter in every direction and sell fruit, vegetables, yoghurt, "simit," etc. directly to households. (Simit is a tasty Turkish bagel covered with sesame seeds.) The village wakes up gradually, like all Mediterranean and Latin villages. Old men dressed in dark pants, jackets, and caps meander on narrow and winding cobblestone streets to their favorite cafes. As on other mornings, they sit at a table outside in the shade and sip their tea, while gazing to their past and waiting for friends. The fishermen spread the night's catch on large and shaded display tables which they wet frequently with seawater. They separate the most delicious fish into large freezers and save them for the local restaurants and preferred customers, like us.

The activity picks up considerably by about 10:00 a.m.. Sounds of traffic and children at play fill the air. Housewives with straw baskets on their arms begin their daily routine of shopping for groceries. The shops are always small specialized entities that sell either vegetables and fruit, or bread and bakery goods, or spices, grains, cheese, olives, and canned goods, or only meat. Some of the owners could have expanded their stores and sold all groceries from one source. But this would mean more work and their ambition could force lifelong neighbors out of business. Live and let live is the rule here.

Vegetables and fruits are arranged neatly in baskets that extend to the sidewalk. The Turkish bread, perhaps the tastiest in the world, is baked in a large stone or brick oven, that looks like a small cave, next to an open fire. Its aroma alone can void any resolution to diet. It is eaten while still hot in the morning. In the meat shop, freshly-butchered beef and sheep dangle from hooks in the ceiling. The butcher cuts pieces from them on the spot, according to the quality of meat wanted by the customer. He trims the meat as needed and when done courteously wishes "Afiyet olsun, efendim" (may you enjoy it, sir/madam). Organs like the brain, heart, liver, kidney, tripe, intestines, and the head of the sheep, which the Turks enjoy in imaginative and delicious ways, are spread on large display tables. People do not mind that a few flies have their banquet on them first.

By about 11:00 a.m., the cafes are animated with men playing backgammon. Young male waiters rush here and there, with trays balanced on one hand, to serve tea, Turkish coffee, "ayran" (a salty drink of yoghurt and water), "limonata" (lemonade), "gazoz" (like Sprite, a gaseous or "gassy" soft drink), and other refreshments. There are no women in this men-only world. The players are surrounded by a noisy audience that carefully follows each move. The sounds of chatter, rolled dice, delighted shouts that follow a desirable roll, and chips being smacked on the wooden board perforate the air.

Like other traditional Mediterranean people, Turks eat a big lunch and take a siesta to prepare for the night. The tumult dies down a bit until late in the afternoon. At sunset, a new aroma fills the air. It is the smell of grilled "köfte" (Turkish meat patties, a specialty in Tuzla), "pirzola" (lamb chops), and "kebap" blended with spices, especially salt, black pepper, and oregano. Sliced tomatoes, green peppers, and whole jalapeno peppers are also placed on the grill. These village chefs really know their trade and prepare their dishes in the way only the Turks can. For example, they can judge exactly how much fat they should include with the lean meat so that the grilled delicacy tastes just right. Restaurants and "gazino"s (open-air restaurants) fill with people. The variety of things to eat is amazing, considering also all the mobile vendors. Three of the most popular and cheapest snacks in Turkey are simit, corn and chestnuts. The latter two are sold either boiled or charbroiled. Either way, they are delicious.

Turkish cities, towns, and villages bloom at night, like Disney World on a busy day. This tradition probably emerged as an accommodation for the semitropical climate. Sounds of music and live entertainment spread. Dancing is encouraged. The bands play light Western and traditional tunes for public dancing. Friends and strangers, men and women, children and old people hold hands and form a circle or a train and gyrate together. Novices and foreigners are invited to join. This is family time and for fun, not to flirt. It is improper to flirt with someone's sister or daughter in public, though, of course, young people exchange glances and smiles. (Single people frequent the many cafes, discos and clubs in large cities, even in the afternoon.)

If lunch is foreplay, dinner is the real thing in Turkey. It is not merely eaten but enjoyed like a celebration, accompanied by animated chats, jokes, laughter, friendship, and rakI, a potent drink. Even children are allowed a taste. After an hour or two of eating, families stroll along the mile-long walkway that separates the bay from the village. Rental boats and horse buggies await customers. Friends and neighbors greet each other and stop and chat with other friends. The atmosphere is festive. The problems of the day are buried deeply. They can wait a day or two. From spring to fall, but especially in the summer, this is a nightly ritual observed by all communities everywhere in Turkey. Interference from TV has been minimal so far.

As a consequence of this and other traditions, words and concepts like isolation, loneliness, and depression-induced-drinking have almost no meaning in Turkey. Other legacies help the people avoid economic despair. For example, Turks have cultivated an alternate ethos to loans and debt. To this day, all purchases, including homes and cars, are paid in cash. There is no such thing as buying on credit. People intentionally avoid the temptation of spending more than they can afford. They would risk unspoken labels like "irresponsible idiot" from family, friends, and neighbors; their prospects for marriage would be diminished.

The Turkish people shun obnoxious behavior and are very protective of women, children, older people, and foreigners. Even a drunk will know his limits. No man would dare to say something unbecoming to a woman in public. Although passion killings and rapes do occur in villages and small towns, involving people who know each other, something like a rape or assault on a woman cannot happen in Turkey when people are around. (People are always around in Turkey.) A woman threatened in public would not need to look for a police officer. The perpetrator would be confronted by other men on the spot. There are no street gangs in Turkey. The mood is so infectious that people join the happiness, not spoil it for others. Guns are treated the same way they are in every other civilized country but the United States. People are safe on any street any time.

From 1949 to 1958, we had lived an exciting life in Samsun, a much more sophisticated environment even then, compared to what we found in Turkey 10 years later. In the 1950s, Turkey was politically stable, the economy apparently chugging along to prosperity. There were no hints of fundamentalism. We dressed like Europeans and imitated everything we saw, mainly from America. American movies were the CNN then. Our views of life in America and what America stood for, etc. were molded by Hollywood. We liked what we saw and heard. As late as 1958, the Dollar was worth about 10 Turkish Liras (TL). The population was about one-third of what it is now. The cities were not crowded and there was tranquility. Istanbul's population, now approximately 10 million, was about 600,000 in 1958. I was attending a private boarding school there. BeyoGlu, the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul in those days, was the place to be. This is where we went on Saturdays. We dressed in navy blue school blazers, gray gabardine pants, white or off-white silk shirts, (usually) red ties, and fine black leather shoes. Boys walked together and eyed the girls; girls ambled together and peeked at the boys. Everything looked neat and orderly; life was felicitous, the future bright. Turkey was on its way to becoming a European country.

The situation at Mercan YuvasI intensified the tedium. Life in the community revolved around the club house adjacent to a delightful cove and the beach. It was a storybook climate for children and young people. Older people and families who raised children probably loved the atmosphere too. However, from my perspective, this was no place for a single person who liked adventure. We tried the club life for a time too but found it too timid and monotonous. Father's ancient morals, though he is not religious, barred me from bringing a girlfriend from America. His view was "if I liked her that much, I should marry her and then bring her home." He would easily qualify as an honorary member of the Religious Right in America.

The club was the only option. Almost all adult women were already married. This left lush young girls. I generally prefer the company of younger women, but this was not just any resort. I was in a Turkish community and Parents lived there. If I approached a European girl at the Mena House in Cairo, I would know this was my kind of woman. As I had done so many times in the past, I could ask her directly to join me, for example, for a tour of the pyramids and easily break the ice. Age difference would not be a factor and there would be no public consequences whatever happened. Here something like this could cause gossip, embarrassment, and possibly even scandal, depending on whom I approached how and what happened next.

With adventure seemingly out, I could only move around the fringes of freedom. Turks are wonderful talkers and there were many opportunities for delightful chats, but this was it. Since I could not be spontaneous my way, I felt stiff and remained an outsider. Others noticed this too, especially Semra, the daughter of our next-door neighbor. I saw her the first time in July 1973 when my second wife Gayle and I were in Tuzla. We met again in 1976 and every year after that until about 1980. She signaled, but I did not pursue her, in spite of me. I was single and living in Saudi Arabia then. Between leaves, most single expatriates were frustrated enough to throw a second look at goats. I did not want to move on to this young woman, whom I liked also as a person, in that state of mind for a short-term conquest. There were no long-term prospects for us then.

Father's emotions were not without justification, though he and Mother were also responsible for our doleful introduction to America. We had left our future in the hands of an American exchange teacher, Florence E. Sutphin, and a loose instruction that if she found a position for Father, we would come. So when Father stepped on American soil on Feb. 19, 1958, he was in no position to build upon his experience of 18 years. He started as an intern. Florence met him in New York. They drove to Lakewood, NJ and Florence introduced Father to the administrators of the Paul Kimball hospital. Then, they rented an attic apartment from a Novak family.

Father was in a state of fatigue, his mind trying to whip up support for his sinking heart. He did not like the hospital and had second thoughts about his decision to come to America. His pay was only $300 per month, an amount he had earned in Samsun in about four days. He had known the pay, but since he and Mother had lived on much less in Turkey when he started his career eighteen years earlier, Father had nurtured notions of a second romantic beginning in America. We had gambled and now we could not accuse anyone but ourselves. The rest of us left Turkey on Apr. 4, 1958, on the passenger ship Truva bound for "Napoli." After a few wonderful days in Naples, we boarded the USS Constitution and sailed for New York. We joined Father on Apr. 22. He was grim of aspect. Our trip to New York had been a party; now came the hangover.

Our life in America was shockingly different from what we had in Turkey. Even worse, this was nothing like our images of America, pictures we had pasted together from movies, a national pastime in Turkey in those days. Beyond the problems we had with the language, environment, and customs, we were on our own and in difficult circumstances halfway around the world. In Turkey, relatives and friends are a source of comfort. A few Turkish friends or one or two compassionate American neighbors may have helped. Instead, we saw a characteristic that is unique to America: intense privacy. Americans viewed their privacy as a precious commodity. During the six months we spent in Lakewood, we had so much privacy that we felt virtually imprisoned. American towns were not built for walking and we could not afford a car. So we stayed in our steamy attic apartment at 211 River Avenue. Father went to work without enthusiasm and returned home depressed. We went to school but were left alone. No one, neither neighbors nor classmates, paid attention to us.

Mother held us together by an outpouring of valiant effort. Florence came periodically and took us to picnic, to the beach in Asbury Park, and a few other places. She helped me with my reading and pronunciation. Other than that we cooked in our own juice. Some days and most weekends were terrible. We read and watched TV. American Bandstand became our party, Yakety Yak our choice beat, and Mark Luen and Dan Curtis our favorite wrestlers. There was a club right across from one of our windows. Every Saturday night, well-dressed young couples came in large cars and went inside to dine and dance. We had done this too, seemingly ages ago. When the walls began to close in, I took a dime and walked outside. There was a milk machine a few steps away. I purchased a small container and walked back. I had been out too.

The conditions at the hospital were untenable. Father quit his job four months later. Turkey had strict laws against individuals taking foreign exchange out of the country. Now we could not even support ourselves. It looked as if we had no option but to return to Turkey. Two Jewish doctors, Dr. Zuravin and Dr. Secal, heard about our predicament. They came for a visit. One offered us part of his house free of rent. Parents thanked him but declined the apartment. The two doctors found for Father a hospital in Tom's River. The job paid $200 per month.

We could not decide what to do next. Our education was top priority. Before we came to America, Femsi and I had been boarding students at a lyceum in Istanbul. I was there five years, Femsi three. We were more advanced in algebra and sciences than the classes in which we were placed in Lakewood High School. However, since English was new to us, we performed below our capacity. Parents decided that we should complete our schooling in Germany, while Father prepared for his examinations. This would also alleviate our loneliness, for Mother's cousin Münir was in Germany then.

Adult visitors are treated even more elaborately. When Florence's arrival in Turkey was imminent, officials in the Department of Education in Ankara got in touch with the regional office in Samsun, asking the people there to locate Turkish natives who could speak English. They got hold of Mother's friend Muazzez and through her other people in Samsun who had graduated from American schools in Turkey. Soon Mother was also involved. A major responsibility like this is not easily assumed in Turkey. Turkish families spend a lot of time with their children, making certain that they do all their homework. They also talk to them, so that problems do not stay hidden and brew inside.

Well-to-do women normally do not work. They socialize a great deal, visiting and calling friends and relatives. In other words, they have less extra time than American women to play hostess to a foreign visitor. And, this was no brief stay; Florence was there for the entire school year. Nevertheless, her welfare in Samsun became a top priority. The members of the informal reception committee agreed to share the responsibility on a daily basis, taking Florence around, introducing her to friends, and helping her to get the things she needed. This was merely an exchange teacher. It was not Florence's position or nationality that qualified her for special treatment; this was Turkish hospitality in action. Mother and her friends placed themselves in her situation, appreciated what this courageous woman was facing, and decided to make her time in Samsun as enjoyable and purposeful as possible. We invited her to picnics, parties, excursions, and to Arhavi for a week-long trip.

Apparently "privacy" is not an unvarying constituent of the American lifestyle, not when Americans live abroad and become foreigners themselves. I became acquainted with several isolated American families in Riyadh. Some of them were so lonely that they paid $110 per bottle of whiskey on the black market to attract friends and Saudis for parties they arranged on weekends, usually on Thursday nights. Since loneliness and boredom was a common state, almost all foreigners arranged such parties and some hosts could not attract guests. Some Saudis who had been ignored while attending schools in America deliberately shunned Americans in less-important positions "to give them some of their own medicine." Several American families who found themselves alone complained to me bitterly how utterly unfriendly they found these people and this land. They were right in their situation, but I also remembered us in our attic apartment in Lakewood. I could not help but think "see how wonderful privacy feels?"

I surmised that they would eventually return to America and, for a time, complain and joke about their lives in Saudi Arabia. Then, they would indulge in lonely American pastimes of driving to shopping centers, hunting for unnecessary bargains, watching soap operas, cutting the lawn, and doing other sanity maintenance. Like characters played by Clint Eastwood, the desolate people in Edward Hopper's paintings, disconnected souls of Sam Shepard's hyper-American universe, in America even an image of two citizens together managed to be about aloneness: `American Gothic'.

Many would continue to ignore, or even ostracize, solitary foreigners in their neighborhoods until perhaps the next annual Spanish, Greek, etc. festival, if any, when they would be outgoing for an afternoon. They would periodically travel abroad, perhaps only to escape the monotony and loneliness of America. Upon return, they would whisper the wholesome words "it is good to be home again," as if to reassure themselves this is really where they wanted to be, again.

I was not being cynical. I remembered the families who complained incessantly about Saudi Arabia. Then, their appointment was almost over and they had to return home. Every family I knew tried to extend their tour and negotiate another term. If this was not possible and time was running short, there were frantic efforts to switch to other companies. A few signed contracts with firms doing business in Sudan and their families moved there. It was not the 30 percent or so extra pay that motivated them. They knew what awaited them at home and were being realistic and smart. Despite boredom, they lived like the colonial barons of yesteryears. They had longer leaves, could travel to exotic destinations, partied almost every night, and had more friends around them than they did in their hometown.

German towns, like all European towns, were designed for walking, sightseeing, and interaction. People did these things. Both sides of many streets were lined with shops, stores, and cafes. We could go out and, if nothing else, look at store windows. A car was not required. Everything was quaint and neat, like a Disneyland village. Walking brought us in contact with other people. We could exchange more than a "hi" and socialize. There were cafes where we could chat. Sometimes the moods matched and we discussed deeper and personal matters. Occasionally we discovered we had much in common. Casual acquaintances became friends, shared experiences made friends better friends.

This was the environment we had left in Turkey and found again in Germany. People had time or made time for other people, for us. They seemed curious about everything. They asked, we replied; we asked, they responded. We still had limited means, did not own a car or even a TV, and also lived in an attic apartment. The physical conditions around us were not better, but otherwise the contrast between Germany and America was blatant. We went to school, studied, made friends, played, and did not miss a thing. Our happiness reflected on Mother. Our friends visited us at home. They loved Mother's cooking, especially köfte and home fries. They came more often, stayed longer. Mother studied German. Sometimes friends and relatives from Turkey visited us. We did not feel isolated, alone, or lonely. In America, Father did.

There was no large influx of Turks to Germany in those years. Most Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in Germany were Italians from poor provinces, as depicted, sometimes humorously, in the movie "Bread and Chocolate." As partners of Germany during World War I, the few Turks in Germany, who were either university students or professional people, were treated very well. Uncle Bahri's four sons, one of them a medical doctor, arrived in Germany while we were there. All of them flourished, as did other Celâyirs. They eventually returned to Turkey. The youngest son became an engineer, married a German girl, and settled down in Germany. Our relatives experienced no severe alienation and therefore they could readily assimilate to Germany. And due to the shorter distance to Turkey, they could go home periodically, to reinforce their identities and quench their longing for people and things they missed.

It was time for Mother and my sisters to return to America. They left Germany on Sep. 4, 1960, after two happy years. Although we had a template of life in America to go by then, this was again a dicey moment, for I (18) stayed in Germany to finish my studies; I was already in Unterprima and had another year to go. Our material circumstances had improved, we were anxious to see if this would trickle down to the spiritual.

In New York, Mother found the bus to Clarksburg, WV. With her on-the-job training in Germany, she could have mapped her way in Africa. Father met them in Clarksburg, in a brand new Chrysler Windsor. He told them that he had borrowed the car from a friend. During the 40-minute ride to Weston, Mother and the girls learned the truth: the car was ours. They were delighted. When Mother was growing up in Giresun, a town on the Black Sea, she had been driven around in her family's limousine, by a chauffeur no less. But that was 25 years ago. The life she had lived since 1940 had gone through deep valleys until about 1949 and over the mountains until 1958. Had Father met her in a prairie wagon and said they were heading for the Oregon trail, I knew Mother would not have blinked. But she was probably happy like a child that the destination was only Weston and they were traveling in this huge American car on a nice road.

Father had already talked to the principal of the Catholic High School about my sisters. Mother took Femsi and Gülhis to the school. She pointed out that although Femsi knew only a little English, Gülhis none, by age the girls belonged in grades 11 and 8 respectively. She assured the principal that she would help both with their subjects.

The following seven months were horrendously difficult for everyone. Mother had been a top student at the American schools in Merzifon and Üsküdar, but 20 years earlier. She had to prepare both girls in all subjects, every day. All household chores became secondary. Femsi's classes were more advanced and Mother prepared her first. For each class, she explained methodically the contents of each chapter, and then tested the girls with the questions at the end of the chapter. She did this several times, in random order, to make sure that the answers the girls gave were based on their comprehension, not by the order of the answers given previously.

Femsi acclimated within a month or two and then continued on her own. Gülhis' situation was more precarious. She did not know any English. There were times when Gülhis was so discouraged that she wanted to give up. Occasionally frustration caused Mother to slap her face, to regain her attention. Sometimes Mother and Gülhis both cried over the impossibility of the task at hand. Finally, after about six months, Gülhis too became proficient and self-reliant in school. In June 1962, Femsi finished high school with straight "A" grades, as a top-10 student in a graduating class of 210. This was no surprise, for Femsi had been a top student in grade school in Samsun, at Sankt George in Istanbul, and in Trier. She would be also at WVU.

After my sisters adapted to the school, their acclimation, the routine phase of assimilation, to the United Stated began in earnest. Parents felt dutiful and optimistic. It seemed our neighbors avoided each other too; Parents did not feel singled out this time. This is how Americans lived and so it was. However, Father had still not found the opportunity he sought for himself. Professionally, he was marching backward.

We always felt that the environment we left behind in Turkey biased our feelings against our life in America, in 1958 and also over the years. Many refugees and legal and illegal immigrants to this country were people who had little to lose and everything to gain. America claimed that since thousands of unemployed Mexicans, Haitians, Cubans, etc. were willing to take all sorts of chances to reach America, this made America a "great country." We did not agree. People who had no work and families to support had only one motivation: find work, if not in their own countries then somewhere else. Since they saw opportunities in America, they came here. And most of these immigrants had a major advantage over us: everything is a gain for someone who starts with little.

This was not our situation. We were already an upper-middle class family in a city in Turkey. Father ran a prosperous medical office in which he owned everything outright. We had a fully-paid new home (which we rented to American soldiers), and investments in stocks and properties. From 1952 to 1958, Father frequently earned the equivalent of more than $100 a day. We had no major debts, owned our car, traveled often, circulated at the highest social echelons, and enjoyed life at its best. Parents could send us to expensive private schools, hire piano, violin, and language instructors for us, and meet all our needs very well.

We grew up in social settings in which Father, who was an advanced violinist then, played pieces by Beethoven, Mozart, Paganini, and his favorite, Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, Femsi often accompanying him on the piano. To this day, I have not seen anyone dance the waltz as fluid as Father used to with Mother or Femsi, he in his black tails, they in full gowns. On the surface, it was entirely foolish for us to leave Turkey, for most Americans did not live so well. We were not the typical immigrant family. Our friends had warned us about this. Indeed, the quality of our background in Turkey became a serious obstacle to Parents' assimilation. It was not the only one.

Even if the initial conditions in America had been hospitable to us, and Father had realized all his expectations, he and Mother could have only acclimated to America in perfunctory ways. They could not have adapted spiritually, as assimilation ultimately implies. This is probably why Parents retained their Turkish citizenship. Father would have built the house in Tuzla regardless, for Parents would have always needed a base from which they could search for the things they missed and not found in America. On the surface, the missing things were basic human needs, like warm and spontaneous human contact. All of our friends also mentioned this void in America.

I saw the cause of Parent's discomfort as much more decisive. This was not just a periodic urge for a reprieve, to hug and chat frivolously. Parents and their friends did not spend enormous sums for such spurious reasons year after year. They were hearing a primeval call. America was so vast and lonely that without human contact Parents felt empty, as if they were nothing and nobody in America. The familiar faces in their old world supplied the one ingredient that helped Parents to survive in America: identity. While they were ignored here, or greeted erratically, they were always somebody there. These trips gave them the fuel to continue. This is why every foreigner we knew went home, again and again.

Had Father found a position in Morgantown instead, things may have unfolded differently for us. Morgantown was a charming university town of about 25,000 people, plus 20,000 students. The osmosis with the university had left at least one obvious imprint on the local population: we saw no discrimination of any kind. Perhaps the credit belonged entirely to the citizens of West Virginia, for we witnessed this trait also in Weston, Wheeling, and other places where we had friends. We appreciated the warmth of West Virginians especially after we left Morgantown and saw that many other parts of the country lagged behind. In contrast, Waynesburg was a conservative and snobbish little town of about 5,000 people, about the size of Weston. Seven months after our arrival, one neighbor embraced us: Mr. and Mrs. Pincus, a Jewish family, whose property connected to our new home. We became close friends. In 1973, they also came to our home in Tuzla.

It had been almost six years since our arrival and now we were seeing a side of America that was new to us: subtle discrimination. We could not figure out on what basis the residents acted snobbish. Apparently they had something we could not see. In Morgantown, people responded with that wonderful (slightly reserved) earthy charm that is unique to Americans. The common folks here also behaved this way, but not our neighbors. When we approached them, they were courteous but distant. This was obviously a closed society.

The real estate agent who found us our home mentioned that his daughter Sharon was the same age as my sister, that she would help Gülhis to adapt to the high school. My sister started the 11th grade in Sep. 1963. Over the following two years, she was ignored by everyone but Sharon. This was not so with another Turkish girl, Esin, who was there as an exchange student. We could not understand why she would be everyone's darling in school and not my sister. We did not deliberate long, for we knew enough about America by then. Esin was a foreign exchange student who lived with a local family. She had a public relations value, whereas my sister was only an immigrant American. She was left alone to fend for herself. Her memories from the high school left an indentation on my sister.

Esin played another role in our lives. She came to visit us in Istanbul in the summer of 1972, accompanied by an older man, Dr. Mustafa. and his wife. It turned out that Dr. Mustafa, her uncle, was Father's classmate from medical school (1934-1940). This is how Father established contact with his friends after 32 years. They had formed a fraternity of 1940 graduates, including their families. From 1980 to 1992, Parents joined them for excursions to various Turkish resorts, also arranging parties together, like Mother and her classmates from Merzifon (1930-35) and Üsküdar (1935-38). I attended a few parties by both groups and felt as jolly as if I were celebrating Christmas with dozens of uncles and aunts.

Eventually we had a few visitors. Some of the ladies volunteered a few tidbits they knew about Turkey. Most of their information came from movies, accusations by the Greek lobby, and other superficial sources. Seemingly no one knew Turkey's location. These people could have done a few minutes of homework before their visit. Perhaps the neighbors were not being snobbish; they were being defensive. We did not know what topics we could discuss with them. The neighbors made this an academic issue. The icing on the cake came in the form of a bad car accident one night. Father was called to the emergency room of the hospital. Several people were severely injured. A young man in a critical condition started to scream and absolutely refused to be touched by Father after he heard Father's accent. He insisted on an American doctor. The nurses shook their heads in amazement and called an intern.

The three years, from 1965, when Gülhis enrolled at WVU, to the summer of 1968, when Mother and Gülhis visited Turkey for the first time, were very difficult for Mother. She was alone. This would have been a difficult turning point for any housewife anywhere. It was harder for her. She did not drive and there was no place to go. Instead, she called us every day; we called her several times every week. Mother read a lot but this still left many empty hours during weekdays. So she turned on the TV to hear someone speak, to have company. Until about 6:00 p.m., there were mindless programs on TV. She was reduced to passing time watching "Love of Life," etc. As if she did not have enough concerns, now Mother was assimilating to America by fretting about Rick and Barbara's (Love of Life) future. The trip to the grocery store became the big event of many weeks.

Femsi and Gary were married on Aug. 6, 1966. Soon after that, they moved to Niagara Falls. Gary's crowded Italian family embraced Femsi like a daughter. She never had to endure the isolation Mother and Gülhis lived at home. Bestowed with an acute mind that focusses, more or less, on those variables that affect her life directly, Femsi blended readily to America. Judy and I were married on Sep. 24, 1966. We lived in Morgantown. Our daughter Belinda was born on Feb. 20, 1967. We visited Mother frequently on weekends and Gülhis came as often. Otherwise, Mother's life was marked by the sameness during the week.

Each time we departed from home, Mother charmed us with a wonderful habit. She hugged and kissed us goodbye on the driveway on the back, and then scampered off, through the house, to the front door to wave us goodbye again when we passed. We always drove slowly to allow her to reach the door and then beeped to her. She did this for 17 years, for us and all visitors.

On Oct. 15, 1968, I received my draft card from the Selective Service. The board in Weston had declared me "delinquent" and assigned me the highest rating for the draft. I was ordered to contact the Army. Parents were in a state of shock. We had not known that I was required to sign up at the draft board when I arrived from Germany. This was not mentioned on any of the papers. The fact that I was in graduate school and had a wife and a year-old baby were all dismissed under "ignorance of the law is no excuse."

Vietnam was a hot topic at the university. Many students were falling for the slogan "I rather fight them there than on American shores," as if, I suggested, the Vietnamese had enough rafts to make it here. This made them think. Some countered that, of course, Vietnam was a proxy for the Chinese and Russians, that the Domino Theory was unfolding. In that case, I responded, instead of wasting time with a proxy, we should declare a war against the other two and have a real war on our hands. Otherwise, I added, this looked like a civil war that would peter out much sooner without us. I pointed out that communism was an ideology and ultimately it had to fail as an ideology. The economy of the East woke up every morning watching the sun shine ever brighter in the West. The Cold War was giving the Eastern Block the rope with which it would hang itself in time. This was sufficient.

I began to implement a plan to deal with my situation: petition for American citizenship, apply for the Army Officers Training School, and employ a legal firm in Pittsburgh. Over the following several months, I was almost daily at the Army offices in Clarksburg, WV, taking tests. I passed them with flying colors. On Mar. 7, 1969, I became officially an American citizen in Fairmont, WV. (My sisters did the same several years later.) Just as I was getting ready for the Army, the legal firm that represented me received a notice from General Hershey's office: the Selective Service headquarters agreed with my situation. I was excused. This was the best $250 investment I had ever made. I had confronted the system and won.

The pace of Mother's life did not change much after the first visit to Turkey in 1968. Our home in Tuzla was ready in the summer of 1970. From then until Father's retirement on July 11, 1978, Parents visited Turkey for two months every summer, and returned like two prisoners from a furlough, for while these visits helped a great deal, they also made the remaining ten months in America even more difficult. Father became increasingly lackadaisical and misanthropic.

My second wife Gayle and I moved to Fairmont, WV on Aug. 14, 1971. Due to the distance, we visited Mother less frequently. By about this time, Judy started to work at a place near Parents and left Belinda with Mother every morning. Mother and Belinda grew very close. However, we noticed that Judy was using Belinda like a wild card to get back at me for the divorce. On Aug. 21, 1972, Gayle and I moved to Washington. We came home about every three weeks. Gülhis continued to visit Mother until her wedding on Nov. 11, 1972. She too grew close with Belinda and saw through what Judy was doing.

In 1975, Mother enrolled in an extended education program in history and political science at the University of Pittsburgh. In Feb. 1976, right after I left for Saudi Arabia, her eyes became acutely ill. Periodically, one of them was bloodshot. Tears and intense pain and burning accompanied this condition. She gave up the program at the university and began wearing sun glasses at home. Superfluous reading and TV were out too, so she listened to the sound of TV. She had her eyes checked at every famous eye clinic. The doctors thought it could be psychological. It could. Knowing there were no options, Mother had never complained. All of us knew this and our respect for her increased every year. But now, her eyes complained for her. Mother has lived with this condition since then. The period from 1976 to 1981 may have been the most difficult time for Mother. Years were passing, the kids had left, and now she had her eye problem too.

Following the failure of diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis caused by the ouster of Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus, the Turks on the mainland began to fear for the lives of the Turkish population on the island. Turkish forces invaded Cyprus on July 20, 1974, when we were visiting in Istanbul. The invasion also ended the regime of the colonels on July 23, 1974, when they bungled an attempt to seize Cyprus from the Turks. After having gained control of 40 percent of the island, Turkish Cypriots established their own state in the north on Feb. 13, 1975. Thus, Turkey effectively partitioned the island to provide a safe enclave to the Turkish population, just like America might have done for its folks in a similar situation.

Since the Greek population in America was much larger than the Turkish population, it could assert itself as a bloc in the Congress, persuading members of the Congress to pass bills unfavorable to Turkey. Officials from the State Department and the military who knew better tried to educate these leaders. The education program continued for some time and had seemingly no effect. By then, the damage was done. The Turkish people had been unconditional supporters of America ever since Turkey joined the NATO in 1952 and accompanied America to the Korean War almost immediately. They began to have second thoughts about their ties to a country in which friendship, loyalty, and policy oscillated with election prospects. They could not comprehend that in the world's most advanced country a nationalistic minority of American Greeks, apparently with more loyalty to Greece than to America, were allowed to fashion policies for the other 200 million plus Americans. They did not understand this, but we did.

We were in America when things turned from rosy to bad to worse for Turkey. Turkey's Human Rights record became a cause of embarrassment to us. This was not the Turkey we knew from the 1950s. However, we understood the situation and saw the Human Rights problem in a context. Anarchy had been brewing in Turkey since the late 1960s. The country had accumulated a sizeable debt and the economy was on a steep decline. Unemployment was high and hope was like the setting sun. Restlessness spread. People were dissatisfied with the status quo but they did not perceive viable options. The leadership had no contingency plans. Religious and political fundamentalists saw a chance for themselves. Instigators from outside joined their effort. Civil law broke down. Incidents of terrorism, some by the Kurds, aggravated the situation. Factions fought each other in increasingly violent ways; students attempted to copy movements in America and Europe. People were afraid, national survival was seen at stake.

There is only one source of power the Turkish people trust in this mood: Kemal Atatürk's military. Atatürk is one historical figure for whom there are not enough superlatives. He was the supreme commander who had defeated the European forces during the Liberation War after the Turkish defeat in World War I. Atatürk founded modern Turkey on Oct. 29, 1923. Under his guidance, Turkey became a secular society, separated religion from state, and adopted the Latin alphabet and western clothing.

Indeed, the military took control and placed Turkey under martial law. This was the situation in Turkey when we arrived there for our summer vacations in the early 1980s. The soldiers were fully armed and in combat outfits; they had orders to shoot on the slightest provocation. They were everywhere, saturating the cities and rural areas. We saw them all along the entire distance from the airport to Tuzla. Everyone still outside after 10:00 p.m. had to present a pass. On several occasions, my American passport served as my pass. Protected by the military, now the civilian leadership could design a new course for Turkey.

The West does not fully appreciate the role the military plays in Turkey. The military is always "Atatürkçü" (in the footsteps of Atatürk), The reference to his name has two complementary meanings in Turkey: "progressive and pro-West." When the nation becomes confused about its identity, the military takes control and reminds everyone who they are and where they are going. Therefore, only Greek propaganda would see a comparison between a military coup in Turkey and one in Greece, Latin America, or elsewhere for that matter. Once the situation calms down, the military passes the reins of power to a democratically elected new government. It always has.

Given the precarious times in Turkey after the mid-1970s, the Turkish people could have used support and understanding, not a series of sharp rebukes, from Europe as well as America. Like Israel, Turkey spent enormous energy and resources to deal with the location history allocated to it. The Turks thought that the West would appreciate the hard times Turkey was going through and the similarities of their situation to the European history. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the European nations were also in a volatile area with temperamental neighbors: themselves. The ramifications lasted until 1945, and only after an outsider from another continent stepped in and unsnarled them permanently. And how fortunate it was for America to find an almost empty continent and two huge bodyguards--oceans--while it carved its identity. Yet under serious but less taxing conditions, America had experienced Chicago and Kent State. During a trying moment in its history, Americans had lived through the Civil War and the horrors at the notorious Andersonville prison and others like it. However, agitated by pressure from Greece, apparently the West was not interested in history lessons or context.

The invasion of Cyprus exacerbated Turkey's image, though any one of the European powers would have probably done the same in Turkey's place. The action miffed the British Government seemingly as much as it did the Greek Government, until the British faced a similar situation in the Falkland Islands. Apparently the British could still not forgive the Turks the defeat in Gallipoli in 1915, which also ended the career of the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in 1915.

Movies like the "Midnight Express" that generalized a rare incident also did not help. Surely the director could have singled out any other country, based upon a few isolated stories like this, had he and his Armenian and Greek friends not set out to agitate emotions against Turkey. On or about Apr. 12, 1975, two months after Turkish Cypriots established their own state, the Armenians and Greeks persuaded the United Sates Congress to pass something about "Man's inhumanity against Man," citing specifically "Turkish atrocities against Armenians." (This, while the Vietnam War was still in full view of the world.) Reinforced by the Congress, Armenians began assaulting Turkish officials worldwide.

The assassinations stopped after two young Armenian Americans killed a Turkish official in Los Angeles. The response by the justice system was swift. Then the malign American policies toward Turkey began to change and Turkish fears were gradually mollified. Perhaps it was finally dawning on America that factions were sacrificing America's interests for short-term agendas on behalf of other countries. However, the one-sided pro-Greek and anti-Turkish European sentiment continued. Some European nations referred to Turkey again as the "Sick Man of Europe," a phrase they had invented for the declining Ottoman Empire before World War I, now doing their best to achieve this result. (They had not been this creative with phrases when England and Spain were losing their empires.) America finally became a friend and began to counter the excesses of European policies against Turkey.

In his book, "Armenia in the 20th Century" (1983), Ronald Grigor Suny states the following. "During World War I, the Turkish Government, considering the Armenians sympathetic to its Russian foe, deported them en masse from Anatolia. Massacres and the hardships of the journey resulted in the deaths of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 Armenians in what has been called the `first genocide of modern times'. Thousands migrated to Russian Armenia, where in 1918 an independent Republic of Armenia was established under Dashnak administration. For the duration of the republic, the Dashnaks struggled to gain international recognition, solve chronic economic problems, and stave off attacks by Turkey. In Dec. 1920, they turned the government over to the Communists rather than surrender to the Turks, and the Soviet Republic of Armenia came into being."

Apparently Mr. Suny interviewed only Armenians and reviewed Armenian propaganda for his historical fiction.

l The first part of the statement, "considering the Armenians sympathetic to its Russian foe," is poppycock. In World War I, the Turks were fighting an all-out war. They were not concerned about sympathy; they were attacked from within.

l "Massacres and hardships of the journey" is a misrepresentation of history. After the Turkish forces broke the rebellion, they forced the remaining Armenians to move away from the war zones where they could not be a threat. The American government did the same to the Indian tribes at a time when, unlike Turkey, America was not fighting for survival.

l There is an enormous difference between 600,000 and 1,000,000. Since no one took a survey of the Armenians killed, these numbers may be hysterical recitals by Armenians who cannot forgive history. In view of the huge gap, and the tendency of people to grossly exaggerate things to support a pet case, it is plausible to suggest that the number could have been also say 100,000. While these are still 100,000 Armenians too many, deaths and killings do occur in a war.

l "In Dec. 1920, they turned over their country to the Communists rather than surrender to the Turks" is true, but for an ironical reason. In 1918, Turkey lost WWI and was occupied by several powers. When the Turkish Liberation War began, the Armenians donated their land to Russia, to make sure there was still a country for them after Turkey lost. Instead, Turkey defeated the occupying powers in 1923 and modern Turkey came into being. Because the Armenians had assumed Turkey would lose, they had given away their country.

The Armenians who stayed in Turkey enjoyed complete freedom after 1923. Modern Armenians are probably still in shock over the misjudgment of their ancestors for enslaving their country to Russia. It may be that the real objective of some Armenians is to shift the focus of history to Turkey, to escape the perpetual shame their own decision brought on them.

There are many Armenians in Turkey even today. Mother's closest friends include several Armenian girls she befriended at the American school in Üsküdar from 1935 to 1938: Zwart, Bercuhi, Matilda, Asdik, etc. We still correspond with them. (Zwart's daughter Ani, who is my friend, married a Turk in New York when she was visiting there in the early 1980s.) They went to the same school only a dozen years after the liberation war ended 1923. Had there been genocide, these girls would not have been allowed to attend the best academic institutions in Turkey, together with Turkish girls. They would have been forced to leave. They stayed, for these Armenian Turks knew the history.

Instead of participating in this enormous historical deception, American historians could have easily resolved this myth of genocide from the 1910s. They could have reviewed the records of the various American schools in Turkey, interviewed the administrators and teachers who were American missionaries. Fortified with this knowledge, the U.S. Congress could have asked Armenian Americans to explain the plausibility of a genocide in view of this huge gap in logic. Then again, having committed several real genocides against American Indians and other minorities in this country, American legislators probably reasoned that it would be wise to have a few other genocides on record.

Listening to these headline news daily, we understood why the news on American TV was substandard, why the average American knew things but was uninformed. The primary objective of the American TV was profit through commercials. The content of what was presented between commercials was judged with a financial eye: it should be interesting--brief, noisy, colorful, shocking--enough to have people tuned in until the next and next sets of commercials. Technology was used to achieve these results, not to improve the substance of the news. The real research went to the timing and content of the commercials. The networks could care less if the Armenian or any other claim was true or false. They were only filling the gap between the commercials. This format stressed headlines, not analysis. And there was never a context.

Since the news in America offered no context, we thought of two to explain the Turkish generosity to Armenian Turks. During World War II, America had forced Japanese Americans into camps, just in case. America should contemplate the scenario of what would have happened to these Japanese Americans if they had indeed armed themselves and attacked American forces. This would have been the historic omnicide. And, as rumor has it, an omnicide by America was a distinct possibility had President Kennedy followed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay's advice for a preemptive nuclear strike against Cuba in 1962.

In one decade, America lost the universal love that was once reserved only for America and Americans. While the country grieved about an imagined defeat in Vietnam, it paid no attention to this real loss. Even the most optimistic scenarios of an evil (anti-American) cabal could not have foreseen such a drastic change so fast. We had known the United States when it was everyone's country. Ten years later, we were hearing contrary emotions. Even if America was oblivious to what was happening, this was a very relevant topic to us, for we were assimilating to America. Vietnam was only the tip of the iceberg. The world became aware of other serious inconsistencies in American character. This was clear to us from our interactions with foreigners here and our travels abroad.

Interestingly, our Turkish friends shared our views about Vietnam. They did not see the end of Vietnam War as a defeat or loss for America. American interference in Vietnamese internal affairs had been repulsed. That was all. But because America was used to having its way, it acted like a spoiled child who was denied something after the war. As a context, the Midway could have led to a defeat; Normandy could have been a defeat, but never Vietnam. We thought the postwar discourse should have focussed on the causes of the mistaken policies that led us to Vietnam, not on how America could live with itself after a defeat. Our concern was that American preoccupation with psychology was detracting it from its search for wisdom. If the war bequeathed wisdom, the end could be still an American victory and this, in turn, would be the real victory for Vietnam and the world. We surmised this is why Robert McNamara wrote his book 25 years later, perhaps instinctively: to help America to shift its focus to the correct target.

We supported wholeheartedly American policies that placed the Human Rights issue on the forefront of discussions with suspect countries. Indeed, we felt the world owed a big favor to America just for this. However, we wondered if Human Rights was an issue that inherently discarded context. The individual was so important, especially in America, that what happened to thousands of people somehow became irrelevant. After watching the "Midnight Express," (1978) everyone was probably in a state of anger and condemnation. In the capable hands of screenwriter Oliver Stone, a not-so-wholesome Billy Hayes, a drug user, perhaps distributor, BUT AMERICAN, became an angelic figure. This 5-star movie made a hero of him and ridiculed and condemned an entire nation to achieve this end. And it lost the innate admiration the Turkish people had for America.

Yet, the same American audiences had remained indifferent to the plight of American Indians, perhaps as late as the 1990s when "Dances with Wolves" and "How the West was Lost" offered them a different perspective. Until the 1960s, these audiences had turned a deaf ear to the cries of the blacks. On account of a mistaken policy, Vietnam had suffered three million casualties and a land fertilized with napalm. While kowtowing to the Chinese and North Koreans, America doomed millions of Cubans into slum-like conditions because it did not like their leader, who was more popular abroad than all but a few American leaders. (America should ask "why?") How did these inhumanities fit in Human Rights? America chose to see no connection in these disparate cases, and it was powerful enough to persuade others not to disagree with this view, at least not openly. But this did not mean that the rest of the world concurred.

In line with what they knew of American history, the message of "Midnight Express" to the Turks was: "any white American, even a drug user, is more valuable and important than the entire population of any other nation." This was not a smart way of nurturing friends or an image. The audiences around the world could not have known that the bits of Turkish spoken in the movie was heavily accented Armenian Turkish, that some of the actors were of Armenian origins. (The "ian" or "yan" ending in last names always points to an Armenian name, like Kevork Malikyan who played the prosecutor in the movie.) The producers may have done a big favor to their Armenian friends. What they did to the American image in Turkey is another matter. (And the Turks are still in Cyprus.)

Paradigms of absurdity are widespread in Hollywood. "The Dirty Dozen" conveyed a similar message about the Germans, making heros of a dozen wholesome American cutthroats while portraying German military as an incompetent bunch of stiffs. Other American movies do the same to the Japanese, Arabs, Mexicans, etc. These movies not only turn off Mexicans, et al. against America, they do the same to Mexican Americans.

Americans like debates. In case of Germany, perhaps historians can entertain the public by debating the scenario of what would have happened had Hitler unleashed all his power directly on England in 1939 and then confronted the United States in a month or two, instead of disbursing his forces all over the world for several years. The conclusion of the debate? America did not defeat Germany, could not have defeated Germany in 1939. Germany defeated Germany, with help from Siberia. America only picked up the pieces and European scientists. So please, let us not substitute absurdity for history, even if the First Amendment allows this and American producers don't know better.

Other nations can make movies too. Suppose a few producers in Hong Kong decided to shove the First Amendment down American throats and, perhaps with additional funds from Iran and Libya, began making movies and a few TV series about Americans soldiers in Vietnam, depicting them as idiots or sadists. How would American audiences feel if their fathers, husbands, sons, leaders, and people are repeatedly degraded this way worldwide? Other nations cannot seek retribution as America can, but they can hate: America, not the movie directors. The First Amendment may enjoy much esteem in America; it does not abroad. Movies like these blemish American image worldwide. The Secretary of State will hear no complaints when he travels abroad; we do.

American power and markets can silence other governments and businesses; they cannot silence the people. America should understand that the world knows about American history. The imprint of what the people know does not include the details of every tree, but it delineates a pretty good silhouette of the forest. Certainly they are aware of the level of bigotry in America. Therefore, although people keep silent about it, they cannot quite digest "human rights" and "America" in the same dish simultaneously. They can accept the notion "to the victor and powerful belong the spoils," but not degradation. That America has a First Amendment which allows movie producers to produce anything they want is irrelevant to them. These types movies fuel hatred and also make a joke of America vis-a-vis human rights. Still, as long as America has the power of persuasion, "human rights" itself will benefit, not necessarily American image.

Had America withdrawn its forces immediately and unconditionally after Richard Nixon became President, American prestige abroad could have been saved. America would have also evaded the huge scar on its national ego. Everyone, including Vietnam, knew ultimately this was no contest. A withdrawal would have announced to the world that America was not only, and still, powerful but also prudent and wise, that now it understood the variables at work in Vietnam and therefore changed its policy. This would have also avoided much of the misery at home and devastation in Vietnam. Instead, America became doctrinaire and fanatical and did the worst thing it could have done. It continued the war in a punishing and paranoid style. The world had ample time to evaluate this new portrait of America. What America did after the war was as bad. As if so much punishment was not sufficient, the United States then placed an embargo on Vietnam.

The icing on the Vietnamese cake came years later, in two ways. Other countries left the United States in a state of single solidarity to enjoy a lonely embargo. Finally America was brought to its senses. Second, when some Americans came to Vietnam, they met happy aspects in the grim. People treated their visitors courteously. The Vietnamese knew their former enemy so good that they felt in the presence of a friend. This stood in stark contrast to the mood in America. The Vietnamese children did even better. They greeted their visitors with "America Number One." We tried to imagine American kids greeting visiting Vietnamese with "Long Live Vietnam." The world had a view of both sides. This devastated country was being more magnanimous and "Forgive and Forget" than magnanimous and Christian America. Two decades after the war ended, this very poor country had to pay us $150 million so that we could put the past behind us. (It is difficult to imagine that America could have done anything worse to contradict its self-claim of "generosity.")

Perhaps aided by an ancient wisdom the Vietnamese people could forgive America. The Arab people could not. Since the time Eisenhower ordered Ben-Gurion out of Egypt, no American President or leader, except for a few senators, had dared to buck the Israeli lobby. Curiously, the Arabs I talked to showed almost no animosity toward Israel. They blamed America for their continuous humiliation, defeat, suffering, and setbacks. Arab unity is a rare thing, but on this issue there was aggregation of feelings: deep simmering hate. I guessed that as long as America could maintain the upper hand, these emotions would remain buried, perhaps forgotten in time. However, I knew that in some things the impatient Arabs could be as patient as the Chinese. They could wait a century or two. For Americans who worked in terms of now, today, next week, next quarter, this type of mindset was alien. And since they were that way, Americans could not fully comprehend that some cultures were not that way.

With regards to Colonel Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, even American experts have not understood the image these men enjoy in the Arab world. While they are not loved, the mainstream Arabs see them as the Geronimos of their world, other Arab leaders merely as expedient kissers. The majority of Arabs are prudent enough to support the kissers, to insure their survival, but in their hearts they vote for the rebels. While Arabs were being humiliated on all fronts, at least these rare men had dared to rail actively against the injustice the mighty United States was meting out on them. They were no different from several Israeli leaders who had played similar roles against the British early in their history. That America described these Arab leaders as a gaggle of bad pariahs, using words like maniac, murderer, sadist, etc. impressed only American audiences.

Like Geronimo, these men knew they could not win. But also like Geronimo, they could not let America get away with so much injustice without carving at least a few scars on America's national soul. They hated America lethally for its policies, but they could not do anything about them. An open war with the United States was certainly not the way. So they did the only thing they thought they could get away with: a proxy war, terrorism. This gave them also an aura of invincibility, that they could be killed but not defeated. This is what Saddam announced to the world by not pulling out of Kuwait. America thought he was crazy. On the contrary; he was planting seeds, making sure that history and little Saddams would remember. Not so much him, but what America had done to the Arab people. Fidel Castro was another such person, Vietnam such a country. All of them were proud individualists who could defy America, regardless what America threw at them. Listening to the emotions these people projected, I considered what could happen if America lost some of its power and presence and found itself confronted by dozens of such men.

Americans who generally cater to the underdog should have understood the emotional backing these men enjoy in the Muslim world, perhaps around the world. Of course, the European governments did not support their actions, but all of them understood much better than Americans what these men were doing and why. In line with American experience with Geronimo and others only a hundred years ago, the focus of American policy was different. America had broken the will of the Indian tribes; now it was annoyed that millions of Arabs did not lie down and let America walk over them. As for Saddam's treatment of the Kurdish and other minorities in Iraq, while no one condoned these actions, in their view, America was in no position to criticize anyone. We heard similar views from non-Arabs.

I asked them how they felt about German Unification. The young man said this was good, they had waited a long time for it. The girl added that it would be very costly, that it would be decades before East Germany's economy was anywhere near the West's. I asked them if they felt any gratitude toward the United States for the unification. He did not know where I was heading and shrugged his shoulders. She was more daring and said "not especially." I asked her to explain. She said that once the Soviet Union broke apart, German Unification was only a matter of time. America could have delayed it, if it wanted to do so, but not block it. She finished with a general inquiry: "why would America want to block it?"

I asked her about the Marshal Plan. "Do you think Germany owes America gratitude?" She said a hesitant "not really." Again, I asked her to explain. Once the war ended, America knew its next opponent: the Soviet Union, which was partly in Europe. So if a war situation developed later, it was obvious that this would start in Europe and/or the Pacific. Therefore, America recognized that both of these regions were natural buffer zones for America's own safety. This meant that both Japan and Europe had to be strong. This way, a limited war could be contained in the buffer zones, keeping America relatively safe. Europe could not be strong without a strong Germany, so the Marshal Plan. It was an investment by America for its own security. The fact that it also helped Europe was only (in German) a byproduct. Then, she turned the screw on me, with a smile: "if America had been naturally generous, it would have helped Vietnam to recover too, and not be so (in German) vindictive in Cuba." (America should consider if Castro's popularity around the world is also a surrogate measure of anti-American sentiment world-wide.)

I decided to ask one final question: "if the world had to have a superpower, which country would you want it to be?" She hesitated no more than two seconds and then flashed a smile at me, without saying a word. This is why I liked young people: their spontaneity and refreshing honesty. In these two seconds, she had comprehended the ramification of my question, quickly evaluated a few histories, and then left the obvious answer unspoken. Her smile granted me a victory. I felt enriched.

As to Father's expectations of us, Parents came to America supposedly to broaden our horizons. I was not convinced. Femsi and I had been trained in German; now we would start in English. We had started to learn German at age 11. At 14 and 16, Femsi and I were old enough to have a few other interests. Moreover, Father's expectations of us left no room for contingencies, not even for karma. They were carved in stone in his head, but he did not speak about them. We were guided along an imaginary path, by something like left or right signals, if we deviated.

Eventually, we developed an understanding of what Father had in mind. We would live in the States for an unspecified length of time, presumably about ten years. Parents would save and accumulate tangible items, such as a car, while we completed our American education. Then, all of us would return to Turkey. We would start careers, marry Turkish partners, and raise children. This part was almost concrete. The rest was up to us and karma. Deviations like one of us marrying a Turk in America or moving to America later were presumably allowed. His was a "Return to Turkey" plan with a "Marry a Turk" corollary, and Father tried to carry out a version of it until his stroke in 1989.

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Before Mother departed from Germany, she arranged for me to stay at the home of one of my teachers, Studienrat ("study advisor") Schmidt. I was in the city and among many friends. Helmut von Herzsommer was my best friend then. At 16, he was a year younger than I, though he looked in his early twenties and lived as if he were in his thirties. My precocious friend was from one of the wealthiest families in Trier and had a cocky and boisterous confidence. Helmut and I circulated at the highest social echelons of teenagers and young adults in Trier. Social success did not come free; my performance in school deteriorated. However, all along I knew that my time in Germany was only a passage, that regardless how I performed now, soon I would return to America and start from scratch. It made more sense to enjoy this unique period than to waste it by studying.

People catered to me; women wanted to mother me. I began to date a Rita M. from a wealthy family. She came to visit me in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes a few times, which may have impressed Herr Schmidt. Six months after we met, she left Trier to attend a finishing school in Baden-Baden. From June 18 to 25, 1961, our class took a field trip to Berlin. We spent a wonderful week there. In July 1961, I took the train to Koblenz, to catch the Simplon Express to Istanbul. Rita accompanied me to the station. When the train began to move, she walked beside it for about thirty seconds, our fingers touching, then separating. We held on to each other with our eyes.

This departure left an imprint in me. It felt like a rehearsal. I had observed a similar scene in 1958, when our ship, USS Constitution, was departing from the pier in Naples. The Italians on board threw party rolls to their loved ones at the pier. There was this illusion that hundreds of these paper strips could keep us anchored to the pier. People faithfully held on to both ends until the distance finally broke the fragile connection, one by one, like the bonds of a relationship gone sour.

Then it was time for me to return to America. In the evening on Dec. 8, 1961, my friend Otto Schröder took me to the train station. I left for Hamburg. It was late in the evening and I got lost in thoughts. Rita was at school and we had said goodbye over the phone. I knew then why I had the strange feeling in July, holding on to Rita as the train moved. It had been our genuine goodbye, not a rehearsal. My mind did not comprehend the motions I was going through. I was leaving the place I loved more than any other. Sirman of this time would never be again, lost like tears in rain. My vocabulary did not include metempsychosis yet, but this was as close as I would get to it in this life. There was something oxymoronic in this. People presumably did not ride a train to their next reincarnation, as if it were a destination on the map. It would be my third or fourth at the ripe age of 19.

As the train gained speed and the view of the outside became blurred, I felt as if I were watching a fast-forward play of my life in Germany. While people around me readied for sleep, I was alert, trying to recapture every slide of my life here. After less than an hour, I was frustrated and felt cheated. I had spent more than three wonderful years in Germany. Yet, the movie of it in my mind was already over. I too dozed off.

When the train arrived in Hamburg the next day, I could not afford nostalgic thoughts, at least not consciously. I had to reach the ship Bremen that would take me across the Atlantic, grateful that I would arrive in America on a ship and not a plane. The departure from the pier in Hamburg was not as romantic and colorful as it had been in Naples, seemingly ages ago. This was as well, for I was feeling already heavy for leaving Germany; I did not want more memorable ties.

The five days I spent on board marked the beginning of my assimilation to America, not to something tangible and known, but to the fact that I had to let go of some things to make room for the new stuff to come, whatever they were. So thoughts of my new life in America began gently to push aside the heaviness. Halfway through the journey, my memories of Trier became blurred, like the earlier ones from Samsun and Istanbul. Time was losing its significance, squeezing all past to one. It seemed that my life in Germany was no longer a part of a real past; it was rapidly becoming sets of disconnected memories of a pallid Sirman, like a hero remembered from a book or movie.

The night before, something obvious had finally dawned on me: when I tried to go over my life in Germany, the playback had lasted only about thirty minutes. Soon, it would be squeezed even more, perhaps to ten minutes. By this reckoning, my entire life would fit into one hour. The future was driven by uncertainty and hope and seemed timeless, whereas the past, always real, almost seized to exist. This did not seem fair and explained why, after a certain age, life seemed to move much faster. This was not so much due to changes in the metabolism; the mind did it, playing tricks. As people aged, more of their life was being constantly squeezed, while less of it remained to be lived. This is why Mother and other people so meticulously preserved photos, etc. from the past. These tangible items were posts to which they anchored their memories, posts that put back some of the lost time reference.

I had other thoughts. At age 11 or so, when I was getting acquainted with the person in me, we were living an elite lifestyle in Samsun. Yet we were constantly under the simultaneous influences of paradoxical inputs. In the same room in which we greeted friends dressed in the latest fashions, we had visitors from villages who were covered in the traditional chador. We knew what we had achieved, but there were always reminders of where our journey had started. We could never become snobbish or pretentious. This also meant tolerance and courtesy for other people, regardless of their standing. We appreciated money, but for the conveniences it provided, the freedom that came with it, worries it eliminated, not as a source of status.

Once, when I was acutely bored at home, I walked about a mile to get to Murphy's, another mile to return. I gave up. Walking in the city or in the woods in Trier had been fun. Not here. This was a residential area that looked like manicured woods, not even like a park. I was conditioned to see some people and to exchange a few hellos. There was no one around to say hello to. I felt as if I were vilifying the peace around me. My surroundings reflected the two elements of the American lifestyle: automobile and privacy. A car was required for all destinations. Everything seemingly revolved around work, family, TV, and Sunday church services. I felt confined.

The first month in Weston was very difficult. I would have done anything to return to Germany. I had been independent for three years, especially after Mother and my sisters had left. Now I had no friends and no social life; there was nothing to do and no one to do it with; I did not like the dull environment, the sterile lifestyle. So I watched television for 16 hours and tried to improve my English. Gradually the prison bars were removed, thanks to Femsi. I became acquainted with some of Femsi's closest friends, Anita, Millie, Marry Agnes among them. They were my introduction to American females. I found them plain but charming in an earthy way, pioneer girls with a few modest modern frills. Their plainness came from openness and unpretentiousness and there was a worldly innocence about them. They emanated an endearing quality. I would learn much more about American women, but later. For now, I was grateful to Femsi and her friends. I felt something new during these first two months in Weston. Starting from scratch was not new to me. I had blended readily as a child in Istanbul, as a young teenager in Germany. But at 19, this was the first time I was starting anew as an adult. The adjustment seemed much more difficult now. My sisters had escaped this. By starting their assimilation in high school, they had entered the American arena almost from square one. I felt worldlier, but different, alien, therefore awkward, and therefore self-conscious. Although I conquered my discomfort after a few months at WVU, as the years passed, I understood better than my sisters why Parents were having such a difficult time adjusting to America. My sisters knew only some of the superficial reasons. Parents' problem was much more basic: America played games with their identity. Because they could not adapt, Parents have remained self-conscious to this day.

The design of American towns, and the lifestyle in them, have been a topic with us since our arrival. Obviously the automobile contributed significantly to American progress. However, we were not sure that Americans fully grasped the intangible costs of their lifestyle. No other culture we knew lived like this, though we had no proof that our suspicions of cause and effect were valid. The emphasis on cars led to a style that accentuated distances, privacy, isolation, loneliness, and probably acute boredom for many. Coping with these conditions had to be the major cause of many serious social ills in America. For it did not make sense that the richest country in the world would show so many symptoms of, what seemed to be, acute and widespread unhappiness.

If our suspicions were valid, boredom and unhappiness could give rise to sets of other problems, like dependence on TV and transient fads, alcoholism, drugs, promiscuity, adultery, rage. In turn, these elements could spring unhappy marriages, abuse, broken homes, neglected children, drunk driving, accidents, violence, etc. Drugs would exacerbate these problems even more and add other ills: big crime, street crime, gangs, murder, prostitution, car jacking, mugging, robberies, all sorts of felonies, huge expenditures for health care and law enforcement, prisons, and fear and alienation.

People who escaped into TV sets were subjected to continuous hammer-and-chisel commercials and "buy this and be happier" bombardments for the privilege of watching dubious content. Those who sought relief in fads, in Jim Bakkers, Robert Tiltons, David Kureshes got hurt another way. Others became automatons in exercise parlors, in front of computers. At least, they were seen as sane, though some of them did strange things like walking in place "in the privacy of their homes." It seemed to us that the admirable economic progress came with an amazing social tag.

My first impression of small-town America stayed with me. Obviously boredom and unhappiness could have many causes, but as far as we were concerned, the American environment and lifestyle had to be at the root. This is how they affected us. I concluded that the only livable places in America were Washington, D.C., New York City, and San Francisco. Later I moved Miami Beach to the top of my list. Many university campuses also qualified. Only these environments offered a cosmopolitan, not purely American, milieu. And xenophobic Americans had the least influence in them.

The English language. Learning the language, customs, and other variables about one's adopted country is only the first and most obvious phase of assimilation. There is one immediate hurdle no first-generation immigrant can overcome: the way the language is spoken. American pronunciation is almost impossible to conquer. One reason may be that immigrants from different countries learned to speak English with accents peculiar to them and then passed on these patterns to their children and grandchildren. Then someone decided the sounds had to be more uniform. A formula was devised: a) parts of words and whole sentences were to be swallowed, so as to neutralize the excess in differences, and b) a quantity of the remaining sounds were to be forced through the nose, to achieve more of the same. We believe many women reporters on TV sound as if they all use the same pretty nose.

Any language that has so many weird sequences of characters, where some of the same sequences are spoken differently in different words, has to be difficult even for the natives. There are foreigners who can communicate in English better than many Americans, but not one who can fully imitate the native sounds. There is always a slight accent. To be sure, one hears stronger regional accents from many officials and reporters, but their accents can be traced to particular regions. The accent of a foreigner, even if it is less pronounced, cannot be traced to a region. Therefore, it sticks out as a foreign accent.

Discrimination is like an atavistic mutation in America. It reappears in some form, regardless of measures taken against it. Presumably many white natives want to protect themselves from something, or maintain some sort of purity. Like the prototypical mammalian state of hirsutism, discrimination is worn like a protective outer gear. In many circles, such as centers of learning, and perhaps the government, the language and accent do not make a difference. However, in other circles, or for some people, the slight accent has consequences. It can influence job opportunities, promotion, remuneration, and other things. We would have learned the language even if we were surrounded by Turks when we arrived in America. However, the fact that we were trying did not make a difference to some Americans we met. They seemed annoyed that we had the impertinence of confronting them with an accent, which in turn may have signified to them that we could possibly infect local virtues and virtuousness.

I experienced no discrimination at the university and rarely in my personal life, but I did sometimes professionally, especially during interviews. On these occasions, it did not matter that I was an American. When the interviewer, usually a personnel manager, heard the accent, he put on the superficially courteous mien that some Americans wear in the presence of foreigners. (Curiously, this did not happen with technical people.) I became uneasy when this happened, perhaps because I sensed that I would not get the job when I was greeted like this. It was invariably so.

Discrimination practiced as shunning was more common. For example, when I traveled abroad, some Americans approached me congenially as a fellow American, then withdrew abruptly when they heard the accent. From their appearances, these were decent middle-class folks from small towns, but it became progressively more difficult to warm up to a culture peopled with such minds. In turn, confronted with these artificial walls, many immigrants are forced to shun native Americans and form at best opportunistic ties to America.

The vagaries of the English language are also a joke to Americans. Bob Swift of the Miami Herald describes the bizarre rules of the language in his column dated Sep. 3, 1985, taken from his poem "English is Tough Stuff": "Sword and sward, retain and Britain/ Mind the latter, how it's written/ But be careful how you speak/ Say break and steak, but bleak and streak. Cloven, oven; how and low;/ Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe/ Hear me say, devoid of trickery/ Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore/ Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles/ Exiles, similes, reviles/ Scholar, vicar and cigar/ Solar, mica, war and far/ One anemone; Balmoral/ Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel. Blood and flood are not like food/ Nor is mould like should and would/ Mark the difference moreover/ Between mover, plover, Dover/ Leeches, breeches; wise, precise/ River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb/ Doll and roll, and some and home/ Stranger does not rhyme with anger/ Neither does devour with clangour. Finally, which rhymes with enough?/ Though, through, plough, cough or tough?/ Hiccough has the sound of cup/ My advice is, give it up." The word ghoti, pronounced fish, which was a favorite of George Bernard Shaw, sums it up.

Had he been a first-generation immigrant himself, Bob Swift may have used another title for his poem, something like "Assimilation is Tough Stuff," considering all the other strange things about English. Even top news anchors and many reporters on TV seemingly confuse "begin" with "began" when they speak. People in most parts of the world would be sensible enough to spell "enough" as "inaf," or clear their throats in an attempt to imitate the sounds implied in the spelling of that word. Much of what is said about English also applies to French. Arabic has also a few sounds that seemingly come from some place other than where sounds should originate.

In contrast, the Turkish language is both phonetic and melodic; it is an attractive and practical language. One can spell every word, even long ones like "gelebiliyorsan" (if you can come), by listening to how the word is spoken. Formulae are left in pure sciences. The rules of the language are always the same; no sound is swallowed; every sound is represented by a distinct alphabet that is always spoken the same way. Spelling contests would be meaningless in Turkey. So people turn to topic, content, and substance. Or, they enjoy life.

In his wonderful article, "Ignoring Marktwainsgermanwarning" (The Washington Post, page A18, Nov. 21, 1994), Rick Atkinson points out the idiosyncrasies of the German language, citing Mark Twain. Apparently the latter was critical of the German language, observing "German ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it. Twain pointed out: "an average sentence in a newspaper is a sublime and impressive curiosity that occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all 10 parts of speech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary."

Be as it may, I wonder what Twain would have said about his beloved English, especially the spelling and pronunciation, had he been born a German. When I arrived in the States to begin my university education, after nine years of studying all subjects in German, all my previous training became practically irrelevant. In less that two months, I had to strive to pass my "Theoretical and Applied Mechanics" class. I started learning words by approximate sounds and appearances. I could feel the contest between my anterior fusiform gyrus of the inferior temporal lobe and the posterior gyrus as I gobbled up new words by the dozen. The former tried to file the words as something I could recognize and make sense of, whereas the latter wanted to dismiss them as nonsensical letter strings.

The odd sequences of characters in some words, especially their pronunciations, often caused alexia (inability to read) and agnosia (inability to name), though I understood their meanings. "Arbitary" was fine for me then and I was grateful this word meant something to me when I heard it spoken and saw it written. However, the new words did not come to me readily when I spoke. So I behaved like a tourist in a foreign land, relying heavily on pantomime to make myself understood. Often when I used a word, it meant just what I chose it to mean, like Alice in Wonderland. Because I am naturally animated, when I could not think of an English word, I threw in a malapropian substitute, an inapt euphemism, or the equivalent word in Turkish or German and continued with the sentence. Years later, I understood why my friends had listened to me with mystified expressions and reticent smiles on their faces.

Along the way, the arbitrariness of "sportswear" and "sports car" amazed me, though surely there were rules about them. Many verbs came bundled with several prepositions; I had to learn the same word in several ways with different meanings. The redundancy of "wake up, lie down," etc. offended my logic. As if there were no more permutations left in the alphabet, words that had nothing to do with each other were spelled the same way, as in "a/to lie" and "to lie" as in "down." They were conjugated differently and I could not always recall which meant what. I still remember the time, measured in years, when I used to say "I lied down," wondering why people smiled at me naughtily.

The languages I knew used the same extensions to produce the different tense forms of a verb. In English, often I had to learn new words. The rule that made "look" and "looked" sensible, did not work with "see" which became "saw," as another "saw," a verb and a noun, one of which led to "sawed," which I thought was another form of "have/had seen." Things like "scampered off to play" jolted me to a stop: "where is 'off' coming from?" If I used "scamper" alone, it would be not entirely correct. So how many words did I have to learn with "off" or "on," etc.? It seemed the language had evolved like a huge quilt, with whatever patches people could find on the spot to fix a tear (as tear in rend, not drop). As an immigrant, I had to make sense of all this as I studied Applied Mechanics. Fortunately, my sisters had time to acclimate to the language. They arrived in their university classes wearing a parachute.

The fact that I had to start again from scratch made me rebellious for several years after I arrived. I was expected to pass several very difficult subjects and also learn a new language simultaneously, before I could comprehend my subjects. I saw myself like a dog chasing its tail and refused to play this role. I decided instinctively to enjoy my life and allow time to condition me by natural osmosis. If I flunked my Applied Mechanics class in this process, this was fine, for otherwise I would have had to immolate my personality and become an automaton. My family did not understand what I was doing, but I knew. From 1962 to about 1966, Morgantown and then several states in northeast United States became my heaven. I was surrounded and pampered by mischievous and playful American angels. This was also part of my assimilation. I relegated everything else to a lower priority in those years.

Having gone through my osmosis, I understand why some immigrants want to take their time, why bilingual education may be necessary. The American environment is hard and competitive. It is unfair to drop the immigrants in situations of "sink or swim" without providing them with life jackets. Native Americans should appreciate that unlike them, who find themselves American, immigrants must go through an enormously difficult process called Americanization. Since America has originated as a nation of immigrants, by this process the new immigrants are introduced to life in America like their older counterparts. And by this standard, Americans who find themselves American are really assembly line reproductions of the real thing. One can argue that the immigrants are the genuine Americans.

The immigrants who are new to this country learn to blend values and traditions that are much older to the standards they find here, as all American ancestors have done. This blending expediently retains much of what is better in native cultures, replaces some with superior ones here, and allows time to reconcile the rest. Things adopted from America are extracted by choice. The natives do not have such a choice. They live life on a single dimension, parroting things they see and are taught. Only genuine interaction with immigrants can supply hints of other dimensions. America is sometimes so driven by slogans that people get confused between reality and wishful thinking. A "melting pot" does not come into being because there is a word for it. It is by interaction with immigrants that native Americans themselves become truly Americanized, not by the fact that they were born here. In turn, this helps the immigrants to assimilate even better and more rapidly. Americans who avoid this interaction by discrimination or self-righteousness should consider against whom they are discriminating and how much harm they might be doing to the country they claim to love.

For example, people are not ignored or avoided in Turkey. Family, relatives, and friends participate in each other's lives and they can be wonderful supporters. They are more than silent shoulders to cry on. Distressed people are never left alone. All problems are aired openly; indeed, it would be impossible to remain silent about something obviously disturbing. People would get it out one way or another. Lives are not allowed to accumulate excess baggage, bitterness, and hardness. Friends realize that in times of stress a person may be unable to reach decisions he or she normally can. So through gentle probing, they acquire an understanding for the nuances of the stress and help this person regain his or her faculties. Psychologists and counselors are rarely used. They generally work in mental hospitals and take care of patients who are certifiably ill. Life's experiences are not considered abnormal. Family, relatives, and friends are expected to help with such situations.

There is never an attempt to belittle a person. Everyone and all views are heard courteously. Ego trips and false gains at another person's expense are viewed as symptoms of a serious weakness and/or personality disorder. Because people spend so much time in company, they can immediately recognize any false behavior, gesture, or intention. No one would embarrass the perpetrator to his or her face, but everyone would know. There is an important side benefit to this. Since people are pampered socially, they gain strong social and individual identities. There is also a major disadvantage: they feel stranded when they find themselves alone for extended periods. This is never a problem in Turkey. After we moved to America, "feeling stranded" became an acute problem especially for Mother and Gülhis. On the other hand, many Americans themselves would have grown bitter in their situations. Mother did not; Gülhis did.

Since assertiveness is not part of the Turkish milieu, on the surface the Turkish people may appear meek by American standards. The opposite is true. They have fiery temperaments, some more fiery than others. Therefore, laud, aggressive, insulting actions and language are avoided. This is also a preventive habit. Bad manners would probably prompt a fight on the spot which, in view of explosive tempers, would evolve into a war. They are still a major cause of bloodshed and feuds in villages. In that mood, most Turks would feel their honor is involved and be fearless about the consequences. The spark, when the mind is not in control, lasts only a split-second. The idea is to learn to have some control over this moment. A lot of energy goes to this end and in time people learn to avoid situations or people that test them.

This kind of background does not serve well in America, where people do get into heated verbal clashes. Such an exchange involving a Turk, and probably other Mediterranean people and Latins, can lead to problems. Since the American environment trains people for these eventualities, the coordination between the mind and tongue is much more spontaneous in America. Not so for a Turk. His or her first response would be to lash out forcefully when provoked.

This happened to me already on a Saturday night in 1963. Three friends and I went to a beer joint (Red Cellar) in Morgantown. One of my engineering instructors, a graduate student, was also there. Since he was alone, he joined us. He already had a few drinks and soon became unpleasant, making wistful comments about my red Austin Healey and girlfriend Janet, whom he had seen picking me up after class. Apparently he perceived an injustice about my life versus his, for he tried to get even with me by a series of silly remarks. I remained silent. A friend tried to interrupt this by reciting a joke he had heard. The instructor interjected and began to make fun of my accent. I should have responded with something like "in that case let's talk German or Turkish." Alas, I did not. I hit him on the side of his chin and he fell off his chair. Very upset with what I had done, I got up and left. Because I was very embarrassed, I started cutting his class or sitting in the back. I failed and repeated the class in the summer. I did not volunteer a punch again, though I got into other skirmishes of various durations. Overall, I was proud of my acclimation. By 1996, my profile looked quite civilized, though not entirely sanitary. The altercation outside a bar in Cayenne, French Guiana was sobering.

Sometimes the structured life bored me and I wanted to be in an entirely different environment. On Oct. 18, 1979, I took a trip from Miami to the Caribbean, first to Trinidad, then Georgetown, then Paramaribo, and finally to Cayenne. I arrived late at night. A cab brought me to a hotel, the only one in town that had rooms available. It was a whorehouse with a Chinese name. Most doors, including mine, were hanging off their hinges. Several rough-looking hombres were chasing girls in undies in the corridor.

On my second night, two guys came after me when I left a bar. One of them, who was much bigger than I, said something I did not understand and pushed me hard. I made a warning show of opening (by wrist-snapping) my Buck knife, which is with me when I travel. I am practiced with knives and can throw them accurately up to about fifteen feet; I can do same with a regular razor blade, flipping it like a marble to a target six feet away. He hesitated and then pulled a switchblade and positioned himself, feet apart but even. This is the worst stance in a knife fight, for it enables only lateral movements. I quickly cut a large piece a cloth from the hem of my shirt and wrapped it around my left hand, to deflect knife thrusts if necessary.

Slightly crouched, he was playing with the knife hand-to-hand, presumably to impress me, which told me the guy knew nothing of knife fights. In this position, he was keeping his body behind while sticking his face forward. I stood balanced and had a tree to my back. After positioning my left side and wrapped hand forward, to reduce the target for him and to maintain mobility, I waited for him to make the first move. This stance also allows the use of either foot for defensive blocks and offensive kicks, the best secondary weapons in a knife fight.

He began to dance for an opening, while I stood my ground. My quick preparations had warned them this was not going to be easy. They were already hesitant. The other guy was a bit to my left. He was about my size and I was more concerned about him. I gave him a quick look. He had a "what the hell am I getting into?" look and stance about him, so I dismissed him. This was good for all of us, for had he been involved too, I would have gone on the offensive.

Big guys are at a serious disadvantage in a knife fight. Longer arms are also longer targets and a big body is always a large target. Besides, big bodies, even if they move quickly, make a wide motion. The knife hand should never be announced except to veil a kick. This guy made a forward arc, but from the square position of his body I knew instinctively that he was either bluffing or probing. He could not move forward without losing his balance or waste time taking steps. And he did not recognize the need to protect himself, even in offense. Before his arm completed its small circle, I cut him quickly on the same forearm, giving him a meaningful look besides. He had a two-inch cut, deep enough to discourage him, not too deep to terrify him. His arm got bloody, but he knew I had pulled back. By then, someone had called the police and we heard the whistle French police use to announce they are on their way. None of us wanted to go to jail in Cayenne. So we lost ourselves into the night.

Somehow the other guy and I met again on a dark side street. We walked together and chatted about our skirmish. He spoke broken English and explained what the problem was. While in the bar, I had made arrangements with a beautiful girl from Santo Domingo. She was coming to my hotel room later that night. Apparently the big guy liked her too. They had met in the bar that night and were not friends. Like all temperamental people who switch moods rapidly from one extreme to another, this guy and I liked each other. He was from Haiti and looked flashy. I guessed him to be a smuggler. We agreed to meet again the next day.

The girl, Maria, was very young and beautiful. I paid her double the next morning and felt a little sad that she had chosen this way. She would have been a beauty queen at some high school in America. I met the guy from the night before. We hired a guide and took an excursion into the jungle. We ate monkey meat in the evening and camped in a tiny clearing next to the river that night. While the bugs feasted on us, we tried to get some sleep. I had a skirmish with the guide the next day, but again nothing big. Two days later, I was on my way to Niagara Falls, to visit Femsi for a couple of days. After spending a week in Istanbul, I returned to Riyadh and started to play with millions again.

The transformation from explosive to controlled did not just happen. I spent a lot of energy and reasoning on this over the years. My sense of fairness played an important role. Obviously there were men who were larger and stronger than I. Normally I would be prudent enough not to punch a stronger guy. So if I could control myself this way, then I could be also wise in the presence of a weaker guy who was being silly. Since controlling my temper took some energy, I adopted a golden formula and practiced it meticulously: I avoided unpleasant people and those who were on ego trips. The ones I could eject from my life I did and never felt a loss.

I also sensed something else about these occasional occurrences and this also helped. People around me knew that no matter what happened I had a way of dancing to my tune and enjoying my life and freedom. This added to my confidence and inner strength. The occasional aggravations I got into were caused by people who were obviously envious, like my instructor years ago. So, they were actually flattering me. I accepted the flattery and ignored the rest. Indeed, none of these occasions demanded anything more.

Morgantown was a lively university town with about 20,000 students. It was also a cosmopolitan place. The Foreign Student Association catered to students from sixty or more countries. There were parties and dances. Many American students participated. I lived in the dorm and had an American roommate by the name of Ralph Bassett. He was in ROTC and all spit-and-polish, which he actually did with his shoes. Several times a week, he put on his military uniform and pranced around as if he had swallowed a stick. He probably thought I was odd too, but he could never be sure, nor I about him. Since this was the first time I lived with an American, and he with a Turk, neither one of us could decide how much of the strangeness was weird and not different. We got along reasonably well and my colloquial English improved rapidly. I still feel that the America I met in the 1960s was a much more broad-minded and fun place than America after the 1980s. Perhaps it was the university environment.

I was an engineering student, not so much because I wanted to become an engineer, but because science classes required less English. However, my classes were difficult and they required long hours of preparation. I studied my Theoretical Applied Mechanics class, that is a serious challenge even for a smart native student, with a dictionary in my hand. I had to understand the words to comprehend the content.

The choice of my major was a serious mistake. In addition to the problems with the language, I was not yet goal-oriented. Instead of placing myself in a meat-grinder, I should have enrolled in German. After completing the core curriculum classes and a bachelor's, I could have aimed directly for Ph.D. in German. This program would have been also more suitable for my personality, for students in languages were more sociable. Indeed, I had considered this approach, but then dismissed it as cheating. So instead of choosing the path of least resistance, I was bludgeoning myself to an engineering degree. The need to look up words constantly to make sense of complex technical sentences interfered with my concentration. Even Father had not gone through this, for he already knew medicine when he reviewed it in English. I was learning my field now. After an hour or two of such effort, my mind began to wander. It seemed that I attended my classes as an excuse to remain in Morgantown.

Several students from Weston, members of the Sigma Nu fraternity, recommended me as a pledge to this all-American club. Within a month or two, Germany was out of my mind, as also engineering. This was fun and there were lots of women too. I liked especially Lynn W. and Jeanne O. and had several cozy dates with them, especially the former. Then, I met a beautiful mulatto girl from Cuba at a dance organized by the Foreign Students Association. I wanted to bring her to a major party at the fraternity at the end of the semester. The brothers tried to convey to me gently they preferred that I came with a white girl. My English had improved sufficiently to initiate, what I thought to be, an amicable debate. They resisted. At the end of the semester, I was rejected. In those days, fraternities were important social outlets and Sigma Nu had been my gate to social life. As the summer closed in, I felt dejected.

It was generally a boring summer in Weston. During the day, people congregated around a lake nearby. At night, the activity shifted to an empty lot a few miles out of town. On the side of the lot away from the highway, about the middle, there was a Dairy Queen, a small cubical cottage. Cars were parked facing it. I had not seen anything like this in Europe and wondered why anyone would build an outdoor cafe all alone in the middle of nowhere and why it would attract people. In Europe, this thing would add life to a residential street. People in the community would walk there to meet friends and neighbors. Our street surely could use some life. The cars made this scene more modern but the idea seemed misplaced. Although people were friendly, I felt out of place and on display. I missed Germany, also Morgantown.

I learned to drive Father's large car and double-dated with Femsi a few times. Then, I met a Barbara L., a waitress at the Dairy. She was about 15 and a piquant female. My frustration reached a peak. Since all social activity required a car, I had to ask Father for his car continuously. He was not always willing. Nevertheless, there were nocturnal occasions when Barbara and I could explore each other in the woods.

In the fall of 1962, Parents moved to another house closer to the hospital. Femsi enrolled as a pharmacy student at WVU. I was happy to be out of the restrictions of Weston. However, I did not look forward to my engineering classes. I also did not want to stay at the dorm. It was too restrictive. On Aug. 19, I rented a room at 321 Richwood Avenue. My landlady, a Mrs. Elsie Feather, was the housemother of a fraternity. She was a widow and stayed there. A John Graybill from Wheeling was also renting. John became my second friend in America. Like Ralph, he was clean-cut but did not date. On Sep. 7, the day of the registration, Femsi and I were chatting in the Women's Dorm, when a girl Femsi had met during registration approached us. She was Janet W. from Wheeling. I felt a spark and asked her for a date. She accepted, but since she was dating our quarterback then, our relationship began on the side, though all out.

At about this time, Father purchased me an Austin Healey sports car, red and convertible. Janet called just before a home football game. She said she would call me after the game to tell me if she wanted to stay with her boyfriend or choose me. My roommate John and I stayed at home and listened to the game on the radio. As the game progressed, my chances looked dim. I walked around in the room like an expectant father, waiting for Janet's call. Finally, she did and said "it is you." Even John was elated and we celebrated together until Janet came. My Americanization began in earnest. Sometime then, I called Rita in Germany to say a final hello.

On Jan. 10, 1963, Father received a letter of notification from the Pennsylvania Board of Medical Examination. He had passed. Our financial situation improved significantly in May 1963. Father was invited for an interview at the Centerville Clinic in Centerville, PA. He was accepted on the spot, at a salary of $25,000. He would work at the Carmichaels Clinic in Carmichaels, PA, a clinic that belonged to a coal mining company, serving its employees. Father would also assume duties at the Waynesburg Hospital for additional pay. A real estate agent found Parents a rental home on Bonar Avenue, up the street from the hospital. We moved in June 1963. His daughter Sharon became Gülhis' only friend. In Feb. 1964, Father purchased for $35,000 a very nice property at 695 Bonar Avenue, across the street from the hospital. This was the home of a retiring banker, a beautiful brick building on a well-designed property with some 70 pine trees. It became our American address until Oct. 21, 1981.

Janet and I grew close with Allen McCune, now our first-string quarterback, and Becky, Janet's friend from West Liberty College and Allen's girl. We were inseparable. My roommate John was like a brother, but because he did not date, we interacted at home. On Nov. 22, 1963, I was in bed, just waking up from a snooze. The radio was on and I was hearing voices that sounded like controlled hysteria. The words began to sink in. President Kennedy, assassinated. I felt numb and called Mother. She was crying so hard that we could not talk.

Sometime early in 1964, I met Tony Carter, my second social friend, though I forgot the particular circumstances that brought us together. Tony and his family lived in Morgantown, including two sisters who were about the same age as Gülhis. Like Janet's parents, Tony's family was warm, hospitable, and nice. His mother, a teacher, was just adorable. Tony and I were together almost continuously, often double-dating, seemingly always in some sort of mischief.

Janet and I were at a crossroad by the middle of 1964. It was either marriage or separation, but I was in no position to contemplate marriage. I did not hear from her again until 1986, when I sent a card to her mother from Morgantown. Janet called from Delaware. She was married to a high school principal and worked in some capacity with the Board of Education there. They had a boy and a girl who were about the same age as Femsi's Debra (18) and Glen (14). We met in Washington in 1987, when she came there for a conference. She looked mature, very attractive. The next time she contacted me, she was going through her divorce.

After Janet, there followed a series of women; Sally W. from Bridgeport, WV and Nancy W. and her sister Sandra, also from West Virginia were special. However, there were too many other girls and opportunities. Parting paths with Janet gradually led to a separation between Allen and me by mid-1965. Soon after that Allen graduated and left WVU. I did not see him or Becky after that. On Feb. 22, 1975, I was in my apartment in Washington, when I felt an urge to track Allen. I located Becky in West Virginia. They had married and divorced. Allen had not been able to sign a professional contract and, until recently, had worked as an insurance salesman in Weston. He had married a second time and his wife Karen had a baby recently. Then, about a month ago, Allen had died in a car crash.

Becky and I reminisced about how Allen used to play the guitar sitting on the sofa, Becky next to him, singing hootenannies with her melodious voice. I asked her if she was still as beautiful as I remembered her, long straight chestnut hair, 5-feet-7 Rubenesque body, gorgeous face, Elizabeth Taylor eyes. Well, she was a little heavier now. It was wonderful to chat with her, but Allen hung in the air. I got Karen's number from her and we said goodbye.

I thought about my handsome 6-feet-2 friend. I had seen him the first time in Wheeling, at home with Bob Donlevy, another first-string football player on our team. My roommate John had invited me home. He and Bob were friends and from the same neighborhood. We came to Bob's for breakfast. Allen was still in bed, sleeping. Then he woke up and with a goofy half-awake smile on his face somnambulated to the kitchen. . . One late Friday afternoon in Jan. 1964, Allen and I left for Wheeling, to visit Janet and Becky. The plastic top of my Austin Healey was torn, so we drove with the top down. We barely made it as far as our old home in Waynesburg, our faces and hands frozen, ice crystals around our eyes, icicles hanging from our noses. Mother was horrified when we walked in like two Frankensteins. We continued in Father's car . . . I also remembered him throwing that perfect pass, a 70-yard play, to Dick Raider--I believe--at a home game, perhaps against Pitt. He had been at his peak then and we had daydreamed about his career as a pro . . . I called Karen in Weston. My daughter Belinda (8) had received a small piano when she was a baby. I took the piano as a present to Allen's kid. Karen and I liked each other and dated a few times, but the distance between us put an end to the affair.

The period from about mid-1964 to late 1965 was wild. Tony and I must have exuded some sort of spell, for I do not recall anyone declining a date with us. Somehow, we ended with a Sherry and Paulette in places as far as Lexington, KY; I found myself in Charleston, Huntington, White Sulphur Springs, etc., while we were inundated with women in Morgantown. Things got so bad that Mrs. Feather, who liked me a lot, asked me to leave. Her home was becoming a house of ill repute. My cohort and I were not loud, but the sight of girls running around in their undies was distracting my roommates. I lost touch with John after I moved out and found him again in 1986. Sharon and I drove to Pittsburgh and visited John, his wife Norma Jean, and their two handsome boys. I knew Norma Jean from 1967, when we were working as programmers for the Human Resources Research Institute. Time had stood still, they were old friends.

In the fall of 1964, I moved to the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house that had rooms for rent. This meant I would live as if I were a fraternity member. I met my fifth good friend there. Dominic Potena was of Italian descent and from Bristol, PA. I called him Bandido. Tony and I continued our adventures, in addition to my new escapades.

Sometimes girls dropped out of the sky. One early Saturday morning, I was alone in the parking lot when a car pulled in, turned around, and wanted to exit. I noticed two attractive girls inside and stepped in front of the car. In a businesslike tone, I said "sorry, but I am a pledge here and I have to ask you for $5 for entering the parking lot; however, the brothers have authorized me to substitute a date, if I could." There was no hesitation. The driver said a date was fine; the other girl asked if I had a friend. Seeing they were serious, I ran inside and grabbed the first of the three guys in the cafeteria. I explained the situation to him while we hurried back. My date was Linda E., the driver; he and Cindy took the back seat. Both girls were from Latrobe and went to school in Keyser, WV. They were here to find thrill and adventure. Being from Turkey, I knew a thing or two about hospitality.

Sometime in Oct. or Nov. 1965, Dominic asked me if I wanted to come with him to Lock Haven, PA. His girlfriend was going to school there and she would fix me up with someone. I had Father's Chrysler with me, so I said I would. This is how I met my first wife. I remember waiting for her in the lobby, at the bottom of the steps, when she appeared, walking slowly down the steps, her exquisite thighs in full view. I could not believe my eyes. This was a blind date? Judy had on a powder-blue (not too) mini dress and medium heels, which made her about my height. Her platinum blond hair cozily hugged her face. And what a face it was. She looked like the twin sister of Bo Derek.

Judy was 20 and the signal I had been waiting for. I dropped all other females and drove to Lock Haven or Altoona, her hometown, almost every weekend over the next several months. There were other harbingers of change, not as pretty as Judy. In December, I was asked to leave the fraternity. Under some idiotic pretense, a "brother" who was drunk punched me. Since the guy was not in my league, I only wrestled and pinned him to the floor. But I was the one whom they asked to leave. I found a shabby basement apartment on Jones Avenue and moved in, to keep company to rats.

In July 1966, Judy was working as a waitress in Ocean City, NJ. I took Femsi's new Corvair and visited her there, staying only a night. A month later, Judy announced that she was pregnant, alleging that I was responsible, hinting that she wanted to get married. Although my responsibility was suspect and I belabored the point, I was not intrinsically against marriage. My track record at school was the main hindrance and I could not decide. Gülhis helped me to acquiesce, though, of course, everything still hinged on my performance at school.

The new cycle presaged other changes, including accidents. I crashed my Austin Healey. Father fixed the car himself, also replacing the cylinders. My beautiful Austin Healey had become a patchwork by then. Femsi and Gary were getting married in Niagara Falls on Aug. 6. Gülhis and I were on our way to the wedding when the Austin Healey died near Greensburg. We barely made it to a repair shop. We left the car there for good and borrowed a car from a Turkish family in Washington, PA. Now that my car had also expired, I sensed the end of an era, of carefree days.

Judy and I married on Sep. 24, 1966 and on Jan. 15, 1967, we moved to a better apartment at 604 1/2 Clinton Avenue, to get ready for the baby. Belinda, named after actress Belinda Lee, was born at WVU Medical Center at 6:30 a.m. on Feb. 20, 1967. Tony and I paced in the waiting room, all night. The marriage and Belinda injected responsibility in me. In the summer of 1967, I started to work as a coder and programmer at the Human Resources Research Institute. One of my co-workers was a smart girl by the name of Norma Jean who would later marry my roommate John Graybill. The institute paid my tuition and about $150 per month.

For four years, I had been barely passing my classes. Now, I began to earn top grades in Complex Algebra, Group Theory, etc. In fact, I was doing so well that I wanted to give another try to engineering. On Aug. 12, four days after Judy's 22nd birthday, I gave her a present: my B.A. diploma in Mathematics. I enrolled in engineering and accepted a second assistantship. My tuition was paid, I was earning a good income, learning computers, and carrying a 15-hour load.

Femsi's Debra was born on Jan. 7, 1968. Judy and I purchased a new Volkswagen station wagon. On June 1, Mother and Gülhis left for Turkey. In July 1968, I had my second bachelor's and enrolled in the graduate school in petroleum engineering. My class took several field trips to company interviews. The one with Haliburton in Duncan, OK signaled to me that the lifestyle of the average petroleum engineer would not appeal to me. Moreover, I did not like the probable locations where I would start as an engineer. I was not made for this. I contemplated a new degree program while I finished my master's.

On Oct. 15, I received my draft notice from the Selective Service. Although I was aware of being in a cycle of major changes, I had not thought that a momentous transmutation like Vietnam would be one of them, especially since I shared Mohammed Ali's views about the war. But lacking his convictions, I would go if I had to. On one of the trips to Altoona, Judy had an accident and totaled our VW. The baby was all right, but Judy was in a body cast for several weeks. Again, I used one of Father's cars. My performance in the graduate school was excellent, though I still crammed most of the time.

On Feb. 19, 1969, I was elected as the executive vice president of the Lambda Chapter of Pi Epsilon Tau, the Petroleum Engineering Honorary. Early in the spring, I purchased a 300cc Honda motorcycle. The elation I felt on it reminded me of my Florette moped in Germany. On one occasion, I persuaded Mother to join me for a ride to Washington, PA and back. On May 18, I had my M.S. diploma, earning the highest--or highest two--grades in the graduating class.

Loaded with three degrees, on June 15, 1969, I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in economics, primarily to qualify for more cosmopolitan employment opportunities. I was also a good programmer by then. A classmate, Rainer Jaenke from Alamogordo, NM, became my best friend. He complained about feeling fenced-in in the east and described the wide-open spaces of New Mexico. I knew the West from movies only and listened to him like a child to his grandfather. On July 24, I received a 3-A classification from the draft board and spent a month getting ready for Vietnam, but I got out of it by the end of the summer. To celebrate this outcome, I purchased a brand new Camaro. I did not need the motorcycle, thinking that I would get something larger later. So I advertised it in the Daily Athenaeum.

A Ken Shellhammer, a graduate assistant, purchased my Honda. Ken and his new wife Nancy were from Boulder, Colorado. Nancy had a boy, Rolf, from her first marriage. The friendship that began then, with all three of them, became lifelong. In 1970, I volunteered to do the programming work for Ken's Ph.D., when he had only a few months left to complete it. Meanwhile, I was growing unhappy with Judy. Marriage activated her obesity genes. This beautiful girl had turned into a lackadaisical and enigmatic slugabed, neglecting herself by the day. Sometime in 1969, I told her amiably that I would ask her for divorce, after she completed her degree. She had two more years to go then. Judy pulled herself deeper into her shell. I was too busy to play a psychologist too and felt cheated.

Sometime in 1969, I started to play bridge and became friends with Jim Braxton, our huge star fullback, who later joined the Buffalo Bills. He also played bridge, better than me. We were together, or in the same circle, almost daily. Jim came to our home for an afternoon party and I took him once to his home near Pittsburgh. I had already met his lovely mother at WVU; this time, he introduced me to his many sisters. We also attended many parties together, together with Pam, the tiny white girl who later became his wife. Judy and I were living in a trailer park then, and I began an affair with a beautiful black woman. My circle changed after my second marriage and I lost touch with Jim. Sometime in 1987, when I heard that Jim had passed away, I located and talked to Pam, Jim's mother and one of his sisters.

In the summer of 1970, Rainer invited me to New Mexico. We drove in my Camaro. It was an enjoyable ride but the feeling of being in the West did not hit me until about Amarillo, TX. It was getting dark and Amarillo was still about 30 miles away. The road dropped down a steep escarpment. Amarillo shone like a string of pearls in the distance. The pearls teased us for another 20 minutes. For the first five minutes or so, it did not seem that we were getting closer. We entered New Mexico early in the morning. As we approached Alamogordo, the wide-open spaces, the ruggedness of the terrain, the unusual landscape blended with my memories from movies.

Rainer's parents were from Germany. His father was a physicist, his Mother a wonderful socialite, a very endearing fun woman. This was a casually sophisticated American-European household, including Rainer's tall brother, attractive sister, a recent divorcee, and her little boy. I liked them very much. The European aura came from the parents, not from the offsprings who were born in America. I liked the Mexican architecture, the adobe homes and their pastel colors, the gazebos, the unusual plants, the infinite landscape, and the always blue sky. They had a party when I was there, like our parties in Turkey ages ago. We also had a family picnic in the White Sands.

Rainer and I stayed also with Rainer's brother in Las Cruces, in a ranch-style rental home that was in total disarray. He kept three rattle snakes in a trash can. We went to Juarez and drank like cowhands at gogo places at isolated spots in New Mexico and Texas. I made a mental note of the aged look on the faces of still young women, as also of the fact that Rainer and his coterie of friends drank continuously, sipping Vodka and Gin from the time they woke up. I thought Rainer did this in Morgantown because he felt confined there.

We purchased for me a shotgun, a Winchester 22, and a Buck knife at a discount store. One early morning, we went out to a rugged place dotted with igneous rocks. We were there to hunt, to search for rattle snakes. A jackrabbit ran a few yards in front of us, darting this way and that. I aimed casually and shot, hitting the poor animal in the lungs. It was not my aim; I was meant to hit the animal.

I woke up, as if from a dream, and could kick myself. This harmless little animal had been going about its daily business, adding life to an empty land. It had died because Sirman and his friends wanted to trifle with life and nature to have fun. It had no chance but to run. I felt like a cowardly executioner, though I kept my thoughts inside. This rabbit would be the last animal I would hunt. Rainer shot a vulture with his shotgun, for fun. The big bird came down like an aimless leaf. I began to see the Westerners around me as a bunch of semi-drunk boys who substituted a gun for something, perhaps boredom or manliness. The Indians had respect for the land and things on and in it; these guys were turning the land to a moonscape. Yet we saw ourselves as civilized, the Indians as savages, because we had law books and could produce cars. The visit was a learning experience. My love for the ruggedness of the West stayed.

Just before Christmas 1970, I saw Gayle sitting alone at the Mountainlair. We talked, but she did not sound like the vivacious young woman I remembered. In fact, this Gayle was so different that either the earlier face had been a put on or she had a double. Then again, I too experienced these switches and missed the mood of carefree days, now that I was a married and responsible adult. Gayle had completed her bachelor's degree in English. Her relationship to Larry, the motorcycle guy she had been dating, had dead-ended. She was at a crossroad and could not decide if she should continue to her master's or find a job. Because our moods matched, we took a room in the Morgantown Motel.

Our marriage began that night. On Jan. 15, 1971, Judy completed her degree in English and found a position in Waynesburg, through our neighbor and friend Mrs. Pincus. It was time to bring up our divorce. Judy refused to discuss it. On Feb.5, Femsi's Glen was born. Two weeks later, Gayle and I embarked on a honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls and Canada. We drove around cozily through a tunnel of snow until we reached Montreal, then Ottawa. We fell in love with Canada and Canadians. If we could have stayed there then, we would have.

After we returned, we decided to live together. I left Kadir on Mar. 15, and moved in with Gayle and her roommate. But soon soberness replaced intoxication. There were too many things up in the air about and around us. We were not resolving any of them, rather burying our heads in the sand. Not yet divorced, I really did not want to get married. But I was already committed. Gayle's family, including aunts, cousins, and friends knew that we were living together, that I was already married. They were putting pressure on Gayle to proceed with our marriage.

Judy knew what was going on. The poor girl was already heartbroken and I felt very guilty. Divorce was one thing, but ending a four-year marriage like this was another. Situations like these probably led to such colloquial wisdom as "what goes around comes around" in every culture. One could not prove them as universal truths, but also not disprove them. I was getting superstitious, or wisdom came with some superstition.

There was no end to karma's fury. Perhaps it was trying to wake me from my stupor, telling me to walk away, to minimize the havoc I was causing to three lives. But the signals were not clear and I did not owe Judy enslavement. Aside from my cheating ways, I had treated her decently, also waiting for her graduation. And I might have walked away from Gayle, but for another signal in disguise. On June 15, we drove to a clinic in the Bronx for Gayle's abortion. Gayle was devastated, I somber, but there was no way we could have afforded a baby then. I could not just walk out on Gayle after this. The only way I could redeem myself now, I felt, was to marry her, never mind the paludal circumstances. Meanwhile, after 9 years at WVU, I was getting bored with my classes. I changed my degree to an M.A. in Economics, because I had already finished the course work. Rainer also quit with an M.A. and left for New Mexico. Gayle and I moved into the apartment he vacated.

On July 14, Judy and I were finally divorced, Gülhis acting as a witness against me, as we had agreed. On Aug. 5, Gayle and I were married by a justice of peace in Oakland. Gayle's aunt Irene and girlfriend acted as witnesses. Sometime in July, I had applied to an advertisement for an instructor at Salem College. Early in August, I received a call for an interview. The interview was successful and, on Aug. 19, I had my first full-time job: I was an instructor in the business and economics department. The pay was only $8,500 per school year, but I would make an additional $1,000 for teaching evening seminars to local business people once a week. Ten years earlier, Father had started in Weston at $8,000 per year, plus housing and food, but with a family. So this was OK. We decided to move to Fairmont. Gayle wanted to complete her teaching credentials at Fairmont College. However, I would drive 47 miles (one-way) to Salem. And Gayle's mother and several aunts would be involved in our lives.

Actually, I liked Helen, Gayle's (Catholic) mother, whom I called Helena, but not so much her (Jewish) father. Their feelings about me were reciprocal. However, Gayle almost hated her down-to-earth mother and was very close to her father, who regarded me as unwanted competition. This materialistic man continuously reminisced about his wonderful past. I sympathized with him for losing his business, but even his successful days did not sound happy. He had been so immersed in his business that he had no time for the family, except that he returned to the same address. How this translated to "good old days" I did not understand, nor the fact that this lifestyle appealed to Gayle. The wives in this system were reduced to lonely nannies who raised offsprings, perhaps to propagate the egos of their husbands. Many of the women seemed bored with the roles assigned to them; many husbands seemed bored with wives who were willing to play this docile role. Beneath the cozy family scenes, ennui ruled, affairs bloomed.

Gayle and I started very committed, but soon I began to notice subtle changes in her. She was showing a new personality, as if she were under the influence of dormant genes that were waking up. And she withdrew often to a world of her own, which prompted inner debates with myself late at night. There were no tangible clues as yet about what was going on in her head, but my instincts often functioned like the "sixth sense" attributed to women. They whispered to me what I might be up against. Gayle seemed determined to set the course of our marriage, including all the details and nuances. Apparently my role in her scheme of things was just to comply and be a "good boy." After all, she was so wonderful in bed. So even if felt like making noises from time to time, she could keep me in check that way until I was fully trained. Of course, she would allow me to initiate some things of my own occasionally, after the right seeds were planted in me. But she would be the one pulling the strings. This is what Gayle's cousin was seemingly doing to her smart-in-business-foolish-otherwise husband. Gayle was "no, I am not envious of her" envious of her cousin, who visited us frequently in her Mercedes convertible. This young woman was also in the process of building a mansion in an elite part of Fairmont. (We did not know then that her husband would declare bankruptcy and lose everything 10 years later.)

I had no idea on what basis Gayle thought she can bend me to her will and make me play such a role, but this was interesting stuff. I decided to scrutinize her, and myself, for I was not sure if I was listening to my ego or instincts. Indeed, I had seen some Jewish women, including a few in Gayle's family, dominate their husbands. He was allowed to be a lion in the arena, but not at home, where she was the lioness. This seemed like an equitable division of labor, but not to me. I saw it as idiotic as the situation in Femsi's Italian home. It could be that Gayle's mood changes had a valid cause: perhaps her instincts were whispering to her that I was not the type to play a subservient role at home. This was fair, for I also had no intention of making her deferential to me. She was my life-companion, hopefully also my friend. So the signals I sent carried a subtle message: I would not allow her, if this is what she was thinking, to redefine our relationship where we would fight daily about who was going to wear pants at home.

One night, at about 1 a.m., Gayle woke up screaming. After I calmed her down to a reasonably coherent state, I asked her what had terrified her so. She said she saw her high school sweetheart in blood, dying, reaching out to her. I had grown up with a clairvoyant Mother and sister (Gülhis) and had intuitive premonitions myself. So I did not dismiss this as "bad dream." The next morning, I encouraged her to call his family in Scranton. Sure enough, the family had been notified in the morning that their son had been shot and killed outside a bar in Detroit, where he had been attending the law school. After this experience, Gayle regressed to her teenage years. She missed Scranton, her friends and memories from there. At age 14, Gayle and this boy from a Lebanese-American family had fallen in love. Then, when her father went bankrupt, the family had decided to move to Fairmont, where her mother was from. Gayle had been yanked out of school. She hated Fairmont for this and her heart was still in Scranton.

I understood the problem but could not empathize with her. I had been yanked from Samsun at age 11, from Istanbul at age 16, from Trier at age 19. And considering what I had done to Judy to marry her, her puppy love affair with her boyfriend from many years ago seemed like invented clutter to me. After she moved to Fairmont, he had called her only once, also many years ago. And I knew a thing or two about how Middle-Eastern families spoiled their sons. As far as I was concerned, the romance persisted only in her head. Besides, puppy loves worked wonderfully in the timeless and carefree environment of a high school at age 16, not necessarily in real life at age 23.

I had divorced a somewhat subdued but decent and loving woman to be with Gayle. The marriage would have ended with or without Gayle, but in effect I had replaced Judy with Gayle. Now I wondered if I had exchanged a horse for a donkey. (This is a phrase borrowed from Turkish.) Gayle was dumping on our marriage garbage that she should have purified before the marriage. There were other complications. Her friends from Scranton, most of whom I met later, were predominantly from Jewish and Lebanese families. Like them, Gayle had a practical and quick business sense, but also the potential to squander. I was much more frugal. Moreover, Gayle was behaving like a commercial artist, not a student of the fine arts. That is, although she could recite this and that from her English classes, her education was confined to her head; it did not trickle down to her personality. Appearances meant a lot to Gayle. She had been sketching a home for us. I noticed with each passing day that our home grew to an increasingly elaborate mansion. This girl, who was convinced she was a "winner," wanted to substitute materialism and pretension for substance and class.

I was aware before the marriage that cultural differences could become an issue between us. But I did not perceive them leading to insurmountable problems. Indeed, the differences had been a turn-on to Gayle when we met. That she was also a hustler I knew from the time I met her. However, I understood that a woman was bound to use her wits to get the guy she wanted. Indeed, this was honest flattery, and it had been up to me to respond or not. But what if this girl thought she should hustle me also in marriage? This would be an entirely different predicament, for it would prompt a battle-of-wits situation between us eventually.

Then I thought of another angle that complicated things even more for me, and it exonerated her somewhat. What if the hustler in Gayle loved the dreamer in me but did not know what to make of it? Perhaps she felt she had to manipulate me to save her love and marriage. OK, but in a mansion? My problem with the mansion was symbolic. If our future led to a mansion, of course I would enjoy it too. But I did not insist on such superficial things as if they were essential to my happiness. I could do with or without them, but I was not sure of Gayle's feelings. The signs I perceived did not comfort me. I also remembered a wisdom a teacher in Germany had mentioned once: "where there is a lot of light, there are many shadows." Still, if the differences I perceived between us were cultural, I, with my multicultural background, would bend more than Gayle to resolve them. However, I could not become someone else just to please Gayle, to have her or to keep her. So if Gayle wanted to be something like a concubine in marriage, the marriage would end, regardless of love.

On Feb. 22, 1972, I had a bad car accident. My Camaro was totaled and I woke up at WVU Medical Center. I purchased a 450cc Honda motorcycle and rode it to Salem. I was very popular with the students and had been appraised very highly by them. The school asked me to renew my contract for another year; I did. Then, on June 6, I broke the contract. This job was a dead end. On June 14, I exchanged my motorcycle for a tiny new car, a Fiat 128. Gayle and I decided that we would move to Washington, D.C. On Aug. 12, I received my 4th diploma: M.A. in Economics.

When one feels this way about one's job and the remaining components of "quality of life" are shaky, everything falls apart. This is how we felt. If Gayle and I did not fight, it was only because we were too exhausted to fight. Of course, there were also many wonderful days. We made sure that we enjoyed everything Washington, especially Georgetown, had to offer on weekends. Sometimes we were romantic like in the beginning. On Nov. 11, we drove home to attend Gülhis and Michael's wedding.

On Feb. 12, 1973, our lease in Arlington ran out and we moved to apartment 1103 at the Chateau Apartments in Silver Spring, MD, at 9737 Mt. Pisgah Road. The rent for this plush one-bedroom unit was $220, and we signed a one-year lease. The relocation reduced our time on the road by about 30 minutes each way for Gayle and 60 minutes for me. We were on the beltway and near my work, also close to Washington. Indeed, Gayle and I were having a wonderful time in Washington, spending all our joint income. We also knew problems were brewing. We let them, for otherwise we would have fought without reaching solutions.

On Mar. 24, we applied for our passports for a trip to Turkey in the summer, my first after twelve years. On Apr. 12, we talked about divorce for the first time. Meanwhile, I was sending all sorts of job letters. I wanted to get out of proposal writing. Gayle had her second abortion in Washington on May 8. She wanted this one, but I did not want to burden a baby with the responsibility of rescuing our marriage. Either we would achieve this on our own and then have a baby, or no baby, was my thinking.

The answer as to whether I was hearing the voice of my ego or instincts in marriage cleared after Gayle and I moved to Washington. Our marriage was coming apart, but Gayle insisted on buying lots of very expensive furniture. In fact, visiting furniture stores became our foreplay. I refused, feeling sorry for her. She wanted to have something to show for the "three years of free sex" that our marriage had become. On July 17, Gayle and I left for Istanbul. She was treated like a queen. With her vivacious ways and gypsy aura, she looked like a Turkish girl who spoke English. We returned on Aug. 8, and on Aug. 28, I finally found a job that was more to my liking. The salary was only $16,000, but I would be paid bonuses too, and I did not have to write proposals, only reports. And, the firm was right in the center of Washington, on the 18th street, between K and L.

After reading the Sunday Post at 8:00 a.m. on Oct. 14, 1973, I suggested to Gayle that we separate. Gayle agreed. We looked for "roommates" in the paper. That afternoon, she moved in with a divorcee in her home at 2700 Briggs Chaney Road. Early in 1974, I gave her $400 to conclude our divorce in Santo Domingo. Then in April 1974, we saw each other one last time, to have our divorce papers notarized at an office on Connecticut Avenue. We were walking back to her car when Gayle said: "you know you did not come out of this marriage so badly; you have all those plates . . ." She was referring to the expensive stoneware plates we had purchased at the Dockside in Alexandria, which I had planned to give to her; I did not after this remark.

I had my heart in my guts and this girl was speaking of plates. Now I knew which voice I had been hearing for almost two years. The heaviness in me vanished. I had not been unfair to her; I had only protected my identity. And she was telling me that I had not lost her, but exchanged her for my freedom. "Thank you, Gayle," I felt. This "winner" would never know that she had hustled herself out of a golden guy she had in her hands. (Thirteen years later, Sharon would try to do the same and also fail.)

Until Dec. 1, 1973, I was elated to be alone, but I had a lot of time to think. Everything around me was fine by American standards, but I was not happy. Although I liked Washington and my new job, and I was doing well, I sensed that soon the novelty would wear off. I had more worldly dreams for myself; I was not made for the "give me your soul too" consulting environment, spending my best hours and life in cubicles and rooms. The dead streets at night, the boondocks that Silver Spring was, the loneliness of the apartment got to me. Then I began to miss Gayle, but I knew my problem was not Gayle. At age 32, I was having a mid-life crisis of sorts. On Jan. 26, 1974, I picked up a Samantha B. at Fran O'Brian's on L Street. It was a start.

The two years from Jan. 26, 1974 to Jan. 14, 1976 were promiscuous, especially after Feb. 12, 1974, when I moved to D.C., to an apartment at 1310 New Hampshire Avenue, across from the Fleet Reserve Building near the Dupont Circle. My friend and coworker John Hennigan, whom I knew from the Ph.D. program, helped me to move my stuff in his large car. I started to date as if I were an epidemic. On June 26, 1974, I had my first date with Fannie H., our very efficient black secretary at work. She also became one of my best friends ever. I visited Ken and Nancy frequently, as also Mother. The agitation in me continued.

On Sep. 24, 1974, I began to read "Papillon." The fact that this man spent six years at solitary confinement provided a sense of proportion to my inner difficulties. I was grateful enough to promise myself that I would visit the Devil's Island someday. (I did in 1979.) On Dec. 5, a Mary Beth T. (Elizabeth to me) joined the firm and my life. In retrospect, this wonderful young (23) woman played a substantive role in my life, equal to my wives.

On Apr. 24, 1975, just before the Vietnam War ended (Apr. 29), I too felt as if there would be a significant change in my life. I felt this so strongly that I began to advertise and sell my belongings, though nothing was in sight. On May 4, there was a documentary on TV about Saudi Arabia. Something rang a bell. I contacted the Saudi Embassy on May 6 and sent several applications to Saudi Arabia on June 12.

On May 22, I met Jules M., the sister of a coworker, who was visiting from her graduate studies in Ann Arbor. She began sending me letters addressed as "The Turk" to work. We had a tumultuous affair, in Washington, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Waynesburg. This lovely young woman introduced me to Pablo Neruda and made a hand-stitched shirt for me that I still have. On May 24, Gülhis and Mike came to Washington to help me to move my remaining stuff to home. My ex-wife Judy came over to help. She had lost 40 pounds in a few months and looked better than she did anytime.

On May 26, 1975, I moved out of my apartment and rented a dingy room at the Harkett Hall nearby. I was curious if my premonition of a significant change would come true. Eight months was a long time to wait, but things unfolded while I was going through a very productive cycle. On June 20 (to July 1), I drove to San Diego to present a paper at the Western Economic Conference, my first. At work, I was busy with several rate cases around the country, either preparing for cross-examination or helping our lawyers prepare questions for the opposing witnesses.

Since I had not heard from Saudi Arabia, I sent a follow-up letter on Aug. 4. My coworker Curtis Bushnell had recommended me for a GS-13/Step-6 position with the FCC; I had my interview on Sep. 3. (The offer came at GS-14 level in Feb. 1976.) On Sep.5, there was a letter from the Saudi Fund for Development. Someone would contact me for an interview--which never materialized. On Oct. 14, I received my GS-15 classification from the Civil Service Commission--CSC, now OPM. Feeling spring fever, on Nov. 27, I flew to Sarasota to visit Florence--the lady who had helped us to migrate to USA, our friend since the New Year's of 1956.

On Dec. 12, I sent a letter to the Saudi Fund, that I had not been contacted. On Dec. 18, after an office party at the Watergate, I won the entire suite for the night. A female Turkish student came to stay with us in Waynesburg on Dec. 25. We attended a New Year's party in Pittsburgh and followed up with a passionate night. Father called on Jan. 14 to let me know that there was a letter from Saudi Arabia, that I a contract was on the way. And there was a $1,405 refund from the IRS.

The contract arrived in Washington on Jan. 16. Alvin R., our executive vice president handed it to me at 11 a.m., along with a $5,200 check for bonus. At 12:30 p.m., I walked into his office to resign. He said that he and the president appreciated my work very much, that they had in mind a substantial salary package for me. He asked me if I wanted to hear their offer. (I was making $25,000 then, plus bonuses.) I thought this very smart man, in his late 50s and a CPA, was manipulating me, presuming that my greed would persuade me. Had I said yes, probably the offer would have come down. I had learned a lot from him and our president since I joined the firm on Sep. 1, 1973. For the first time, I looked at him as an equal, smiled, thanked him, and said no. He still did not sense that I was not negotiating. I walked out, leaving him to digest his shock. By then, I had no debts and, in spite of all out spending, I had also $10,000 in the bank. And Karma had also prepared me for the abstemious life in Saudi Arabia.

I did not notice the effect of the environment on the people until about 1966. By then, I knew women from a broad range. Because I continued to interact with some of the same women, I saw them age. The transformation that happened after about age 21 was curious. Surely aging alone did not bring this about. I guessed at first that the imminency of their departure from the carefree university environment was the main culprit. It seemed that spontaneity was the first element that got lost or was rescinded. Women became more cautious and practical, presumably because they were getting older. But this was not necessarily maturity or wisdom. It was often more like a mask or shell.

In this very free environment, people rapidly lost innocence and began accumulating excess baggage. In time, only a few seemingly survived the gauntlet of expectations versus disappointments, economic realities, extreme competitiveness, and emotional bumps. There were signs of emerging bitterness and hardness in women who were still very young. Many confused bitchiness, ego trips and assertiveness with confidence and self-assurance. Therefore, the practicality I observed had a harsh and self-centered undertone, as if these young women were honing their survival tools. Although this had the appearance of maturity, I was not sure they were therefore mature.

I witnessed these seemingly semantic differences much more pronounced in Washington later. The more competitive environment there accelerated and exacerbated the transformation. Initially, I was confined to a university milieu. Men and women began to project wooden images of their delightful former selves, though they were still young. Being an adult supposedly meant allowing Puritan cultural injections, that apparently remained dormant until about age 21, to surface and become instinctive guidelines. The age group around me became increasingly conservative. So in addition to the normal aging process, it seemed people were intentionally bottling themselves. Their transformation caused a mild conflict in me. I was making a conscious effort to let the child in me to continue to play a role, whereas the people around me were consciously burying the child in them. I observed the onset of hypocrisy and privacy. They were careful to project an "I am altogether" image to the outside.

The play on adult is perhaps best illustrated in cyberspace. There are thousands of private bulletin boards in America. The most successful ones flourish because they are almost totally dedicated to adult callers. That is, adult men and women can download pornographic photos showing all permutations of sex. On boards with several active nodes (modems and telephone numbers), multiple callers can use the "chat" option to join a conference forum and initiate an electronic orgy, keyboard-talking to each other in explicit language. The time spent on electronic sex is staggering. Although I do not participate, I have absolutely no qualms about the activity itself. What amuses me is this interaction is called "adult," not "delinquent."

The activity on the boards has always fascinated me. There had to be a reason why so many adults, in this topsy-turvy world of adulthood, enjoyed sex this way. It could be that some of the callers were physically confined or unattractive, and this was a way for them to get partners. But this still left huge numbers of regular callers. Why would they participate? I could not think of a sensible explanation. 1) Were some people so lonely that they welcomed any substitute? 2) Was there a massive confidence problem in America? Perhaps people were terrified of rejection. 3) Or this interaction did not interfere with their "I am altogether" images outside. 4) Was real romance so worn out or disappointing for so many Americans that they had to experiment with the kinky stuff to get turned on?

I did not contemplate these questions to pass judgment; I wanted to understand. However, I did not want the rest of the world to become this advanced. The questions that really interested me were: 1) how many of these people projected I-am-altogether images outside? and 2) how much of this kinkiness was predicated by the Puritan filters through which Americans graduated as adults?

I thought people in Washington were emotionally tough; therefore, they seemed more hard than tough. I could see how this could make them "objective." The heart had little to do but to pump blood to the brain. Since I spent most of my awake hours as a consultant, I was objective all day, and competent. But it dawned on me that for me this could have a robotizing effect in time, because I was neglecting my subjective (emotional) needs. I was proud enough to want to do my best at work, but my Mediterranean temperament needed zest. Making money or solving objective problems did not titillate me per se. Perhaps my colleagues were balancing the two needs better, but I was having difficulty. There was little occasion for the subjectivity in me to surface. I did not want a wife or family, because I was not sure I would be happy in this environment. The inner clash in me surfaced as all-out promiscuity, to pour a proxy of intimacy and emotion into my life.

Ten years after I left, I returned to Washington. By then, I had seen productive people also in other countries. Men and women in Europe usually went out and celebrated the end of the work day. Cafes and restaurants filled with happy people, for fun, not on business. In contrast, most Americans could not wait to lock themselves in their homes as soon as their work day ended, some of them driving for an hour or more each day to get there. Voluntary isolation seemed to be a byproduct of the American lifestyle, though parts of many large American cities teemed with people too. But there was still a discernible difference. While people in Rio, Paris, Rome, Istanbul lived life, Americans got excited about reading books and magazines, watching sports and movies, shopping and finding companions electronically and on the Internet from "the privacy of their homes." It seemed the natives were also struggling to balance their objective and subjective needs, perhaps more than me.

Life in downtown Washington died down after 6:00 p.m. because profits designed the city. The zoning laws catered to the profit motives of developers who lived elsewhere. The city and its people suffered the consequences. Only the most conservative and largest entities, usually banks, could afford the rent for the ground-floor units of these buildings. Banks closed at about 4:00 p.m., everything else by 6:00 p.m. By 8:00 p.m. many downtown streets looked and felt like cemetery walkways. On weekends, entire sections and neighborhoods were desolate. The same minds who could imagine Disneyland reduced their cities to cemeteries and parking lots for dead buildings.

Sometimes my girlfriend and I had a fight and the apartment felt lonely at night. So I went out for a walk, feeling like the only survivor in a science fiction movie, something like "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Three decades in this country and I was still amazed, every time. I knew absolute aloneness from spending many a night deep in the desert, but this was unique. I was four blocks north of the White House, in the center of the capital city of the world. There were eight hotels in my immediate vicinity. In Istanbul, Paris, Munich, Cairo, Tokyo, Rio, World (and yes, New York), this place would have been a beehive. The loneliness that had induced me to go out was more disturbing outside. I could not wait to return to the warm hug of my apartment, and the loneliness there.

I tried to estimate the effect of this on the many have-not Americans who lived in Washington and in other cities. What percentage of murders, muggings, drugs, drunkenness, rapes, etc. in America happened as a result of instability and rage caused by isolation, loneliness, and boredom, i.e., privacy? These people had another infection agitating their insides: hopelessness, total and perpetual. And because I thought about these things, my loneliness went away. The walk cured my problem after all. And I had a new thought that would put me to sleep that night: who was going to cure America's problems? The city screamed in silence, but no one but a few downtrodden souls heard. The haves were busy busy with their little agendas.

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The Untersecunda (9th grade) German class began with "Tonio Kröger" by Thomas Mann and moved on to other German authors, including Adalbert Stifter's "Berg Kristall," Eichendorff's "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts," Gottfried Keller's "Das Fähnlein der sieben Aufrechten," E. T. A. Hoffmann's "Meister Martin" and "Das Fräulein von Scuderi," G. E. Lessing's "Nathan der Weise," W. Schmidtbonn's "Hinter den sieben Bergen," Ch. W. Gluck's "Iphigenie auf Tauris," H. v. Kleist's "Prinz Friedrich von Homburg," Ludwig Tieck's "Der Blonde Eckbert," and Otto Friedrich Bollnow's "Wesen und Wandel der Tugenden" (The Essence and Evolution of Ethics/Virtues). We spent several weeks on each work. Other books, such as "Der Waldwinter" (forgot the author's name), were on the reading list. For school use, these classic works came in booklets that cost 1 DM, or about 20 cents.

The examinations and assignments were always essays, to challenge our reasoning, creativity, and writing skills. The topic could be something like "based on his works, describe Thomas Mann's perception of the world, of his own life, how his values may have evolved, experiences that may have played a significant role." This was not easy stuff. It made sense to start the analysis with Tonio Kröger. Why had the author chosen such a paradoxical first and last name for his book? Did Tonio (soft and Mediterranean) Kröger (hard and German) hint at an anomaly in the author's personality, perhaps a duality of character? Was this an innate conflict or the result of a contrasting upbringing by his mother (Tonio) and father (Kröger), perhaps also implying love for the mother and respect but fear for the father? Who were his parents? The story had to be about his own experience, the young girl passing the introverted sensitive and perceptive young boy for the extroverted one. What would be my response? Did the boy lament the experience or observed, felt, and found wisdom through it? Was there a universal message, that perhaps some people were doomed to suffer love while others enjoyed it?

In quest of dramatic verities, I wondered if my inquiries were in the story and I found them, or I mocked Mann by injecting my own thoughts and personality into the story. If the latter, was I supposed to do this? Why not? Surely Thomas Mann could express feelings better than me, but could I not feel them as strongly, also differently? Was not everyone Tonio sometime? Is this what Mann wanted to convey and achieve, something like "the mind once suddenly aware of a verity for the first time immediately invents it again" (Agnes Sligh Turnbull), to help me discover and identify my truths, myself? Was I getting sidetracked? I could not be sure from one story. So what were the common elements of his works? This way, we struggled with the essays, to find a clue to start.

The German class became much more difficult the next year when I started Obersecunda. The classes were separated into science and humanities sections; I was in science. We began with Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold, der Ring des Nibelungen (Vorabend)," continuing to "Die Walküre (Erster Tag), Siegfried (Zweiter Tag), and Götterdämmerung (Dritter Tag)." From Wagner we graduated to Schiller, covering "Don Carlos," "Wallenstein I (Lager, die Piccolomini), II (Tod)," "Kabale und Liebe," "Die Jungfrau von Orleans," and "Die Räuber."

The next year, in Unterprima, it was time for Goethe. We spent considerable time with his works, including "Iphigenie auf Tauris," "Egmont," "Götz von Berlichingen," and finally "Faust." Goethe had spent a lifetime completing his greatest work. We did not just read it, this was total immersion. Dr. Knümann did not allow our youth to trivialize or parody Goethe's romantic fervor, nor the eternally profound conflicts of Faust. Our class was an affecting rendition, indeed dedication. We allowed the devil his luxuriant due, gauged the heroic climaxes, and savored the pathos of the death scene. I still remember lines from "Prolog im Himmel," about four pages, and from the first three pages of "Nacht" that follows. I can also recall many of Dr. Knümann's words in class, like "Der Böse hat den Funktion das Gute zu erwecken" (the bad has--serves--the function of awakening the good). He knew the English literature almost as good as the German literature, in which he was fluent. When appropriate, he quoted lines from Shakespeare and alerted us to the similarities and differences between Goethe and Schiller and Shakespeare.

Modern literature was left for the Oberprima class and included Heinrich Böll, Wolfgang Borchert, and Elizabeth Langgässer, as also works by American, English, French, and Russian authors, primarily O. Henry, Poe, Twain, Dickens, Camus, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and others on the suggested reading list. This was the schedule of literature classes in the science division. We shuddered when we thought of our friends in the humanities section. Those poor souls probably had to write a "Tragödie" of their own, we joked. I was too enamored with my social life to devote much time to banal things like studying in those days, but I listened in class.

The discipline was strict, but primarily because the students knew they were there to be educated. The subject matter of every class was so advanced and consuming that we could barely keep up with full attention. For example, the history classes emphasized reasoning, not facts, at this level. The "what happened when" type of world history was already covered in earlier grades, as also Herodot, Robert von Raenke-Graves's "Griechische Mythologie I, II," and Titus Livius' "Römische Frühgeschichte" and several others. Here we debated how circumstances a, b, and c in such and such years brought about a unique situation ten, etc. years later and predicated event d subsequently. Works like "Das Kapital" were required reading.

We debated the colonial history, slavery, industrialization, communism, capitalism, etc. under the able guidance of our teacher Dr. Lieser. Our class did not study history like an album of isolated snapshots of events and dates, as I did several years later at WVU, as if preparing for a trivia contest. We learned to connect, for example, the Prussian Empire to World War I, to the Weimar Republic, to Hitler's Third Reich, to World War II as one continuous process of interacting cause-and-effect circumstances, variables, decisions and events. We emphasized understanding and retained dates better this way than by memorization. This process did not merely teach history, we tried to make sense of history. I still remember struggling with the essay, "Describe the influence of Magna Carta on the Constitution of the United States and evolution of civil liberties in America."

In addition to excellent teachers, meticulous classroom discipline, full mental challenge in a variety of subjects, and lots of homework, the basic ingredients of education included a Spartan and "no frills" environment and upbringing. We played briefly between classes and longer during the lunch hour. Since there was no cafeteria in school, we brought sandwiches. The physical education classes stressed military drills with minimum reliance on expensive equipment and embellishments. We practiced gymnastics and played basketball and volleyball in the same large room, dressed in the same shorts, T-shirt and shoes.

Things like marching bands and baton-twirling and cheer-leading by partially-clad leg-throwing and thigh-spreading wholesome female students would be unimaginable in German or any other schools, not even in physical education. Moreover, the German system leaves specialization to vocational schools and universities. Since basic subjects are covered in public schools, German university students do not waste two years and substantial sums of money attending "core curriculum" classes, when they are there to study, for example, engineering. Germany, like most other countries, tailors its schools and pedagogy as educational boot camps, no less serious than American military boot camps. America stresses defense; Germany emphasizes education.

German public schools produce educated and informed young citizens who can then participate in the democratic process in a substantive way. German leaders must have realized that democracy had to mean much more than giving people voting rights, if democracy and the nation were to survive. Years later, we understood why American democracy did not and could not function properly. In America, "Das Kapital" was reserved for history students at the university. Americans generally learned to love and hate things by their slogan value. As long as public education remained substandard, most Americans would be persuaded by their biases and special interests, appearances, slogans, and gimmicks, if and when they voted. They would continue to elect leaders many of whom should have led their own lives, not America. Had America truly valued democracy, it would not have allowed its public education deteriorate to the levels it has sunk. America, the leader of democracy, apparently did not even comprehend this connection.

We were confronted with an irritating American habit. When some of them uttered a gem of a falsehood about Turkey, we tried to explain. Their response was "why are you being defensive?" We were taken aback at first, but then I made a habit of replying "we are only trying to improve your information." There were exceptions, but they were exceptions. We were not sure if we were seeing the real nuts and bolts of the American mind and way.

"The American Way" has fascinated us from the beginning. Since this was a part of our assimilation, we wanted to understand what made America tick, before we strived to tick this way too. The way obviously had something to do with the mind. We could not decide if the American mind was driven by runaway materialism, absolute pragmatism and expediency, or all of these. The consequences could be more than academic. Over time, Americans would know many "abc" facts. However, life was not a Jeopardy contest. People had to learn also to reason, that, for example, unless a and b were both true, c could not be true; a and b together invalidated c, etc. This reasoning would flag out some facts as falsehoods, others as contradictions of other facts. Unless this process took place and people avoided their biases, raw knowledge could be more dangerous than no knowledge, for it bestowed false confidence and self-righteousness.

We saw our suspicions confirmed in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was a turning point in American history, if for no other reason than it taught America humility. The humility came not by defeat but by a clear validation that the best minds in America, with all the intelligence at their disposal, flunked the reasoning test. Even if the situation was murky initially, facts emerged. Yet American reasoning remained flawed with presumptions, paranoia, self-righteousness, and self-confidence. The obsession to win overwhelmed all considerations. It took America 25 years to admit the flaws, when every other nation, even ones with elementary intelligence, understood the circumstances and voiced strong objections. Their conclusion was derived from only a few but relevant facts and a reasoning that relied mostly on common sense. Together they were superior to American intelligence. This meant that data and information, even volumes of them, could not substitute for reasoning, that America's most profound weakness in Vietnam had been its incapacity to reason things correctly. Years later, we were still not sure that America understood this. It seemed the only thing American leaders learned from Vietnam was "don't lose a war."

This was not a minor point to us, for we saw other evidence of defective reasoning reflected in American policies at home and abroad. For example, America rejoiced when President Reagan built the 600-ship Navy and gave America a glimpse of its former eminence. Ten years later, America was shocked to find out that it had a $4 trillion debt, that would double by 2002. The maestro blamed the choir and vice versa. Since no one could be blamed, people who caused the debt tried to take credit, by suggesting that because of our 600 ships the USSR had collapsed. As if the USSR would not have collapsed if we had only 500 ships, 400 ships, or 300 ships.

Since Milton Friedman did not worry about the debt, people found comfort, until Ross Perot told them to worry. (So clearly one of them did not know what he was talking about.) While the size of the debt and persistent large deficits also concerned us, something else worried us even more. America was conditioned to spending huge sums of money on problems, but often without results. Other countries also incurred deficits, but to invest, to get results. We borrowed daftly to squander. We hoped that America would learn to resolve problems with sensible policies, not by throwing money and wishful thinking at them.

For example, what was the monetary cost of the Second Amendment to America? That is, whatever the forefathers had intended with the Second Amendment in their circumstances, as a direct consequence of this Amendment modern America was saturated with guns and gun users. We did not blame the forefathers for this condition. They probably assumed modern American leaders would be wise enough to make changes when their circumstances warranted them. Had they foreseen the situation in modern America, these wise men would have used the Second Amendment to forbid guns in the hands of the citizenry, for any reason. We were sure of this. (It seemed we trusted the sapience of American forefathers more than the natives.) Unfortunately they could not project their wisdom this far into the future and make up for the deficiencies now.

Be as it may, how much money did America spend dealing with crime and accidents involving guns, the share of gun-related incidents in court buildings, judges, attorneys, court personnel, law enforcement, police cars, helicopters, prisons, prison personnel, inmate upkeep, parole system, supplies and equipment, maintenance costs, medical costs, psychologists, pathologists, crime labs, the FBI, Treasury, etc., and whatever else was involved? What were these sums annually over (say) the last 25 years, also expressed on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of taxes paid? How did this data compare to the average of data from other industrial societies, as a measure of the excess here?

We thought if Americans had a true inkling of these (surely) astronomical out of pocket costs, the nation would awaken with a deep groan. It would be loud enough to quickly "wise up" the lawmakers, to shake the NRA, the lobby for gun producers--not hunters--from its stupor. Many responsible gun owners would volunteer to return their guns, to save the true cost of their hobby. So what was the sensible policy? Spending $30 billion more for additional law enforcement and prisons, or doing away with the Second Amendment and starting a real program of public education (of the true costs) and gun control?

Surely government policies must level the playing field for all citizens, for talent does not necessarily favor wealth. The fact that a few babies from the Bronx achieve success does not lead to the conclusion that the dream is there for everyone. Obviously it is not. Perhaps Colin Powell flourished primarily because he joined the Army, which, like sports, offers a level playing field to all citizens. Otherwise, the chance for many Bronx babies is perhaps a little better than winning the lottery. So unless government policies achieve fairness in all arenas, many talented babies will be wasted. Because of the substandard public education system in America, such policies are even more important. And by this yardstick, America is not a reciprocal democracy. That is, while American democracy underlines the importance of the citizens participating in the election process, for many citizens nothing changes after the elections. In this respect, other industrial societies may be more democratic to their citizenry.

Moreover, despite serious deficiencies at home, America often uses its laws to reap extra mileage for itself around the world. That is, America feels free to preach civic manners to other countries periodically. For example, in 1994, we admonished China for mistreating a few thousands of its dissidents in prison. In contrast, a huge segment of our population exists in lifelong oblivion, despite the laws. The Chinese could have responded with something like "OK, we punish some of our people bodily, which we should not, and you punish many of your citizens spiritually and through neglect, which you should not. It would appear that both of us have some ways to go before we can call ourselves civilized. Now, let us talk trade." Of course, the Chinese did not openly confront the United States, for they knew that only the richest and largest market in the world could presume to have morality and self-righteousness on its side. Surely the peoples of the world owe gratitude to America for its stance on human rights, but America must recognize that "human rights" encompasses much more than our official reaction to caning in Singapore or individual violations elsewhere.

Americans are generally optimistic and active searchers. This is good. What is not so good is their willingness to accept formula answers to complex questions, like the snake-oil remedies of the past that supposedly cured everything. This naive insistence that there be quick solutions to problems has repercussions. It is the primary reason why so many Americans are taken for a ride by schemers from almost all sectors, including politicians, ministers, TV networks, cosmetic industry, self-help gurus, astrologers, psychics, etc. Take this pill and be slimmer by 40 pounds, use this cream and become 10 years younger, call a psychic and improve your love life, call again and get a wonderful new job, vote for Mr. X and solve the country's problems, send $1,000 to Robert Tilton and reserve your seat in heavens. This is how life and various components of happiness are parceled out and sold.

While the society views cults as flaky, it regards many religious organizations as wholesome American institutions. The latter are suspect by the same pragmatic standards. For example, what kind of reasoning can lead to the conviction that mailing $1,000 to Robert Tilton automatically endears a person to God and reserves this person a spot in heavens? How is Tilton's group more credible than the Branch Davidians in Waco? In America, the distinction between a weird cult and a wholesome organization is often decided by the size of the congregation, for size decides the degree of political power the group can generate. People who look down condescendingly on some groups are themselves willing victims of other dubious groups.

There is a natural tendency in this country to look for quick solutions. The degree of reliance on astrologers and psychics, shrinks and counselors, self-help gurus and groups is amazing. People donate their homes, bank accounts, and themselves and their children to these groups. The founding fathers of some of these entities are foreigners who can barely speak English. Their messages are rejected even in their native countries. Yet, they flourish here. Of course, when it comes to swindle, Americans will play no second fiddle to anyone. A news story in Oct. 1992 informed the public about an attractive woman in California who built an empire by passing on to hundreds of her followers messages and wisdom from a warrior who died 2,000 years ago. The dead warrior supposedly took control of the woman's body and spoke through her. (It would seem strange that these supernatural events almost always occur in America.) The woman was apparently also endorsed by Linda Evans of Dynasty fame. This common American practice, especially on TV, of using people who enjoy name recognition as endorser of products, here no less than witchcraft, a phony one at that, about which they cannot know more than the average person, is nothing but institutionalized fraud. It is assumed that the public will see through these schemes and can protect itself. Unfortunately, many people become victims and bankrupt.

While America is getting increasingly technological, increasing numbers of Americans are relying on superstition. Presumably these people want to connect to the supernatural world, which may be the world of kismet and karma. Perhaps some imaginative souls watched too many episodes of "Star Trek" and other science fiction and lost their common sense. These groups should understand that their acute desire to search makes them ready victims for schemers with harebrained notions.

Induced by their enthusiastic gullibility, which America redefines as optimism, the American people make a hero of anyone who promises formula solutions. Since the 1980s, the airwaves have turned into cesspools of hotlines. A substantive share of the economic activity is being generated in a flea market on the air, in the form of a cornucopia of infomercials, on top of commercials. People either sell or buy the Brooklyn Bridge in this underbrush economy, generally as "self-help" guidance, the real national religion in America and a secular gospel of gung ho (Chinese for "working together") get-up-and-go. Apparently there are enough people with dashed dreams to go around for everyone.

We believe this system perpetuates what makes most Americans unhappy in the first place. It italicizes greed, success, and appearance as the most important prerequisites of happiness and fulfillment and dooms people to a perpetual rat race and self-enslavement. We have seen genuine smiles, laughter, and happiness in third-world populations who should have been severely depressed by these standards. Yet, unhappiness, as reflected in the rates of crime, suicide, wife/child abuse, divorce, alcoholism, drugs, promiscuity, infidelity, etc., is a rampant characteristic of especially America.

For those Americans who feel they should upgrade themselves, Phil McCombs ultimately asks the right question: "Who the heck wants to be all that effective, anyway?" ("Help Yourself; Let Life Happen," The Washington Post, C5, Jan. 19, 1995.) He also mentions a passage in Ecclesiastes: "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet the bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

Sometimes, we switch to the infomercial channels just to observe the enthusiasm of the audiences, the look on their faces. These faces project the same totally-involved expressions of guests on other shows, like Ricky Lake and Geraldo, and on other occasions, like football, baseball, hockey, golf, bowling, wrestling, etc. Add to them the faces of the psychics and their guests, the 900 number operators and their customers, Robert Tilton and his gang, etc. and you have the entire population of the United States, about 23 percent (1991) of whom have college education which is often specialized rather than general.

About half of these people do vote, for the superintendent of schools, the city, state, county legislators, mayors and governors, congresspeople, the president, on abortion. (We have not seen census data that breaks down the voters by educational attainment; it would be interesting.) The thing that disturbs us is the kind of candidates, issues, and techniques that would appeal to minds saturated with Tony Robbins, Robert Tilton, Ricky Lake, etc. regardless of education. Of course, Willie Horton ads produce results. Similar topics entertain these voters on the Ricky Lake Show and in the National Inquirer. In most other countries, a Willie Horton ad would doom the candidate who thought of it. In America, it may guarantee victory. This is a worrisome feature of American democracy.

He is wrong. The truth about America is the opposite of what Mr. Putnam concludes. Indeed, Americans join too many superficial groups. They are members of church groups, political parties, clubs, fraternities and sororities, various causes, something, anything that exclude more than include. A second problem is that Americans do not socialize with each other amiably enough. The daily mood and interaction between fellow citizens in most countries are festive, like at a country fair in United States which occurs once a year. If membership in organizations is declining, then America should rejoice, not alone but merrily, holding hands with other Americans, all Americans, including immigrants.

Michael Kazin, professor of history at American University, states "certainly individualism is stronger here than in most Western countries" in his book "The Populist Persuasion: An American History." He is wrong too. (All he has to do is read this book to see why.) The majority of American people are enslaved to a church and preacher. By this yardstick alone they can never qualify as individualistic. Dr. Kazin may be confusing "individualistic" with "searching."

After skimming these works, I came to another conclusion: native Americans should be careful postulating profound cultural conclusions about America, for they may only see what their American lenses allow them to see. This wisdom also applies to Charles Murray's "The Bell Curve." Surely it should not "ignite a new debate over race, intelligence and class," as Tom Morganthau of Time warns.

The IQ scores are a measure of the ability to think in structures, to focus. Western education trains people so, probably adding to their IQs. Instead of debating IQ scores, America should improve its public education system and the conditions in which most impoverished people live in inner cities. The IQ scores must reflect these conditions too. Moreover, I met clever Saudis who, I believe, could run circles around many high-IQ individuals here, though they would probably flunk our IQ tests. And some of the brightest minds in America got us the Vietnam War and a $4 trillion debt a decade later. Our public education system is in shambles, as also many major programs. We have the worst social statistics in the industrialized world. In view of these facts:

a) either the IQ scores are irrelevant, or

b) the American political system does not attract the most competent minds, or

c) the IQ scores have nothing to do with why some--many?--people get elected or become successful in America, or

d) the IQ scores have nothing to do with how issues are decided, especially in the Congress.

Starting with the positive, if indeed people with high IQs do rule the American political scene, then perhaps America would do better with less-intelligent leaders with superior common sense, for apparently high IQ scores conflict with the latter. Unfortunately, common sense can be judged accurately in retrospect, especially for leaders who became leaders presumably through their IQs.

If IQ scores are relevant, then given America's track record on a number of social fronts it may be that conditions b, c, and/or d render IQ irrelevant. If so, then America has more important things to debate than IQ. How can the latter be true? Many variables contribute to success, including luck. Surely the level of education (i.e., public education) and the average IQ of the constituents also play a role as to why people get elected, why some people become successful in America. For example, has Tony Robbins, this former fire-walker, reached success through his IQ--whatever it is--or the gullibility of his followers? How did Jim Bakker dominate the televangelist scene for so many years? Because of his high IQ, inner goodness and high morals, the quality of his Christianity? These examples raise a bigger question. What if special interest groups, lobbies, campaigns, TV, substandard education, etc. have polluted the American environment so that now the system can generate as leaders mostly political Jim Bakkers, but with some exceptions? Is this thesis farfetched? Perhaps, if America can explain why the public rates politicians as low as they do lawyers. Could it be that because many politicians are lawyers, surrounded by lawyers?

Turning to IQ scores, John Sununu can see his way through complex conundrums and he has succeeded in the political arena. But this does not say that therefore all politicians share his IQ. Indeed, his IQ had probably nothing to do with why he became a governor, for obviously people with lower IQs also get elected. And even in his case, many of his views on Crossfire seemingly contradict his IQ. This is easily explained. Presumably his mind can find the one billiard ball out of 12 that is lighter or heavier than the rest by weighing them only 3 times. But his mind will also defend the view that the minimum wage is fair as is, at $4:25 per hour.

What is the connection? There is none, and this is the point. The "billiard balls" is a tough but solvable problem. With regards to the minimum wage, Mr. Sununu is not solving a puzzle; he is merely expressing an opinion, perhaps a bias, derived from his preconditioning or something, but NOT from his IQ. In other words, IQ scores have nothing to do with whether or not $4:25 is fair, if America should send soldiers to Vietnam, outlaw guns, buy more stealth bombers.

Given adequate IQ, whatever that may be, the individuality of the person may be the more crucial ingredient for a leader. For it decides to what extent this person involves his or her heart in the decisions of the brain. The brain may want to spend more on defense; the heart may vote to spend less on defense and more on education, children, people. So if the republicans want a huge tax cut and the democrats want a targeted smaller cut, this is not a clash of IQs. It is a clash of values, views, personalities, and common sense. It may be that common sense does not function without the heart.

The IQ is probably directly relevant for Einstein, John Malone, Bill Gates, an inventor, a grandmaster, a puzzle solver. But being smart in one arena does not guarantee competence in another arena. How "smart" would Einstein, Gary Kasparov, or Ms. Savant be as president? Moreover, together with his high IQ Einstein had also phenomenal imagination, which is not easy to test. But what if high IQ (i.e., superior focus) without imagination is actually a sign of general incompetence? It is conceivable that a mind that is geared to solving complex but concrete problems is also attuned to reject real-life problems with nebulous dimensions. This person's logic may be inclined to substitute impromptu opinions to be quickly done with such a flaky puzzle.

Lawyers, who are notoriously an ambitious group, are better situated in America to run for elective office. They are also pragmatic people who are trained to deal with immediate and concrete problems and hurdles, and to WIN. They might not function well as philosophers, ideologues, visionaries, which government leaders often must be, in situations where there is no immediate victory or glory. These distinctions themselves are nebulous. While everyone has goals, plans, expectations, dreams and visions, everyone would not qualify as "visionary." So how does one spot a visionary, except perhaps retrospectively?

A scholar also trained as a lawyer should be superior to a scholar or a lawyer, though the relevancy of this for capable leadership is also not clear. Perhaps Lincoln became a great president not because he was a lawyer but because he was a visionary. That he had also legal training may have helped him with mundane decisions, such as how to get reelected. But his mark on history, the Civil War, his vision and implementation of the process that freed (all of) America from the institution of slavery, was too grandiose and daring for a mere lawyer. (Lawyers are trained not to dare a question if they cannot anticipate the answer; imagine them "daring" a civil war with an unpredictable, perhaps catastrophic, outcome.)

There will always be many gray areas about what IQ scores really represent, how relevant they are. They may be vaguer than astrology or psychic powers. People who want to attribute some sort of superiority to high IQ should remember that the "Unabomber," Ted Bundy, and Dr. Frankenstein were not idiots. The IQ is blended with so many genetic and other potentials in the person, and the environment and circumstances exogenously, that no one can know if it will manifest as superiority or inferiority. If a person with an average IQ becomes a counselor who helps children, and a high IQ individual turns into a Unabomber, who is the "superior" person? If the world were a jury, how many brilliant people could claim superiority to Mohammed Ali, who can hardly read, and be convincing? It would seem that the entire wisdom of the West serves only one real purpose: inventing self-accolades.

I felt some pride that I did not need superfluous heros or role models, nor trickle-down glory. To me, nationalities (tribalism) and team sports did not belong in the Olympics, also to avoid self-defeating exhilaration and misguided nationalism: a nation of 260 million people with 44 gold medals, the most earned by a country, would still be inferior to a nation of 18 million people with 10 gold medals. Was the old East Germany, that won more medals than West Germany, the better culture for women? So what did the medals say about a nation? Nothing. Alas, the world had too many Hitler clones.

My thoughts turned to another direction. I did not understand why professional wrestling was so popular in America, a culture that seemingly honored honest achievement and performance, when wrestling glorified phony performance, staged violence, and unmanly--e.g., three on one--conduct. It had to be the worst thing on TV, seemingly very un-American; yet, it was so very American. OK, the wrestlers were making lots of money, but why were the audiences addicted to this phony athletics? This was no freestyle wrestling; these wonderful role models--perhaps with Simpson "big baby" genes--demonstrated how to relish real or phony sadism.

I could reason only one explanation. Americans did not always cheer performance. Cheering in America ultimately represented only one thing: it anticipated, indeed demanded, victory, regardless how victory came--for otherwise wrestling did not make sense. (The other explanation, that the average American "loved" watching three guys beat up one guy, seemed un-American.) Many Americans apparently felt an irresistible urge to be "Number 1" in something. If Carl Lewis brought genuine victory, this was fine; if Hulk Hogan paraded phony victory and emotions, this too was fine. Sometime in 1976, I thought I understood why America had pursued the Vietnam War with such possessed determination, how devastated America really was over the way the war had ended, why the embargo . . .

I perceived parallels between the cheering directed at performance or victory, idle cheering on TV shows, and the cheering in political conventions. Apparently Americans loved any excuse to cheer and applaud; presumably cheering jived with being optimistic. On the other hand, if optimism was "a tendency to expect the best possible outcome," it seemed that American optimism operated also in a vacuum, like belief or faith. For example, obviously it was foolish--not optimistic--for a student to expect an "A" in an exam for which he or she did not prepare. Similarly, the cure for AIDS or cancer would come through lots of research and testing, not by cheering or optimism per se. After the shock of the Sputnik, President Kennedy had mobilized American scientific community and resources to overcome Russian supremacy in space. This had been a tangible and sensible plan, not wishful thinking, and America eventually rejoiced. However, it was also true that many American leaders got roaring applause by merely substituting wishful thinking for a plan. This seemed especially popular during conventions.

The conventions were about electing the presidential candidate of the party, potentially a pivotal occasion for any nation. Yet, there were more substance and dignity--and beauty--in Miss. America pageant. Obviously America faced serious and persistent problems, some situations deteriorating. Surely this leader perceived them. The convention was a wonderful forum for this leader to outline to the nation his well-thought-out plans, policies, formulas, solutions, something to warrant optimism and earn the cheering. Instead, party leaders relied on the momentum of idle roar to elevate them to the top, as if problems would not dare to continue if only their candidate won. To achieve the roar and the momentum, the conventions capitalized on the "We are Number 1" frenzy. Wild applause after wild applause followed boasts of "we are the greatest; we will solve all our problems; our education system will be second to none; our future will be better than our past; our economy will be the Carl Lewis of economies," etc. (Americans had hated Mohammed Ali for similar claims about himself, though he was on top.)

Obviously all Americans, regardless of party affiliation, wanted these results. The problem was not in the definition of the desires; it was in devising sensible policies that would achieve these ends. It seemed American optimism saw a problem vanish, a desired end already in grasp, simply because a leader underlined this desire. If there was a formula at all it was a simple one: reduce taxes by 15 percent, capital gains by 50 percent; don't touch entitlements but increase defense expenditures. Somehow these steps would jerk the economy to a 4 percent growth rate, reduce the rate of inflation by 2 percent, increase savings and investment, create more higher-paying jobs, make everyone better off, and erase the deficit and pay off the debt. With the economy doing better--by faith--there would be no need for cuts in discretionary spending. Presumably education and other problems would improve on their own, the gates to paradise would open. (One wonders how problems emerged in the first place when solutions were this easy and obvious.)

In short, the plan consisted of a listing of the desires, held together by faith, instead of concrete and sensible policies that would replace faith and work on the desired goals. No leader who deserved to be a leader would have dared to offer such a haphazard--full of faith--plan but for the fact that American optimism often favored the bombast who promised much and offered the simplest formula.

When I was attending grade school in Turkey, every morning we had chanted about all the wonderful things in the then 650 years of Turkish history that made Turkey the greatest nation on earth to us. Then, we were old enough to reason that chanting alone would not bring this about, that the Turkish Empire was a thing of the past, gone like lost virginity. These séances of idle nationalism had been melancholic optimism, wistful boasting, and frustrated cheering. We had substituted enthusiastic wishfulness for optimism; our cheers had been mere noise. Turkey continued its downslide, for unlike the national sense of mission that united Japan after WWII, every Turk wanted to be an island onto himself as conditions deteriorated. The winners were happy and celebrated life, the losers hoped for another Kemal Atatürk. As if he were a wild card in a deck of cards, one that would eventually pop and solve all of Turkey's problems.

When Bülent Ecevit became the Prime Minister in the mid-1970s, the Turks had high hopes, especially after he invaded Cyprus. They felt the same with the military ruler Gen. Kenan Evren, but he fizzled out too. It dawned on them that karma had a finger in history too. Karma had helped Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to greatness and then watched them make a mockery of themselves. It had also lifted Lincoln, Ataturk, FDR, and perhaps Churchill, "The American Caesar," de Gaulle, Tito, and Deng Xiaoping but with some affection. It had paved the path for Gandhi to join these esteemed few from another direction as also Mandela, and even Mohammed Ali. Others like Kennedy could claim membership by charm and well-spoken words uttered in an aura of invented Camelot, while America could not decide if Eisenhower deserved a spot there too. So fickle. What if "North" had lost the Civil War? How would Lincoln be remembered then? What if Turkey had lost the Liberation War after WWI, Ali had gone to Vietnam, Mandela had not spent 27 years in prison and became president, like Mugabe in Zimbabwe?

How could people judge if a leader destined for greatness would become a Hitler or a Lincoln of his time? It seemed very strong nationalism could invent a Hitler, passive cultures could tolerate a Mao, hatred or fanatical beliefs could trigger a McCarthy, Helms, or Buchanan, sheepish religiosity a Jones, Bakker, or Tilton, etc. In other words, people and their state of mind, as much as the environment, culture, and conditions, had something to do with the type of leaders a nation got at a given time. In retrospect, the society blamed these leaders if they were bad; yet, people had made them into what they became. The Germans, one of the smartest and most accomplished cultures had adored and cheered Hitler as if he were God, perhaps more so. In their frenzy, they had allowed him to rule like an Idi Amin in Uganda.

In his book "Character Above All," Richard Reeves concludes that maybe more important than presidential character is the character of the American people. This conclusion may be broadened to say "maybe more important than the character of any leader is the character of his nation." (In his article dated June 27, 1996, Hamza Efe, an editor of the Hürriyet, a major paper in Turkey, states something similar: "Uluslar, layIk olduklarI yöneticilerle yönetilirler"--nations are led by leaders they deserve--with regards to bad leadership and human rights violations in Turkey.) Ultimately the people decide their leader, how he or she rules, and what impact this country has on the world. The ramification of this conclusion is more profound than Mr. Reeves may have envisioned. For this provides a more realistic basis to the definition of a "superior" culture. Many nations who think of themselves as "civilized" and "superior" indeed may not qualify, though some nations that are labeled "backward" or even "savages" by them may.

One criterion for being "civilized" may be the degree of harm a nation does on other people. By this measure, the Canadians are probably the most civilized and superior people among the advanced cultures, though a few northern European countries, and perhaps Switzerland, would qualify too, as also American Indians. The size of the population, or the age of a nation, is not a factor. Although China has about ten times the population of Japan, historically the Chinese have been much more civilized to others, though not to themselves, certainly not to their "bound feet" women. The "Dowry System" and factional atrocities disqualify also India, the largest democracy, in spite of Gandhi. Religious brutality in the past filters out Spain and Portugal.

All records are eventually broken. One can argue that preoccupation with being "We are Number 1" is the surest and fastest way of becoming Number 2 or less eventually. This wisdom applies to people as well as nations. This is how Hitler was humbled and through him his nation, ditto Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain, Turkey, England, Japan, Russia. Looking at the old videos of Mohammed Ali, who would have thought that he would be humbled this way, and yet still be "The Greatest," now by the dignity that emanates from him. That he would be much more by being less than when he was the "Champ."

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We saw television the first time when we arrived in America in 1958. After six months in Lakewood, we left for Germany. The novelty of this contraption impressed us so much that we practically overlooked the fact that, until then, we had been happy also without a TV. We had been so concerned with so many things about our life that we did not perceive the significance of why the TV was so essential in America and inessential elsewhere. Indeed, our life in Lakewood would have been tantamount to solitary confinement without our TV. However, if I had a TV in Germany, it might have interfered with my social life. So I did not miss it there. The German people watched only the news and special (cultural) events on TV. It played a minor role and apparently this is what the Germans wanted. There was no such option in America, and this was good after I returned, for I had to learn English.

The airwaves belonged to the American people. Yet, the Government had discharged this most important conduit of information, the "Information Highway," freely, or almost freely, to private operators, as if it were granting mineral, water, lumber, grazing rights, like signing over the Yellowstone to a mining and lumber company. The shortsightedness of this practice appalled us. Then the Government let a sieve, the First Amendment, be the only vehicle of regulation, pardon self-regulation. The networks were probably dumbfounded over this unbelievable luck. They started to design their profit scheme: commercials, interrupted by programs.

Since the commercials dominated everything, the news, movies, programs, would be proglottic and segmented. Interrupting the news every five minutes or so meant the news on TV would become disparate headlines. If the news about the death toll in Vietnam could be suspended for bathroom tissues, priorities had to become lopsided. Since the time that could have been allocated to more depth and continuity was given to commercials, people's understanding of the world became more opinionated than informed. Fragmented attention span meant audiences were being conditioned to cater to headlines and look for quick solutions and answers. "Mr. Vice President, we have only 20 seconds left; how would you summarize what we are doing in Vietnam?" "We are doing the right thing." "Thank you, time is up, now this from your stations." By interrupting movies like Casablanca every ten minutes to talk three minutes about women with yeast infections, Dodge Poleras, Campbell's soups, baby diapers, etc. in one breath, the networks probably castrated America of emotions and feelings. In any other country, these programs would have been boycotted.

We wondered if the networks followed "Freedom of Speech" or they were allowed to actually define it in practice, motivated by a single thought: "popular," as in "profit." Single-minded preoccupation with money led to a universal premise that any activity that yielded higher profits was ultimately always good for America. Of course, any cost-benefit study that highlighted only the benefits would conclude this, especially when the benefits were visible costs elusive. It was not until several decades later the Government had an inkling that something was not right, that the commercial TV--well, not so much the commercials--could indeed be harming America. Restricted by a myopic vision, it began to ask only two questions, as if all else were perfect: 1) were the kids watching too much TV, and 2) did the TV programs and movies showed too much sex and violence? Then the Government indulged in its favorite pastime: a spate of insipid hearings. Indeed, these hearings served another purpose: they veiled procrastination. Solutions for critical problems could be passed on to another administration, generation.

Instead of blaming itself for allowing this to happen in the first place, the government tried to blame the networks and movie producers. The accused parties assured the Government that they had kept their word, meticulously: no one screwed on TV. No one pointed out that the entire population was being screwed. The hearings ended, as usual with no ending. The reason? The Government ran smack against always the same thing: the First Amendment. Now it could do only one thing: beg the producers to "please try to reduce sex and violence." Then, everyone paraded the wonders of the American Constitution: "the most flexible document the world had ever seen."

What amazed us even more was that the American people put up with the commercials. Surely they did not like everything they watched interrupted continuously. They were being manipulated, yet there was no attempt to change this. To us, the answer was simple: boycott the products. That is, the lifeblood of network TV was the Nielsen Ratings. Anything that threw the ratings off balance would force the entire commercial system into chaos. Then, the networks would either collapse or improve. For example, if the audience, even a minor but significant percentage, watched a program but then refused to purchase the products shown on that program, the following things would happen. For the first time, consumers would assume the dominant role in the triumvirate consisting of the consumers, networks, and advertisers. This shift in power would be the network executives' worst nightmare, for the relationship between the networks and advertisers would soon be in chaos. No one would be sure of what (say) a 21.4 percent Nielsen rating, even if correct, really meant: potential customers or "turned off" customers.

How could the system be fixed? Consumers, through a meaningful Government agency, and perhaps watchdog entities like the Consumer Union, Ralph Nader, etc., would enforce two objectives. One, the news and news programs, the lifeblood of democracy, would be shown without interruptions, as they are in every other country. The networks would air them as a public service, for having the airwaves that belonged to the American people freely at their disposal. Two, the networks would be allowed a specific number of minutes of commercials per hour, and only at the beginning and end of programs. Otherwise, the products involved would face a boycott. Even the quality of the commercials and programs would improve. Mind-numbing hammer-and-chisel commercials, shows accompanied by incongruent and monotonous beat, designed to catch attention, would fade away.

There are other serious problems with American TV. Except for rare situations involving a national emergency, nothing is deemed important enough to interrupt the commercials. The environment is so lavish that hosts of some shows earn $100 million a year. These lottery-like remunerations introduce an artificial scale of how apparently the society values work. The networks may argue this is capitalism at work, risks are involved, that therefore the successful shows deserve the pay. Not so. A TV show is not like a manufacturing plant that provides long-term jobs and livelihood for a town. Ultimately, the society can care less if, for example, Roseanne survives another season.

Moreover, if the term "role model" has any meaning at all, the enormous pay scales must influence people's expectations of what they are worth and how they should go about achieving it. Serious education and hard work may be seen increasingly as irrelevant or last-resort motivations. Inducements to hustle, rather than earn, a living may be also a consequence. These side effects are already taking place. The late night audiences are bombarded by dubious situation commercials promising "get-rich" and "success" formulae. People cannot trust the recognizable faces on the networks to debate these conditions, for David Brinkley, et al. are employed by the networks. They are direct beneficiaries. So there are no meaningful debates.

The current system is absurd. America is forced to tolerate conditions of information flow that is unique to the United States. A built-in escape clause supposedly offers a choice: "you can switch the dial and watch something else," when all channels, but for CSPAN and PBS, do the same thing. By this reasoning, America can also allow drug dealers at street corners and argue "you can pass by without purchasing."

Why was a documented First Amendment necessary in modern America? We were curious because it seemed that after having documented it, America had been unable to live with it. The European countries did not have a First Amendment, that we were aware of. They did not incessantly talk about freedom of speech, religion, etc. Apparently no one doubted these freedoms. People said, wrote, did things common sense allowed and that was that. In America, the First Amendment became an issue almost daily. If not the First, then the Second, Tenth, etc.

For example, by still adhering to an outdated Second Amendment America had effectively deactivated common sense. It had turned the country into an armed camp, divided its people, sacrificed millions of its citizens to crime and accidents, incurred enormous costs on medical care, the legal system, etc., not to mention the alienation and fear. It had done this because there was a documented formal amendment that America could not get rid of. Could any document that contained such an egregious amendment be called "the most wonderful and flexible blueprint the world has ever seen"? Was America inculcating or kidding itself, putting on a happy face while struggling in a straightjacket? Other countries probably considered themselves fortunate for not having such a constitution around their necks. By not anticipating the etymologies of their wisdom, had the American forefathers doomed the country as they were creating it?

The noble intentions of the First Amendment stood out. However, we were concerned that by definition the First Amendment came bundled with abuse, especially in the American arena where profiteers were in charge of the airwaves. That is, while the First protected freedom of expression and beliefs, it also protected the freedom to mislead, for those so inclined. Nothing in the First Amendment said that schemers could not and would not use it as a legal sanction to instigate fraudulent enterprises. So if a crooked preacher started a TV program and bilked millions of people of their savings over several decades, nothing could be done about it. Indeed, he was protected. There seemed something oxymoronic about such a peremptory amendment.

We perceived a paradox in the American system. The way the American Government dealt with tangible and intangible sources of damage. A few bad cans of tuna or a small epidemic immediately alerted all resources. The response could not be better or swifter. No other country handled these types of problems as efficiently as America. In contrast, if the source was something that affected the mind and soul, and then the pocketbook, people were left entirely to their own defenses. In the case of the tangible abuse, America was not hand-tied by an amendment; otherwise, it was and could not deal with the situation. So unless the citizens saw the light on their own, the amendment practically guaranteed returns to almost any fraudulent scheme.

America used the law as the arbitrator between the abuser and abused. In fact, if the fear of law did not deter, the law was only a reactive and after-the-fact measure. Therefore, the legal system in America did not act as an impartial referee that discouraged abuse and protected people; its primary role was "picking up the pieces," for this is when the system entered the scene. This meant reliance on the law to regulate conduct, more often than not, was doomed to fail.

The weakness of a primarily law-based system became even more obvious in situations when abuse occurred under the First Amendment. When abuse was intangible and elusive, it was practically impossible to show categorically a case of abuse until long after the damage, if then. The authorities conducted investigations, but there was seldom a satisfactory recourse for the abused after the fact. In all these cases, there was one consistent element: justice and arbitration came always after the damage was already done. So by relying on the legal system to regulate conduct and abuse, America only provided a soft shoulder for people to cry on, while they paid lawyers what was left of their money to seek justice. To be sure, in most instances people could not even collect damages. For example, Jim Bakker's religious empire came to an end not because people saw through the scheme but because a prostitute squealed on him. How many millions of people had donated how many millions of dollars for how many years until this karmic accident? Can these people be ever reimbursed? How often can people expect to catch fraudulent enterprises so easily, if they do not use their common sense?

We thought the potential for abuse was not unique to America. How did other countries deal with opposing rights and situations? Could they provide an example? Other governments were obviously also aware of the potential for abuse and the conflict between regulation and freedom. However, they dealt with them from a completely different angle: through education, not legal means. For example, the TV in capitalist and democratic Germany was not left entirely in the hands of the private sector, not because Germany did not believe in freedom. On the contrary, the German Government viewed the potential value of information on TV, and the rights of its citizens, as much too important to be left to the discretion of people motivated only by profit. This meant abuse and nonsense that appealed to the lowest common denominator in America was effectively blocked right from the start.

The German public, through their government, had a say about the content and substance of the programs on TV. Although the variety was not as rich as in USA, this was alright, for the German people did not want to make TV a major part of their lives. So they could socialize, go to cafes, meet with other people, and do other fun and purposeful things. Students still learned the old-fashioned way: by studying, through homework, not gimmicks. Television supplemented their learning by quality programs. The movies were about the Sturm und Drang of human situations. They refrained from depicting mindless scenes of how mercilessly one human being could treat another. The German TV also did not observe the obscene habit of periodically interrupting the news, interviews, and programs to sell something; the commercials were shown at the beginning and at the end. There were no phony public service slogans like "Channel 7 and Toyota, on your side for education," as Channel 7 in Washington. Shows like the overrated "Where is Carmen Sandiego" would be shown on German TV as a comedy or a documentary about how things should not be taught, not after kindergarten. German students learned geography by studying. Since they knew it much better than American students, American technology obviously entertained, taught less.

In short, the Europeans dealt with potential abuse indirectly through substantive and informative programming complementing their excellent public education. They relied on the premise that educated and informed people would be less likely to become victims of fraudulent abuse and brainwash, and educated people would be less likely to victimize others by fraudulent means. So they did not have to worry about their airwaves becoming a conduit for "Hustlers and Suckers," as in America, effectively blocking abuse before it could start. Their subtle First Amendment worked; our formal First did not.

Our review showed no overlap between the American and European approaches to the airwaves. However, we saw a possible compromise. It would depend on the American Government, not touch the First Amendment, and over time, reduce frauds committed under the protection of the First. The premise of our compromise rested on the fact that the Government had virtually given away to private operators the airwaves that really belonged to the American people. Therefore, the American Government owed the American people a compromise for taking this liberty. Meanwhile the TV networks, including the cable channels, owed the Government a big favor for this unbelievable generosity. So they would be persuaded also to compromise. The joint compromise would work as follows:

a) Commercials. There would be no commercials in the news. For other programs, commercials would be allowed only in the beginning and at the end. The networks will argue that people would not watch commercials placed this way. People in other countries do. It is time that Americans enjoyed some of their freedoms.

b) Regulation of Time. The TV networks qualify as public utilities, on the basis of the type of service they provide, and the fact that they use a public domain for their enterprise. Therefore, "rate base" and "cost of service" types of references that are used to regulate public utilities can be used also for TV networks, to decide how many minutes of commercials would be shown per hour of program time.

c) Public Hour. The Government would purchase one hour air time per week for a "Public Hour" on the Public Broadcasting System. The program would be aired at a suitable time to attract a large audience. The topics would include anything and everything, like tests of people who claim psychic powers. Scientists from different fields would talk about other topics, such as male pattern baldness, transplants, vitamins, etc., to balance the exaggerated claims that dupe thousands of people on TV. Entities like the Consumer Union, Ralph Nader, etc. would be invited to discuss any topic. This hour would be public education, not regulation. Education and information flow in this form should not be delegated to the whims of TV producers. The Public Hour may become the most popular program on the air, going a long way toward renewing the trust between the American people and their government.

The headline news "we are number 15 (of 16) in math" periodically does not fully describe the real differences. For example, America would learn about the uniform quality of German, French, etc. public schools. Videos of the school environment, classroom ambiance, sample test questions in history, geography, languages, math, etc. that 10 to 16-year-old youths are expected to master in other countries would be shown uninterrupted to all leaders, educators, parents, and students. The results may cause severe depression initially, but America does need a shock treatment to jerk from its stupor.

A comprehensive reference like this would give America a more realistic inkling of its relative standing, and force teacher unions, etc. to reconsider their true purpose. Union or no union, unqualified teachers would be released from the system, even if they are popular, on the grounds that education is not baby-sitting. They would be replaced by people with a Ph.D. or master's in their respective fields, at a higher starting pay. Competent supervisors would oversee their progress in class and rate them.

This plan is more substantive than the one proposed by President Clinton in 1996. By promising a $1,500 tax credit to people to encourage them to attend two years of community college, his plan provides an incentive to individuals to catch up on their education, which they should have received free in high school. However, the plan skirts the real problem: public education. "A problem evaded now is a crisis invited later" said Dr. Kissinger.

It seemed only America made movies then. Within weeks of their release, they arrived in Turkey. We did not miss a thing, saw many movies twice. If there was nothing new, sometimes we went to see Turkish movies. Like other Mediterranean people, the Turks are a passionate lot. They like melodramatic embroidery and tragic content in their movies. A good ending usually meant broken love or death and heartbreaking sobs and gushing tears. We could not imagine what a bad ending would be like.

After we came home to Samsun for the summer, we went to the movies on some nights. On other nights, Parents got together with friends and took us to open-air restaurant-clubs. The food was exquisite and there was always a small band that played Latin music. The lighting was arranged carefully, also on some trees, to avoid glare and to create interesting shadows and reflections. We practiced Tango, Bolero, Rhumba, Mambo, Samba, etc. on a patio around a small pool, surrounded by families sitting at tables. We had about a dozen friends with whom my sisters and I frequented, also going to summer camp together.

The movie theaters that operated in the summer, Ferah (Lofty, Airy) our favorite, were almost like outdoor clubs. A special section a little to the side was cordoned off from the rest of the audience. The ground there was covered by a layer of limestone chips, to prevent slippage and to steady the tables and chairs. We had always one or two tables reserved for us and our friends. This is where we had our dinner before the movie, usually grilled meat dishes and "pilav." We did not just enjoy American movies but participated in them. Even after several decades, I could still recall many scenes from many movies, including the facial expressions of the actors. We enjoyed the "kovboy" and war movies perhaps more than American audiences, because we were also seeing a different world.

After we arrived in America, the same movies did not appeal to us as much. I began to understand why not. The movies were playing mental tricks on us. In our innocent days, we had romanticized and mythologized the laconic cowboy for the simplicity of his life, his focus on only the essentials, the endless beauty and freedom of his environment, like the Monument Valley. Now we were in America. In the old days, the Monument Valley and our imagination had shrouded these people in a cocoon of romantic illusion. Now our focus changed to how many Westerners were shown in the movies: often as acrid beery nomads who talked in syllables. They were not so much "silent strong" loners but unsociable loners. We could see the lineage between the people in the movies and many of our neighbors.

Many Westerns, even supposedly the best of them, did not just tell a story and entertain. They were bundled with hidden messages, values, and morality of a Puritan utopia. The stories were invariably about white hats against black hats and, predictably, victory of good over evil. The incorruptible chief white hat always won and got the girl. Still the bad guys were bad but they were also white Americans. So they were not denigrated; they died like men. We had a problem with the other formula. In many Westerns, the few remaining Indians were being used for target practice to make a hero of a John Wayne. They were savages who deserved to die, as inconsequentially as flies, as long as John Wayne came out a hero.

I could think of only one old Western, "Broken Arrow," in which the Indian was treated respectfully, equal to the white man. This movie also showed a few quaint scenes of life in a village, qualifying the Indian as a member of the human species. Of course, the Indian role was also played by a handsome white hero. In almost all other cases, the Indian was either a savage or a cartoon. We understood who made them that way and how. While portraying wholesomeness and apple-pie on the surface, America apparently enjoyed kicking people who were already on their knees. The Monument Valley, Indians, everything served to only one purpose: building a white American hero. Presumably the hero would then bring increasing revenues at the box office. Everything else was irrelevant.

We could not be sure that the directors were not intentionally poisonous. After all, the Midnight Express had been entirely fated, making a mockery of the Turks to appease a few Greek-at-heart Greek-Americans. Hollywood could have produced the image of the American Indian in "Dances with Wolves" aeons ago, if it had wanted to show the Indians as humans, innocent people caught and defeated by progress. Presumably they would have done this if America had insisted on it. Creating phony heros and pampering the white supremacist illusions of the audiences were more appealing. People came and saw the heros dominate their environment the way they wished they could theirs. Already in the 1960s, we switched the channel if we saw a movie belittle another culture and then harangue about ethics.

Finally, there appeared a new kind of Western, the way Westerns should have been made all along. The director was an Italian: Sergio Leone. His Westerners were not Puritan puppets. There were no moral messages, good/bad guys, gentlemen, ladies. This left humans, their environment, how they coped: a story, not a Bible class. No more good versus evil, white versus black-hat. The good were not destined to win. People had no names; it did not matter if they had. Boy did not get the girl; women were raped occasionally; some of them wanted to be taken to the barn; dogs and kids were kicked sometimes. People entered the story out of nowhere and, if they survived, they left that way too. This was not artificial hero building; no invented role models. The hero, who could never be a role model, emerged, not all good, not all bad, not Puritan. Even flies were not discriminated against. They played their part very good.

The movies received tremendous applause and American producers were caught off-guard. Foreigners were making better Westerns than they. So, thank God, they stopped making stupid Westerns and started to imitate some of the Italian ideas. Most flopped, but at least they had Clint Eastwood to rely on. Then, he too failed, alas for another cheap Hollywood trick. After annihilating masses of people over decades, finally he wanted to redeem his soul too, in "The Unforgiven": hypocrisy masquerading as religiosity and nobility.

I was reminded of a few older Westerns. In one particular movie, "The Fastest Gun in the West," or something like that, Glen Ford wasted one hour and fifty minutes struggling with his conscience: "should he put on his gun belt and fight someone who was asking for it?" If the end had not been predictable, these phony contortions may have meant something. So instead of building excitement, the story frustrated. Of course, he did shoot, with a few minutes to go. But since the director made such an issue of the inner struggle, his message to the audience was that ultimately primitive solutions would always dominate in America. By then, I had been ready to shoot Ford myself, my insides screaming "fight the SOB and do your thinking after the damn movie."

The best Western? "Once Upon a Time in the West." A good old Western? "Veracruz." A bad one? "Shane." A meaningful TV series? "That was the Week that Was."

The war movies painted a more elaborate picture. They started with a canvas of a sanctimonious America. After the late 1960s this already conflicted with the real image of America, in view of Vietnam. All right, we were seeing old history; America was this way then. The hero was pampered throughout the movie. We saw his hometown, parents, brothers and sisters, his sweetheart, and a few heartwarming vignettes from his past, etc. until he (e.g., William Holden) was killed by the other side. When we were in Turkey, for a moment, the death of this hero felt like the loss of a family member.

But we did not feel the same way later. Although masses of people were killed also on the other side, their deaths meant nothing. Everyone cried for the fallen hero, as if the demise of a single American hero always meant much more than any number of, presumably inconsequential, other people. This effect was achieved cleverly. While the heros were being pasted to our hearts, people on the other side were treated as if they were a subspecies of humans. They had no hometown, parents, wives, children, nothing. If someone from the other side had a presence, this too served an ulterior motive: when he was finally defeated, the hero looked larger than life. Hollywood and America, more than any other country, denigrated other cultures to manufacture heros for home audiences. Even very eloquent movie critics overlooked this very consequential deficiency of American movies: one-sided glorification as a form of discrimination.

We thought this is probably how the Indians came to be "Savages," Japanese "Japs," Germans "Krauts," Arabs "Ayrabs," etc. in America. By then, we already knew that in this nation of immigrants many members of the white majority looked down on people who were different. Hollywood could not have been blind to this. By degrading other cultures, the movie producers were not only capitalizing on discrimination, they were fueling it.

It seemed to us the American people had a way of moving in and out of movie images and real life. The heroic parts a hero played somehow became real credentials by which this hero then projected himself on the national scene. That is, people who never took part in a war became real war heros in America, who then condemned the people who refused to go to Vietnam. Even more absurd, the public sided with the phony heros.

The American public has not appreciated the fact that morally it was very easy to go to WWII, very difficult to go to Vietnam. Many who refused to participate in the latter would have volunteered in WWII, and many who took part in WWII may have refused to go to Vietnam. In line with lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials, sometimes courage is NOT following orders; it is standing by one's decent convictions, against all odds, as Mohammed Ali, surely no coward, demonstrated, why he became the most celebrated human being and a true role model around the world. It is incumbent on all leaders to make certain that before they ask their young people to die there is a cause important enough and defensible enough to die for. During the Vietnam war, the people who failed America were NOT the "draft dodgers."

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I was the first one in my family to become American. And my citizenship in 1969 came with the right to vote. Putting a check mark on a card was easy; I wanted to understand the workings of the American political system first, how it really functioned beneath the "Sound and Light" show of the election process. Ever since Jack Kennedy had churned America with Camelot speeches, and some policies to that effect, it seemed all candidates running for public office felt they had to compete with him by adopting florid language to spice their visions of America. The wording fueled optimism. People felt better about themselves and America, and optimism helped them to see each presidential election as a fresh start to an even better future, as if from a clean slate. But underneath the euphoria, it seemed that problems were getting bigger in scope, depth, and number every four years.

The manuals and booklets I reviewed for citizenship presented a cozy picture of the American system. But reality seemed to contradict this image. To start with, the exorbitant sums needed for campaigns, and the way these funds were financed, hinted at a built-in corruption and corrosion in the system. That there were a few laws that supposedly discouraged blatant illegalities seemed as futile as gift-wrapping manure. The presidential candidates were scrutinized with some care, but otherwise anyone who became a leader by the existing system was suspect. In retrospect, some did better than others, but there was no way of judging a candidate beforehand. To succeed and survive, American leaders had to elicit funds, which meant they shook hands and made promises along the way. Therefore, what bills they would bring-and not bring--to the floor and how they would vote on particular issues was anyone's guess.

On May 26, 1996, the same paper (page 11) had a detailed map of Tansu Çiller's finances, including 23 sources of major assets in Turkey and five in U.S.A., the total in the neighborhood of perhaps billions (as in Dollars). Although Ms. Çiller was from a wealthy family, apparently her family's finances benefited when she was in power. This had been also a topic of outrage when Turgut Özal was the Prime Minister. Like the Salinas brothers in Mexico, obviously "service to the country" was not always the only reason why some people ran for elective office in Turkey. People being people, this was bound to be so also in America, though some of the excesses in this country were supposedly curbed. However, we were not sure that Teapot Dome dealings were a thing of the past. Agitated by the depressing news from Turkey, we were adamant that checks and balances flourished in our adopted country. The citizens owed to themselves to be informed about their system and leaders. And this is where public education and also the media came in.

We did not comprehend how the arm-wrestling matches between the executive and legislative branches alone could qualify as checks and balances. Since problems continued to fester, the built-in checks obviously worked only for the small stuff and power games, not for real problems. The media insisted on being only an audience, supposedly to remain impartial. They did a lot more in Turkey, though pundits there risked jail sentences for demanding reforms. Democracy in Turkey came a long way thanks only to the media, though checks and balances had still a long way to go because corruption and abuse of power were rampant. As far as we were concerned, there could be no reforms in a country in which the media behaved as self-serving gossipmongers. They could force reforms, by staying with major issues (e.g., campaign financing) until they were resolved. We were concerned that because of its commercial foundation, American media was geared to tabloid approach, jumping between "shocks of the day" in an unending array of shocks.

Obviously the electorate could not correct the system on its own every so many years. It had to weigh all sorts of issues and positions. Fine-tuning could not be done at long intervals. So without real reforms, it seemed American congressional elections (especially) were reduced to something like a choice of which godfather the voters could put on the board this time. Half the people who might have served as arbitrators no longer bothered to vote, leaving the future of America increasingly in the hands of special interest groups and single issue voters. Everyone knew this was happening, but no one, in this country of checks and balances, stayed with the topic, except for special interests. Lonely voices like Ralph Nader and Ross Perot could be easily overwhelmed by the system.

We also debated among ourselves how we might be able to enhance checks and balances, also the feasibility of America without the Congress. Unlike most countries, America was in a unique position to have real governors. So the idea of a Congress in addition seemed redundant, especially the 439 members of the lower house. I was not sure if the country might not be better off without this club, that the President and governors together might not achieve better results. With Congress, real campaign finance reforms were almost impossible to achieve. Even if reforms were enacted, people so inclined could still find ways of selling their votes or lining their pockets. Public financing and free TV time seemed to be only the first steps to real reform. Remedies like "full disclosure" did not sound convincing to us, that it would be necessarily "full," with hundreds of people receiving money from thousands of sources.

In contrast, keeping track of 50 governors and the President would be relatively easy, for the networks, papers, pundits and the citizenry. If the president and his cabinet could serve the entire nation, then surely these smart and capable governors and their structures could serve their states and also participate in national (e.g., foreign policy) decisions, assume some of the duties of the Congress. If the nation perceived more safety in numbers, it could keep the Senate, perhaps with some rule changes. But the members of the House seemed dispensable discretionary expenditures. (Provisions could be made for Guam, et al.) Surely their presence did not guarantee, nor enhance, the nation's well-being. The system would function more efficiently, the proceedings would be under brighter limelight, party and personal agendas would become subservient to national agenda, single-issue voters and special interest groups would (more likely) lose influence, the potential for corruption would diminish, as also bickering and gridlock, Americans would get to know their leaders and their voting records better, more people would likely participate in elections, and the nation would save a huge bundle. It was a debate.

Moreover, achievements in some sectors could not conceal, nor cancel, brewing problems elsewhere. Any adverse trend that eroded the foundation would have serious and long-term reverberations. They would be difficult to stop, even harder to reverse, for no healthy system would have allowed its public education system to deteriorate in the first place. Maintaining optimism was difficult under these circumstances, because we perceived built-in blocks to remedies. For example, given the situation in inner cities and resistance to change by the teachers' unions, all efforts by the administration and the Congress to improve education were inherently blocked, not that we perceived discernible effort. Utterances like "education president," or "our education system will be second to none," etc. meant nothing in this vacuum. We skipped the candidates who spoke in slogans.

After I returned from Saudi Arabia at the end of 1980, I was in a serious mood about the election process. I did not want to listen to flowery speeches; I wanted to hear an outline of the problems and solutions. Although I was a democrat on social issues, I was also fiscally conservative. So I chose to remain independent. I did not support higher or lower taxes per se. Taxes were also a tool of income redistribution, as a way of achieving some degree of fairness. It could be tailored to serve a social good, though, of course, I did not support waste. I rejected self-serving slogans like "man makes his destiny" and "sink or swim" as phony religion invented by the haves. The Europeans, especially the rich, paid higher taxes. People had to have some concern for their fellow citizens, and not only after a natural calamity. Everyone did not have the smarts of Bill Gates, talent of Michael Jordan, opportunities of Colin Powell, inheritance of Steve Forbes, the luck of a lottery winner.

Mr. Clinton was new in 1992 and I did not know enough about him to vote for or against him. Instead, I decided to vote for Mr. Perot, perhaps only to send a message to both major parties. His presentation of America's financial situation impressed me. This was the first time I had heard a candidate discuss two very important issues in such detail: America's finances and campaign reform. Although his analysis outlined the problems better than their solutions, I thought this was still serious progress.

Four years later I was not sure. It seemed the election process in this country increasingly concentrated on clutter issues, like "character." Obviously the choice was not between Al Capone and Billy Graham. In our view, the candidate who emphasized phony issues and expressed dubious beliefs lacked on the character front, "character" relevant to the presidency. Therefore, we perceived this person as unqualified for the position, whether or not he or she had served in a war, was faithful to his or her spouse, went to church every Sunday. We wondered if the folks who babbled about character realized they were voting for a president, not their neighborhood preacher. Surely Richard Reeves made sense by concluding that "maybe more important than presidential character is the character of the American people."

We perceived other serious deficiencies. "Talking about issues" in America meant throwing around headlines, like "flat tax." The fact that this plan would benefit the rich enormously in absolute dollars was clear, but how the nation would benefit was not, aside from the fact that a family of four making $30,000 would have an extra $1,261. We saw this as a bribe of $1,261 to middle-class families to obtain their approval of much larger grants to the rich. The plan was essentially a tax shelter for the latter. Meanwhile, middle-class families would collect the $1,261 with one hand while paying probably larger sums with the other, at least to make up the difference. So we also dropped these types of disingenuous candidates.

Moreover, education was separated from beliefs and opinions in America. Take Pat Buchanan, a highly educated, smart, punctilious, and savvy man, whose modern education was clearly lost in a labyrinth of dubious and unsubstantiated beliefs. (He said he would encourage schools to teach "Creation Theory.") While everyone was entitled to beliefs, we believed educated people had to reason, even their beliefs, especially if they were running for the office of the president where they would set a direction for others. So he and his kind were out too.

For us, this left only Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader in 1996. Nader was the most trustworthy, Perot probably the most competent and no-nonsense, despite his quirks, Clinton the most plausible. So people who thought character was the most important prerequisite for a president could vote for Nader--not Buchanan, Gramm, or potentially Robertson or Reed, whom we saw as crusaders and would-be-dictators for the Puritan cause. Those who wanted to bite the bullet and have real reforms could vote for Perot, and the ones who wanted to play safe could go with Clinton. If Dick Lamm were running, I would have voted for him. So for me it was a tossup between Nader or Perot. Parents and my sisters supported Clinton, also my friends Ken and Nanci.

We thought hidden agendas and ridiculous stalemates increasingly became decisive election issues in America, also eroding the quality of American leadership. If sensible and capable leaders at first refused to get involved in nonsensical stalemates and special interest issues, this did not work. The next election, single-issue candidates confronted them on this point. People forced the sensible senator or congressperson to take a side or lose his or her position.

We witnessed this the first time when the obstreperous Jewish lobby helped to unseat Senator Fulbright. We sympathized with both the Arabs and Israelis. However, in our eyes what happened to the Senator set a very dangerous precedent. In this country of strong opinions and hidden agendas, capable leaders were being sacrificed on the grounds that they refused to be chained to any one group. Our fears were confirmed when every lobby in Washington began to do the same within a decade: the Greek lobby, the gun lobby, the Religious Right, etc.

Already in the 1970s, we saw the single-issue candidates as "bought" politicians with questionable visions and competence-- which probably also explained why the U.S. Congress was held in low regard. Yet, some of them found seats in very important forums, like the Foreign Relations Committee, as if every American had the genetic credentials to be there. Americans who voted on single issues apparently could care less about the potential damage of their myopic designs. As long as they had a watchdog on their pet issue, all other concerns did not matter. The House and Senate were such complex entities that even incompetent representatives could survive or even flourish without detection.

Moreover, elections in America resolved nothing, because the climate guaranteed that issues and disagreements continued ad infinitum. It seemed that the adversary system, America's pride, had trickled down also on common sense. America invented issues to insure that polarity remained a constant feature of the American culture, that the citizens had enough enemies, opponents, adversaries, and antagonists while they pursued happiness. It did not matter who won this time. The bread and butter issues of abortion, prayer, guns, etc. would be decisive issues again in year 2000, 2004, and later. We did not see how the system could succeed in an arena of opposing fanatical ambitions. Indeed, we were not sure in which direction American leaders looked when they spoke about "a bright future for America in 21st Century."

Our view was that democracy was fine if some things were dispensed on merit and common sense, not by votes. For example, with regards to the abortion issue, depending on which side won, abortion would remain legal or become illegal. Although the polls said the majority of Americans were Pro-Choice, suppose the Pro-Choice people lost by 51 to 49 percent. As long as the Pro-Life group won and kept winning, their views would eventually subjugate everyone, by law. America would then become something like a dictatorship by the voting majority, only because an issue that should have been decided on merit was decided by votes. The Pro-Life group would then join the Pro-Prayer group and take on other people and continue to other issues. Ultimately, such a trend could have only two outcomes: anarchy or William Lederer's "A Nation of Sheep." That such a system would give rise to some 1800 cults, militias, and other "our way or no way" groups, in addition to all sorts of Evangelical and political fanatics, made sense to us. We wondered if democracy could survive this climate of strong pro-something and equally strong anti-the-same-thing clashes of ferninsters? Many armed camps in America were willing to die for the views they believed in.

Our foreign friends were also aware of this logical consequence of the American system. Although America believed that the rest of the world envied American democracy, this was one of several (e.g., "the American justice system is the envy of the world") illusions with which America liked to pat itself. It did not ask why other people and governments would want to experience these futile battles in their countries, when American democracy apparently turned off more than half the American population. Sometimes my cynicism grew strong. I visualized members of the old KGB around a table, discussing ways of undermining America. They gave up, stating "leave it to the Americans; nothing we can plan here can come close to what they are already doing to themselves."

America was deeply immersed in the abortion debate. The rest of the world, democratic or totalitarian, advanced or primitive, did not bother resolving such conflicts because they saw them as beyond policy and law. Like a choice about religion and breast transplantation, these types of issues were left to the discretion of the individual. But not in America. Why? Was America more caring toward children? Was the rest of the world less caring toward children? The "American character," at least some of it, could be in the answer. Or the answer could signal something else about the American character.

Unlike animals, humans were protected against most adversity at birth, except karma. Humans differed from animals because of the complexity of human societies: the weaning of human babies was infinitely complex, arduous, time consuming, and costly. Therefore, having a baby was also an investment decision for humans: could this family afford a baby, raise it properly?

And there were philosophical questions. The wildebeest was programmed to produce enough babies to insure the survival of the species. Presumably humans could push aside such impulses if the investment did not make sense, would not benefit the baby, though all humans did not deliberate these variables. Moreover, couples could adopt some of their babies for humanitarian reasons. Yet most families preferred to have offsprings of their own. Everyone expressed love and concern about their own children. But what about all children?

While all mothers claimed they loved their children, words aside, there had to be differences in how a mother's endless and unconditional love translated to "upbringing." "Love" alone could be mere poetry, sometimes selfish poetry. But upbringing mattered. Therefore, one way of measuring the differences in "love," perhaps in "capacity to love," was in the time and energy a mother directed to her child, especially in the formative years. This was the relevant criterion of love that mattered to the child: the quality of his or her upbringing.

America was definitely handicapped in this respect. "Work" was an almost essential part of the American environment. Economic realities allowed only so much time for children, even for mothers who wanted to be with them. And since the public education system was deficient, American upbringing relied more on daycare centers, baby sitters, TV, arcade games, streets, etc. In short, ceteris paribus love (i.e., assuming equal parental love in every culture), the American environment presented obstacles to many parents from actively translating their love to "proper" upbringing. American children, more than other children, were at the mercy of external influences. Since all industrial societies shared these conditions to some extent, families had to be more conscious of the investment aspect of children, why these societies had fewer children per family.

So by the abortion debate alone America could not claim to be more caring toward children. Yet a faction in America insisted on denying abortion to women. If love of babies and humanitarian concerns were the parameters of the abortion debate, why was this faction singling out unborn babies when millions of live children needed a home? Why were these children not an election issue?

We perceived ulterior motives. After all, this was also predominantly a Puritan culture that practiced Evangelical Christianity. The two were intertwined. And 30 percent of Americans were Catholic. When Evangelical and Catholic missionaries reached out to the darkest corners of the Amazon, to convert innocent people there, it was naive to suppose that Puritanism and Catholicism would be content to exist in passive states in America. Of course they would seek to infiltrate the society and enhance their tangible presence at home, not just as religion but also as a way-of-life. Indeed, the people who made an issue of abortion were Puritans, the Religious Right and the Catholic Church.

But because America claimed separation of church and state, these factions could not carry out their plan openly. Many Americans would rebel against an open attempt. So the objective, whatever it was, had to be achieved through a subterfuge: "concern for unborn babies." This was an ideal smokescreen. Who would object against anything that seemingly favored babies? Of course, many women would: the issue touched their bodies, health, well-being, choice. They were not as fortunate as men, who could chatter idle opinions without the pains. Some women were already persuaded by their religious beliefs, honest convictions. The rest had to be subjugated, by law. For us, the question reduced to "why would the Puritan Religious Right focus on abortion and make this a blatant election issue?"

In America, toleration surfaced occasionally from its exile in the dictionary. America bragged about freedom of religion, freedom period, then various groups attempted to dictate their interpretation of religion on others, by law. The same Americans who complained about "government intrusion" in their lives then turned around and forced their government to take sides in every "either way you lose" stalemate they could get into.

Other cultures have been around longer and they have learned to optimize what they know about life better than Americans. They also understand what abortion means and find an appeasement with this issue by common sense, not by analyzing molecules. For example, they know that life is a process of changes, that feelings and views expressed now, perhaps in a vacuum, can change depending on circumstances. That is, Pro-Life women in other societies realize that it is not fair for them to shove their views down other throats, when they too may decide for abortion some day, regardless of how strongly they feel against it now.

And they know there are false prophets, hypocrites, and groupies who join positions just to be a member of something. The news from especially America reinforce their suspicions. Everyone has heard about Jim Bakker, other preachers, Catholic clergymen, etc. who present a front and do the opposite. They perceive other incongruities in America. Americans war about the fate of unborn babies, but overlook the lot of millions of live babies who are abused, neglected, and discriminated against. They know America has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. They are not even convinced that the Pro-Life people in America are sincere. Given the assertive American milieu, they perceive it as also likely that the American Pro-Life movement is a massive ego trip by a segment whose real intention is to force its way on others. So they go on with their lives and let the Americans have these fights.

Vigilante laws that would force the women in America to lifelong servitude are absurd. One side is asked to have and care for accidental babies for life because the other side is unable to sacrifice a little from its beliefs. To drive home this point, imagine a law that required all Pro-Life parents to adopt at least one baby, all single working Pro-Life adults to make a minimum of perhaps $100 monthly contribution, say for about 18 years, to the upkeep and education of an orphan baby first, before they were allowed to vote on abortion. One wonders how long abortion would last as an issue then.

The ramifications of what the Pro-Life people propose are such that common sense screams for a hidden agenda. For example, suppose the Religious Right, like the Catholic Church, wanted to stop sexual activity, except in marriage and to produce babies. This would be a Prohibition on Sex. Still, religious folks have always supported this moral view. When men get involved in any issue that primarily taxes women, women should be alert. There may be a hidden explanation as to why they have always supported this. Religion is also a pretense in some countries to circumcise baby girls to avert sexual drive in adult women. This happens when all religious leaders are males, or as in America, primarily males. For centuries, baby girls of China suffered the utmost cruelty of "bound feet" to please men. Until very recently--perhaps still--the dowry system in India allowed some men to treat their women as if they were from a different species. Indeed live women were burned with their dead husbands.

Women should remind each other that they have not always fared well under rules defined for them by men, especially when religion dominated the scene. (People who denied white American women the right to vote were white American men.) It may be that the real Puritan agenda is to make pets of women, pets the insecure males of the Religious Right can control. The very fragile male ego should be included as an important contingency in any analysis of possible agendas. To the men of the Religious Right, the idea of heaven on earth may be in scenes of "Stratford Wives."

We felt it was incumbent on ALL Americans, even those who shared the views of Ralph Reed, et al., to rebuff such crusaders. For once the door opened to a Ralph Reed, it would stay open for a McCarthy next, perhaps an Inquisition after that. The freedom to pursue happiness had only one moral corollary: "do your best not to interfere with someone else's pursuit of happiness, as you pursue your own." PERIOD.

We asked ourselves what compelled so many conservative Americans to attempt to draft lifestyles for everyone in free America. Why were Dan Quayle, Bill Bennett, and Ralph Reed talking about family values? This was a superfluous message for happy marriages, an irrelevant one for unhappy marriages. If it was a nostalgic yearning, a call for company by people who wanted to live in the past, it was futile too. Although no one in America promoted divorce, the divorce rate was bound to increase as more women became independent economically. They would be less dependent on men, making men less relevant, at least as heads of households. Economic liberation of women would be accompanied by a substantial shift of power away from men. This trend was good for women and also not stoppable. Was this the real worry of the men of the Christian Right?

On the other hand, if the real target of the crusade was the welfare population, the message was doomed to fail too, because it focussed on the symptoms (e.g., illegitimate children) not the cause: hopelessness. We thought conservative America should first do away with dubious ideologies like "man makes his destiny" and "sink or swim" and acknowledge that America neglected vast numbers of its citizens. Having rejuvenated itself spiritually, it should then turn its attention to improving conditions in inner cities and the public education system, both of which will challenge America's ingenuity. The private sector, especially small businesses, had to be encouraged to participate in welfare policy, by providing full-time jobs especially in inner cities, some even at minimum wage.

A sensible policy like this, not an idle crusade, would bring about the desired results, because people who were granted opportunities would nurture hopes for a better life, to be someone, as in American Dream. These people would be less likely to spoil their dreams by having illegitimate children. They would eventually marry responsible partners and have planned children. The children would have homes and nurturing parents. Families would become role models in their communities. Welfare costs would diminish; "family values" would materialize.

But this was exactly the policy President Clinton had outlined in 1996, including an education dimension. So the Religious Right could continue its idle crusade, or Dan Quayle, Bill Bennett, and Ralph Reed, etc. could persuade their followers to actively support Mr. Clinton to year 2000. There was agreement on the goals, no substantive disagreement on the means, and the policy was good for America and family values.

Since boys and girls are separated, fights, arguments, and ostentatious behavior by boys and teasing by girls are avoided. The school is not a frivolous club. Boys and girls can do what they want after school, but even then the schools have some control over them: through homework, lots of it. When boys and girls do meet, generally on weekends, they interact like adults. There is no delinquent behavior, no unpleasantness to others. Aggressive and assertive persons are avoided, because such people are incompatible companions in this civilized "live and let live" environment.

The American society also knows that good results are a function of a proper upbringing, challenging education, homework, and parental supervision. However, since America has the worst results in the industrial world, something in the system is obviously overwhelming all good intentions. The causes are probably all the things that are unique to the American culture, some of them seemingly inconsequential. For example, parents and audiences applaud semi-clad little school girls when they perform burlesque motions to cheer crowds. Is it possible that these leg-throwing, hip-gyrating, thigh-spreading moves turn these girls into little teasers? How much of the cheering is in effect on the job training for turning on? Do these girls become aware of their bodies prematurely, do away with their inhibitions?

Combine these seemingly harmless pastimes unique to America with temptations from the larger environment also unique to America and a case can be made that American capitalism is degenerating its youth. After school, the teens are tempted by spurious arcade and video games, 50 TV channels on at all hours, constant commercials and make-money inducements. Only in America do students have an option of watching explicit scenes in soap operas and movies with "youthful sex" written all over them. If not sex, they can enjoy "graphic scenes" (which logically rhymes with "watery water") of blood and gore. There are talk shows that break all sorts of social taboos. They can get turned on watching music videos of young men and women having a wonderful time dancing "suggestively," the camera blatantly aimed at their crotch and up the girls' tiny skirts and shorts. Only in America can the TV get away with phony public service messages like "this movie contains graphic scenes which may not be suitable . . ." as a way of inviting an even larger young audience. Why not? The TV producers know that the more appropriate message is "may not be suitable for parents; discretion by teenagers is advised."

The teens can watch these, but not Calvin Klein's young models showing off enticing attires, which they wear too. All this wholesome hypocrisy day after day, and America puzzles about bad performance in schools, rampant teenage sex, babies having babies. The impasse is understandable. It is the byproduct of the American tendency to have its cake and eat it too. That is, all real attempts to clean up the culture automatically run against the First Amendment. Since nothing can be done about the First and no real changes can take place, America can only look for superficial measures, like yelling at a tornado to scare it away. Desperate for a way out, once again America resorts to dubious laws to achieve at least the illusion of morals.

The Statutory Rape laws in America are synonymous with corrupt reasoning. Somehow, a 16-year girl can have sex with several impulsive 16 to 19-year-old boys and still be her mama's innocent darling. If she does it with an adult male, she is declared an abused child, of course without any responsibility for this great sin. A 16-year-old female student can enjoy a sexual relationship with a male teacher for months. She can regret the whole affair a few years later, after lifelong Puritan injections bloom and convince her that she should feel guilty about this. Then she can squeal on the teacher and have his life destroyed by shifting the blame entirely on him, and continue with her life from a "fresh" start and "clear" conscience. The society incarcerates the teacher as pervert and martyrizes her as an innocent victim, even if the girl also has had sex with a dozen younger guys whom she cannot and would not accuse. Indeed, the statutory rape laws in America promulgate sin, guilt, and neurotic behavior in young people.

What the law has achieved is more perverted than the situation it claims to control. Foremost, it does not preserve hymens. The law, not biology, declares a girl "underage," because supposedly a 16-year-old is not mature enough to understand sex. That is, minds that can comprehend Shakespeare, geometry, chemistry, biology, etc. become utterly void when it comes to the dynamic duo, according to this reasoning. Why? By God, because the Congress and the law say so. In fact, since the body is mature for sex long before age 18, and since teenagers are capable of understanding sex, some probably better than their parents, the only element subject to debate is maturity. How does America define this word? "Maturity" in Puritan vocabulary probably means "time for Puritan teachings to take hold and the infections of guilt and sin to sink in." This way, the now mature person is more likely to accept the excess baggage with which the Puritans bundle sex.

If the Puritans had declared openly "we don't want America to indulge in sex, except in marriage and to produce babies," which is what they really want, people, including the Congress, would have laughed at them. So they found a less conspicuous way of achieving their objective. Words like maturity enabled them to hide their real agenda in a smokescreen of "concern for children." They were able to convince the Puritan members of the Congress to propose laws to their liking. Once the issue reached the floor, the sensible members could not oppose it, for they would be seen as promoters of teenage sex. So to appease a self-righteous minority, another vigilante law entered the books. Now America could claim high morals, declare itself even more civilized, and invent criminals: adults with young companions.

The law does not make sense at any level. People with significant age differences do not normally form a sexual relationship, except in bordellos. Obviously the "teenage sex" problem is not going to be cured because the system locks up a handful of teachers, congressmen, and other adults. Even "maturity" cannot be an issue. Given the exorbitant divorce rate in America and huge numbers of stranded children, it would seem that at least half of American adults also do not qualify as mature. And their mistakes are much more consequential. If the rate of extramarital affairs, drugs, alcoholism, etc. for the remaining 50 percent are also taken into account, maturity by Puritan definition is almost an extinct word in America. Many in Puritan ranks would not qualify. So why single out the teenagers as "not mature enough"?

In Turkey, most girls come as virgins to marriage. But even in Turkey, no lawmaker would dare to propose a law that forbids a 16-year-old girl having sex with an older male. The state does not decide who can sleep with whom; it trusts its citizens, its culture. Morals are taught by parents, teachers, and the society, not forced by laws. The individual, even a young person, is granted the right to exercise responsibility over his or her decisions and actions. Compared to the legally regulated freedom and morality in America, this is much superior. It is real, not a slogan. Except for orthodox Muslim countries and a few other exceptions, the rest of the world follows a similar, common sense, approach to morals. And although the environment is much more relaxed in Turkey, abuse, if teenage sex should be so labeled, is almost negligible. As in Europe, American rape laws could have followed biology and common sense: girls below the age of puberty will not be touched, others can be, if they choose so. Apparently some do, others do not. Once the body develops, the mind does not require a Ph.D. in biology to indulge in sex. Moreover, the rest of the world makes allowance for differences in personality, that girls become nuns, hookers, housewives. These differences do not pop suddenly after age 18. America, supposedly a nation of individualistic people, by law recognizes no such differences among individuals.

Finally, according to the morals America wants to promote, either Saudi Arabia is as advanced socially as America, and the rest of the world medieval. Or America is as medieval as Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the world advanced. At least Saudi Arabia does not confuse its youth with a contradicting lifestyle versus laws. It may be that the true intent of the statutory rape laws is to protect adult women. The society does not want young chicks to take away also the adult men when half of these older women come out of broken marriages, generally bitter, worn out, and unable to compete with younger women. This reasoning would make sense.

In his book "The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America," Philip Howard says that government looks increasingly absurd because it tries to use detailed laws as substitutes for reasonable judgments by individuals. He points out that our hatred of government is not caused mainly by government's goals, whatever their wisdom, but by government's techniques. Adds George Will: "the techniques express two goals--compassion, meaning safety from material or mental distress, and equality, not meaning treating like cases alike but rather treating everyone the same" ("Lunatic Laws," the Washington Post, C7, Jan. 22, 1995.) According to Howard, "law no longer just facilitates society's enterprises, it is a main enterprise."

Strict regulation would still allow the gun owners, hunters, and militia have their way and, in return, ask them do a huge favor to the country they say they love. They are not responsible for all the crime, but they are for accidents. There were more than a million of them in 1993. Moreover, even "responsible" hunters cause fear in innocent Americans who indulge in harmless pastimes. For example, several letters by bicyclers to the editor of the Miami Herald talk of instances when they were harassed by people with guns who shot in their direction. Bicyclers, runners, walkers, Frisbee throwers cannot harm anyone with their pastimes; people with guns can, from enormous distances, intentionally or unintentionally. By favoring gun enthusiasts, the American system has been in effect discriminating against all other Americans. That the Constitution says something about gun rights but nothing about a bicycler's or runner's rights does not justify modern American leaders to favor the group that indulges potentially in the most lethal hobby. It would make more sense, be much more civilized, to remove this amendment from the Constitution than to continue with the status quo. Presumably the Supreme Court is there to safeguard first America's rights, not a document's rights. Neither the President nor the Congress can dare to tackle the Second Amendment; the Supreme Court can, should, must.

Even if the gun owners see the new law as an infringement on their rights, they would understand that their Government, without blaming them, is doing its best to stop the fratricide in the country. Many would go along. So instead of getting deeper in untenable sophistry, for once, America, like all other countries, can learn to sacrifice (a little of) individual rights for social rights and see that concern for social rights has nothing to do with communism.

l Expertise or Politics? First the obvious question: did the experts express honest opinions or politically expedient positions? For example, by defending the President's budget proposal in 1995, did Dr. Rivlin express her expert views or politically expedient views, defending a strategy of the President? Did the opponents express their own informed views or also something else? How could the public be informed about the true ramifications of issues if debates and interviews stressed ulterior motives and not honest facts and expertise?

l News Shows. We felt that even supposedly the best news programs in America probably dazed the public. This is where experts and politicians expressed their partisan views and dangled the audiences. Then came the "analysis," for example, by George Will, who automatically sided with the Republicans, followed by Sam who automatically sided against George, followed by Cookie who floated somewhere in between, while David conducted the GE songs. The talk shows did a better job selling products.

The most impressive eye-opener analysis we have ever seen in America happened in 1992, when Ross Perot used an hour and "hard facts" to awaken the President, Congress, the news media, George, Sam, Cookie, David, and the American people from their complacent stupor. The man knew his facts and was trustworthy and frank during that presentation. This, not the one by General Schwarzkopf after the Desert Storm, was the "Mother of All Briefings."

l Expertise versus Bias. Did the pundits on TV really use their knowledge and training when they expressed views, proposed solutions, made predictions? Often, the ingredients of expertise were derived from presumptuous criteria, such as "a Yale graduate," as if no Yale graduate had ever been wrong. Perhaps these ingredients qualified the expert to be on stage, but they did not guarantee objectivity. Many long-term issues were so complicated that they rendered expertise irrelevant. Could anyone be really expert enough to know the true impact of NAFTA on the United States 15 years later?

Moreover, some experts, e.g., William Buckley, were professional debaters who had something to say about all sorts of topics, perhaps only to win debates. However, experts contradicted each other, suggesting solutions only one of which could be correct. The outcome depended more on the personality, delivery, and wit of the speaker, less on content and substance. For example, Gore Vidal and William Buckley, both superlative pundits, graduated from some the best universities in the country, studying many of the same books and sources. So why did they almost always express opposing views, regardless of the issue? These types of severe contradictions could be explained in only one way: the learning process, deductive reasoning, and views of even experts were tainted by their biases and preconditioning. So Pat Buchanan could still hang on to the Creation Theory, despite his superb education. We perceived a danger in this. What if brainwashed intellectuals with proper credentials qualified as members of, for example, the board of education and selected books for schools?

l Polls. For a country that supposedly hated generalizations, polls had to be a joke. On the other hand, predictions had to have a basis, like astrology charts. So the media substituted polls for insight. To have some credibility, they mentioned also a scientific margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent, though it was clear they did not know what this meant. And they had seen predictions with 3 percent margin of error bomb later, which meant a 100 percent error. Obviously a poll taken in 1995 about whether Clinton or Dole would win the presidential election in 1996 meant nothing, with or without the 3 percent. The announcer could have flipped a coin, with the conviction that whatever answer he gave would be at least 50 percent correct.

We thought polls became popular for another reason. They were cheap and invented news. A half-hour news show was already reduced to about 17 minutes when the commercials and the time devoted to the ugly music were taken out. By talking profoundly about a meaningless poll, the program could reduce the time devoted to the news even more. And since commercials came between topics, this gave the networks an excuse for another commercial. This way, the program could reduce its production cost and increase its profit margin. As for the accuracy of the predictions, the pundits were safe, for no one really remembered who predicted what, like the top dozen or so pundits who were wrong about Colin Powell. Scientific or not, Clint Eastwood, in a Dirty Harry role, made the appropriate comment about opinions: "opinions are like . . . holes; everyone has got one."

l Dubious Expertise. Some expertise had to be self-defeating. For example, no other nation but the United States wasted as much time and money debating crime. As far as expertise on this subject, we were the experts, the Japanese, et al. mere novices. The Japanese did not need to become experts. They maintained their social environment, took a few sensible measures, and prevented crime from becoming a topic that required expertise. This reasoning applied also to the legal system. America could claim "because we have many laws against such and such, we are civilized." The Japanese could respond "such and such does not normally occur here; therefore, we have no laws against it."

l Off-Target Predictions. Although some predictions proved wrong immediately after they were made, no one confronted the experts who made them. Before the Desert Storm, pundits from all think tanks flocked the networks. They were mainly retired military staff and defense personnel, people who supposedly knew. "Yes, America would win but we could lose 10,000 or more soldiers," they said. Some estimates ran as high as 20,000 American casualties.

These predictions were contrary to all facts. A significant part of the American forces had been brought from the European theater. These forces had been built over 50 years to counter an invasion of Europe by Russia, the world's other superpower. The fact that 25 nations would walk all over the Iraqis with minimum casualties was clear from the start. I thought the experts were so preposterous that I prepared an 80-line advertisement delineating my views. I paid the Washington Times a hefty fee to print it. This made me feel good, although only a handful of people paid attention to the ad. In the end, America lost more people to accidents than to war.

l Incompetence. The predictions were worse about Bosnia. For three years, people like Lawrence Eagleburger, our portly Secretary of State, Senator John McCain, Congressman Lee Hamilton, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Bill Highland of Georgetown entirely misjudged the situation in Bosnia. Colin Powell, our expert on military matters, considered the Serbs invincible without the commitment of hundreds and thousands of ground forces. When pundits like Leslie Gelb raised bombing as a feasible countermeasure, they invariably shifted the focus back to ground forces, to alert America to the dangers of getting involved. These experts, who had supposedly learned from Vietnam, were wrong.

Perhaps when national survival is at stake, bombs alone cannot defeat a nation. Perhaps. But this was never the case with the Serbs. People do not normally risk bombs dropping on them only to continue morally corrupt policy. Probably many Serbs themselves were ashamed about what was going on, but having just emerged from totalitarianism, they did not voice opinions. Moreover, unlike Hitler, the USA and NATO did not face the entire Yugoslav population fighting for its national survival. America did not want to defeat or conquer the Yugoslavs, or even Serbians. It only wanted to teach civility to a minority, a derelict Serb force serving a crazy psychiatrist.

When the genocide first started, a day of we-mean-business bombing, even a genuine threat of bombing, would have discouraged this group then. Instead, the United States and NATO hesitated for more than three years. The United Nations lost more soldiers to inaction than did NATO in more than 3,200 sorties. On Sep. 8, 1995, less than two weeks after the bombing started, the Serbs came to the negotiating table. Our disgust with these soothsayers was matched by the pride we felt when, despite humongous odds, the U.S. Army fashioned the bridge over the Sava river. On Sep. 12, 1995, on the Newshour, Eagleburger and Highland admitted grudgingly that bombing was doing some good after all. How noble. More than 200,000 people were decimated perhaps partly due to the incompetence of these experts?

l On Oct. 2, 1995, George F. Will had an article in the Newsweek, "The Fourth Awakening," with the subtitle "Political change in the 1990s is rooted in changes in American religiosity." The article is based on a study by Robert Fogel, professor of American institutions at the Univ. of Chicago, to get across some of his own ideas: "today's large political changes are 'to a large extent spawned by changes in American religiosity,' which is usually how change is spawned in this deeply religious country." He proceeds to accuse the administration: "the biggest blunder of the Clinton presidency, bigger than even the health care plan, was the tactic of implying that the religiosity of religious conservatives compounds the unpleasantness of their conservatism." He adds: "'The re-emergence of confidence in the power of personal compassion' undergirds conservative demands for returning power to the people." And: "Thus does Fogel--an empiricist, not an advocate--find that conservative values buttressed by religion can support--did support--egalitarian change."

How impressive. Professor Fogel's study is not a sufficient basis for Dr. Will to pontificate and sneak in his own pop-off views. For more than 30 years, we, a white immigrant family, lived in small American towns surrounded by decent, God-fearing, Jesus-loving, and obviously conservative white neighbors. They ignored us, as Americans do when they do not discriminate openly. In every location, the people who helped us to overcome our isolation, who befriended and shared their lives with us, were invariably Jewish families and other immigrants, and some white Christians. As far as we are concerned, religiosity, as it is practiced and promoted in America, is the primary cause of discrimination. Dr. Will's eloquent connivance cannot make our experiences "egalitarian."

Dr. Will can review simple facts which he knows well. He can do this without relying on elaborate studies which, like statistics, can often prove or disprove any claim. Almost since its inception, and despite the Bill of Rights, poetic verbiage and self-righteous slogans, America has been a prejudiced country. The "nonegalitarian" state of affairs continues to this day, when this "deeply religious" country was conservative and deeply religious every step of the way. Since the only power brokers were white men, America was effectively ruled by a minority: conservative-religious-white men who denied egalitarian rights to the majority. The majority discriminated against included white American women, ethnic minorities, and immigrants. Let's call the minority rulers, the nonegalitarian-conservative-religious-white males, the SOB (Society of Benighted) for short.

The blacks, other minorities, and disaffected white American women (who are not a minority), have suffered under the way-of-life designed by the SOB. It gave no egalitarian rights freely. First the black men (1865, the 15th Amendment), then white American women 55 years later, then other discriminated groups had to fight for those rights, piece by piece, risking their lives in this "oldest democracy." They are still fighting, against the offsprings of the same white men, who still represent "conservative values buttressed by religion."

The egalitarian changes came through the courage of people like Dr. King, blacks, decent liberal whites, and the embarrassment America suffered worldwide for claiming one thing on paper while doing the opposite in fact. So it is not scholarly to substitute exquisite sentences containing false messages, ideas and facts for the truth. As usual, Dr. Will relies on bias as the intellectual predicate of his preordained argument, proposition, persuasion. Discrimination is no longer politically correct; neither is "nigger." The America of the SOB is experienced in these things. It can remove words from its dictionary and look clean. This America is also experienced the other way. It can compose a Bill of Rights and look the other way. However, discrimination, America's original sin, is still alive and palpable, though worried. As late as Oct. 3, 1995, Americans again had the occasion to debate the state of bigotry and race relations even in the courts. My conclusion is the opposite of Dr. Will's: to become egalitarian, America must smother the SOB.

l My Reasons. I was cynical about the experts also for subjective reasons. After I returned from Saudi Arabia, I looked for suitable positions in Washington and contacted several think tanks with expertise in Mid-East affairs. I was originally from Turkey; I knew all Mid-East countries; I was an advisor in Saudi Arabia; I worked at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, completing several special studies for the Saudis, and I was involved in $10 billion petrochemical projects. Plus, I had all the relevant degrees and various publications. I presumed that I qualified at least for a consideration. I did not receive a response, not one. I knew why. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I met experts from American think tanks. They took a few short trips, shook selected hands, talked briefly with some people, then published a quick book about their insights of Saudi affairs, advertising the book as their diploma. So the next time the Newshour needed a Saudi expert, there they were. They perpetuated themselves on other shows and soon became recognized experts. These phony experts did not want a real expert around them. However, I was surprised that the CIA also turned me down.

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