“It’s different in here”
The perceptions of the habitués of a coffee house in Hacı Bayram
Introduction
In the seventeenth century England, “[t]he coffeehouse was not only the place where one went to collect intelligence, it was also the site of learned discussions about a wide variety of issues.” (Pincus, 1995: 820). In the twenty-first century Turkey, when an image of a typical coffee house doesn’t contain these features, it is possible to find such a place in one of the places of religious activity, Hacı Bayram. Being interested in the perceptions and the practices of the habitués of Hacı Bayram, I conducted a short field research in a coffee house close to Hacı Bayram Veli mosque. I visited the place twelve times during my research and developed an intimate relationship with the habitués. During my visits I tried to figure out how the habitués of the coffee house perceived Hacı Bayram and what different meanings they attributed to the coffee house in Hacı Bayram.
The coffee house is on the road behind the women’s entrance of the mosque. It is physically segregated from the mosque arena by concrete blocks of the municipality. It is also mentally separated from the mosque as the attendants of the coffee house perceive the area and the holiness of the saint differently. The coffee house is located between the religious site and the notorious residence area, and is hidden behind walls, that means it is impossible to understand that the place is a coffee house at first sight.
Passing through a small garden and walking up the stairs, you enter the coffee house through an old door which generally has a cat waiting in front of it. When you open the door the first thing you see is the rugs on the ground, which brings together the necessity to take off your shoes. Since I am a lady, I don’t normally have access to coffee houses which are male dominant places, and I don’t know whether this is because I haven’t seen many of them but taking off shoes when entering a coffee house was really bizarre for me (coffee houses were places like cafés and pubs where you entered with your shoes on according to my paradigm). When you raise your head, you come across the Arabic writing “Edeb ya Hû”, which is the sufi equivalent for the old saying “Know thyself!”, and the panorama of Uzungöl valley, a lovely sight in the Northeast of Turkey and far from Ankara, with Ben Sweetland’s saying “Success is a journey, not a destination.” below it. On the left there are mattresses on which people either sit cross-legged or lie down, and on the right there are sofas and armchairs in front of which there are coffee tables. “Neither the words nor the objects ‘already’ there”, as Keane (1995: 117) concludes in the study of Eastern Indonesian houses, “fully determine what will be made of them”. In a parallel manner, there are prayer rugs in the coffee house and it is interesting to see the prayer rugs, which are normally respected by users and kept folded only to be opened for prayer, in daily use as tablecloth. There are usually chessboards on the tables between the sofas and armchairs and they are actively used by the habitués. On the corner between the sofas there is the stereo, below which there are books, cassettes and a cup for a chess tournament, and in front of the windows next to the stereo is the sofa where people prefer to lie rather than sit. Moreover, opposite the mattresses there is the tea boiler and the chairs on which the owner of the coffee house, Şen amca , often sits with the people who come for a therapy.
Myths and the perceptions about Hacı Bayram
The habitués, most of whom have financial problems and some of whom receive psychiatric treatment, see Hacı Bayram as a different place, which is obvious in the myths they talk about. I could gather three myths during my visits to the coffee house and one of them was contrary to a myth originating from a frequenter of the mosque .
The first myth I came across about Hacı Bayram was that there is some kind of magnetic energy in this area and this area is one of the seven magnetic centers on the Earth. That is why Augustus came and built his temple here and Saint Hacı Bayram came here and the mosque and the shrine are built upon the temple. This is also the reason why the dogs and the “meczup” (1. crazy, 2. Sufism dervish completely carried away by a mystical experience ) love spending time in Hacı Bayram. There may also be some kind of magnetic connection why the best and the worst meets around this religious site. There are different reasons for people who gravitate towards Hacı Bayram according to Şen amca: “Some of them are here for religious purposes and some others have dirty jobs. You know the best and the worst meets here; the gypsies, the sellers, they all live nearby.” Two other groups frequently visit the site: the goal-oriented ones and tourists. As for religious frequenters, Şen amca continues his description like that:
“Especially people older than 60 come here for prayer. Why? Because it is cheap. They don’t pay for the buses since they have free traveling cards. Furthermore all the shops and tea gardens are cheaper here than the rest of the city. When their wives do the cleaning and they don’t want a man around, they say ‘you, please go and have a walk’, this is a chance for them to come to Hacı Bayram. They pray regularly, they meet friends…”
Next to the myth of energy, in the myth of 10 insane, it is claimed that Saint Hacı Bayram loved the insane, and his first followers were 10 insane. There can be a relation between the number of tombs in the shrine and the insane followers. As the saint loved them, they somehow found him and came around. Whenever one of the insane dies or leaves the site, another one immediately comes.
I have encountered one more myth about Hacı Bayram during my last visit. This last myth is contrary to another myth which appeared in one of the colleagues Esra Can’s fieldnotes, telling that the saint came and built his mosque upon that old building to show that the depravity within that old building is inferior to the holiness of the mosque and he didn’t destroy the temple totally so that it could be a warning to all. However, when I gave clues about that myth during the chitchat, the habitués, with an exclamation “Conspiracy theory!” , told me that the saint built the mosque upon the temple so as to show the continuity of the holiness . The mosque leans on the temple and takes its strength and power from the temple. Furthermore, they claimed that the people who worshipped here in the temple before the emergence of Islam were also Muslims.
Perceptions about the coffee house and the habitués
As it can be understood from the myths, it is not only Hacı Bayram that is to be perceived differently. The habitués also see the coffee house as a different place. But more important than that, the habitués are different themselves. As Thompson (2007: 35) states, what attract people in places and what they enjoy there depend on things that are not the same as what they dislike; they aren’t the opposite of each other. What I saw during my fieldwork was that the habitués’ being in Hacı Bayram was related to religion but not because they committed themselves to religion or they rejected religion either. “They come here to calm down, it is different in here.” was Şen amca’s introductory sentence in describing the coffee house. It is a place where religious people met, but who believe in a different religion.
The habitués see themselves as members of the losers’ club. One main aspect that makes them feel so is that they are somehow excluded from the society. Some of them lost their jobs, some of them were deserted by their wives, some couldn’t even have a chance to get married and the most outstanding examples are the ones who receive psychiatric treatment.
Together with the ever-repeated sentence “it’s different in here”, they used three more sentences when describing themselves: “Burası bir kaybedenler kulübü (It’s a losers’ club here.)”, “Burası bir tutunamayanlar cumhuriyeti (That is the republic of the disconnectus erectus.)”, “Burada mürid yoktur, herkes şeyhtir. (There are no followers here; everybody is a sheik in this coffee house.)” The term loser is explained by Şen amca’s nice analogy: the people coming to the coffee house resemble silkworms which can’t get out of their undersized cocoons. The coffee house, namely their therapy center, helps them get out of the cocoons and feel relieved. There is a constant sequence of thesis, antithesis and synthesis in the chitchat and the losers, who lost their chance of getting out of narrow minds, face the antitheses of their acquired theses and create their own syntheses within the chitchat. Bahtiyar says they are losers but they all lost outside, so they come here, they don’t feel the pain of loss in the coffee house. Through Baumann’s (2004: 20) grammar of Orientalism, Bahtiyar’s comment can be interpreted in that they suffer from being “the other” in their own lives, so they gather in the coffee house to feel “the self”, that is why everybody is a sheik in the coffee house.
Zeyrek, for instance, is a graduate of philosophy, having the diploma of one of the best universities in Turkey, and he is receiving psychiatric treatment. During my first visit , I was told that he went through a drastic change from a religious person to one that drinks and spends time in brothels and was in hospital. The next time I went there I came across Zeyrek and I was cornered by his intellectual questions and comments on Frazer, Lévi-Strauss and Malinowski. Zeyrek is claimed to become Messiah one day and Mahdi the other day. Mesut, who has served for the state for more than 30 years, was another one of them. He received treatment from a psychiatrist as well and he blamed his doctor for not providing a therapy as good as Şen amca’s. His doctors got acquainted with the name Şen amca, and they later on started to ask Mesut whether he continued attending the chitchat at the coffee house, but without forbidding him from doing so.
An example of losers is Nemrut amca who isn’t liked even by the habitués. He is expelled from the society for manipulating religion, and he is expelled from the hearts of the habitués although nobody prevents him from entering the coffee house or speaking loudly inside. One day, he brought elegant ladies to the coffee house for some kind of witchcraft and took their money for that. Şen amca accepted everything as they were although he wasn’t content with what is going on, saying that “no matter how much intellectual you are, you are in need of the supernatural to overcome your fears. For your fears to get lighter, your purse needs lightening as well.” The way he commanded Şen amca for tea was ruder than the common way of doing so in the coffee house. The guys in the tea garden even preferred to talk about him as charlatan.
One striking example is Bahtiyar, who has a bachelor degree of arts and who knows English well. He is very intelligent that he is claimed to finish two universities and he is the chess trainer of the youngster attending the coffee house. He was married but his wife deserted him, making her brothers beat him to death after she left the house. Mutlu amca prefers to talk about him as a person who cannot carry the weight of that much intelligence.
Facilities of the coffee house
When the habitués describe the coffee house, they prefer to use the term rehabilitation centre together with the sentence “it’s different in here”. The so-called insane visit the coffee house regularly and they sometimes claim that Şen amca is their sheik. For the people around the religious site, I noted the saying “Hacı Bayram’da dört şey eksik olmaz: delisi, velisi, kedisi, köpeği (Four things are never absent in Hacı Bayram: the insane, the saint, the cat and the dog).” Bahtiyar was referring to the habitués in the coffee house as the insane. And the “smart insane”s of the site were remembered with their sharing and fidelity. Asi, whom I first saw when he gave two cigarettes to Melek, is told not to do the same generous act towards the sane and he is significant for Şen amca. When his previous coffee house burnt down, nobody came and offered for help but Asi shared the money in his pocket, which he took from another person, with him. Melek stayed in the coffee house for a long time when she was released from the hospital and although she was “one of the ten insane” for the people around, she was treated as if she had no problems by the habitués.
Not only the insane but also the habitués enjoy the facilities of this rehabilitation centre. Interesting for a coffee house, they sometimes gather ingredients and make meals in the coffee house. Generally Mutlu amca cooks and hardly anybody prefers to stay away from the meal and the chitchat around the lunch. Another facility is chess. Almost all the habitués are good at playing chess and sometimes there occurs a chess jargon shaping the chitchat. I noted the motto “the King dies and the curtains are closed” which came out during a match .
Content of the chitchat
The most important facility of the rehabilitation centre is of course the chitchat. Many different topics ranging from science to politics, daily issues to religion come up and as Şen amca puts it, they relieve from their troubles through the thesis, antithesis and synthesis of the ongoing chitchat. They demolish the values of the society during these talks, and sometimes really hot debates arise.
As usual politics takes the biggest share in the chitchat. Their perception of self as the other within the society is reflected in their critical comments on politics. About the people who are above the average per capita income and “official patriots (kadrolu vatanperver)”, they claim that as the habitués they cannot be one of them so they cannot have the right to speak for themselves in politics (agony of positive aspects of politics) and manipulate the power and money of the state (agony of negative aspects of politics). It is interesting to see them laughing at the idea of being the odd one out.
Bahtiyar as the linguist likes playing with the words and he usually brings funny tales into the chitchat in a clever manner. The liminal discourse he creates, as Tsibiridou (2006: 137) refers to the genre, includes irony and humor so as to discuss real facts. One of them was about the prime minister during one of those hot debates about the power-that-be:
“Erbakan died one day and met the angels in the eternity. There he saw many clocks on the wall, some fast and some slow. He inquired what they were. ‘They are the clocks counting the lies’ said one of the angels. He turned to the slowest clock and asked whose clock it was. ‘Atatürk’s’ was the angel’s response. He turned to a slightly faster one and asked whose clock it was. ‘İnönü’s’ said the angel. Erbakan got curious while reading the names below the clocks. ‘Where’s Tayyip’s clock? I couldn’t see it anywhere’ said Erbakan. The angel started giggling: ‘Hmm that one, its hands were turning so fast that Mohammad took it to his own room as a fan.’”
It is very common to destruct the power-that-be in many chitchat occasions of adults, but in the coffee house chitchat they also demolish concepts of orthodox Islam. Similar to the Neo-Knitters who regard themselves distanced from traditional knitters through originality and stylishness (Fields, 2004: 10), they distance the content of their talk from traditional discussions on religion through destructing the existing values. After an act of disrespect, the angry guy trying to beat Memnun who is a foreigner living downstairs shouted by saying that he would treat the prophet as badly as he treated Memnun for such a behavior. Asi’s prayer for a childish love after an instance of cheating during an oral exam in primary school and their attention to that prayer was significant: “Ya Ayla, ya Allah, ya Muhammed, ya Ali”. On a discussion about the poet İsmet Özel and his claim that there are no Turks who aren’t Muslims, Neşet amca said with loughter:
“A person can’t be both a Muslim and a socialist. The term Muslim Turk is already false; as all the Turks are Muslims, mentioning Muslim is redundant. Then you’ll ask why the divine inspiration of Islam came to the Arab community; ‘cos the Turks already knew it, they were already Muslims. The book came in Arabic so that the Arabs could learn Islam a bit.”
Acording to Şen amca, meteorology has the God-given power to work miracles. “Every major religious tradition”, according to Feuerstein (1990: 231) as Robbins mentions (1992: 229), “has an antinomian aspect that appears to the conventional mind to be madness.” Resembling the holy fools of different religious traditions by claiming that they are themselves insane, they not only destruct religious images but also scientific ones.
Conclusion
Neşet amca, who is a social scientist claimed to have read Weber’s classics ten times and a mystical body claimed to have visited the mythical planet Sirius, warned me one day for my regular visits in that he was afraid I would become one of the habitués. Mutlu amca, in a parallel manner, enjoyed my attendance since he regarded me as one of the disconnectus erectus who is insane enough to become a habitué. I was different from the others outside and the magnetic power of the saint brought me into the coffee house in their perceptions, which was in fact the summary of what I encountered during my fieldwork. The habitués of the coffee house are certainly different in that they are expelled from the majority of the society, they come together in a coffee house which is close to Hacı Bayram Veli mosque although they criticize the religious perceptions together with politics and science, they have myths about the area and they believe the coffee house is different from any other place in the world.
Footnotes
1-Names of the habitués have been changed.
2-Fieldnotes, Esra Can, March 25, 2008.
3-http://seslisozluk.com/?word=meczup accessed April 8, 2008.
4-Fieldnotes, March 26, 2008.
5-Fieldnotes, May 7, 2008
6-Fieldnotes, March 13, 2008.
7-Fieldnotes, March 24, 2008: Neşet amca saying “İnsan hayatında üç yol var, bizimkisi dördüncüsü, önce her türlü inanşı inkâr edip sonra kendi inancını bulacaksın. En kestirme ama en meşakkatli yol. (There are three ways in human life, ours is the fourth; first you will reject all types of belief, and then you will find your own belief. The shortest but the hardest road.)”
8-Fieldwork findings II, April 25, 2008.
9-Fieldnotes, March 19, 2008.
10-Fieldnotes, March 24, 2008.
11-Fieldnotes, April 15, 2008.
12-Fieldnotes, April 19, 2008.
13-Fieldnotes, April 25, 2008.
14-I owe thanks to Professor Milica Bakic-Hayden for recognizing the resemblance.
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