Encounter with Adversity - What REALLY Happened at Zirve University

FYI: If you happen to be flaming gay like yours truly, be extra careful when trying to travel the world and teach English as a foreign language (also known as TEFL, TOEFL, TESOL). This may seem like it goes without saying, which it sort of does, but now I have a story for you, children...

First, though, look up Gaziantep, Turkey, and tell me what you think. Would YOU move there? Your answer is probably straight laughter and a crude "Give me a break, bitch!" but Diva was wanting to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak, and with an attitude of Anywhere But Here. Now look up Zirve University. Would YOU work there? Ah, ain't so quick to cackle now, are you, ho? Full benefits, plus a company MacBook, great pay, accomodation provided, airfare paid for... it was the tits as far as TEFL jobs go. Now, if you're bored, look up TEFL. Oh, the shit that goes down when you're an English teacher abroad!

If you are unfortunate enough to never have experienced what people refer to as "culture shock," let me break it down for you: arriving at 3 AM after TWENTY-FOUR HOURS of traveling in a dusty, po-dunk little airport, 2 hour delay on the last plane, both bags show up without fail (hallelujah!) and someone there from the University to pick Diva up? That would be a big FUCK NO (hallelujah revoked). What's a girl to do? Don't speak Turkish. Don't know jack other than I'm Here I'm Queer I'm Fabulous Now Take Me To My Fully Furnished Apartment, Thanks. Well, in this situation I luckily had my wits and found a security guard with a computer and looked up the apartment's address and some useful phone numbers.

I wish I had a photo of my facial expression as the taxi drove me into Gaziantep for the first time that night. You'd think I'd swallowed a tarantula and it was slowly crawling back up my esophagus. That bad. Random outcroppings of drab stone buildings, dozens and dozens, and an expanse of dirt that was apparently a road - the word dystopia buzzed in my brain. Where in the hell AM I?

Pros: -The goddamn money! -The prestige of working at a University and not just some random language school. - Own personal apartment paid for in full by the school, and fully furnished. -Automatic group of friends, aka the 'foreign teachers,' a magpie mix of characters: the British professor who'd written four history books and speaks three languages, the fierce Indian girl with hilarious horror stories of all the English teachers from last year (apparently they hated it, which I found fascinating cuz it's like, love it or leave, hello?), the Hawaiian hippie archeologist, the weird sporty dude who was an unlikely English major and the Turkish-American brothers whose mom is head of the Education Department, etc. etc. etc. And that's not to mention the Turkish staff! (The Turkish English teachers were to teach grammar, foreign teachers conversation). While I was at first totally freaked out by being there and basically had a week-long inner anxiety attack (see "Culture Shock"), once things got rolling a bit I grew to quite like it.

Cons: -Disturbing viscinity to Syria, given that country's recent violent political revolution. -Disturbing source of income for the school, which on the very first day was revealed to me by the Hawaiian archeologist to be a semi-fundamentalist Islamic group founded by a Turk known as Fethullah Gulen who is banned from Turkey but has major worldwide influence via Islamic followings in various 2nd and 3rd-world countries. I shrugged my shoulders - They hired me, didn't they? I was here, wasn't I? Who gives a rat's ass where the money comes from, as long as it ends up in my pocket, right?

0700 Hours: Wake up, boil some water for coffee on the hot plate (takes 20 minutes), get dressed in shirt and tie (required), make some coffee in French press and have a bowl of cereal, but quickly because the bus doesn't wait after 7:45.

0745: Find a place on the bus next to someone likable, or else just sit by myself and wait for someone to sit next to me. Stare out the window at the incomparably bleak landscape on the way to Zirve, which is in a housing development way outside of town.

0800: Since classes haven't started, I now have 8 hours to kill, yay! Hang out in Hawaiian archeologist's office most of the day playing Every Word on Kindle and watching Vampire Diaries and Project Runway off of Side Reel.

1200: Find some people who are interested in lunch and haven't brought their own, mosey on down to the cafeteria for some ridiculously cheap eats that are always more or less awesome (Gaziantep is known for its cuisine). Gobble down fabulous feast, stay and chit chat, usually talking about some complaint pertaining to the apartments (no hot water, the laundry situation), and pretend to be interested.

1300: Leave the cafeteria for the cafe and have Turkish coffee, then read fortunes to one another. Play Every Word until the end of the day, about 5:30.

1730: Sit next to someone cool on the bus home, convince someone to go out to eat or do something fun like go to the mall or something. The 40-something Iranian woman from the Communications Dept. is always reliably friendly, since she and I were together when we went to get our residence permits at the police station and were served tea twice as well as Turkish coffee, thus beginning my obsession with Turkish coffee.

1900: Eat and chit chat, listening to Iranian woman's lovely lilting accent and wonderfully brash and feminist opinions. Or discuss past experiences with the girl who spent a year in Thailand and has her Masters in TESOL. Or go to an Albanian restaurant downtown and sit on the balcony with the fierce Indian girl and talk about boys, then go jewelry shopping and sample Gaziantep's famous pistachio baklavah (it's true what they say: it's divine!)

2100: Read some of George R.R. Martin's Clash of Kings in bed until sleepy or else Skype at Pizza Pizza (downstairs in the same building as the apartments) with friends or family.

2200: Turn on fan above hot plate for suctioning smoke to tune out the honking, tire-skidding traffic at the major intersection just outside my window as well as a metro stop that makes polite announcements each time a train arrives. Go to sleep on re-purposed futon in the living room, thinking about Turkish boys and they're B.O. (Foreseeing it's gonna be a problem - they stink!)

Doesn't sound like too bad of a day, right? With the Turkish teachers, we also had a week-long workshop that was basically a crash course in teaching English. Then classes began - but only a 3-week pre-session that was for very early beginners and was taught only by the Turkish teachers, so more Every Word all day except now with students running around everywhere.

I was visiting the Iranian woman over in her building (there were only two buildings, a third being constructed and nearly finished, with other buildilngs going up right and left - the University is only 3 years old and not yet accredited. There was constant construction going on at Zirve as well as in the city itself, whose metro system is brand new and opened four months ago). We were discussing a visit to Mount Nemrut when one of the Turkish-American boys showed up and invited me to meet his mom, the head of the Education Dept. whom everyone was very friendly with and had nothing but good things to say about.

Her son left me in her office, which I thought strange but no big deal, we could have some friendly idle chatter and get to know each other. "Gaziantep," she said, "and the South of Turkey, is very backwards. Things aren't as liberal here as they are in the U.S." I agreed, thinking, Damn this bitch is the serious type! "Since I'm American but ethnically Turkish, sometimes the Administration asks me to talk to the English teachers... There's been some talk about you and your sexuality and, they've... they've asked me to ask you if you would consider resigning."

Like, wait, hold on a minute, FOR REAL, girl?

Yeah. For real. The real deal. As real as it gets.

She continued: "They're concerned about your safety mainly, and how the students will react to you. Personally I think they would give you grief, for sure. And this region, I mean... your safety is a concern."

Safety, Ha! This was class A Discrimination with a capital D and an exclamation point! Diva was near tears. Diva's heart was a-thumping in her chest. "How could they know?" I said. She shrugged. "I suppose I just now today locked my Facebook," I commented, putting 2 and 2 together. I'd always left my Facebook open to the public as a matter of principal, drag queen photos and all. However, all the foreign teachers had been making separate Facebook accounts for adding students and teachers in order to maintain privacy, which we all referred to as Fakebook. She nodded with great concern, "I wish you had done that earlier," she said with heartfelt sincerity. Earlier! Bitch, they hired me THREE MONTHS AGO. What were they doing ALL SUMMER?

I sat in the English building in a relatively secluded spot and sent out applications for the rest of that day, mostly to schools in Istanbul, which the woman in the Education Dept. had recommended. Back to square one. How many applications had I sent out in the past two years, to how many institutions in how many countries? It was almost automatic at this point, copy and paste this, attach these files etc etc. and bang! application sent!

Diva was distraught. I called my friend Amanda that night and told her, and asked her not to tell anyone. She of course immediately called my dad, who didn't sleep that night, as evidenced in his Facebook messages to me every half hour with details on a gay rights group centered in Ankara, as well as phone numbers to the American Embassy and other pertinent details that any concerned father with a gay son addressed with this particular situation would send.

Weirdest part of this whole experience? The following week, when I didn't tell a soul at Zirve about what was going on. Why should I? After talking to my dad on the phone and his emphatic, "Get the hell out of the there," I didn't want to fight any battles in the name of gay rights in Gaziantep. That was not the reason I had come to Turkey, and it was a losing battle that would create a safety concern. Sure, I could blab to all the American teachers that the fundamentalist-Islamic-group-funded University we all worked for was more or less giving me the boot for completely unethical reasons and rally rally rally, but who has that kind of fortitude? It was exhausting enough just getting to Turkey, but then to stay and battle some holier-than-thou cause that won't see the light of day for another 50 or 100 years minimum? No thanks!

But try dealing with all this mental anguish in total silence, smiling as if nothing is going on other than everyone sitting around and still waiting for classes to start, complaining about not having textbooks to plan with yet etc. etc., and on the sly replying to the overwhelming response to my applications in Istanbul, holding Skype interviews in empty classrooms until a desperate elementary school coordinator offered a job teaching Kindergarten on the spot, come tomorrow, dahling! (She spoke with a perfect British accent, but, turns out, was Turkish). It was as simple as that.

Except when the girl with her Masters in TESOL found out the night before I was supposed to leave and came over to say goodbye. It was quite sad. I'd become, oddly, rather close with this little grab-bag group, and I was going to miss it, as I do even now. I gave her all my dishes and things I wouldn't need or couldn't bring in a bag - cleaning supplies, food etc. And the next day one of the Turkish-American boys drove me to the airport, and POOF! I was gone.

Within 48 hours of my departure all the English teachers knew what had happened via my girlfriend whom I gave all my dishes, the only one who got to say Gule Gule ("Bye Bye" in Turkish). Needless to say, they were pissed. They caused a fuss. The Administration had to call a meeting due to morale, and it was laid out for everyone that they were concerned for my safety and yada yada.

I will say this: I did get paid for my time at Zirve, down to the penny. I will also say this: by the time I left, I was glad to leave. Fuck Gaziantep! Merhaba Istanbul, baby! Isn't it clear which is the more desirable location, people? DUH.

My dad, bless his heart, had some very seriuos discussions via e-mail with the gay rights group in Ankara, and told me that they had a lawyer who was ready to serve Zirve University with a lawsuit because what they did is immoral and illegal and illegitate and just plain ill all around. That's right: a lawsuit. Moral of the story? Be careful who you "ask to resign," bitches!