I am used to being a foreigner. For the past 10 years I am. Through my travels and living abroad. Even in my home country. “You speak Russian without an accent“, - a Moscow taxi driver notes. “I am a native” - I murmur.

Being a foreigner is always discriminating - in a very cool but also very annoying way. On the one hand you get a license to do outrageous things that violate local customs. Yet on the other hand you are never given full excess to the local living. And you are constantly balancing between keeping your identity (and sanity) and yet integrating.

I find that being a foreigner in Turkey is a particularly cool and annoying. Often times people in Turkey go off their way to help and protect you. Other times they take advantage and leave you in misery.

Turkish hospitality easily wins hearts. Friends driving miles to pick you up, teenage boy on a train sharing a pack of chewing gum, a stranger on a ferry delivering a speech on Istanbul history for your education and eternal shopkeepers showing you the way when you are lost. Foreigners are guests and guests are holy in Turkey: “A guest comes with ten blessings, eats one and leaves nine“.

I feel that a lot of the relationships I have developed at the shops and eateries in Istanbul are because of me being a foreigner. Shopkeepers at the places where we go showcase the finest Turkish hospitality because I am a foreigner introducing other foreigners to their country and their food, both a matter of unconditional pride for Turks. And the food vendors help me in this mission with grace and generosity. Inviting us to share breakfast when them, offering endless freebies to sample and packing a little thing “for the road”. I don’t mention endless cups of tea.

Other times you however see the other side of being a foreigner in Turkey. People think you are completely clueless and invite being taking advantage of. Lady jumping the queue to the ladies’ room at a cafe, restaurant charging you with a “foreign tax” and adding arbitrary amount to each single dish on the bill (Agapia in Kadikoy, this is you), merry shopkeepers of Sultanahmet making jokes at your expense, taxi drivers (ah, should I even mention Istanbul taxi drivers?!), indifferent officials of all sorts. “Put the belts on the band!” - cries the airport security official. I turn to him, raise my brows and calmly inquire, “Efendim?” (Pardon me). “Buyrun hanımefendi” (Here you go, ma’am), he points to the gates. This short distance and very blurry borders between “Hey, you!” and hanımefendi always strikes me in Turkey.

I acutely live the ups and downs of being a foreigner in Turkey with my two lives - one in Sapanca and another in Istanbul. In Sapanca I am a part of family and for woman in Turkey it makes a whole big difference “Are you married?”, my greengrocer at the Kadıkoy market asks me. “Yes, I am”, I reply having learned that little lies make things easier in Turkey. “Oh, you are ours, one of us then“. I am “Bizim kız” (our girl / daughter) to the close and not very much so friends of the family and things are taken care of for me. In Sapanca I fell protected and not foreign at all.

When I am on my own in Istanbul I am constantly reminded that I am. By all those experiences that draws the line very clearly.

Hamam going has been one of them: now and then I feel like pampering myself or introduce some of my visiting friends to the Turkish bathing rituals. My hamam is near the Kadıkoy market: it is mostly local but somewhat frequented by the foreigners living on the Asian side.

Three middle-aged ladies are commanding the floor. It am amazed how our mere appearance paralyzes them for a while: they give us this scanning suspicious have-you-entered-the-wrong-door look which you almost never get from a man but almost often will get from a woman in Turkey. To my greetings the ladies start using scarce English words or replace words with signs to communicate. I go ahead with my Turkish. The communication does not really go well. Moreover, the ladies do not seem to be interested in one. And this is in the place where the chatter goes louder than the water running into the marble sinks - you come to Turkish bath to socialize as much as to pamper yourself.

When we are about to leave I notice two another girls, a Turk and her foreign friend. The Turkish young lady had a small chat with the attending ladies, left a tip and got a smile and “Yine bekleriz, efendim” (Will be happy to see you again). When we were leaving the hamam ladies helped themselves with a tip without returning the change, forced a smile and bade rushed farewells.

What was so different between that Turkish lady and us? What is the difference between the male shopkeepers at the Kadıkoy market and the hamam attendant ladies? Was it female jealousy or our inadequacy ?

Sometimes I get too tired of making such analysis. I try to think that this is just how it goes - up and then down. Sometimes to be more adequate I would make uncontroversial red lentil soup for the nine of us. But sometimes I would ignore the Turkish imperatives of combining ingredients and sharing the meals and would make my own winter salad of roasted chestnuts and watermelon radish. And you know what? That combination of sweet roasted chestnuts and bitter watermelon radish looks so strange and foreign but very fitting at the same time!