Tantalizing Tapas

Story and Photos

by:

Füsun Atalay Copyright © 2004

Called by any other name, such as the French “hors d’oeuvres,” Chinese “dim sum” or Turkish “meze,” tapas are small portions of food served as appetizers in a social setting.

Spaniards go to bars to join friends, converse, argue, joke and flirt. Tapas keep them going, but they are rarely eaten in place of a main meal.

“Tapa” finds its origin in the verb “tapar” which means “to cover.” The first tapa, as the story goes, was a thin slice of ham served on top of a sherry glass, intended to keep the flies out. Once barkeepers discovered that the saltiness of the ham spurred beverage sales, a tradition was born and tapas, served in bars and cafes throughout the country, became an integral part of the Spanish lifestyle.

Today, every glass of sherry bought in a local bar comes covered by a “tapa,” the Spanish word for “lid.”

It could be anything from a slice of bread topped with ham, cheese or tomatoes to a small dish of tapenade with a piece of bruschetta.

Tapas come in cold and hot varieties. The cold dishes on the tapa bar are comprised of various exotic salads such as Salpicon with chopped tomatoes, onions, peppers, shrimp and other shellfish. Remion is a salad of oranges, codfish, onions and olives which is — strange as it sounds — delicious. Same goes for the roasted pepper salad, ensalada campera, a lemony potato salad and cooked fish roe dressed with olive oil and lemon.

As for the variety of hot tapas, some, such as prawns drizzled with garlic and oil or garlic- grilled pork loin, are cooked to order. Others — like meatballs in almond sauce, kidneys in sherry sauce, sauteed mushrooms and chicken fried with garlic — are dished out of a bubbling stew pot. Beans with ham, spicy snails, crispy fritters or croquettes, and tortilla, a thick round potato omelette, are all part of the endless variety of tapas.

Even though you’re thousands of kilometres away from Spain, you can create some of the sunny Spanish flavours in your own kitchen.

For a light summer fare or for great parties, tapas will show off your culinary talents. Here are a few recipes to get you started.

Spicy Almonds

1 Tbsp. coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp. cayenne
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 egg white, lightly beaten
2 cups whole almonds in their skins

Preheat oven to 350 F. Toss almonds with the egg white and the rest of the ingredients. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast almonds until golden brown and aromatic, about 20 minutes. Allow to cool before serving. Serves 4-6.

Fried Calamari

Sea salt

150 g prepared calamari, cut into rings
2 Tbsp. flour seasoned with salt and pepper
1 egg
2 Tbsp. milk
olive oil, for frying
lemon wedges

Dredge the calamari rings with the seasoned flour in a bowl. Whisk the egg and milk together in a shallow bowl. Heat the oil in a heavy-based frying pan.

Tip out the floured calamari rings one at a time into the egg mixture, shaking off any excess liquid. Fry in the hot oil, in batches if necessary, for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden.

Pat excess oil from the fried calamari with paper towels. Sprinkle with salt and transfer to a warm plate. Serve with lemon wedges. Serves 4.

Spanish-style Bruschetta

12 slices of Italian or French bread
1 large clove garlic
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 ripe tomato cut in half
Salt and pepper to taste

Rub the bread with the whole clove of garlic to lightly flavour the bread.

Brush the bread with olive oil and place in a 325 F oven for 5 minutes or until toasted.

Remove from the oven and then immediately rub the bread with the inside flesh of the tomato in order to make the toasted bread moist with the fresh ripe tomato juices.

Carrots Seasoned with Herbs ~ Serves 8 to 10 as part of a selection of :
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp. ground coriander
3/4 tsp. cumin seeds
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
3-4 Tbsp. sherry vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil, for the dressing, plus 2 tablespoons for carrots
1 kg long, tender young carrots cut diagonally into 2-cm thick slices
1/4 cup water (or as needed)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black
pepper
Pinch of sugar
Half of a small bunch flat-leaf
parsley, leaves only, finely chopped

In a mini-food processor or a blender, combine the garlic, oregano, cumin seeds, coriander and pepper flakes.

Add vinegar and grind to a paste. In a thin stream, drizzle in the olive oil and blend until the mixture is emulsified. Set aside while you cook the carrots.

In a medium heavy saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 4 minutes or until they begin to soften. Add the water, sugar, salt and pepper; cover the pan. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, for about 5 more minutes, or until the carrots are just tender but not mushy. Add a little more water to the pan if necessary.

Transfer the carrots to a serving bowl with a slotted spoon and immediately add the herb dressing. Toss together and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave the carrots to marinate for 2 to 3 hours, and when ready to serve, stir in the parsley. Serve at room temperature on small plates.

Cherry Tomatoes Stuffed with Spanish Olive Tapenade ~ Makes 8 to 10 servings
Source: Gourmet Magazine

For the tapenade:
1/2 cup Spanish olives with pimento
1 1/2 tsp. drained capers
1 tsp. brandy, preferably a Spanish Solera Gran Reserva
1/4 tsp. freshly grated lemon zest
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
32 small cherry tomatoes
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish

Make the tapenade: in a food processor, pulse the olives until they are chopped roughly. Add the remaining tapenade ingredients and pulse until olives are minced.

With a sharp knife, slice and discard the stem end and the bottom from each tomato. Using a 1/4 teaspoon, remove the juice and seeds from each tomato half, leaving the outside shell intact.

Spoon a generous 1/4 teaspoon of the tapenade into each shell and garnish with the parsley.

Potato and Onion Tortilla ~ Serves 4 to 6
3/4 cup olive oil
5 large potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
2 onions, finely diced
6 eggs, lightly beaten in a large bowl
Salt and freshly ground black
pepper

Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the onions until soft. Add potatoes and cook over medium-heat about 10 minutes or until almost tender. Break up the potatoes slightly with a spatula.

Transfer the potatoes and onions to the bowl with the eggs. Stir the potatoes around to cover well with the egg, and season with salt and pepper.

Drain all of the oil from the pan except for 1 tablespoon. Add the egg mixture to the pan; reduce the heat to low and cook the omelet slowly until golden and firm enough to flip. Carefully flip the omelet, slipping it onto another plate if necessary, and cook until the other side is done. It should be about 1-inch thick and still soft inside.

Cut the omelet into squares and serve immediately hot, or let cool to room temperature and serve.

Garlic Shrimp ~ Serves 4.
Source: Casual Cuisines of the World

These shrimp — fragrant with garlic and olive oil — are brought to the table sizzling in a little metal pan. Have plenty of bread on hand to sop up the delicious pan juices. Serve with lemon wedges, if desired.

1/4 cup olive oil
4 large cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 lb, medium shrimp, peeled and de-veined
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsp. dry sherry
1 tsp. paprika
Chopped fresh flat-leaf Italian
parsley for garnish

In a saute pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and saute for 1 minute. Raise the heat to high and add the shrimp, lemon juice, sherry and paprika. Stir well, then saute, stirring briskly, until the shrimp turn pink and curl slightly, about 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper and sprinkle with parsley. Serve hot.

Copyrighted Material ~ Copyright © 2004 ~ All Rights belong to Füsun Atalay

Clean Money

short story inspired by a real life experience
by:
Füsun Atalay © 2000
Dedicated to BILL S

Antonio Giuseppe Franco Delverde was an inconspicuous little man for his long, impressive name. So, he called himself Tony, and the simple sign outside his little shop read Tony the Tailor. His height was at the lower end of the average scale for men, and his weight competed with his height particularly around the waist line. He had dark hair, a small moustache which he kept neatly trimmed, and a nice row of teeth which enhanced his generous smile every time the little bell on the shop door announced a new customer.

Tony was a cheerful man by nature, blessed by a mellifluous voice. He would hum familiar arias or whistle merry tunes as he picked up his needle and thread and set down to his much loved vocation of altering and tailoring garments for men.

He never knew the complete lyrics of anything he sang, but whatever he did sing sounded so joyous that one could listen to him without getting annoyed at the repetition of the limited number of verses he knew. Sometimes Tony even took familiar melodies and made up his own lyrics. To a non-speaker, much of what is uttered in Italian sounds romantic and mirthful anyway. He could be singing, "O, go away and leave me alone, why don’t you?"— but it was unimaginable to think he would when his voice and the impish smile under his toothbrush style moustache suggested very much the opposite.

Tony enjoyed the good reputation he had worked hard to earn. Whenever a young man in town had a career promotion and needed the attire to reflect his new position, he would visit Tony to tailor fashionable suit. Aspiring junior executives could surely pick suits off the racks in the department stores but if they wanted a perfect fit, choice of fabric, unparalleled attention to detail and meticulous workmanship, Tony was their man. He would not dream of compromising his art and his integrity which assured that he would always have faithful patrons, but also that he would never be rich enough to retire to a life of luxury, sailing around the world on a cruise liner.

Of course there were Gino and Carmela to think of as well as his devoted wife Magda, who managed the dry cleaning store. Gino wanted to become an engineer, move out of the small town in which he was born and grew up, and discover life in big cities such as New York or San Francisco. He was keen, industrious like his old man, bright and blessed with a sense of humor and adventure. With the right schooling he would go places Tony himself couldn’t even dream of. His greatest legacy to his son would be to provide him with choices and opportunities only a solid education could ensure.

Carmela, with her Hungarian complexion and Italian passion was the joy of Tony and Magda. Tony was proud that she had inherited her artistic talents from him. She had an instinctive eye for harmony and color coordination as well as a propensity for the whimsical and the unusual. His hopes for her included carving a prominent niche for her in the world of design and fashion. When Magda nudged him to the reality that such endeavors required funds they did not have, Tony would look up and reply as if he were addressing an invisible being.

"You never know, mia cara," he would say. "When there’s a will, there’s a way. The Almighty up there sees how hard we work for the things we want."

Thus Tony continued his dreams of a brilliant futures for his son and daughter and kept on working hard stretching his early mornings into late hours of devoted labor. He counted his blessings for for having a loving wife, good children and a talent that was in enough demand to put bread and butter on the table and afford a roof over their heads with a little left over to save for the future of his loved ones. But just the same, at times when he was overworked and his shoulders ached with the tension of his trade, he could not desist the temptation of daydreaming.

It was always the same dream: Somehow, he’d won the jackpot in the lottery. He’d lock up his little shop, go straight to the florist and buy the most expensive, most beautiful, largest floral arrangement. At this point he’d smile at the thought of disbelief on Magda’s face when he’s show up unannounced in the middle of the day at the Dainty Cleaners , almost lost behind a gigantic bouquet of flowers and foliage. Then they’s both drive home and plan the rest of their life and the future of their children with plenty of financial resources to afford what they wanted.

Tony was in the middle of such a daydream one day when the jingle of the bell over the shop door announced a customer. Tony laid the charcoal gabardine trousers he was hemming on his work table and went to the front to greet the newcomer.

The man who stood on the other side of the counter had not been in his shop before. He was a burly chap in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked straight at Tony with piercing gray eyes and planted a heap of garments on the counter top.

"I want these laundered and pressed. How long will it take?"

"This is a tailor shop," started Tony, "the cleaners is down the street on. . . "but the young man cut him off impatiently.

Look— I’m new in town and I don’t have much time. A tailor shop must at least have pressing?"

"Let’s see," Tony looked like a doctor with his tape measure hanging around his neck like a stethoscope and his half-moon lenses low on his nose. There were two jeans, a pair of brown corduroys and three polyester shirts.

"If you’re in a hurry I can take them to the Dainty Cleaners myself this afternoon and you can collect them here again the day after tomorrow."

"That’s fine," the man replied curtly. "I’ll come for them after four o’clock, Thursday."

"I’ll need your name and phone number," Tony picked up the pencil that he always kept lodged over his right ear.

The young man seemed to be a bit fidgety all of a sudden. "The name is Harvey. Lou Harvey. No phone number yet!"

Have you checked the pockets, Mr Harvey?" Tony looked up, but the man had already vanished in a rush.

Tony shook his head in the manner older people do at the haste and the rudeness that is prevalent among younger people. He tagged each item to deliver them to the cleaners before he could return to the task that was interrupted by the strange customer.

The dry cleaners where Magda worked during the mornings was less than a ten minute walk away. She would be leaving in half an hour, and maybe he could take her out for a cappuccino before she went home to cook supper and he returned to the tailor shop. He locked up the shop door with the sign indicating he’d be back in an hour.

Magda was surprised to see him show up at the cleaners with a pile of clothes on his arm. As she took them from him, he explained the circumstances which brought him there. Whatever the reason, Magda thought it was a nice idea, impromptu as it was, to go for a leisurely coffee at midday with her Tony.

She stuffed the garments in her canvas bag to wash at home. (She had been doing that for the past week and bringing them back for pressing since the industrial washer had been taken out of the cleaning store for major repairs.) Then in the faltering autumn sunshine, the two of them sauntered, arm in arm to Café Ferento for their favorite brew.

She stuffed the garments in her canvas bag to wash at home. (She had been doing that for the past week and bringing them back for pressing since the industrial washer had been taken out of the cleaning store for major repairs.) Then in the faltering autumn sunshine, the two of them sauntered, arm in arm to Café Ferento for their favorite brew.

That evening when Tony closed up shop and went home just in time for their evening meal, Magda seemed to have a strange look about her. She asked him to wait until dinner was over and the two of them had some time alone after Gino and Carmela left to meet their friends at the movies. Now Tony was even more curious about her unusual secrecy.

Finally he was alone with is wife.

"What;’s up Magda? What’s the big secret?" He tried to make light of her serious appearance.

Magda seemed impatient to tell him whatever it was and get it off her chest.

You won’t believe it Tony, but I laundered twenty thousand dollars today !"

"What? Where did you get that kind of money? What d’ya mean you laundered it?" Tony was befuddled.

Magda went on to tell him how she noticed a bulge in one of the pants after it came out of the wash. She had presumed that the pockets were cleared when the garments were brought, so she didn’t check them herself. When she investigated, she found a worn out billfold in the back pocket of the brown corduroys .

She was so surprised at first, she did not know what to do with it. Then she decided to check if the contents were damaged. That’s when she found the folded thousand dollar bills— all twenty of them— in the wallet. There was nothing else- no driver’s licence, credit cards, anything to identify the owner. She had taken out the bills, which were all damp but clean, and laid them out to dry on the floor in their bedroom before placing them back in the wallet.

Tony was puzzled. He couldn’t make any sense of this either. But when he recalled the odd manner in which the man who brought the corduroys behaved, he began feeling uneasy. Who would keep so much money in his pocket and let it go so casually? Either he was hiding it from someone or he was truly absent minded ! Was he aware of missing his cash by now? Did he remember that he might have left them in the cords he gave for washing and pressing?

"The way I see it," started Tony after pondering a little on what he heard, "we have two choices.

One— we can place the money back where it came from and return his clothes to this Lou character on Thursday.."

"What’s the other choice?" Magda looked so sweet when she had that girlish curiosity on her face.

Tony chuckled. "The other is not really a choice, but it is a possibility. If we were not honest, we could keep the money and pretend we knew nothing about it I mean if it was so important how could anyone just leave it in his pocket?"

"Oh, Tony, you can’t mean that!" exclaimed Magda in earnest.

"Of course I don’t mean that, mia cara. I just like teasing you."

Yet how nice it would be if they had received a windfall like that just out of the blue ! It would not set them up for life, but perhaps they could afford a cruise after all and forget about their hard work for a couple of weeks. Or, they could pay off the remaining mortgage on their home and then have a couple of thousand left over for a frivolous shopping spree. The thought seemed to be mutually shared by both but neither dared to voice it to the other. Yet Tony could read the wistful expression in Magda’s blue eyes; and Magda knew what Tony’s involuntary deep sigh meant.

Next morning all the bills were dry and ready to be placed back in the wallet. Tony thought it would be best to keep the wallet locked up at home until Thursday when Lou Harvey said he’d come to pick up his clothes at the tailor shop. He was still unsure whether he should point out that the latter had left his wallet in his pants. There was something strange about this incident and the Lou character but Tony just could not put his finger on it.

On Thursday Tony closed his shop for lunch, made a special trip home and brought back the wallet. He picked up Lou Harvey’s garments from the dry cleaners - all washed and neatly pressed. As the clock on the wall ticked away, the small hand moving closer to four and the long one to twelve, Tony’s anxiety filled his chest. Had it not been for the inordinate amount of cash casually left in a pocket, he wouldn’t have thought much of Lou Harvey’s behavior. In the two dat time lapse however, Tony’s vivid imagination had presented him with so many scenarios and ‘what-if’s’ . Then reflecting back on the young man’s hurried manners and shifty eyes, little by little the honest tailor started losing his composure.

It was four-thirty-five but there was no sign of Lou. Tony finished sewing the last button on a jacket he had tailored. The suit was completed. It was very stylish and once again Tony fely proud of his work. There was no use starting something new now. It was five twenty and he wanted to close his shop soon. If it were not for Lou Harvey, Tony would have called it a day a quarter of an hour ago.

At six o’clock Tony phoned home to tell Magda that he was just leaving his shop so she wouldn’t worry. That’s all he could do for Lou Harvey— after all, he had a life and a family. Some people were so inconsiderate ! The Tony thought of the wallet and decide not to leave it in the shop overnight. He had to take it back home with him.

Magda was awaiting his return anxiously to hear what happened. She could not believe her eyes when Tony showed her the wallet.

An entire week had gone by and there was no sign of Lou Harvey. Every day Tony had taken the wallet full of twenty thousand dollars in cash and waited for its owner to show up. He was beginning to feel distraught with the burden of this money like the ancient mariner must have felt with the albatross hanging around his neck. There was no way of finding out where this man lived to get in touch with him.

After four torturous weeks of waiting without any results Tony declared to Magda that they had but only two options left.

"Didn’t we have two choices when this thing started?" asked puzzled Magda.

"Well, one of the choices is still the same, but we know we cannot keep this cash—it’s not ours.

Which brings us to the second option," Tony paused to see if Magda had caught on. She waited for him to continue.

You agree that it is the only other thing to do, don’t you, mia cara? The police will know what to do with it. Keeping it may bring us trouble we don’t need."

Once again he thought he saw that wistful look in Magda’s eyes. How good she would look stretched out on a chaise-long on the upper deck of a luxury liner, soaking in the sun and the sea breeze. A brief picture of them dancing cheek-to-cheek in the lounge after the sumptuous eight course meal flashed before his eyes. Then followed a snapshot of the sign on his shop window:

"Closed for two weeks - VACATION".

She thought she heard the familiar involuntary sigh she had heard when she first told him about laundering thousands of dollars.

Tony was right, but just the mention of police and trouble raised the blonde hairs on the back of Magda’s neck. The sooner they settled this, the better life would be. Sleeping with thousands of dollars under their pillows just wasn’t novel any more.

At the police station Tony recounted in the smallest detail hoe he came upon such a sum of money. Before he turned the wallet to the authorities, he read the written transcription of his statement and seeing that there was nothing else that he could add, he signed it.

When he stepped outside, he was met by a cool November drizzle. Faded orange and crimson leaves were swept to the trenches in the sidewalk and glistened with raindrops in spite of their parched skins. Tony put up the collar of his coat, hunched his shoulders forward and started walking towards his shop. He felt the lightness of a weight taken off his shoulders and his mind. It was still a mystery to him why Lou never returned to claim his garments or his money— but then, Lou was probably not even his real name. In any case, Tony hoped that was the end of this strange adventure and acknowledged to himself that both he and Magda had learned some lessons besides courting and resisting temptation.

It was Carmela who answered the phone and covering the receiver with her other hand she shouted, "Pa, it’s for you! Someone - a sergeant Conrad in the fifth prison?" Tony took the receiver. It was sergeant Conrad Barrymore from the Fifth Precinct. He wanted to know if Tony could drop by the police station tomorrow morning at nine.

Tony's heart started palpitating. It had been almost three weeks since he had turned in the money and signed his statement. Why would they want him to go back? Was he found guilty of something? Sergeant Barrymore assured that everything would be explained to him when he went to the station.

The sky was already turning dark at four o’clock . Magda found November days so dreary. She stopped pacing nervously when from the corner of her eye she saw Tony’s silhouette at the entrance. She ran to open the door, but he had already turned his key in the lock.

So?" Magda was dying of curiosity and anxiety.

Tony took off his trench coat and the brown woollen scarf Magda had knitted for him. He hung both on a wooden hanger; placed the hanger in the coat closet and turned around to his wife. Magda looked as if she were about to faint with anxiety.

"Well, I’m not going to jail," said Tony calmly. His face was beaming.

"Tony, what happened, tell me for heaven’s sake!" Magda begged. "I have been climbing the roof wondering why the police called you back— what did they want?"

"Ah mia cara, my darling.." Tony grabbed Magda by her waist and turned her around in a waltz step.

"Get ready to go out for Christmas shopping. We still have three hours before stores close."

"Antonio Delverde, stop kidding around with me and get to the truth !"

The truth was that Lou Harvey was a counterfeit money printer. His real name was Louis Desrosiers. He had no idea where the batch of twenty -one thousand dollar bills had disappeared , so he printed a set with the same phony serial numbers. The police had established that the money turned in by Tony was indeed counterfeit, but they were waiting to find the culprit behind the operation.

Louis Desrosiers was apprehended when he tried to pay cash for a fancy sound system he purchased on Saturday morning. After being detained all day, he finally confessed and that is why the police called Tony that evening to go the next day to identify Desrosiers in a line up of suspects.

"Oh, thank you, God !" exclaimed Magda. "I was so scared that they thought you were involved in a crime or something." Then, as an afterthought she added, "Can you imagine, Tony, if we hadn’t turned it in and started spending the money ourselves?"

By this time Gino and Carmela, in their benign curiosity, had surrounded them.

"Well my darlings, honesty always pays off— and in more ways than one." Tony reached into the breast pocket of his sharply tailored vest and took out an envelope. "Because we helped the police to catch the culprit and stop him from printing more fake money, we get the reward that was set for this. Look— Two thousand, crispy clean, unlaundered dollars !"

There was a joyful cheer from all three. Carmela and her brother applauded as Tony lifted his wife off her feet in a tight embrace. Then they all decided to go out to celebrate, and over a candle-lit dinner discuss what they would do with their reward..

All rights reserved ~ Copyright by Füsun Atalay - January 24, 2000 ©

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Vanity’s Fare

Story and Drawing

by

Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © 2000

My best friend Wendie and I hate rain and humidity for exactly the opposite reasons. At the slightest bit of dampness in the air her hair frizzes ; whereas mine loses its long laboured curls and hangs limp. Of course there’s the gray skies and the gloomy feelings a rainy day brings, but, in comparison to the imminent threat on my self image, they simply pale.

"Oh, you’re so lucky!" Wendie keeps whining. "You have such beautiful, straight, thick hair! Look at mine- I’m born with the electrocuted look!"

I keep telling her it’s not much fun to have straight hair. Leaving it natural makes my face appear longer and my jaw line more squared. I like the big, bouncy curls which give a softer uplift to my appearance. But to obtain such curls, I have to wet strands of hair at night and confine them in spiky plastic curlers with pink snap-on caps.

The worst part is sleeping with those curlers. I have the type of hair that takes along time to conform. It would rather hang free and loose. Some friends ask where I get it straightened so nicely although I keep explaining that’s my natural hair. They look at me strangely when I tell them of the pains I take, feeling doomed to sleep in discomfort for the rest of my life just to have curls!

I must admit that I do not envy Wendie in the least for her naturally frizzy hair. She spends close to an hour every morning in front of the mirror, hair dryer in one hand and a wide brush in the other, pulling and stretching her tight, frizzy curls. The longer and harder she pulls, the better her wiry curls turn into voluptuous waves. That’s why she often looks as if she walked out of the coiffeur salon with a fresh hair do.

Perhaps hers is a small price compared to my ordeal of sleeping over an uneven landscape of rollers every night. But at the first hint of humidity, our individual efforts go to waste, and we each end up what we had to start with.

A permanent is out of the question for me. I have tried it once- many years ago when I was in Paris. I wanted something that would be more memorable than a miniature Eiffel Tower statue.I wanted an experience on which I could look back and remember the summer of my European vacation. . .

So I walked into a coiffeur salon and explained in an affected Parisian accent that I wanted big curls that would stay, even after many shampoos.

Antoine appeared to be kind although, I sensed a certain haughtiness in his approach. He ran his long fingers through my hair a few times pulling it back, examining and evaluating from various angles. He crossed his arms, tilted his head and squinted meditatively for a few seconds, leaving me in suspense.

Finally he announced that if I wanted curls, I would have to agree to shorter hair. Otherwise, I would be supporting a rather large head and resemble a giant ball of copper wire used for scrubbing pots and pans.

I should have known I would regret my decision. After all, a permanent is what it suggests. But I was in an adventurous mood and wanted a memorable experience from Paris. And, what could be more memorable than walking out of a coiffeur salon with a French perm?

I spent close to three hours at the capable hands of Antoine who had already made it clear that he definitely preferred straight hair and questioned my sanity, albeit in a subtle way. I assured him, in my limited French that I was really not insane nor at the threshold of mid-life crisis. I just wanted to sleep peacefully for a change. No more butane curlers or plastic rollers. Just wash, brush and fluff. Carefree and easy to maintain like a polyester wash ‘n wear shirt.

If it was a memorable experience I wanted to take back with me, Antoine had certainly fulfilled my wish although it did not turn out to be the type of experience I remember with nostalgia and warm, fuzzy feelings as I had hoped it would be.

I’m certain that my permanent, by any professional standard, would have been considered very good. It just looked horrible on me and I was stuck with it until it grew out.

I realized miserably that, after all, I looked just like Wendie in the rain. I was condemned to months of drying my wet hair pulling on it with various sized styling brushes to smooth out the frizzies and get larger, bouncy curls.

I should have known I’d regret my daring decision immediately when narrow strands of my shortened hair were getting shackled in slim curlers, and my skull was doused with a sharp smelling chemical which tickled my nostrils and brought tears to my eyes.

One would think I had learned my lesson with vain endeavours and preferred to live naturally. But it’s human nature, as I know so well now, to seek adventure and dare to trek on untrodden territory. At least— insofar as one’s personal territory goes.

My disastrous Paris experience should’ve been a lesson for me to stop interfering with nature’s creation and spare any other part of my body from further mistreatment. Yet, viewed through the hazy lenses time inserts between the past and the present, the jagged edges of traumatic experiences are smoothened.

The panic, regret, despair and anguish I felt a dozen years ago standing outside Salon de Coiffure Chic, have mellowed to an abstracted smile at the most at my vanity.

I have not given up on beauty salons all together in favour of living more naturally. If there was a lesson to be learned, whatever it was, I’m sure I learned it although I haven’t been able to put it into words yet.

Since my last and only hair permanent, I have changed into a strawberry blonde, abandoning my fiery red hair somewhere in the past. The chemicals in hair colours are not as harsh as those used in perms, so I can tolerate them. And I get my legs waxed regularly, spending a good torturous hour spread out on the white linen covered table with a little towel draped over my body.

I think of all this as a pound of flesh for an ounce of beauty. The agony of hair, being ripped out by its roots on sticky strips of linen, becomes endurable when I visualize slipping into a tight black skirt and cross my smooth legs at a restaurant or a theatre. I know, when his hand probes under the table to brush my knee or thigh, he won’t be disappointed. A little pain is the price of womanhood, I keep reminding myself. It is the bane of our eternal vanity.

But there is still one thing I will never, ever give up: my big, blonde curls. I still abhor straight hair that hangs like random strands of hay. I am quite used to it. so I don’t mind the discomfort of sleeping with curlers three nights a week. It’s an insignificant trade off, because when I wake up and pull those curlers off, I know I will have a sure winner of a face adorned with large, bouncy blonde curls- that is, just as long as it doesn’t rain, and I stay in air-conditioned, de-humidified places, of course !

Copyrighted Material ~ Copyright © 2000 ~ All Rights belong to Füsun Atalay

Read at the Newfoundland & Labrador Writers' Guild Christmas Party ~ 2000

Teaching: A Means to an End

a reflection on my teaching career

by:

Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © 1995

When I started teaching twenty-one years ago, I thought,- no I knew- that I was going to teach everything there was to be learned about my subject to generations and generations of youngsters to pass through my classroom doors. I would be fair, I would be just, I would treat my students equally and fulfil all their academic needs.

That was the twenty-three year old, bright-eyed, opinionated, naive young woman who was hired to teach English literature and composition to secondary four and five students most of whom were barely half a decade younger than she. I did not have the credibility or the wisdom suggested by greying hair or wrinkles appearing around the corners of my lips; to compensate I had enthusiasm, energy, the fervor of youth and the naivete of professional innocence.

I presumed, in my eagerness to get on with the awesome deed of educating young minds, that all those young minds came from families like my own which had a mother, a father and maybe some siblings.

That was the scope of cognizance of my audience. At the heels of that speculation followed the noble call that they be taught the perfect writing, spelling and punctuation; the command of compound, complex and compound-complex sentences in their expository, literary and personal essays; the understanding of underlying themes in "Macbeth", "Julius Caesar" and "King Lear"; the use of symbolism and imagery in Yeats, Keats, Pratt and Moore.

This was my call in life, and I was trained and ready to answer it.

Ever since I was a six-year-old debutante in primary school, I had succumbed to the fever of teaching. I remember coming home with the little piece of chalk I sneaked out of the class (the guilty reminder of my theft); writing on the pale green door of my room the letters of the alphabet; summoning my younger sisters to be my pupils; and with the staff of authority— my long ruler at hand— playing the role of the teacher ready to teach even if I had to resort to an occasional diatribe or a whack on little palms for not concentrating on the day’s lesson.

What I saw in class I emulated at home; what I heard I repeated; what I learned I passed on. In retrospect I think I must have done a good job, because by the time I was in my third year, my younger sister who should be starting grade school had learned so much that she was allowed to skip a year and go right into grade two.

Now, at age twenty-three, I was ready to do the same "good job" on a larger scale.

At least, I thought so.

My passion for teaching has not diminished over the years; my bright-eyed idealism- yes. More precisely, the latter has evolved into the understanding and acceptance that, what I revered to do and what circumstances dictated me to do were not necessarily the same.

Twenty-one years later, having taught the entire gamut of secondary school grades ranging from students with special needs to talented and gifted students, I now question who has been teaching whom. I know I have come a long way in finding a fair balance between my ideals and the true needs of my students which have not always been academic.

I know that I am not the only educator who has been taunted with disappointments in teaching and was challenged to turn them into small daily victories.

I know I am not the only teacher who had to be a mother or a sister or just an understanding friend or guide to her students.

I know the times have changed at an incredible pace since the first year I was a pupil; and even faster since the first year I became a teacher.

I also know by now, thanks to hundreds of students who have passed through the doors of my class room, that what makes a good teacher is not only the amount of knowledge she can part to her students, but it is the degree of humanity she is willing to show and share with them.

I grew up with a generation that perceived teachers differently; and that perception was supported by our fathers and mothers most of whom were married to each other and lived with us. As noble as that perception- the reverence for a teacher-, it has ceased to exist as the needs of our society have changed. I still maintain my standards in teaching; however, I have learned to temper those standards with realities to teach the universal basics of humanity and Language Arts.

As a speaker whose acquisition of the English language started at age thirteen, I was puzzled by the expression "the end justifies the means". Ironically as a teacher, I not only understood but I also used that understanding as a principle throughout my career, as I’ve learned to shift my focus from the end itself and pay attention to the means accomodating the particular needs of diverse students.

Now when I look back at a career that has been full of hopes as well as disappointments; frustrations as well as successes; learning as well as teaching , I feel I may perhaps qualify as a veracious teacher. Then in panic I seek a mirror and ask my reflection what I had been doing for the last two decades. A smiling face with reluctant wrinkles appearing at the corners of her lips replies lucidly :

"You have been training for life, my dear, and how lucky you are ! For you’ve had the top notch teachers in your very own students."

Copyrighted Material ~ Copyright © 1995 ~ All Rights belong to Füsun Atalay

Read as welcome address to McGill Faculty of Education students in 1998 _at Centennial Regional High_QC

Ice Storm of the Century

a memoir

by:

Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © 1998

My mind awakens slowly and I find myself reciting an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet about fretting in the dark after having looked so long upon the sunlight...

I notice the fire I’d lit before falling asleep is about to subside. The arabesque of the dwarfed flames reminds me of Ravell's "Bolero"- a raging fire, a ballet of flames racing towards self-consumption.

My cheeks are ice-cold; my fingertips confirm that sensation as my mind jumps to yet another thought. What is the connection?

O, yes, I remember. . .

I remember the last kiss I placed on my father's cheek. . . His face was as cold as mine is now. I remember how peaceful he looked in his eternal sleep; yet I had wondered for a split second- if he would wake up when a teardrop touched his cheek as my lips gave him my farewell kiss.

The crackling of some more branches and ice, like pebbles, peppering my windows pull me back to reality. " I grope and fret and holler in the dark..." something like that. Consciousness dictates that I should put more logs in the fire. I must relinquish the little warmth built under the four layers of covers, arrange few more logs of wood strategically in the fireplace, stuff crumpled pieces of paper and strike a long, blue tipped match with my icy fingers.

The papers rejoice at their contact with the match- my magic wand which will create a little warmth.

A quick, shivering return to my sofa-bed, my nocturnal shelter for the last seven nights... I pull the covers over my head to keep in the feeble warmth of my breath , but mine is a cold, cold breath.

"Some say the world will end in ice..." that was Robert Frost. Ice and Frost. "...and some say in fire." I cannot remember anymore. I cannot think. I say a little prayer for all living things, big and small and surrender my ears to the howling of the wind as it continues to play havoc with nature.

In spite of all our creations and inventions, in the face of the Power above, yes, indeed, how powerless we are.

Copyrighted Material ~ Copyright © 1998 ~ All Rights belong to Füsun Atalay

A Period without a Sentence

Füsun Atalay

Copyright © 1996

Time stands still
as blank faces in black cloaks
cut through
billowing clouds
of
collectively inhaled tobacco.
Fates-
summoned to heaven
or
to hell
with one fell blow
of a gavel's knell...
What festering conflicts
redirect paths?
Time stands still
While the arms of clocks turn
to restore justice
or temporary peace -
tempers burn the final threads
between parties.
A last, valiant attempt
to inurn the pain.

Copyrighted Material ~ Copyright © 1996 ~ All Rights belong to Füsun Atalay