Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER TWO
THE SETTING
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where they sleep with their children, and keep their personal possessions.
The wealthier homes, and some of the less wealthy, have also a special room for the men of the household, where they sit in the evenings, brew coffee or tea if they can afford it, and entertain neighbours and guests. These rooms are much more luxuriously furnished. They invariably have a built-in sedir, a divan which runs right round the walls, or in the older design, run like tramlines facing each other along one side of the room. Originally these rooms were heated by open hearths, but in the last ten or fifteen years these had been ousted by small sheet-iron stoves. The divans are covered with rugs, carpets and cushions. The floors are usually of stone, or even wood, and the windows are large, by village standards. The few really large rooms of this type in each village are used for weddings and other large-scale entertainments, and are often approached by a small ante-room in which coffee is made on important occasions. The villagers call these `guest rooms' misafir odasi (sing.) or more simply just oda (room). These are in fact much more than guest rooms. But since they correspond roughly to similar rooms - or tents in other Middle East societies, which are usually called `guest rooms', it is perhaps best to use this term. In contrast to the main living room, (ev), the guest room (oda) belongs to the men and should preferably stand apart from the rest of the home, or have a separate entrance, so that male visitors see nothing of the home at all.
Village History
Sakaltutan is not an old village. On the meadow is a tomb or turbeh, said by the villagers to be that of a Muslim commander named Mehmet Miktat, killed in a battle with Byzantine forces. There is another small burial ground said to contain the bodies of martyrs who. died in this battle. Some marks on rocks in another part of the village were said by the present inhabitants to be tombs left by a previous Christian village on the site.
The present village was probably founded by people from villages nearer Kayseri, who had first made a temporary summer camp there for pasture, and later decided to settle permanently and plough. All the villagers could tell me was
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