Today’s Lesson: Çiğ Köfte and Fasıl Music

Impromptu dancing may occur! Snap!

Corporate culture always has universal elements wherever you go, but a certain pleasure is derived from stumbling on what makes workplaces unique in other countries.

Recently, I was giving a lesson at the IT department of a Turkish bank. The bank, Kuveyt Turk, is Islamic – some would say conservative or even fundamentalist, though I disagree – and therefore must abide by sharia law, which prevents the charging of interest, the bread and butter of “regular” banks.

It was Friday evening at about 7:30 and the lesson was winding down. My student, Mücahit, invited me to a “fasıl” night, which was directly following the lesson in the company headquarters down the street. Having never been to one, I accepted the invitation. Fasıl is traditional Turkish music played by stringed instruments such as the saz and ut, and often accompanied by drums. This ancient tradition pre-dates Islam, to a time when Turks roamed the steppes on Central Asia on horseback and worshipped animist gods. Listening to the stringy twang echo across the room like it were a windswept Kazakh plain is a meditative pleasure.

Anyhow, we walked into what serves as a basement cafeteria during the day and found ersatz plastic carpets spread before me. Men – and only men, this is an Islamic bank after all – were sitting on the floor sans shoes eating çiğ pronounced chee) köfte, a traditional Turkish meatball made from raw meat, bulgur and spices. This was my first time trying çiğ köfte with meat. Turkish health code regulations no longer permit the use of raw meat, so most places such as çiğ köfte

The reddish balls are the çiğ köfte with the delicious lavaş bread and lettuce in the foreground

stands use a protein-rich paste of almond or other nuts as a substitute. You place the çiğ köfte balls onto a tortilla like bread called lavaş, spritz some lemon and add some lettuce and maybe mint and, presto:  the original health food wrap is ready to be eaten. I didn’t forget to wash it down with some şalgam, or “fermented” carrot and beet juice and is a mighty antidote to the hangover.

I chatted it up with my student and other people around the “table.” One was a middle-aged Turkish man who worked with the bank’s operations in Germany and had a German accent, something he immediately pointed out he didn’t like about himself. Another one of my students who also sat with us, Aslan, got up and jammed on the ut for a song or two. It’s always harder to fit in when you can’t sing along to songs everyone knows. Nevertheless, I had fun watching grown men dance traditional Turkish dance, a sort of ring around the posey that fans of traditional Russian or Balkan dancing would find familiar.

People slowly moseyed out after a couple hours as I munched on dessert of

The saz is being jammed on at the moment

mandarins and kuruyemis (Turkish trail mix). It was a fun, non-alcoholic way to unwind after a busy week of the universally known corporate pressures of meeting deadlines and profit targets.