Thanksgiving in Gaziantep

This year Thanksgiving falls on the day before a very important Muslim holiday, Bayram. It commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. We know that son as Isaac but in Islam it is Ishmael who almost gets sacrificed. Those that can afford it – or who raise their own animals – slaughter a lamb and give almost all of it away to the poor. It’s also a time for visiting family members. The holiday officially begins at 5 AM on Friday; however, the official government holiday begins at noon on Thursday -- presumably giving people time to get back to their homes -- and runs through Monday. So it’s a nice long weekend.

This was the room in the hotel where we celebrated Thanksgiving -- with food being rolled in from the kitchen

We Americans wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving somehow and also to invite our Turkish colleagues. We knew no one would come if we did it the day before Bayram, so we decided to have a Thanksgiving potluck the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It started small. We thought we’d just have rotisseried chickens, which you can buy everywhere. There weren’t any turkeys to be had in Gaziantep.


Well, things changed. The American director of our program used some high-level contacts she had to get a couple of turkeys flown in from somewhere. Also there were two new staff people coming from Texas. One brought several bags of fresh cranberries and another a couple of cans of pumpkin. Then the Zirve people arranged for us to use the kitchen in the hotel where everyone stayed before the apartments were ready. With the kitchen came two chefs and a darling apprentice chef. And one of them even cut the turkey quite expertly.

We had just planned to mix up the fruit in a bowl. But the Turkish chefs would have nothing to do with that. It had to be arranged and adorned with fruit "flowers."

We are blessed to have in our group a teacher who started out to be a chef. While in culinary school he decided he didn’t want that life and retooled himself as a teacher. He took over cooking the turkeys -- they were perfect. He also made wonderful gravy and fabulous stuffing -- with persimmons and cranberries. Needless to say it was quite a feast. And we were glad to be able to introduce this holiday to our Turkish friends.

Joe and Laressa, teachers in our program and our group chefs.