Mirdina had just come to my house for the first time and my heart was racing after our encounter. Looking back, it must have been so strange for her to walk into our home and sit down on the couch and have a laptop staring her in the face. I had been desperate to talk to her so I thought Google translator would be the best option. I typed my questions away, trusting that what came up on the screen would represent my questions. I thought, “She can type her answers in as well and we will have so much fun!”
What “Fantasy Island” do I come from? She looked at me as if I were crazy. She stared at the screen and tried to make out the words. I began to realize that she might not be able to read, so I tried the “say it out loud” button. The broken computer like sounds meant nothing to her as she strained to make them out. Ok, unwilling to give up, I tried to pronounce them myself. Still, furrowed brows and frowns were all I could see on her face. It never occurred to me that maybe the translation might be wrong.
I gave up and decided to go back to our game of charades. I had this plan that I had talked over with my friend from the states who lives in Turkey. “Do you think I could ask Mirdina to be my cooking teacher and I would pay her for her lessons?” “Yes,” she said enthusiastically, “and it would honor her to be your teacher sharing her types of food with you.”
That is why I asked her if she knew how to make “Sarma” stuffed grape leaves one of my favorite foods. She said “evet,” (yes), and I asked her if I could pay her to be my teacher at 25 Tukish Lira per hour. She said “evet,” I think. We started to work on the ingredients when I thought, “How do I let her know I will provide the ingredients, so that she doesn’t feel the burden to shop for this.” I didn’t want to mess this up, so I searched my dictionary, my Turkish phrase book and finally back to google translater I’m still not sure I succeeded.
Occasionally there would be a moment of understanding, the “AHA” was amazing. For example, she kept saying: sar un, sar un. That’s what it sounds like phonetically. She tried to find it in the dictionary, I tried spelling it on google translator. I tried different combinations, and then it hit me, “I bet it is onion.” I have no idea how I knew that but when I typed in onion, it came up sogun, pronounced sar un, onion, she nodded “evet, evet!”
My greatest fear is that I would offend her since I didn’t speak any Turkish. I don’t think I did, but she would talk away in Turkish and I would strain to catch any glimpse of what she might be saying, but truly the words that sound like English are nonexistent. I recognized nothing. It was so hard! I could tell she wanted so badly for me to understand and I couldn’t use google translator to translate what she said.
Finally, she took my book, my notepad, and closed them firmly, then gestured that we were through. She kissed me on both cheeks and left quickly. I didn’t even have time to give her a plate of goodies.
As far as I knew she would be here on Thursday at 11 am to teach me how to make stuffed grape leaves.
She never showed up, but I am learning that in Cyprus, you really don’t make “plans.” Schedules don’t mean anything, at least in the average person that you meet. So I’m not taking it personally.
I took on the challenge myself, based on the ingredients we talked about. The stuffing is similar to that which we put into bell peppers, rice, beef, tomatoes, onion, and garlic. The spices that make them taste unique are tarragon and mint, and of course the grape leaves. Since I didn’t have access to fresh grape leaves, I found some canned ones in the store. They were crammed so tight into the jar that I broke a third of them trying to get them out. I rolled them with the stuffing like a mini burrito, and voila: Stuffed Grape leaves. They tasted good, the stuffing turned out great, but the leaves were tough and hard to bite into.
Yesturday, it had been almost 4 weeks since the day we “talked” about making Sarma together. We had been gone all day, and when we got home around 8:30pm, on my counter was a plate full of Sarma! These were rolled tight, and the leaves were tender. The stuffing was amazing and slightly spicey. Yum! How I wish she could have taught me how to make these! The house had been locked up all day, except for the kitchen window that was slightly ajar. Our window is around 5 feet off the ground and the counter is about a foot below the window. How she managed to get the plate through my window and onto the counter is still a mystery.