"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious.
Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working.
You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.'"
-- The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
Ah, the life of an expatriate. The word itself conjurs images of smoky backalley bars where intellectuals read poetry and drink cheap red wine while discussing the news of the day. The word makes me think of some of America's most famous expatriates: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, James Baldwin and, later, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
Unfortunately, the life of an expatriate in 2009 is not nearly as glamorous as it was back in the 1910s and 1920s (in fact, it probably wasn't glamorous then, either). Today, expats work, struggle to make friends and find housing in their adopted countries and deal with all the joys and strifes -- minor and major -- of what it means to live in a culture entirely different from your own.
That's where I hope Turkish Muse can help.
Turkish Muse is an online resource for expatriates living in Turkey and those who want to or are planning to do so. This site was born out of a desire to tell stories about my new life in Turkey and to help other newcomers adjust to life here. Through essays, photographs, advice columns and stories, I hope to give you a better understanding of what expat life is like in this country.
About Me
My name is Barbara J. Isenberg and I
am an American citizen, born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the early
1980s. When I was 16, I traveled beyond the borders of my country for
the first time and came to Istanbul as a one-year Rotary exchange
student. That decision changed who I am in fundamental ways and altered
the course of my life.
I studied at Temple University in Philadelphia where I got a bachelor's degree in journalism. During my first semester at Temple, I took a class called Intro to Fiction. My teacher, Jeff Hibbert, was a grad student at the time and hot to boot. After the semester ended, he invited me to his Christmas party and the rest, as they say, is history: we got married four years later.
I stayed in Philly for a year after graduation, but when Jeff and I realized we had exhausted all our career options in the city, we moved to Wichita, Kansas because I was offered a job at a paper there. Wichita didn't really work out for us: we went broke, sought marriage counseling, considered divorce and spent many, many nights lamenting our decision to move West. Within months we decided to get out of Dodge, as they say.
I convinced Jeff to move to Istanbul sight unseen. Of course, I had been talking up the town for several years, so he knew how much I loved it and we figured he probably would too. Jeff and I applied for jobs in Istanbul, and he got one first. I quit my job at the paper, we sold everything we owned, save for several boxes of books and some other odds and ends that we put in my parents' house. We vaccinated our cats and prepared them for an international flight. And then we bought a one-way ticket to Istanbul in August 2007.
Two years later, in the summer of 2009, we moved to Izmir and are now living a life of leisure and contemplation on the Aegean.
I'm
a writer at heart and always have been. Now, I'm a full-time editor,
freelance writer and amateur photographer who keeps up this website in
my spare time. If you'd like me to do any writing for you, contact me
at barbara@turkishmuse.com. (You can also check out my professional website at The Written Word).
I love cats and dogs, black licorice, vodka martinis, jazz and lazy Sunday afternoons at home.
