Birth Control Turkish Style

Istanbul, TURKEY

We’d not been too long in Istanbul, Turkey when I needed birth control. Off to the eczane (“edge-sana,” or pharmacy) I went. Inside the thankfully empty shop, attached to a shopping mall, there was a female pharmacist. This would be pretty painless.

Like a sightless person may discover an increased dependence on the other senses, my Turkish language skills had escalated my reliance on miming. Which should have increased my reliance on an interpreter, but I felt that would only become a crutch.

Medical issues, requiring very specific vocabulary, as they do, on this day, I was happy for a more private exchange. 

When the woman asked what I assumed was ‘how can I help you?’ I gesticulated a big tummy and sliced my finger across my throat. Charades was never my game.

She seemed to understand, stroking my head, pursing her lips and nodding; a look on her face that must have been, “sister, I understand, my husband too would kill me if I got fat,” because she went immediately to fetch a massive can of SlimFast powder.

Okay, minor setback. Probably since she speaks her language, her miming skills are not as honed as mine.

Shaking my head ‘no’ I remembered that in Turkey, ‘no’ is a jerking back of the head, a sort of half-nod, plus a ‘tsk’ sound. So I added a couple of backward jerks and a ‘tsk’ creating a live bobble-head effect – ironically resembling someone whose neck had been slashed.

Store check: still empty.

I tried again, this time with my ‘holding an infant’ mime, and added one backward head-jerk with a ‘tsk.’ In Turkish, this is verbal shorthand for “no,” “not, or “uh uh.” Though she was probably doubtful at this point as to my ability to actually bed a man, she did understand I’d likely want to prevent my compromised genes from replicating. She retrieved some pill boxes with women on them. We were able to retreat to the language of numbers from there on out.

I’d not realized that it was possible to get an injection that would last for months, an advent that would clearly work in my favor as my personal health regime had, for much of my life, been based on chaos theory. True to the theory, it has never happened more than one day in a row that I have fallen face first onto a birth control pill and with enough force that it has catapulted down my throat. Resulting in a rather haphazard approach to family planning.

We chose the 3-month plan, with an option to renew.

I sat in the available chair, an antique wood schoolhouse affair and began rolling up my sleeve for the shot. She pointed to her bottom. But of course. Of course, the pharmacist administers shots in the pharmacy and of course, it would not be a simple poke in the arm. Okay, so it had to be a shot in the bottom. Still, the convenience was not lost on me. I’d have thought the Americans might have come up with this nearly ‘drive-through’ operation.

My ally in family planning led me into a back room, ‘secluded’ much like the first class cabin of an airplane, with a curtain that didn’t quite meet either side of the doorway. At which point we encountered two things: the first, an elderly man who immediately scurried from the room, and whom I could only assume was somehow related to the pharmacy. The second thing was his breakfast, spread like a Swedish smorgasbord across the countertop, next to the sink.

We’re talking everything short of an open grill back here: cutting board, knife, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, sliced meats, butter, jam and bread. There was yogurt, boiled eggs, feta cheese and olives. These are all the required components of a typical Turkish breakfast – I surmised from the scene that the location of the morning meal was a bit more flexible.  Customer service aside, I’m not sure I’d want my food in the same place where people were disrobing and possibly shedding their pubic hairs all over. To my Western way of thinking, a place in which ‘medical’ procedures are administered should be sterile.  

I knew in Turkey, people did eat where they worked, the work culture there, being that the first task of your workday is to have breakfast at your desk. Hey, it’s incredibly civilized. Even more so, when you consider that nobody would think of showing up before 9:30, 10-ish. Not even hungry vermin.

 Dining in the ‘procedures’ room cum laboratory cum storage area of a pharmacy offered another subtle clue to Turkish culture. This was a slick modern pharmacy attached to a very posh, contemporary shopping mall. Everything sparkled and gleamed except the block of feta cheese sitting atop this employee’s cutting board. The vignette spoke of a culture of cuisine that would not step aside for capitalism or the haute couture retail industry. My customer-service nerve twitched as my mouth watered.

I’m well familiar with eating on-the-go. The primary school version, some sort of soggy sandwich wrapped in foil, a fruit, vegetable sticks and a cookie. The highschool version involved not being seen eating, ever. The concept of breakfast in America is based on “action” food – something that we can eat while folding laundry, getting dressed, hailing a cab or conducting a morning video conference. There is never a cutting board or exotic condiments like olives and pungent cheese. It’s eaten in less than five minutes, while standing up.

This pharmacy guy didn’t bring his Lean Cuisine into the back room to throw into the microwave. He wasn’t quickly downing a glass of kefir, or deep throating an Adana Kebab out of a wax paper wrapper. My visit actually interrupted a feast that included no fewer than five fresh vegetables, to be sliced up and eaten at leisure, is my guess. I mean you don’t put that much work into something you’re planning to inhale between meetings.

All this was set up only centimeters away from where my new pharmacist was about to prepare my baby-proofing syringe that she would empty into my bare hip.

It was rather cramped quarters, as there was also an examination table set up in the pharmacafe, and as I bent down to remove my tights, my ass nearly grazed the cutting board on which the cold meats sat, sliced and ready to eat.

Shot complete, my pharmacist left me alone with my thoughts, my undergarments and an increasingly attractive breakfast buffet. I was ravenous.

But no. Coming from a country where we now offer hand wipes for our shopping carts, where we cover our coughs with our elbows and carry hand sanitizer in our pockets, this just screamed ‘inappropriate.’

What was exactly appropriate at that moment was for me to thank my pharmacist and take my newly infertile self off to a restaurant where I could sit and enjoy “kahvalti.” It means “before coffee,” and cannot be wrapped in a burrito, blended in a shake, is not frosted with sprinkles and never microwaved. Lunch in Turkey? Americans should be so efficient. The turks call it “kebap” and put it on a stick for ultimate portability.