A Lamp

I needed a lamp.

I needed it about a week and a half ago, but I dreaded having to buy it.

"Why, Steve?" You ask, "It's just a lamp, right?"

No, it's not just a lamp, it's a maddening descent into pantomime hell.

I'm not back in the U.S. right now, where I can walk into Walmart and see a display of a couple dozen lamps, pick the one that most tickles my fancy, and then pay at the self-serve cash register.

I'm in Eastern Turkey, in a little village called Ilic, on the shores of the Euphrates River. I wasn't even sure they sold lamps here, to be honest. I was pretty sure they had light bulbs.

Damn it, though, ever since my light fixtures caught on fire last week (that's another good story) and the repair crew replaced them, my room has been as bright and cheery as an Al Qaeda safe house. They put in these dome light fixtures, meant for two 75 watt bulbs. Instead they wired each for just one bulb, and then placed in the smallest halogen bulbs they find. I get about as much light out of them as Pluto gets from the Sun. Maybe not quite that much.

So I needed a little desk lamp or a reading lamp. It was time to bite the bullet and take a trip into town.

Downtown Ilic isn't exactly known in the 3-village region as a magnet for commerce. If I had to compare it to somewhere else I've lived, I guess the thriving metropolis of Rio Bravo, Suchitepequez, Guatemala could fit the bill. But it was nice enough for the 2500 people in town, well lit stores selling the essentials I needed, like chocolate and Coca Cola Zero and mechanical pencils, all at fairly reasonable prices. I had established a rapport with some of the shop owners, especially the Coke Zero place. That guy liked to practice his English on me, so he got a lot of my business.

But those weren't the stores I needed to visit. I had to head down the the Far End of the Street.

I rarely ventured down that way. That was the more dimly-lit end of the downtown district, where they sold tools and weapons, and had metal shops and cave-like auto repair garages, and small side-walk tables full of grumpy old men drinking tea and scowling at foreigners. That was where they walked down the middle of the road when you tried to drive through at 5 kph, and as your bumper approached their calves, they'd give you a slow disgusted look over the shoulder and advance another 5 paces or so forward at a slightly slower pace before they finally meandered out of the lane of traffic.

I didn't feel as welcomed there, but there was where they had the lamps, or so I was guessing. So I sucked it up and headed down that way, after parking my truck down at the friendlier end of the road.

My first attempt was at the electronics store, where I had seen electric teapots and small cooking appliances in the window before. I ducked in, with my iPhone translator app out and at the ready, already scrolling through it as I walked, to see how to say lamp.

"Lamba", it said. Well, easy enough!

I walked in, muttering "lamba, lamba, lamba" to myself so I could make my one word inquiry without having to look at my iPhone. But much to my disappointment, there was nobody to ask. The store, although wide open and brightly lit, was completely empty. I was the only human to be found. I waited around for a bit, looking over the stacks and boxes of items for sale, but after visually determining that there was no lamp to be had here, I gave it up and headed on to my second choice.

That was the knife-and-gun shop.

Now I knew it was a long shot, but I had bought a few pocket knives there since arriving in town a few months ago, so I knew the shop keeper, and had already established a sort of hand-motion language with him. So when I walked in, he smiled and greeted me warmly, probably thinking he was about to score another knife sale.

"Merhaba," he said, and I responded in kind.

"Merhaba. LAMBDA!" I smiled, fists on my hips, proud to be speaking the native tongue. I had just said, "Hi. LAMP!" same as I would say in the local Ikea back home if I needed a desk lamp, right? I mean, that's how we all talk to each other. Cursory greeting, then state your business!

He cocked his head to the side, confused. My smile faltered, my confidence starting to crumble a little. I put my hands in front of me, my right hand flat, palm up, the fingers curved at the first knuckles, forming a base. The left hand I held about a foot over it, palm down, fingers forming a rough cone shape, like a lamp shade. Then I repeated my one-word inquiry:

"Lambda," I said.

He shook his head. Not like one might shake their head to say "No, we don't have lamps," but rather as if to say, "What the hell are you talking about?"

I pulled out my little translator and typed in the word again. Lamp. translation... Lamba.

Oh LAMBA, no "d" in the middle. Here I thought I was asking for a lamp, and instead I'm asking him for a Sorority house. Dumb ass American.

"LAMBA," I said.

"Ahhhhhh!" he said, nodding his head in emphatic understanding. You might know this particular head nod; it's a nod we never use with fellow English speakers, only those we think don't understand us. We're not nodding just our head, we're nodding from the second or third cervical vertebrae, getting the entire head and neck into the act, like a Texas Oil Well. We're not saying "yes," we're saying "YEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!"

This nod was universal to all languages and cultures. It was a world-wide assumption of foreign idiocy. It said, "You don't speak my language, ergo, you are stupid, and need even my simplest answers to be shouted and spoken slowly and thrown out in the most obvious and confrontational manner possible, so as to not misunderstand one another at all."

He turned around and grabbed a light bulb off the shelf behind him.

This was going to be a long night.

More hand gestures, more emphatic "Hayir (no), LAAAAAAMBAAAAA" from me, and finally a shrugged admission of defeat from my knife-and-gun-selling friend. I pulled out the translator once again, typed in a word, and asked him, gesturing out the door, up and down the street, with my shoulders half shrugged inquisitively, "Nerede?" or, "where"?

He came to the door, took me by the shoulders, pointed me down towards the far end, and pointed three doors down. "LAMBA," he said, pointing.

"Tesekkurler," I said, to thank him, and went to the 3rd door down.

This time I wasn't screwing around. I walked in, nodded and said "Iyi aksamlar," (good evening), and then turned and looked all over the shelves, trying to find this thing before social graces required me to verbally inquire.

No use, though. Before long I was back at it again. "Lamba?" I asked, very nonchalant this time. Sure, maybe I'm speaking in one word sentences, but I have this language DOWN. I own it. "Lamp?" I asked, chest swelled with confidence.

It worked. He nodded, like one Turk to another, and grabbed a light bulb off the shelf.

What was it with these people and the light bulbs? Light bulb was "Ambul" or something. No, "ampul," that was it. It wasn't "lamba." I shook my head disapprovingly. Why couldn't this guy speak fluent Turkish, like I did?

"Hayir (no)," I said once again. "LAMBA."

"Ahhhh, tamam," he said. "Oh, ok."

He walked over to the shelf behind me, and slid aside a candy rack, to uncover a hidden stash of flashlights. He grabbed one and held it out to me.

Well, we were getting closer, anyway...

"Hayir. LAMBA." again I did the sign language. Again it was met with confusion. We motioned back and forth at each other for about a minute. He did't understand a damn word I was signing, and I didn't understand him either. Didn't people put lamps on end tables in this country?

Screw it. I bought a candy bar to thank him for his troubles and wandered out of the store, desperate this time, poking into store after store, saying "Lamba?" over and over, getting pointed back to stores I had already been to, and shaking my head to say, "No, they only carry light bulbs, same as the ones you're so eager to sell me when I'm asking for a LAMP."

Finally, in one store, a break through! I found someone who remembered about 15 words of English from his school days. Between his 15 words of English and my 11 words of Turkish, we were able to have a regular caveman conversation out in the streets, and he informed me with a "yes" and a finger point that lamps were, indeed, sold in Ilic.

He pointed back up the way I had come from, down to the friendly end of the street. "Bank."

I nodded. "Bank." I knew where the bank was. I had just come from there, getting Turkish Lira to buy this stupid lamp.

"Street," he gestured, flipping his hand over.

"Other side of the street?" I said.

"Yes, yes, yes!" he said, oil-well nodding.

I thanked him, walked on, already knowing full well where he was telling me to go.

It was the Coke Zero store. I approached the door.

"Hello, how are you?" the store owner asked me when I walked in.

"Fine, and you?"

"I am good!" he said, smiling ear to ear. There he was, speaking English like a son-of-a-bitch, like he was BORN speaking it! This wasn't going to be any trouble at all, I thought to myself.

"LAMP!" I said, smiling myself.

He nodded. "Lamp!" He knew that word!

He grabbed a light bulb.