"When West Meets East" by Jane Satchell McAllister

 – being in two places at once

Another world, other lives rolled out before these visitors like Turkish carpets at a bazaar.

Jane Satchell McAllister's writings draw inspiration from the wide variety of people and places she encounters, from her home base in Davie County, North Carolina, to rich adventures across our country and abroad. She has co-authored two Images of America books through Arcadia Publishing and served for nine years as director of the county public library. Her current writing project is compiling her family’s stories so descendants can better understand and enjoy their heritage.

Author’s Talk

Jane Satchell McAllister

Trepidation perhaps best describes my reaction to my husband’s suggestion that we travel independently to Istanbul and Greece. Beyond the challenge of the languages, I was concerned about the riots occurring in Syntagma Square in Athens in response to the dire economic straits of the country at that time. Nonetheless, I agreed to go, trusting that we could keep ourselves out of trouble. 

My husband took great care to instruct me in the Turkish cultural norm of no physical contact between men and women in public. We were taking a train into the city from the airport but struggled to figure out how to purchase tickets from the kiosk. When a station attendant came over and resolved the issue for us, I reflexively reached out and touched his arm while thanking him. Good grief, 15 minutes in country and I had already violated a cultural norm. Fortunately, he did not respond negatively. 

Istanbul is a sprawling city, a curious mixture of ancient and modern architecture, land and water, and definitely east and west. The overlay of east and west captured my attention, making Istanbul unique in all our travels. Our visits to the mosques, ancient churches, and markets as well as Topkapi Palace provided rich insights into the history and culture of the city.  

When traveling in Europe, we usually manage to communicate on some level of basic understanding, but in Istanbul, we only managed to learn how to say, “thank you,” thanks to the congenial assistance of a young waiter at a street café where we stopped for a spot of tea one afternoon. Besides the language, our greatest challenge was having to endure the constant, aggressive sales pitches of the merchants.  

Our visit to Istanbul reminded me vividly of how incredibly fortunate and miraculous it is for historic architecture, art, and artifacts to persevere through economic distress and warfare and natural disasters to remain available for us to see and enjoy today. I am deeply grateful for opportunities to travel and take in such marvels, illustrating for me time and time again that we share a common humanity, even when expressed so differently across cultures. —Jane Satchell McAllister