Keywords

Introduction

I met Orhan, a Burgazlı then in his mid-80s in 2009, who was introduced to me by the security officer of one of the social clubs. The officer gave him my mobile number, and Orhan called me to arrange a time to meet. On the phone, I explained to him that I was doing doctoral research about the memories of Burgaz islanders currently living on the island. I added that as he was one of the oldest inhabitants in Burgaz, I would be very grateful for an interview with him. When he arrived for our morning meeting at the Blue Club, one of the island’s social clubs, he brought along sheets on which he had listed names of friends, activities, events and the poems he wrote about Burgaz. I did not expect that he came so well prepared, and I was happy that he was eager to talk to me. When I took out my small notebook, he exclaimed, “What, how can you write all the memories of many years in such a tiny book! Go get a proper notebook!” So, I went to the security desk and asked for a stack of A4 sheets and came back prepared to write, as he preferred me to take notes rather than to record the interview.

I begin this section below with a long vignette from the uninterrupted stream in which Orhan narrated me his story of Burgaz. I then complement Orhan’s memories with the islanders’ current daily practices in the ways in which they embody the island and internalise islands’ diversity. Orhan’s memories and the islanders’ daily life show that collective embodiment of the island through multisensorial experiences is one of the mechanisms that bonds the islanders together. These collective experiences such as dancing, swimming, fishing and drinking are embodied, enjoyed, shared and performed, and make people Burgazlı. This chapter illustrates the ways in which collective embodiment of the island through a diversity of sensorial pleasures bond together the islanders and form the sociable sociality of conviviality. I show the ways in which the islanders embody each other’s diversities, and hence call themselves “multicultural.” I explore this embodiment by investigating daily activities as well as syncretic religious practices performed collectively and/or individually, where islanders make their own way of integrating practices from different faiths. Nonetheless, I also show the complexity of separating cultural practices into “Jewish, Rum or Muslim practices” due to the fact that many daily activities are performed collectively, demonstrate the porousness of ethno-religious boundaries and form the collective Burgaz culture. When one returns to the allegory of ebru, these ethnographic examples show that the boundaries within the ebru pattern (Fig. 1.1) fuse into each other, and unlike the stones in the mosaic, they are not separated in a clear-cut way.

Memory, Bodies and Senses

Orhan narrated:

Burgaz was an island of Rum fishermen. The permanent inhabitants of Burgaz, such as restaurant and coffee shop owners, storekeepers, fishermen, bakers, and grocers were all Rums. My father was one of the first Turks, who came to Burgaz between 1915 and the 1920s. They were governmental officers, doctors, or lawyers, and the majority of them used the island as a sayfiye yeri [summer resort place] and were very few in number. In the 1930s and 1940s, summer inhabitants, such as Ashkenazi Jews and Germans, were rich and elite. The Jews of Burgaz were upper class in comparison to the Sephardic Jews who were lower middle class and who lived in Heybeli, another Princes’ Island. The Jews of Heybeli and Istanbul used to come for a day trip to Burgaz as they could not afford to have houses in Burgaz. These Sephardic Jews became richer when the Democratic Party was in power between 1945 and 1960. Thus, from the late 1940s onwards, the Jews from Heybeli moved to Burgaz and the ones in Istanbul either rented or bought property in Burgaz.

This island was the island of fish. Rums were very into fishing.

Istavrit, uskumru, palamut, lüfer, torik, lapin, mercan, karagöz, orkinos, sinarit, kılıç balığı [names of fish varieties] … there were so many fish that the fishnets used to break. When there was excess fish, the fishermen used to throw the excess back to the sea. The fishermen used to compete with each other in order to catch the biggest fish, especially orkinos. The fish caught were always displayed and sold in the market. The fishmonger used to mark the name of the fisherman on the orkinos caught, thus you would know who caught it and see the pride in the eyes of the fisherman when he walked in the market. Now, there are fewer and fewer fish in the sea. People are not as careful as the fishermen of the old days. The new generation put dynamite in the fishes’ nests and fish when the fish were reproducing. Now the seagulls are hungry. I used to go fishing with my summer Rum friends. They had boats. We used to go to Sivriada and Yassıada [the uninhabited islands]. These islands were a heaven of fish and mussels. We used to go there in the afternoon, fish and eat the fish there, get drunk and sleep and come back in the morning. Sivriada geceleri [the nights of Sivriada] …

These times were the times of bolluk [abundance, prosperity]. The rich Rums had big gardens. For example, Taso’s garden was full of fruit and vegetables. Quince, plum, lettuce, onion … Mimi had a flower garden. In Foti’s garden there were almond trees. They used to sell their fruit, vegetables and flowers to the islanders. Have you been to the Austrian chapel, high up in Burgaz? [I said “yes.”] Good. The Austrian nuns used to sell the spare produce to the islanders. They had cows and chickens. The yogurt, cream, cheese, and milk that came from them were the best I have eaten in my life.

Do you know Kalpazankaya? [I said “yes, I have been there.”] Do you know the Hişt story from Sait Faik?” [I said, “Yes I have read it.”] Sait got inspired to write the story on the way to Kalpazankaya. He lived in Burgaz, he was much older than me but he was my friend and Burgaz is known as Sait Faik’in adası [Sait Faik’s island]. In the story, Sait is on the Kalpazankaya road, he hears hişt hişt [similar to the “psst” sound that one person whispers to another to get their attention] but he cannot tell where it comes from. A plum tree? A hedgehog? A person? A bird? The sea? Saik writes it so well. It does not matter where the sound comes from. It is the sound of what makes you feel alive. He says in the end that if you do not hear hişt, then it matters. In Burgaz, you constantly hear a hişt sound, whether it is a person, a tree, the sea, the nature, an animal; these things keep you alive.

The times of the Rums were the times of fun. I loved attending the church at Christmas and on important Rum Orthodox religious days. They offered pastry, biscuits, cookies, and meals at the church. There was not a mosque on the island until 1954. I did not care about the mosque. I did not care when it was built. I am not interested in religion, but I enjoyed attending the church because it was good fun to socialise with my Rum friends. There were five gazinos [dancing and drinking places] in Burgaz. In gazinos, Rum and foreign music played, sometimes live, sometimes from the gramophone. We danced day and night—tango, slow, swing … The Rums knew how to drink. There was always one person at the table who would control anyone who was getting too drunk. Now, people do not know how to drink. They get drunk and they start fights.

Adanın tipleri vardı people with unique characteristics. You know, every place has its own unique people. Ali Rıza Kondos. Kondos means short in Rumca. Ali Rıza was a short drunkard. He had built a cave for himself in Burgaz. When we saw him, we used to yell pırr, which would make him so angry; he would throw stones at us and run after us. And then Şilep [Ocean liner] Hasan … He was so huge we used to call him Şilep. The islanders used to give names to these unique people. Now, people are boring. The island was more diverse in the old days, we had adanın tipleri and everyone had a particular character, fault, weakness, funniness, craziness that made Burgaz a place of fun. Now, everyone is the same. People watch TV, they go to work. They do not have fun in their lives. There are no adanın tipleri anymore.

When he paused for a minute, I asked Orhan: “You talk as if all these things do not exist anymore. What happened? What has changed? You said there were many, many Rums? Where are they now?”

Orhan:

The Rums left. They went to Greece, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Varlık Vergisi [the Wealth Tax], the 6–7 September events in 1955, the 27 May 1960 coup, the Cyprus events scared them all. They said: “Every twenty-five years, something will come up, the government will do something, we better leave.” The government did many things wrong. My father had a Jewish friend, who was required to pay such a high Varlık Vergisi that it was impossible to pay, thus he was sent to do military service in Aşkale. When my father’s Jewish friend came back from Aşkale, my father lent him some money that helped him reconstruct his business. Varlık Vergisi made the ekaliyet [an older term used for minorities] suffer economically. Furthermore, the Rums had many shops in Beyoğlu, they all got destroyed during the 6–7 September events. Here in Burgaz nothing happened. We protected the island and no one could enter. However, what was happening in Istanbul and in Turkey was scary enough for them to leave. And they left. They sold their properties at a low price to Erzincanlı Alevis, who were working for them. Erzincanlıs had saved money while working so Erzincanlı bought these properties. Now the permanent inhabitants are Alevis and Kurds.

When Orhan was talking about the years between the 1920s and the 1950s, he jumped from people to places, from activities he did, to Sait Faik’s story, to adanın tipleri. These five themes that emerged in his vignette also came up in the narratives of the islanders I talked to, when I did semi-structured interviews; when I listened to people’s conversations in cafes, restaurants and the social clubs; when I listened to my elderly friends in the embroidery class. For instance, Adanın tipleri appear in Berberyan’s (2010) memoirs and Aktel’s (2005) Kestane Karası. During my fieldwork in 2009–2010, a male Sunni informant of mine (aged 75, at that time) had talked in depth about the times in gazinos. Two Sunni Muslim informants of mine, both female architects in their 50s, told me about adanın tipleri and Sait Faik’s stories about Burgaz. The Sunni grocer and the Sunni pharmacist (in their 70s) who have lived on the island for about 50 years, my Rum informant Niko (aged 67), a male German informant (in his mid-50s) and Ajda (70) who both grew up in Burgaz, all told me about the abundance of fish, fruit, vegetables and flower gardens. Ajda also said:

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed going to the church to hang out with my Rum friends, when I was a kid. I also loved the farm and the garden at the Austrian chapel. With my friends, there, we used to run around and play in that garden for hours, until my father got worried about where I was and went around Burgaz trying to find me. It was a hard thing to find me, because I could have been on top of a tree, at the peak of Burgaz, at the Austrian chapel, in the sea … I was a very naughty girl [she laughed].

My informants’ and Orhan’s memories are memories of conviviality, and they take their sources from the shared life in Burgaz. Orhan began the story of Burgaz with the Rums, Turks, Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Germans, which shows that ethnic and religious differences were acknowledged, not as “coexistence/toleration” but as part of what it meant to live in Burgaz. Orhan, like many of my Jewish, Muslim, German, and Armenian informants, joined and enjoyed the sociality at the churches. Rum rituals added to the richness of Burgaz. The luxurious summer lifestyle—full of discos, music and fun, drinking, and fishing lifestyles—brought people from different ethno-religious backgrounds together to socialise.

He has embodied Burgaz through dancing, fishing, drinking, attending church, socialising with his friends, and having fun. Orhan’s memories are of what Chau (2008, 489 emphasis in original) calls a “social sensorium,” a term he uses to refer to “a sensorially rich social space such as found at a temple festival, a busy market, or a packed dance floor.” However, while Chau (2008) explores “red- hot sociality,” or the way that sociality is produced through a type of heated frenzy, Orhan refers to the way that a sense of the social, of what it means to be a Burgazlı, is produced through the experience of sensory diversity. Orhan’s concept of bolluk, abundance and prosperity, includes a diversity of people, animals, and natural beings. The “Hişt Hişt story of Saik Faik Abasıyanık (1993) that Orhan referred to indicates that Burgaz—with its people, nature, animals, tastes, trees, and its sea—whispers into islanders’ ears. The experience of diversity is what makes Burgaz the place that it is, and enjoying diversity is what it means to be Burgazlı. ”As place is sensed, senses are placed; places make sense, senses make place” (Feld 1996, 91).

Classen (1997, 402) draws attention to the ways in which “We experience our bodies—and the world- through are senses.” And that “sensory meanings and values form the sensory model espoused by a society, according to which the members of that society ‘make sense’ of the world or translate sensory perceptions and concepts into a particular ‘worldview.’” According to the islanders, like Orhan, collective embodiment of the island through the diversity of senses is one of the mechanisms of conviviality that “glues” or bonds the islanders to each other. During sociable sociality, the islanders enjoy each other’s company, embody the island and each other’s diversity through different senses (sharing food, walking, swimming, fishing, dancing). When Jackson (1983, 331) observed girls’ initiation rites in the Kuranko village in Sierra Leone, he marked the importance of doing the activities for the “enjoyment” of doing it all together, that “the performers were simply contributing to the enjoyment of the occasion.” Similarly, like Orhan, the islanders did things together and while doing these things, they enjoyed what they were doing. Basso (1996, 56–57) marks that “relationships to places are lived most often in the company of other people, and it is on these communal occasions—when places are sensed together” (emphasis in the original). The island was embodied all together and this embodiment had a great sense of enjoyment and sensorial pleasures, such as being immersed in Burgaz’ nature, its bays, seas, and hills. This enjoyment of nature together with its people is what keeps people alive like the hişt sound in Sait’s story. It is a form of having butterflies in the stomach, which is caused by a sensory pleasure, whether a bird’s voice, sound of sea waves, or a person or any living creature of Burgaz, like a plum tree, which makes the Burgaz islander feel alive.

The fact that he remembered what kind of fruit and vegetables grew in which garden, which dairy products came from where, and the names of particular fish shows that the tastes of these foods are significant elements that tie him to the island. Sensory aspects of food create a sense of belonging (Sutton 2010). Through the memories of his senses, Orhan tells the story of Burgaz. The older days in Burgaz in his words, were “abundant and prosperous” because of the diversity of living creatures, like types of fish, flowers, vegetables, fruit and dairy products. This nostalgia around the diversity of tastes is similar to Seremetakis’ (2019) nostalghia in the Greek sense, in difference to the English meaning of nostalgia that is tinted in romantism. The Greek nostalghia refers to “the desire and longing with burning pain to journey” (Seremetakis 2019, 4). The Rums contributed to the diversity of the island and to the sensorial pleasures. With their departures, along with the change of social and natural life in Burgaz, came also a loss of the diversity of tastes. Like Seremetakis, who could not find the same taste of the particular peach “the Afroditis’ breast,” called rodhakino in Greek, that she ate when she was a child in her village; Orhan could not find the same taste of the cream, cheese produced by the nuns in his childhood, neither the different types of fish. Orhan was angry with the “new generation” who was greedy, who put dynamites to fish excessively. He stressed that the Rum fishermen of his youth used to throw back, to give back to the sea the excess fish they had caught. In other words, they were thoughtful, thankful and grateful for what the island had offered them and hence they returned what they did not need. They cared for the nature on and surrounding the island. Orhan criticised the greediness of the new generation fishermen with dynamites as one of the reasons, which decreased the diversity in nature. Later on in the interview, he was also sad and angry for the Rum friends, who left the island. Life did not “taste” the same to him, after their departure. As Classen (1997) would argue, Orhan expressed his perception of the loss of diversity through the loss of the diversity of senses, the diversity of the bodily activities that he did with his friends and through the loss of the diverse types of islanders. Orhan’s perception of human diversity was not limited to ethnic and religious differences. People’s particularities, stories of craziness, anger, and jokes made Burgaz diverse, joyful and fun for him, while today, the island is more boring to him.

Furthermore, Orhan also criticised the use of technology and the media as what reduced the diversity on Burgaz. According to him, when people watched TV or played with their mobile phones and laptops, they became more individual and monotypical. Hence, islanders started less and less being in contact with the nature in Burgaz as well as doing activities collectively. Carpenter (1976) and his friend, Mcluhan (2002) drew attention to the social changes that came with new technology and media. Mcluhan (2002, 18) put it that any medium and technology is the extension of ourselves, of our senses. Carpenter (1976) argued that media changes people’s perceptions: when Papua New Guineans first saw their photos, they ducked their heads and showed shyness and embarrassment due to a sudden self-awareness. Except seeing their images on reflections of water, it was the first time they had seen their full bodies on a printed photo, which they could hold and touch. When they heard their voices being played back after being recorded on a tape, this confused their sense of time (Carpenter 1976). According to Orhan, media and the technology changed the social life on the island, because they changed the ways in which people embodied the island with their senses. According to Orhan, watching TV at home instead of the open-air cinema on the island lessened the fun that people used to have on the island. It made people and their bodies distant from each other in opposition to watching the movies together in the open-air cinema, making jokes to each other (like throwing eggs to piss off some of the audience) or sharing one pack of sunflower seeds, passing from hands to hands, and inserting their palms one by one to the pack of sunflower seeds.

Nilüfer Uzunoğlu, a Burgaz islander for generations, (the director of the 2013 Burgaz documentary, a graduate from Marmara University Communication and Journalism), agrees with Orhan and would agree with McLuhan by saying that the change in the transport system on Burgaz and other islands will change the social life on Burgaz. In the last few years, the horse carts were replaced by electric transport vehicles, at low cost for the islanders. In my interview with her in 2022, she said, “This (electric) bus, taxi, minibus, according to me, will change very much the island. Maybe in the future, we will talk about how much the life and people’s relationships have changed. I think that this rhythm is bad.” When I asked her why this change was bad, she clarified:

If those people who move to the island (summer inhabitants for instance or new permanent islanders) would want the same comfort in their lives, this would be very dangerous for the island life, then it will not be an “island” anymore. The rhythm will change. They call these “vızır vızır (a sound of the buzzing bee, that signals speed) electrical”. They light their lights, they make accidents. Like this, the life on the island changes totally. The people will not get/feel any benefit from what the island offers to them. In the old days for instance, our elderly, for example, my grandmother used to count “I bathed in the sea 40 times or 60 times this year”. It was very important to bath in the sea to pass a healthy winter. However, what I see today is that people do not even walk, let alone swim. Walking is very good for one’s health, to get fresh air and so on, yet people do not walk, they would rather take that electric thing. This island then turns into a city with these electric vehicles. Like this, the island changes, the rhythm of the island changes, the islanders change and the island life changes.

In the old days people used to escape from the city to come to the island, to relax and to detox, but now they are bringing the city to the island. For instance, to have better reception, a lot of receivers are installed on the island. People want to have better signal and internet connection. When people would like to have comfort, then, the island life changes. In the past, people did not spend that much time in their homes, because it was not comfortable, hence everyone was outside. Now for instance, children do not get out of their houses. They are sitting in their garden, in the fresh air but in a sitting position, connected to their internet. We used to have a lot of action and movement in our lives. What I mean by “us” is the people my age and even some younger ones. When the internet was not that spread and overtaking; people and children were much more active and did a lot of things outdoors, in the nature.

Thus, according to Orhan and Nilüfer, the use of people’s bodies, the movements that the bodies do, especially together and the contact of the bodies with the nature, especially with the sea, makes the social life on Burgaz. Similarly, to what Carpenter (1976) argues, Nilüfer is expecting a change to the “expanded and relaxed” concept of time on the island. The electric vehicles will bring higher speed and pace to the islanders’ perception of time. They will also have less bodily contact with Burgaz. Instead of using their feet and legs on the paths, rocks, grass, soil of Burgaz, walking and taking sideways, twists or concrete stairs that connect some streets, they will take the assigned paths of the public electric vehicle and get to wherever they plan to reach, faster. Thus, Nilüfer hypothesises that the changes in perception and bodily experiences will also change the social life on the island.

Embodying and Performing Diversity

According to Orhan as well as other Burgaz islanders, like Engin Aktel, the islanders are multicultural, as they have embodied each other’s diversity. As Aktel says in the introduction of this book that the Rum and Jewish culture lives in him, it is very difficult to understand exactly what this Rum or Jewish culture is and whether one can separate a kind of “Rum or Jewish” culture from each other. The complexity of this is that, the islanders, like Orhan, have embodied the island through the diversity of the senses in the everyday practices that they did together. Thus, the sociable sociality that they produced is produced all together. Hence, it is not possible to separate what in these activities of fishing, eating, drinking and dancing is Rum (or Jewish or Muslim), for instance, except the religious activities that are done at the Rum Orthodox church.

Nonetheless, this naming and separating what Rum culture was, was understood and reflected upon, after the departure of the Rums. It was, in fact, when the Rums left, that the remainder Burgaz islanders, like Orhan, understood and became conscious that the dancing in the gazinos, the fishing and getting drunk together with friends started disappearing. It was after the departure of non-Muslim islanders, especially the Rums, that the islanders realised that the “Rum culture” included fishing, rowing on a boat, drinking rakı, swimming, dancing and eating. The departure of the Rums made a mental break of “coexistence” in the heads of the remainder Burgazlı that when the Rums left, those joyful moments, sensorial pleasures and togetherness which included swimming, drinking and dancing started disappearing, for instance, the gazinos closed. When I asked Orhan what had changed, he referred to policies (the Wealth Tax in 1942), the riots on 6–7 September 1955, the coup in 1960, and events in Cyprus as what changed life in Burgaz. All of these were a logical consequence of what I refer to here as coexistence/toleration, or the management of difference. In this case, that difference was “managed” by the state as a form of homogenising social engineering. For Orhan, it appeared as the distinction between the conviviality that he remembered and related with such fondness, his eyes sparkling as he looked dreamily towards the horizon, and the management of difference that led to his friends’ departure and the political tensions, which he related staring at the ground and with much reticence. It was clear in his mind that government policies had brought a rupture to people’s daily lives. Through those policies, the identity of the religious minorities was crystallised around their difference. The sense of coexistence/toleration appeared in Orhan’s narrative in the form of the homogenisation process that took away his friends. In opposition to the memory of coexistence and homogenisation, Orhan articulated his memories of conviviality in Burgaz, in the ways in which his father helped a Jewish friend in Burgaz, and how the islanders did not turn against each other during the riots. On the contrary, the islanders cooperated with the police on Burgaz and protected the island from an outside attack, by waiting at the bays, scaring away the invaders, who could not get to the island. The memory of the 1955 pogrom was articulated as a memory of conviviality and act of solidarity by the Burgaz islanders, which I will return in Chap. 7.

After having explored the ways in which Burgaz islanders internalised and embodied the diversity of cultural practices, I now turn my attention to syncretic religious practices, which I have attended and hence experienced it with my own body together with the islanders, as well as witnessed the ways in which Burgaz islanders talked and reflected on their individual syncretic religious practices.

Agios Fanourios kai Fanouropita

One of my closest friends from the French Middle School, Notre Dame de Sion, Despina lives in Burgaz as a summer inhabitant. She moved to the island in her mid-20s, after getting married to Panos, who grew up in Burgaz. Despina and I were very good students. We became good friends in the first months of the middle school, when we were 11 years old, since the teacher made us sit next to each other. Our teacher, Madame Pascale (we always called our teachers with their first name instead of their surnames) had made a ranking of the students, by allocating the students in terms of their performance in the class. She made those who were doing very poorly sit in the first raw. The better students performed, the further back they were seated by the teacher. She had made me and Despina sit at the very back next to each other. Since then, we encouraged each other to do well, to explain the rules of the grammar, the homework and so on. We were also “friends in rebel.” As a part of the school uniform, we were given a ribbon-tie-bow to put on our collar. Some parents even do not buy it, as it is not mandatory to put in on. Those, who buy it then take it off after a couple of days. In short, nobody cares about it. However, due to our being stubborn, Despina and I decided to wear it all year long. Even if our friends or older students joked about our ribbon, we still kept it. This was in fact a special bonding between us. At the end of the of the first year, we decided to take it off, which came as a surprise to the other students. Wearing this ribbon was in a way our way of fighting the pressure that could come from other students and friends. We liked the ribbon, so we wore it.

When my mum and aunt asked me who my close friends were at the school, I said Ece and Despina. Ece was my friend from kindergarden, who also happened to go the same middle school. When my aunt, Sevim, told me: “Despina is a Rum name. Rums are lovely people. We used to have such great Rum neighbours in Yeldeğirmeni (a multicultural neighbour on the Asian side of Istanbul). They are great cooks; they are very hospitable and very clean. They are hamarat (an adjective used for someone who is very good in many things especially with cooking, cleaning, working and multi-tasking).” I was very puzzled, because Despina and I were so similar, I could not understand why my aunt was talking about her as “different.” As my family was not religious, it was difficult for me to understand what religion was. When I moved to Burgaz for my fieldwork, I was utterly happy that Despina lived there. She introduced to me many people on the island, took me to the Rum churches, to the social clubs, introduced me to Engin Aktel. Through attending the Rum masses together as well as other important religious rituals, I was introduced to religious practices by Despina.

On the 26th of August, she invited me to the Agios Fanourios, the day when women bake a special cake called Fanouropita, to make a wish. This religious ritual was at 16.30 in the afternoon. So, we met prior to lunch to bake a cake. Despina told me that this cake had to be vegan, so no animal products. As there were no eggs in the cake, it was equally difficult to make it expand and rise. One should put 7 or more ingredients, but the total number of ingredients had to be an odd number. We put orange juice, vegetable oil, cinnamon, walnut, sugar, raisins, baking powder, self-raising flour and hazelnut. Despina explained to me that if an unmarried girl puts a piece of this cake under their cushion, then it is believed that she will see the one who she will marry. This, then, turned out into a wish day, where unmarried ones wish to find their love, or those without a job to get a job, or sick ones to have their health returned back, in sum whatever they wished and baked the cake for. While baking the cake and mixing all the ingredients, you make your wish. Together with Despo, we baked two cakes, one for her and one for me. She had baked one in the morning but the cake got stuck to the cake mould. Rum women give a lot of importance to how their cake looks like. This is also the same with anything they cook. It has to look and taste great. As Despo was newly married, and the cake did not turn well, she disregarded it not to get criticisms and hence we baked another two, which turned out rather well. We had asked our friends and neighbours that we were going to bake fanouropita, the wish cake, and if they had a wish, they told it to us and we will repeat it while baking the cake. We also had some wishes: I wished for my PhD to finish and for it to become a book, for example. While baking the cake, we repeated these wishes. It made an hour to bake the cake. While baking it, we had coffee, and chatted. We then went to the social club, where we swam. In the club, I told the women I saw there, especially the Rums that we made fanouropita with Despina. They were surprised that I also baked a cake.

Whenever I participated to any religious or social event, the islanders were surprised because there were so many things happening on the island and I managed to be there. I must have seemed like a mouse in their mind, as one islander joked with me that he had seen me in every hole on this island. They were surprised at my pace of joining so many events, very quickly and to do exactly what the islanders were doing. For instance, I went to the Catholic mass high up on the island, at the Austrian chapel at 9 am in the morning on Sundays. The Catholic masses were attended by a variety of Catholics, Suryanis and Keldanis of Arab decent, Rums, Armenians, Italians, French, Germans and Austrians (mainly nuns) and also halfies, such as half Catholic-half Muslims, and half Rum Orthodox, half Catholics. The priests for every mass used to change, for instance, there were sometimes a Spanish priest, sometimes an Austrian. The Catholics had complained about the fact that the Catholic chapel did not have a permanent priest assigned. The masses were done in Latin, German and Turkish. The audience, who spoke so many different languages, came up to the alter to read a piece from the Bible in Greek, or in French or in whatever language they felt they wanted to express themselves. For instance, there was a Rum Catholic couple, who lives in Canada in winter and who speak French. They sometimes read the Bible in French. After the mass, the participants offer cookies, cakes and börek (a savoury type of pastry) they make. Catholics do not share the communion bread with the non-Catholics. Zeynep, a Keldani islander, explained to me that there is bowl at the altar, where there is the holy bread. It is not a piece of bread but a special type and when a Catholic enters church, before the mass, he or she goes near that bowl and takes his or her piece and puts it on the “mass bowl.” Like this, it is as if all the Catholics who will get the communion “reserve” their piece of bread and when the priest does the communion, then he gives the body of Jesus, blessed, to the Catholics. This is another way of separating the Catholics from the non-Catholics who are entering the mass, during the communion. Even though the communion excludes non-Catholics, the mass is open to whoever who would like to attend.

After the mass and the refreshments offered at the Catholic Chapel, then I used to go down to the Rum Orthodox mass which also starts at 9 am but then goes even until 12.00. As it is very long, sometimes the Rums also come to the mass late. The Orthodox are also diverse in terms of their ethnicity and languages. Rums are in majority, but there are also Bulgarians, Macedonians and some Armenians. Armenians do not have a church of their own, but those who are of Gregorian Orthodox sect attend mostly the Rum Orthodox masses and those who are of Catholic descent attend the Catholic mass. Nonetheless, during special religious days, especially of the Rum Orthodox religious calendar, and weddings and funerals, the church is attended by everyone and hence the islanders perform syncretic practices. Agios Fanourios is one of these days, which is attended by many islanders from different ethnic and religious affiliations. Those attenders, not only the Rum Orthodox, but everyone believes in the power and the blessing of the ritual. The power of Agios Fanourios, for instance, of making the wishes come true is believed by the participants, who bake a cake and make their wishes. What I would like to argue with this ritual is that it is both an embodied collective practice, during which people embody each other’s differences, and it is also a performance, the islanders self-consciously perform this ritual, enjoy and value the sociable sociality in the production of place.

I wanted to use my body and feel the island in the same way the islanders did. I wanted to do everything together. This, on the one hand, is very difficult because of the fact there are so many things happening at the same time on the island. On the other hand, it is also difficult how to do participant observation. When one participates and tries to feel the movements and the actions and through the senses, it is equally difficult to observe things. Because, observing and the use of the eyes eliminates the perception through other senses and hence when I focused on my own body, how can I observe and understand what is going on around me? Jackson (1983) argues that it is crucial to do and experience everyday practices together with the informants, in order to understand this practice, to feel it within one’s body instead of only asking the informants many questions of reflections such as: Why do they do like this? How do they feel when they do like this? Or what is the meaning of this practice or ritual? He writes:

[T]o participate bodily in everyday practical tasks was a creative technique which often helped me grasp the sense of an activity by using my body as others did. This technique also helped me break my habit of seeking truth at the level of disembodied concepts and decontextualised sayings. To recognise the embodiedness of our Being-in-the-world is to discover a common ground where self and other are one. By using one’s body in the same way as others in the same environment, one finds oneself informed by an understanding which may then be interpreted according to one’s own custom or bent, yet which remains grounded in a field of practical activity and thereby remains consonant with the experience of those among whom one has lived. (Jackson 1983, 340)

He adds that rituals and everyday practices are somatic, bodily experienced and enjoyed together. Doing these things together contextualises these practices, in opposition to only asking or interviewing informants to reflect on these practices after or before they do that. When one does the same things and uses his or her body in the same way as others do, this collective embodiment also breaks the boundaries of the self and the other, the environment is experienced together with bodies. Therefore, in the beginning of the fieldwork, when I was more anxious to understand what is going on, I did more observation than participation, on what people did with their own bodies, and what they said. Later on, through attending regularly the churches, kal (the Burgaz Jews called the synagogue, kal, which comes from the word keila/kehila in Ladino, that means gathering, a gathered mass of people) and the mosque, I focused more on how I felt and how we felt together. Knowing the rules of the game, in Bourdieu’s (1990) words, then, lessened my anxiety and helped me in the feeling of what was going on and made me feel as a part of the whole. For instance, in the kal when we were singing in Ladino from Torah, I was able to follow it, understand the words and enjoy the singing together, saluting the people I know, joking with the people after the synagogue and so on. And when someone got lost, for instance, during the singing in Ladino, I was able to show them what we were singing from the Torah. Hence, the Jewish were joking that I was more Jewish than them, and the Rums were saying that I have become a Rum girl. During Agios Fanourios, I focused on the enjoyment of doing things during this ritual together with the other Rum women and Despina. I cannot explain the joy and the excitement I felt in the speedy movement of this ritual.

Agios Fanourios was brilliant. I was a bit late. There were around 50 women and two men among the participants. All the women, who baked, left their cake on the big table (Fig. 5.1).

Fig. 5.1
A photograph of 8 people who gaze at a long vertical table loaded with baked cakes in the church. A paper slip is placed over each cake.

Agios Fanourios (photo taken by the author)

Full size image

There were around 25 cakes. Not everyone had baked one. Despina was right in being concerned about how her cake looked like, because when we went to the church, and put the cakes on the table, the women started judging how the cakes looked like. There were, for instance, two cakes, very well risen, which were highly criticised, because it meant that the women had put eggs in them, which they should not have done. I did not know that we were supposed to write names on the cake. We made one column for the deceased ones, to send prayers to their souls, and another one for those who were living to pray for the health and well-being. So, I wrote the names of my grandparents, Recep, Neriman and Şehabettin, who were no longer alive in one column and my family and friends on another column. One male priest, two young boys and the organiser of the church were singing and guiding the prayers. Then the priest yelled out all the names, written. I got emotional to hear the names of my grandparents. Then I also realised the diversity of names pronounced by the priest: Rum, Bulgarian, Italian, Muslim and so on. Among the participants, I had seen Armenians, Catholics, Sunni Muslims and Alevis whom I had met in various religious and non-religious occasions. My very good Armenian friend, in her 70s then, was also there with her cake. She had baked a cake the previous year, and her wish had come true. She told me that after your wish comes true, you bake another cake the following year, to show gratitude and to thank Agios Fanourios. Other Rums also said the same thing. Then the priest makes a cross to bless the cake and hence cuts the cake in four pieces. At the end of the mass, women bring their blessed cakes to the garden. There you cut your cake into many small pieces and the speedy movements start. Women snatch pieces from each other. They do that as quickly as possible. This movement and speed of cutting and snatching cakes from each other makes the event so vivid, so shared, as well as fun. You try to exchange as many as you can, with whoever is there. You hold your cake on one hand, and you try to snatch a piece from the cake of another. Your eyes are trying to catch a cake that you have not gotten a piece from yet, while trying to hold your cake so that it does not fall. It is a bodily movement, where you constantly move among the women, hence bump or hit each other while trying to reach a cake. You also can eat a piece as you go along. You hear small talks in Rumca and in Turkish: “This one looks good.” “I want to try this one.” “Have I gotten a piece from you?” and you smile and laugh as well, as you enjoy the fast pace of the ritual, of the snatching which feels like a game. I snatched around 20 pieces. The best-looking cakes or smaller ones usually disappear as people try to snatch a piece from it. You give from your cake also to people you did not bake a cake, or they also come and take from yours. Children or anyone who passes by, drops by the church garden and eat from the cakes. People wish each other that God may make their wishes come true. Some people also expressed their surprise, with an approving smile, that I managed to bake a cake too. In the end, your tray of cake looks like a variety of cakes that look like left overs, as they are all in pieces. On my way home, I distributed the pieces of the cake to whoever I met. It was also Ramadan, so those who were not fasting, took a piece at that moment and those, for instance, fasting Muslims of the teacher’s house where I stayed, some of them ate after they broke the fast.

Agios Farounios is a collective, gendered, embodied practice, where women take part in it with their bodies, both in the baking of it, in the sharing and snatching of it at the church and when they distribute it after the church to their families and friends. It is very much similar to the embodied dimension of ritual practice (Hirschkind 2006) and “ritual sociality” (Erickson 2011), which makes the participants feel a part of the community, by sharing sensory and affective experiences. During Agios Farounios, you use your eyes to catch and snatch the cakes. You hear the prayer, the names of the dead and alive being blessed, you touch each other’s bodies during the snatching, you eat and taste a variety of cakes with a variety of tastes. You feel the heat. When you eat the cake, you also smell the different ingredients, some put cloves, some put hazelnuts or other nuts. Some cakes are softer and lighter, some are heavier and denser. This ritual is hence embodied collectively through diversity of senses. The tastes of cakes are also distributed and shared with those who did not attend the church, by giving a piece of the cake to the non-attenders. It is also a performance, as people who participate in it are performing by baking, by displaying the cake and by snatching from others. They repeat it, if possible, every year, to make a wish for themselves or to eat a piece from somebody else to help their wish come true. The more your cake is eaten, the more it is believed that the wish comes true. Some people just attend to be part of the collectivity, to enjoy each other’s company and taste different cakes. It is hence a syncretic practice, embodied and performed by the islanders from different religions. This is similar to how Engin Aktel expresses that the Rum culture lives in him, or how Orhan and Ajda emphasise how much they enjoyed attending the rituals in the church and this is also how Nuri, an Alevi from Erzincan, articulated that it is also his church because he went to weddings and religious days since he was a child.

I suggest, then, that conviviality is not only the ways of living that Orhan remembers so fondly but a particular valuing of sociable sociality in the making of place. It is the sort of “everyday coexistence” discussed by Bryant (2016) but here given “an intense ethical and aesthetic valuing” and self-consciously performed. For those who live there, what makes Burgaz a place with which they identify is precisely this form of sociality; to be Burgazlı is to experience and value this sociality and to invest in its reproduction. Conviviality is practiced not only in everyday activities such as dancing, drinking, talking, having a coffee, swimming but also during syncretic religious practices.

Building from Mauss and Bourdieu, Bowman (2016, 259–260) argues that social practices such as interactions and negotiation of space are embodied through tacit knowledge, learned through imitation, practice and repetition. In the practice of everyday pluralism and intercommunal mixing, then Bowman (2016, 261) confirms that “sharing in religious celebrations and festivities is an extension of the habitus of a shared communal life.” Burgaz islanders, having grown together on the island, having shared daily life, enjoyed and embodied the island through different senses, having attended each other’s religious rituals, share Burgaz habitus. Bowman (2016) stresses the difference between practices during pilgrimages where sacred places are shared by tourists in other words by “strangers” who do not share the communal life but happen to “co-exist” in the same place, in difference to the syncretic practices in plural places where the inhabitants share the daily life. Bowman (2016) separates “syncretism” from “mixing” and “sharing.” Syncretism implies inauthenticity, contamination, creolisation and hybridity of a practice, where identities are transformed (Bowman 2016, 197). During the “mixing,” the participants of different faiths do not take practices from each other. For instance, Muslims will attend a Christian religious activity in the church but will tell Muslim prayers (Bowman 2010, 208). During the “sharing,” Muslim participants can imitate or borrow Christian practices during the ritual however, they will not make a cross, for instance. “Shared practices at mixed sites mail entail antagonism and may forge novel identities, but neither is necessary; sharing may just well be the practice of a moment engaged by persons who return, after that ‘communion’ to their traditional selves and ways” (Bowman 2010, 198). Agios Farounios is then not “mixing” nor “sharing” according to Bowman’s definition, but it is a syncretic, embodied and performed ritual, where the participants enact and reenact collective Burgaz identity. Nonetheless, this syncretism is not seen as inauthenticity, nor as contamination, neither as creolisation nor as hybridity; it is valued as what makes one Burgazlı, a collective identity that is based on diversity, of being “multicultural.”

For instance, the Saint George’s day, Agios Georgios celebrated in Büyükada, the biggest Princes’ Islands, which I attended on 23 April 2010, can then be considered a shared practice, according to Bowman’s definition, where thousands of people, mostly Muslims from different parts of Istanbul attend by taking a rope from the bottom on Agia Georgi hill, up to the church. It is incredibly packed in the sense that people push each other, in such a way that I saw people’s candles being broken on the way. The attenders draw their wishes near the church and light their candles when they reach the church. In Bowman’s terms, these people are “strangers” to each other, who do not share the same space: they do not live together. Couroucli (2010) is right in the sense that the practices of Agios Georgios are only “moments” and do not reflect everyday practices of pluralism, because thousands of Muslims who join the pilgrimage come from Istanbul, engage in this Rum Orthodox religious practice only one day. Thus, they can “go back to their traditional selves and ways.” Unfortunately, Couroucli (2010) has only explored Agios Georgios day in Büyükada and hence it would be wrong to conclude that Princes’ Islands or Istanbul do not have syncretic practices in their everyday life. For instance, Agios Fanourios in Burgaz, is embodied, practiced and performed by the Burgaz islanders, who also share the daily life. According to my interpretation, Agios Fanourios, is an example of a syncretic practice as the participants from different faiths, follow and practice the ritual collectively through their bodies and this embodiment transforms, produces, reproduces and strengthens their Burgaz identity, based on diversity. The embodiment, the collective enjoyment, the sensorial experience and the collective bodily practice makes and remakes the islanders Burgazlı.

Having explored the collective embodiment, performance and production of diversity through Agios Fanourios, in the next section, I investigate the ways in which Burgaz islanders reflect on their personal syncretic religious practices in the ways in which they take, share and integrate practices from different faiths in their individual religious practices.

“I am Jewish but I fast like a Muslim”

On Burgaz, important religious days, religious rituals and practices are occasions where the practitioners discuss their religious beliefs and interpret the meaning of rituals in and outside religious places. When I analysed the discussions between people from different faiths, I found out that the islanders were interpretive, critical and questioning about their religious practices. Hann and Goltz (2010) criticise anthropologists of religion, who are trapped in the dichotomy of “scriptural versus popular” and “doctrine versus practice” (Hann and Goltz 2010, 15). They suggest that “instead of opposing beliefs to practices and theological to practical religion case by case, analysts might instead begin to recognise more complex combinations of beliefs and practices, varying between different social groups, but also between individuals, and contextually variable for the individual” (Hann and Goltz 2010, 16). Burgaz islanders’ practices of religion challenged orthopraxy (correct religious practices based on the doctrine). The practitioners made sense of the religious practices, sometimes they rejected parts of the doctrine; sometimes they referred to it and followed it. Building on Hann and Goltz’ approach of not opposing belief and practice, and exploring conviviality, I analysed the ways in which individuals practise religion and the ways in which individuals from different faiths negotiate which each other their ways of practising religion. I found out that the islanders were open about how one practises religion, that they discuss different ways of practising a ritual. Some were also syncretic in the ways in which islanders combined practices from different faiths to make their own religious practice.

I came across some of these conversations about religious practices at Zeytin restaurant, during the Yom Kippur evening, one of the two most important holy days in Judaism. Yom Kippur is the atonement day, which takes place 10 days after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and during which the Jewish people fast for about 25 hours. Yom Kippur is the day when people reconcile and also ask forgiveness from God. In the kal of Burgaz, the shofar, a Jewish religious instrument was played. The prayers were about “God is the forgiving one, we have sinned and we are asking for forgiveness.” Igal, who helped in reciting some of the prayers and in interpreting them to the audience, explained that first they pray in pluriel (said in French, meaning plural—“we”) which means that they pray all together and reconcile with each other, then they pray in singulier (singular—“I”) to ask for forgiveness from the God for the self. In between the prayers in the kal, Meri, Igal’s wife, sat next to me and explained some of the rituals and how practices are done, and also pointed out people could also do things differently than the doctrine. For instance, according to the Torah, on Yom Kippur, one should not put water in the mouth while fasting, take a shower or wear perfume. However, on Yom Kippur day in Burgaz, many women came to the synagogue wearing makeup and perfume. Some, who did not fast because of working or health problems, also attended the prayers in the kal during the day.

At Zeytin restaurant, in the evening of Yom Kippur, one Jewish woman told me that they did not want to go to the synagogue (they used the term synagogue, not kal while talking in a mixed group) on Kippur because it smelled, because most do not brush their teeth as they are not supposed to put anything in the mouth. Two other Jewish women said that they brushed their teeth while fasting, because, otherwise their mouth would smell. These are some examples which challenge orthopraxy, where the practitioners do not follow the doctrine word by word; they reject some bits of the doctrine and adjust it to their own way of practising. On that Yom Kippur day, I came across more instances in which Jews and Muslims compared Muslim and Jewish doctrines emphasising the similarities between these two faiths and explained the ways in which they took practices from each other.

Before I analyse my ethnographic examples, it is important to explain the context of Zeytin restaurant, what kind of a restaurant it is, the relationship and sociality between the clients and the owner. Zeytin restaurant’s clients are religiously mixed. Similar to the other restaurants in Burgaz, Zeytin is an expensive restaurant to eat in. In 2009, one meal costed between 50–100 liras while the minimum monthly wage in Turkey was 800 liras. The restaurant is owned by a secular Sunni Muslim couple. The clients are wealthy summer inhabitants, who eat there regularly with their friends. They would not have to cook at home or wash the dishes. They just come to the restaurant, order whatever they would like to eat, socialise, drink, laugh and go home to sleep. Thanks to these summer clients, Hakan, like other restaurant owners makes a lot of money. The frequency of the clients eating in the restaurant created an ambiguous client/owner relationship. On the one hand, Hakan and the clients are friends, because they see each other almost every day. Hakan and his wife eat together with some of their regular clients. On the other hand, Hakan is still supposed to serve and collect the bills, and clients pay him for the service they get. The Muslim, Jewish, Rum and Armenian clients who eat regularly at the restaurant share a similar lifestyle. They can afford to “live” in a restaurant, they organise fancy dress parties to which they invite friends from different religions.

Ethel, Orli and Ari (Sephardic Jews), Osman (non-practising Sunni Muslim) and Hrant (Armenian) usually eat together every night, during the summer, at Zeytin restaurant. Fortune (Ashkenazi Jew) and Rayka (Sephardic Jew) also eat there with their friends and family a few nights a week. There is also a non-practicing Sunni Muslim drinking group, who eats there. The customers have “core” friendship groups, with whom they get along well and hence they hang out more. These “core groups” are not divided into different ethnic or religious affiliations; they are mixed. Even though one might be within a “core group,” hanging out at the same table, one can still shift from one group to another, join another dinner table for example, or play backgammon with someone from another table. The tables of the restaurant are very close to each other, and there are lots of inter-table talks. Everyone can hear whatever one says; one jumps into a conversation that is going on at another table, interrupts, comments and shouts. People have backgammon tournaments. People swear. People spend the whole evening and night there. It is not just a place for dining. These regular customers even eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there every single day in summer. For instance, rather than paying a bill every time, they rather have an “account,” where Hakan keeps track of food consumed and these very frequent guests pay the accumulated bill every week or so. The customers who attend regularly Zeytin restaurant share similar lifestyle and tastes. While some islanders will not enjoy attending restaurants so frequently or regularly, the frequent customers like that. Similar lifestyle, tastes and frequent face-to-face interaction in this small restaurant and lack of vast space between tables create space and intimacy between people to talk, reason and discuss together about religious practices, politics, news and any other topics. Nonetheless, this also causes a lot of chaos, misunderstandings, tensions, which I will get back in Chap. 6.

After I attended the Yom Kippur prayer in the kal, I went to Zeytin restaurant. I was invited to join a table where Jews, Armenians and Sunni Muslims were eating. Ethel, a Jewish lady, had already broken the fast before the Kippur prayer as she became very ill and vomited. There was a heated discussion between two friends, Ethel and Fortune, and Hakan just jumped into their conversation:

Fortune::

I am really upset at you because every year, it is the same story! You fast and you get very sick in the end. We told you not to fast and you fasted again this year! Why do you do this to yourself?

Hakan::

Ethel was here in the restaurant all day, while she was fasting. I told her to go home and rest but she said she will stay here and keep fasting. Even though she vomited, she still kept fasting! Fasting ceases when you vomit! And I told her that after she vomited, she should eat. She resisted. Finally, Osman, [another Sunni Muslim client], convinced her to eat something until she got better.

Ethel::

This rule that fasting cancels when you vomit is for the Muslims not for the Jews. I should not have broken the fast.

Fortune::

No! Hakan is right, fasting cancels when you vomit, and it is the same in all religions.

Orli did not fast because of her health problems. Ethel had to break the fast early as she vomited and Fortune broke her fast after the Kippur prayer as stated in the Torah. Jews, Muslims and Armenians who were at the table were surprised that Fortune went to the synagogue and that she fasted on Yom Kippur. Fortune is considered as this unique, vivid, lively and crazy woman. She does not care about what people say. She is highly educated, multilingual and has a demanding job. She loves playing cards and backgammon and does not mind swearing when she plays. On that Kippur night, she told us the story of how she decided to fast on Kippur days:

Fortune::

Once, I was eating, drinking tea and coffee and smoking while the other Jews were fasting. The other Jews disapproved of my behaviour. During that year, everything went bad in my life. People reminded me that as I did not fast on Yom Kippur, kept eating while everyone was fasting; I had a horrible year. From that day onwards, I fast on the Kippur day, but I fast in a Muslim way.

While she was supposed to start fasting when the first star (8 pm-ish) appeared in the sky and fast until the first star (8.30 pm-ish) appeared the next evening (about 25 hours), she said:

I had all the support from [the prophet] Muhammed, I kept eating pasta, boiled eggs, bread anything that made me feel full until 2.00 am like the Muslims do when they fast, and like them, I slept until early afternoon and broke fasting after the Kippur prayer like the Jews.

This particular example of Fortune shows her agency in the ways in which she combined and juxtaposed Jewish and Muslim practices in how she fasted during Yom Kippur. The explanation of her choice is told in a jokingly manner. She mentions that she gets the support from the prophet Muhammed. By doing like this, she compares fasting in these two religions and sees that fasting for the Muslims lasts less hours, however it is also accepted by God and practiced by the Muslims, thus it will equally be accepted by God, when practiced in Jewish fasting. She still marks that the year when she did not fast on Yom Kippur, was seen as disrespectful by the other Burgazlı Jews. She interprets that this kind of contempt that she received brought her bad luck and misery that year. Hence, she then decided to fast on Yom Kippur, but on her own way, integrating Muslim practices into the Jewish fasting.

Many Burgaz islanders do not follow strictly a particular doctrine; they change and adjust their practices; they compare religious practices with other faiths and take practices from each other. This comparison of fasting in different religions by the restaurant clients shows that Burgaz islanders are very well aware of differences and similarities in religious practices; as well as the flexibility and agency of the individuals in the ways in which they interpret and practice religions. As they have lived together since their childhood, attended each other’s religious events, shared the daily life, they collectively reached to an understanding that all religions are equal in the eyes of God, that there are different practices in different faiths but it is totally accepted to syncretise practices from different faiths. Berberyan (2010, 83), a Burgazlı woman of Armenian descent wrote in her memoir about Burgaz, what she learnt from her grandmother: “Regardless of religion, humans are humans, their God is one. Regardless of which language the prayer is uttered, it is a prayer” (my own translation). Berberyan (2010) remarks three things: (a) Burgaz islanders syncretise religious practices, by taking prayers and practices from different faiths; (b) they collectively experience religious events, in the ways in which, they attend each other’s religious rituals, eat together and share food during these events; (c) the islanders know the important religious days of every faith as well as what one should do on these days, as they celebrate each other’s important days by taking part in it. She recalls that she had one Muslim friend who was scared of many things, in other words, a “coward” she says. She told him that whenever he was scared, he should do the cross three times and say “Hisus Kristos” (Jesus Christ) and that his fear would disappear (Berberyan 2010, 83). Her friend did as she followed: whenever he was scared, he made a cross three times and nobody remarked it as something weird or something that should not be done, let alone despising it. She also recalls that whenever they (Armenians) heard ezan, the Muslim call to prayer, they (Armenians) recited the “Hayr Mer” (Our Father prayer in Armenian) and made a cross (Berberyan 2010, 83). She also draws attention that regardless of which religion the children came from, they all ate together all the religious food that was shared during funerals, weddings, Christmas, Easter, and Bayram (Eid). She cites irmik helvası, a semolina dessert, or un helvası, a flour-based dessert, which were both eaten at the funerals of the Muslims; koliva, another dessert served at funerals of Rum Orthodox, done by wheat, dried fruit and nuts; coloured eggs of Easter; the flower-free bread, Matsa, during the hamursuz (Passover) of the Jews; the meat from the kurban, sacrificed animal during Eid of Muslims, that is distributed to the neighbours; and the olive leaves, distributed to the houses in the neighbourhood during Dzağgazart, the Palm Sunday, in Armenian (Berberyan 2010, 81). Fortune’s fasting, and Berberyan’s Muslim’s friend’s doing the cross sign are examples of individual syncretic practices particular to Burgaz islanders, where individuals are free to syncretise religious practices and this is not despised, yet this makes the islanders Burgazlı, who embody each other’s differences. These daily and religious practices are extensions of shared habitus ingrained in conviviality.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have explored Burgaz islanders’ memories and current daily practices by paying attention to the sociable sociality aspect of conviviality, in the ways in which Burgaz is embodied collectively through diverse sensorial experiences, such as drinking, dancing, fishing, swimming, eating together, and attending religious rituals. Sharing food and commensality during the religious days as well as in various occasions produces collective memory and shared identity (Seremetakis 2019; Sutton 2001), and hence a strong sense of belonging to Burgaz. Everyday practices are very much enjoyed by the islanders; and collective enjoyment and embodiment of their environment bonds the islanders together and they embody each other’s diversity. By participating in each other’s religious days as well as by syncretising practices from different faiths, islanders create/invent their individual religious practices and embody the diversity of the islanders.

While it is relatively easier for the islanders to differentiate religious practices from each other, for instance, Rum orthodox Sunday masses or Agios Fanourios from Muslim Bayrams, it is not so easy to grasp or put boundaries to what Rum culture or Jewish culture is, as islanders share Burgaz habitus and construct the daily life in Burgaz together through shared memories and collective embodiment. Thus, the conviviality in Burgaz differs from side-by-side living, where there is limited interaction among different social classes and ethno-religious groups.

The taking and sharing of practices from different religions in Burgaz resemble to how Mazower (2000) described intercommunal mixing prior to the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, before the spread of nationalisms. At that time period, in Ottoman lands, practices of daily life did not reflect clear-cut religious categorisations despite the existence of the binary distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims (Mazower 2000). Religious difference was recognised. People respected the fact that their neighbours followed their own beliefs, and in times of crisis they asked for each other to pray to their own God and messiahs (Mazower 2000, 65). Christians, Jews and Muslims would use each other’s amulets when their own did not work (Mazower 2000, 86). For instance, a Muslim woman would try to get a hair from a Jewish person’s beard to reduce fever; Muslim children had Muslim prayers read over them in churches; Christian children were blessed by Muslims hodjas (Mazower 2000, 86). In some parts of Macedonia, people went to mosque on Friday and to church on Sunday and said that they were Muslims of the Virgin Mary (Mazower 2000, 68). Non-Muslims sometimes used sharia law even though no Muslims were involved in the issue (Mazower 2000, 69). People became blood-brothers even though they belonged to different religions (Mazower 2000, 71–72). Intermarriage between Muslims and Christians was not uncommon (Mazower 2000, 70). In a Bulgarian memoir in 1870, it was remarked that Turks and Bulgarians got on well as neighbours in the villages, their children played together; in the neighbourhood, people spoke enough Bulgarian and Turkish to converse with each other; even though both had their own faith, customs and clothing, they accepted belief as it was without making a value judgement (Mazower 2000, 75–76). These older practices in the Balkans can be extended in time and space, as we see in Burgaz, by taking different forms following the homogenisation processes during the nation building stages, incorporated in the intercommunal mixing/relations, where people share a joint life in the neighbourhood, and share religious practices with each other in plural, mixed communities (see Bringa 1995; Bryant 2016; Bowman 2010).

Burgaz does not seem to be a unique place, but one of the many examples across different times periods and contexts, where people of different faiths, took and/or shared practices from each other, and lived together sharing space/neighbourhood. Yet, violence can also erupt in mixed communities. For instance, in a war situation, life-long neighbours (from different ethno-religious backgrounds) can turn against, even kill each other (Bringa 1995). Bowman proposes not to presuppose Samuel Huntington’s (1993) clash of civilisations, nor Hayden (2002); Hayden et al.’s (2016) “antagonistic tolerance” where tolerance refers to enduring the presence of others (without embracing it) as long as one group dominates other(s). Instead, Bowman (2010, 2016) suggests to explore the contexts and the moments when particular practices are shared or mixed, and the ways in which individuals perform and reflect on their practices in order to understand how intercommunal-mixing takes place. Analysis of the context will also allow one to understand the changes, as well the tension, conflicts and even antagonisms in people’s social relations, such as the ways in which the bombings of the synagogues and the political tension regarding Turkey-Israeli relations solidified the boundaries of the Jewish community, which I will turn to in the next chapter.