From Enemy to Friend

WARNING:   If you get disgusted easily, please do not read the rest of this post.  Thank you very much indeed.

The toilet…man’s answer to the call of nature.  There are different variants of the toilet such as the English style, also known as the throne.  There is the squatting one built into the ground which can be known as a Desi or Turkish toilet.  And of course for the ones who are working outdoors there are port-o-potties and the bush in worst-case scenarios.

Being born and raised in the west, I learned how to use the English one.  Whenever we’d go to Pakistan, for the most part I’d have the option to use the English toilet but there were those emergency situations where I couldn’t find one and had to cope with using the desi style one.  It was a nightmare of epic proportions.  I didn’t know how people did their job in there while keeping their pants on?  It was something they should have done a documentary on or have it as a topic in the show “Unsolved Mysteries: Secrets of the Desi Toilet”…You know what I’m saying???  So when I came to Turkey I was horrified to learn that for the first 10 days during orientation, our dorm washroom was only fixed with a desi toilet.  The first few times I went to the washroom I had the hardest time figuring out how to use the toilet, yet I managed to come out successfully, unscathed.  And then on the second day, disaster struck…

I was taking my pants off in the washroom and before I could catch it in mid-air, my Nokia e51 slipped out of my left pocket and went straight into the hole.  I even heard a PLOP! That sound added insult to injury.  I was already all down from “holiday hangover” from the Pakistan trip and this just made it worse.  I had some important files on that phone too.  After a few hours I got over it though.  There was no way to get it out as the hole was way too deep.  When I told the dorm manager what happened, using my broken Turkish and hand signals, he just shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t do anything about it.  I eventually broke the news to my roommates, they literally fell on the ground and started laughing; I have to admit, thinking back it was pretty damn funny.  One of my friends just said, “it’s a phone, who cares, just get a new one…it happens”.  He couldn’t have been more right.  Things come and go.  Getting attached to any material thing doesn’t make much sense at all.  To get over it my roommates told me they’d treat me to some traditional Turkish food called Kokoreç.  They thought I wouldn’t be up for it after telling me what it was, but they didn’t know Shiraz Khalid Choudhary that well at the time.  When it comes to food, I’m down to try new things, regardless of how nasty it sounds, just no pork   Kokoreç is a dish consisting of lamb or goat intestines.  It’s chopped up into small pieces and mixed with spices, lemon juice, herbs etc.  They then put it on a long bun and you eat it.  It looks like something you can buy from subway.  I have to admit, it wasn’t too bad.  The chef seemed to mask any intestine taste by adding a ton of spice.  After eating so many spices I was worried about the toilet.  I had developed a strong hate for the desi toilet.  I had a new enemy….

For the rest of the orientation period I used an English toilet on a different floor.  After orientation was over we moved to our permanent dorms, which were a lot nicer and cleaner than the temporary ones.  The only problem was that they were farther away from everything else on campus.  The other problem was that we were on the main floor.  The main floor only had desi toilets as the space that was to be used for the english ones was used up by the laundry room.  The laundry room was only on the main floor and the other floors had the English toilets.  So if I wanted to use the English one I’d have to go upstairs to use them.  So I decided to man up and just get used to it.  And I have to admit, after one month I’ve gotten used to the desi toilets.  We’ve developed a mutual understanding and respect for one another.  I’ve even developed some leg muscles in a spot where I had not known muscles even existed.  As for our relationship, I’ll forgive but I won’t forget.  As of now we have mended our hate for one another and are on friendly terms.  Lets hope it stays that way.  In order for it to stay that way I just have to make sure of one thing…keep my pockets empty.

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