Michael in Turkey

Here's another letter Silvia wrote to a friend last month:

Can I fix your radiator?: the story of those who tried

The third man showed up at 8:30, also after the children had gone to bed, but at least earlier than the second man, who the day before had come at 10:30, smelling of smoke and with needle-nose pliers in hand. This third musketeer held a single-handle, screw-adjustable wrench, perhaps better than the first of three ill-equipped men to try his wrong tool at fixing the leaky radiator in Mara’s room. The comedy of errors had begun with that two-handle, straight clamp wrench, which his wife, our landlady, had gone down to retrieve from their car when we discovered the leak that memorable evening weeks ago when the temperatures dropped enough to warrant turning on the heat for the first time.

We hadn’t known how the heating system worked exactly, since we were given conflicting information from all sides. The person who had found this-‘ole-flat for us had initially told us it required a card, a sort of gas account debit card on which one put money at certain locations then inserted into the household gas meter to deduct gas consumption whenever one turned on the heat. Sounded simple enough. “You will have a very warm winter,” I vividly recall him writing in early July. (Who could have imagined warped window-frames, drafty doors, and a leaky radiator back then?) At the first feel of cold weather there were incredibly long lines at those gas-debit-card charging locations. Poor people, waiting there in the cold, as if in bread-lines for food handouts, waiting not to be given anything but waiting to put down money—surely some hedged amount calculated by weather forecasts, anticipated income, and the narrow margins between comfort (from both heat energy and food energy) and the cold. We did not have to get in line, since that wasn’t the type of heating system we had. But how did our heating system work then?

Helpful people speculated. Maybe it’s central heat, where the entire apartment building heat is controlled centrally, and everyone shares the cost in a flat, fixed, monthly bill, budgeted, I am told, over most of the heating month. Others told us not to hope we had central heat, since they said it would get way too warm for our liking and the bills would be high. Look at the type of meter, it will tell you, some affirmed. We did, and saw different meters outside the door of each of the 24 apartments in our building. Finally, the people of action (2) said they would stop by soon to have a look and solve the mystery. One of them also called the Turkish-only-speaking landlord to advise him we wanted to turn on the heat. The landlord must have told her that it was apt.-individual heating, by water run through the water-heater and then through the six radiators, one in each of the flat’s rooms (3 bedrooms, living-room, kitchen, bath), since only the landlord stopped by to solve the mystery for us, and be the first to try to stop the radiator leak.

It was a brisk, cold evening, and we had just sat down to our warm dinner when the doorbell rang (well, it actually chirps winding down here). It was the husband/wife landlord duo to the rescue, well-dressed in dark suit and dark dress, probably both getting off from work. After taking off their shoes in the hallway outside our flat’s front door and stepping into our apartment in their socks (a Turkish custom for visitors), quick cordial greetings of Good evening and How are you (iyi aksamlar and nasilsin) and Good evening back and Fine (iyi), they dispersed into our space while the children and I remained seated at the kitchen nook. The landlady went straight for the water heater in the kitchen, while the landlord and Michael checked the radiators and adjusted them. Then the landlady joined in the general inspection, more, it seemed for her apartment and her belongings, than for our interest. They both entered each room without hesitation, to check the heating, of course, and when the leak was discovered, the landlady went out to the car and returned with a hand wrench. All during this time, each couple had its own side conversations going, in their own language—a language not understandable to the other couple. Michael said to me, “That’s the wrong tool; it calls for a socket wrench.” I imagined the other couple commenting on our dinner food, the cute children, the rearrangement of furniture, all the missing (hoards of ugly, dusty) knickknacks, which we put in storage, along with all the useless junk (eight 50-gallon garbage bags full of old clothes, books, x-rays, broken dishware, broken appliances, peeling Teflon pans, and much, much more), and the general good state of their real-estate investment.

With words of confidence, the landlord, with wrench in hand, walked to the radiator. From the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, we heard some banging, metal on metal, then he briefly reappeared requesting a paper towel to wipe up a small puddle and returned walking past us to the bathroom to wash his grimy hands. “Problem solved,” he smiling told us in Turkish. All is OK (tamam). Meanwhile, his wife had pulled Michael aside in the then three children’s bedroom with the 3 beds along the walls and the 3 tiny dressers (more like plastic organizer drawers 5-high and file-width) to ask if she could take one of the plastic-drawer things. Michael shook his head back in the kitchen and pointed to each of the 3 children, attempting to explain how we needed them. 2nd request: How about those large pots up there? Fine, you can take them (an important religious festival and feasting holiday Bayram was approaching in a few days). They left with their tool and a few pots and lids, all in a large plastic bag we gave them. From the kitchen table we had never left, the children and I said goodbye/good evening as they left, and they echoed it from the hallway outside our door as they slipped into their shoes. Iyi aksamlar.

The radiator started to leak almost immediately, unbeknownst to us then but discovered after we rearranged the children’s room into two rooms (by giving up an office/computer room, which is now incorporated into our livingroom) due to bedtimes lengthening with the arguments, clashes, and conflicts caused by one boy and two girls, ages 3, 5, and 7, not all sleepy simultaneously, in a dark, 4 x 4 meter room. Mara’s room now had the radiator in question, and one day at the end of a warm spell, when I told her to put on some slippers cuz the tile floors were getting cold again, she came back to show me how the slipper was so wet that “look, I can paint the floor with water streaks!”

Shut down that radiator, that is, turn the knob so no water reaches it. Then call the landlord the next day, which always requires the mediation of someone bilingual (Turkish-English), which expertise Michael’s colleagues are always willing to share. That night, at 10:30, at least two hours after the now-separated children were long asleep since their 7:30-8pm bedtime, there came a long chirp at the door. Michael was in bed, simulating reading an upright book with his eyes closed, and I told him it was probably a wrong-ring from outside the building, where someone buzzes up to get buzzed in, before then ringing again at the door. Trouble is, the buzz-in chirp and the apartment-door chirp sound the same, and people outside the building sometimes ring a lot of apartments to get anyone to buzz them in, since the intercom system between the apartments and the outside-buzz panelboard has been broken since shortly after we arrived in August. In the past, I’ve had people outside buzz our flat (and probably others) at least three times before getting in; I’ve even run into such an abusive buzzer on my way two flights down to see just who it was as she came up. When I confronted her and asked her if it was she who was buzzing without end to number 16 (our flat), she apologized and said she lived upstairs. Not the best way to meet a building neighbor.

So I ignored this 10:30pm buzzing/chirping until it was persistent enough to annoy me and worry us both that it would awaken the children. To check if it’s an outside-in buzz or an apt-door buzz, one simply has to look through the front-door peep hole. There stood impatiently shifting from one foot to the other a young, lean Turkish man with black hair slicked back, and needle-nose pliers in his right hand. “Su” (water), he explained and showed us his wrong tool as we opened the door. Shoes off, socks in, whispering voices, dim the living-room lights, tiptoe into Mara’s room, turn on her reading light, and attempt to fix it. He smells of smoke, like a chain smoker, and to his credit, when his cellphone vibrates he doesn’t answer it, but after a some call back buzzing vibrations pulls it out of his front trouser pocket to see who is calling him on the ID screen before putting it away. A few more face-tightening squeezes and Tamam (Ok). Our thanks and bye. Our whole tiny apartment smells of smoke. The radiator begins to drip again, so we shut it off again.

Turns out that was the landlord and landlady’s son, we learn after another mediated call the next day. That evening the third person shows up at 8:30, in a suit and tie. Wrong tool too. We go through the usual routine. Turn on the heat from the water heater, turn on the leaky valve, adjust and wait. Mara watches. A new discovery: adjusting something at the water-heater location could alleviate or perhaps solve the problem? Water pressure, we English-speakers wonder? Michael decides to call a mediator now, instead of waiting until the next day, after the fact. The cell phone goes back and forth; tell him this, ask him that. The man in the suit is confident (a landperson’s brother, I wonder?). All is explained and explained away, until tamam (Ok). Iyi aksamlar.

It’s dripping immediately. We laugh in frustration and go through our shut-off routine. (I tell Michael he should write a blog on the leaky radiator, the fixers, and their wrong tools; he says he has too many other things to do. I sigh, “Tamam, I’ll do it.) Our mediators call the landlord again the next day. And finally, we don’t know what she may have said or why another relative/friend wasn’t sent with another wrong tool. Instead, as we can see through the peep hole, a work-clothes uniformed plummer with a square tool box rings outside our door (someone else must have buzzed him in). He quickly sets to work flushing the radiators’ black water onto our bathroom floor (it has a floor drain), and pounding on the leaky radiator pipe to remove and replace the corroded parts. New joint, new knob, no leak.

No mediation necessary with a determined, knowledgeable man of action (and the right tools). When he says something that Michael doesn’t understand, he simply pulls out his wallet to mime pay. Michael opens the apartment door to show him the name of the landlord engraved on the doorplate. Tamam, says the plummer. Iyi aksamlar, we all say.