Elf Ears and Evil-Eyed Safety Pins

In case you’ve ever wondered whether elf-ears (cute little pointy ones) are ever naturally occurring in the human race, then I am pleased to inform you that they do. One of my new students, a woman, has the epitome of elf-ish ears. They form a definite point, they’re not at all rounded at the top, they’re sloped and pointy. Very cute, and very interesting. It’s a pity that I can’t take a picture. She really just has the most interesting ears. She also has very interesting safety pins.

I confess, I failed to live up to my duties as a hijabi and be in possession of at least three safety pins and two straight pins at any given point in time (in the event of just such an emergency), so when I lost a straight pin the other day, I was in trouble. I made it to my class with my scarf slipping backwards and asked my student if she had a straight pin. She did a little searching around her house, and came back and handed me…a tiny blue eyeball. It was attached to a tiny gold safety pin, to ward off evil I suppose.

I’ve noticed that all of my Turkish students have blue eye-balls hanging on things, in all their cars, above their front doors, hundreds of tiny ones in a bowl on the dining table. It’s not such a leap to suppose they’d have one on a safety pin, though I’m not sure whether the eye was there to protect the pin or whether the pin was there to secure the eye.

In either case, I had to use the tiny safety pin with its glaring blue eye-ball to pin the main fold of my scarf down. The safety pin laid flat, but being round, the eyeball didn’t and it sat primly and conspicuously on the very top of my head. I thanked her and then went off to pick Aniraz up from her office, from where we were supposed to go off and run some errands after work.

“Don’t worry about the eyeball,” Aniraz told me, “It’s not like anyone we meet can even see over the top of your head.”

Good point. A funny point though, considering that in the US, Aniraz and I are just average height, but here we’re the first and second tallest women (respectively) in our entire Khandaan. (extended family) It’s really a kick, going from being an almost-short person to an almost tall one. The average height in the US for women is about 5’6 I think. Here it’s 5 foot one or two. The younger generation is coming out taller though, but without hormone-enhanced food (like they have in the US) they have a long way to grow...err…go.

There’s a new pic on the fotolog, but it’s not the one I wanted to post. I wanted to post a picture of the evil-eye safety pin, but I forgot, and posted a pic of…of…well go see the pic and try to guess what it is before you read the caption.

posted by Abez @ 7/29/2003 04:58:00 PM