Turkish tales of the Indian Elvis

Today I spent the afternoon with my Turkish friend Huri in her little kitchen with the formica table and chairs. I like having tea at her house because she's an excellent hostess, always overindulging her guests with cakes and salty snacks like peanuts (you better not ask). I always like to talk with her because I can be sitting there and feel completely transported into her former world: Istanbul and the cafés and markets and overflowing shops, and the women veiled in beautiful layered garments and voiles contrasted against the modern Turkish twenty-something woman in tight jeans and t-shirt working hard to leave old stereotypes behind. She always takes me on these journeys describing her life before she moved to France with her husband and I always prompt her with more descriptions; armchair travelling with engrossed rapture.

Today she had a friend visiting for tea, a French woman of Turkish descent, perfectly nice and friendly. I didn't enjoy the visit as much though because the woman kept interrupting and correcting each French phrase that Huri slipped on and because I could see in Huri's demeanor that she was uncomfortable talking about anything from the past in front of this woman. I guessed that maybe she wanted to seem very connected to French life and that perhaps she wanted to feel accepted as a successful French immigrant and not as someone still lost in a world this woman's parents may very well have cast off and maybe even taught their children to tactfully shun. I understood and just sat back listening to them chatter off and on in Turkish and French remarking that people can wear different masks in front of different people and isn't that such an odd thing.

The woman was funny because she kept saying to me that she dreamed of visiting the cities of Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco and Mississippi. I didn't get the Mississippi part because that's the first time I'd heard a French person say that they wanted to go there, especially when you note the frequency of the airing of Mississippi Burning on French television, but later she professed a love of Elvis so I understood. I had to stifle a real belly laugh though when she told me that Elvis had one parent who was Indian (ie. Native American) and that was why he was so beau and had such rhythme She also professed a love of Eddie CO-shran and Zherry Lee Lewees. She was cute in her devotion to fifties music and I enjoyed hearing her go on and on about it, clutching her heart and fanning her face for effect. This apparently is something featured a lot on Turkish satellite television. I think they do have some translation issues to iron out in those documentaries though ...Indian parents?

Okay well stump me. It appears they do know at least part of their stuff on those Turkish documentaries. This from the IMDb.com biography of Elvis: "He was extremely proud of his Cherokee roots. Wanted to be more open about it but was advised against it, according to some sources by Colonel Tom Parker, since this was around the time that there were still racial tensions in the US. Sometimes the audiences were "deceived with the truth" like in G.I. Blues (1960) when his character tells about his Cherokee background. In real life his Cherokee roots started with his maternal great-great-great grandmother Morning Dove White and it was even rumored in Memphis that he had Cherokee blood from his father's side of the family as well, though never confirmed."