High tables, low tables...

AYLİN ÖNEY TAN - aylin.tan@hdn.com.tr

DHA Photo

The first fast-breaking iftar dinner of Ramadan was a bit awkward around Taksim area last Tuesday.

Along İstiklal Avenue, there was a trail of a feast at ground level, where people squatted right on the street pavement to share food on tablecloths laid directly on the street. It was strangely convivial, joyous and modest, just as a Ramadan iftar ought to be.

This single, long table was set on the ground along the pedestrian İstiklal Avenue. The Anti-Capitalist Muslims and the Revolutionary Muslims were at the core of the organizers with the help of all other Gezi protesters. With more and more people joining this unusual iftar feast, the long, low table stretched for almost half a kilometer from Galatasaray High School toward Taksim square.

At the end of the street, in Taksim Square, there was another festive occasion. The usual Ramadan iftar tables set out in tents went al fresco this time, as if to proudly demonstrate the generosity of the local municipality of Beyoğlu, hosting another iftar dinner free for citizens. White plastic tables with white tablecloths were festively decorated with huge strips of red satiny textile. It surely added a touch of “quality” akin to high royal tables to the plastic picnic setting. The table settings were the colors of the Turkish flag, but that gave the overall effect of a giant cheap wedding-gown with the ubiquitous red ribbon belt of village weddings. The atmosphere was more of a wedding reception rather than a religious feast, but the attendees seemed not to care, happy to have their free dinner boxes provided by sponsors. The boxes containing three dishes were hastily consumed by the fast-breaking public and the “wedding” venue abandoned quickly, whereas the protesters’ feast continued to be enjoyed along İstiklal Avenue for a long time despite police warnings and threats of water cannon.

The low table of the protesters was totally in line with the original meaning of the “sofra,” the word for “table” in Turkish. Sofra initially did not refer to furniture but to the leather or cloth mat laid on the ground to put food and dishes on.

The word sofra comes from the Arabic word, sefer which means travel, tour or campaign. Süfre, deriving from the same root “sfr,” was the traveler’s provision. The food of the travelers came to be used for the cloth or mat on which it was served, and eventually for the first low tables set in Topkapı Palace to serve food. Until the times of Süleyman the Magnificent, the palace pupils used to eat their food from the so-called sofra, a round leather mat placed on the ground. It was at the times of his highness when slightly higher tables were introduced, namely the sini. Huge circular trays set on foldable wooden stands became the higher means of eating within royal circles. Even within these higher royal sofras, the food was still eaten from communal dishes, with the only cutlery being individual spoons. The communal dishes were a part of Islamic doctrine of sharing and equality. Tables and chairs, as well as forks and knives, never made their appearance in Topkapı Palace, all becoming features of high-dining only toward the last century of the Ottoman Empire.

The contrasting low and high iftar tables, set almost a hundred meters apart, demonstrated two world-apart approaches to the fast-breaking feast of holy Ramadan. The Taksim Square high tables with distributed picnic boxes bore a visible sense of estrangement, whereas the shared food brought to low tables by protesters boasted an atmosphere of conviviality. The low table of İstiklal was surely a single united one, a genuine “yer sofrası,” completely true to the origins of the word sofra, and loyal to the Ramadan spirit of sharing.