The Eyes Have It

In less than two weeks, I’ll be making my yearly journey east to the island.  Once again, There will become Here.

I’ve often likened this annual migration to that of a bird’s, the pull toward take-off physical and necessary, the markers along the route familiar, known. And how, though I’m helped along by clearly signposted interstates with rest stops and restaurants, I feel I know the route by feel alone and it’s my body’s inner maps that direct me.

Unlike migratory birds, however, I do not travel light. I arrive in a car packed with books, computer, writing supplies, foodstuffs, clothes, all the myriad things I’ve collected over the year and am convinced belong on a Maine island. This year, that includes my newly acquired nazar boncuk.

Bob and I have just returned from an exhilarating trip to Turkey. In its important and richly-layered history, in its people and cultural customs, in sights and sounds, in landscapes ranging from sprawling Istanbul bisected into European and Asian sides by the mighty Bosphorus and dominated by a dome-and-minaret poked skyline to “fairy-chimneyed” Cappadocia with underground cities dating to 2,000 B.C. to Greco-Roman ruins on the Aegean Coast, and, aah, the Aegean itself, Turkey offers surprises and wonders at every turn. After a few days though, certain daily and somewhat commonplace things became familiar to us: the customary Turkish breakfast (beware bacon-and-eggers) of bread, cheese, olives, cucumbers and tomatoes, endless trays of sweet chai served in squatty, bulbous glasses, simit vendors with their unleavened  bread rings strung on sticks, packed raki bars and kepab houses, the unfailing muzzein calls from the minarets of mosques punctuating each day, particularly the dawn azan that, as an early riser, I found most appealing in the small Cappadocian village where each syllable echoed from the hillside behind it.

Wherever we traveled though, nothing seemed more ubiquitous or inescapable than the Turkish evil eye. Or, rather, the nazar boncuk of deep cobalt molten glass centered with an “eye” of three concentric circles in white, light and dark blue. Appearing as emblematic of the evil eye itself, the nazar is actually an amulet meant to shield and protect, to turn back evil eye’s harm.

The notion of the evil eye is not unique to Turkey. By way of religion, custom or superstition or a mix of all three, many cultures share in such belief. The earliest references to evil eye are found in Sumerian clay tablets dating to 3,000 B.C. Ancient Greco-Roman archeological evidence in the eastern Mediterranean and sources such as Aristophanes and Plutarch suggest the fear of the evil eye was similar to what’s been carried forward over millennia – that certain people have eyes whose look, intentional or not, have the power to inflict injury and bad luck. Most often, it’s believed, this is the result of envy or greed, of someone eyeing your good looks or good fortune with more than a smidgeon of jealousy. Praise is not to be trusted. And since the evil eye can be cast without intention, what’s openly praised and possibly, even if unconsciously, envied – a new house, car, baby, boyfriend, recent business success –is at risk.  

And so the nazar has evolved, its color signifying the long-held belief in the power of blue,  the color of all-important sky and water, as evidenced, too, in the blue typical to Mediterranean house doors and trims and said to play a role in warding off evil spirits. Meant to be used in the open and not kept secret, the blue nazar talisman attracts the evil eye and absorbs its power before damage can be inflicted. Or as Ozai our Cappadocian guide explained, “to reflect back the negative energy.”

While the nomadic Anatolians once rigged up their camels with braided blue beads alongside their embellished prayer bead tespih, today’s nazars create a heap of opportunity for souvenir hawkers and trinket vendors. As though divorced from original meaning and appropriated as a touristic must-have,  the blue-eye talisman, in various shapes and sizes, shows up in bracelets, necklaces, key chains, refrigerator magnets, clothing, belts, mirrors and frames. In a sort of superstitious two-fer, it’s even mounted onto a horseshoe – although I confess I saw no marriage between nazar and rabbit’s foot.

But the nazar has not been merely trivialized for the tourist trade. Their use is customary. Even in the most cosmopolitan Istanbul neighborhoods, it’s hard not to come upon them -- at the entries to houses or shops, paved into walkways, mounted on cars and taxis and baby carriages, affixed to cell phones, ceremoniously embedded in new office building foundations, as equally evident on a horse’s harness as on a plane’s tail.

It's hard to say how many people actually believe in the evil eye today. Or whether the wide-spread use of nazars is due to deeply-embedded custom or entrenched superstition. Certainly, no culture is free of its superstitions. The list is extensive. And several of them, I’ve now come to realize, do echo a bit the evil eye's “beware of praise” phenomenon. Not long ago, a Jewish friend who’d just become a new grandmother, recounted to me how her grandmother, whenever a new baby in the family was ogled and praised, particularly by a stranger, threw salt over her shoulder. My Red Sox fans friends tell me baseball players, in the midst of a possible no-hitter, never mention such enviable achievement by name. Maybe such jinx-fearing is behind the response of island lobstermen, any one of whom will never say, even in a record-breaking haul year, that business is good.

In “Wet and Dry: The Evil Eye,” folklorist Alan Dundes explores the relationship of blue equating to water and water equating to life. It's a link that, he says, lies behind the evil eye and the amulets and chants long used to protect against it. He cites the belief dating back to ancient Greeks that life is a gradual diminishing of liquid inside a man, achieved perhaps as the result of direct observation – a juicy plum ages into a prune, a grape into a raisin. Man, too, wrinkles, appears to dry up. Dryness then is equated to death, no doubt an inescapable conclusion in the naturally dry landscape of much of the Mediterranean where rain is infrequent and liquids limited. And where, when a new mother's breasts inexplicably dry up or a baby suddenly refuses to nurse or, unaccountably, a successful farmer’s cows cease giving milk or his crops and orchards shrivel and wilt, the conclusion is drawn: an evil eye, intentionally or not, has been cast in their direction. And is it behind, too, what we still call a “withering look?”

Associated with this evil eye notion of wet and dry, Dundes writes, is one custom meant to remove the possible taint of praise or admiration and also add liquid to counteract potential dryness. It’s simple: Praise then spit.

Okay, so I didn't see much spitting in Turkey. And suffice it to say that neither Bob nor I made such attempt to mitigate our praise of a gracious Turkish host or talented chef. But we did purchase a nazar to hang by the entrance of our newly renovated island house. It’s a memento, really. Though a little protection can’t hurt -- right? And while we don’t expect praise, we’ll gladly accept it. Spitting, however, is not encouraged.