It is half past eight in the evening. Another day’s work at the döner kebab shop is about to come to an end. Soon I will put on rubber gloves to help Alparslan, the owner, scrub the gunk off the spit roasts. I will then sweep the floors, wipe the counters and cycle home to call it a day.
Suddenly I feel my phone vibrate. It is Hasan calling. I met him at a coffeehouse in Neuhof some weeks back and ran across him there on and off since. He tells me he and Numan are going to Karlsruhe. I remember Numan from the same coffeehouse. A Turkish man in his mid-twenties who came to Strasbourg after marrying a woman of Turkish origin born in France. They call men like him ithal damatlar [imported grooms] here, a pejorative particularly poignant for men yet to father a child, as they are expected to remain subservient to their wives and in-laws to retain residency.
‘I’ve got the car fixed. Come for a ride?’ asks Hasan.
I know these trips to Karlsruhe. They always end up at what is commonly known as the Volkswagen Garage. That is the Red-Light Street on Brunnenstrasse.
It wasn’t these trips that brought me to Strasbourg in the first place. I came here to write an ethnography on burial practices in the diaspora by focusing on a recently opened Muslim-only cemetery. I spent the summer of 2013 frequenting Turkish mosques and asking members of the congregation, comprising mostly old men, whether they’d consider being interred in France rather than having their bodies shipped to their natal villages in the Anatolian highlands. Their responses didn’t reveal much about death. Rather, they wanted to talk about a youth working in heavy industries, timber yards and meat-packaging facilities, followed by leisure in cafés and bars where they met other men, Turkish and Arab, and women, French and German. They mentioned the return home as a goal, but few seemed to have managed to pull it off. Instead, they were joined in France by their kin and wives who brought their children along and gave birth to others. Hasan’s family came to France in the late 1970s. He was born in the early 1990s.
I could have stayed in mosques, talked to men about the past and written my dissertation on it. But I didn’t because of an encounter that summer where a man invited me for a car ride after the evening prayer. I thought I was getting a ride home. Instead he drove me to the German town next door, Kehl. The first stop was a coffeehouse packed with men smoking and playing cards. We then headed off to a tobacco shop on the autobahn. After buying cigarettes, he took me upstairs to a casino. Following a quick stroll, we got back in the car, where he took me to another one. Nothing too flashy about this venue – a two-storey house with an electronic banner that blinked ‘Cash Casino’ at its entrance. There were slot machines and tables scattered across. We ordered espressos and started talking. ‘Here are your Turks,’ he said. ‘Forget about the mosques. This is where you’ll find them.’
When I returned to Strasbourg in 2016, I continued visiting mosques but stopped asking questions about death. Instead, mosques, especially on Friday afternoons, became places to plan my itinerary for the weekends. An invitation to a coffeehouse or to a shisha lounge in town? I’d take that. And soon after I’d find myself in the back seat of a car darting off to wherever it took us. Mosques. Quartier [neighbourhood] courtyards. Other coffeehouses. Other shisha lounges. Restaurants. Betting alleys. Casinos. Brothels. And, rarely, homes. Much of our time was spent on the road going from one venue to another or cruising without a particular destination … These nocturnal trips, however, were not aimless. They served a purpose that I’d call therapeutic, but I am no expert in such affairs. Regardless, they seemed to have brought my companions closer to something they considered lacking at work and home. One could name that lack money, status or even love – physical and emotional. I, however, read these escapades as moments to assume ownership over life amid struggles to fit into norms as sons, husbands, fathers, breadwinners, Muslims and Turks in the diaspora. Pleasurable, yet transgressive, these moments were enabled by the car, which transformed the road into a space to feel in control of life. The car rides were the foreplay to the main act, so to speak, which could be the prayer, the card game, the hash, the machines or the women. The main act was comforting, but reaching there was even more so … I felt more pleasure en route than in situ, let alone in what came after. For these trips not only took us to play. They also took us back from it, making the rides after a sombre reminder that playtime would soon be over, and bring us back to reality, which comprised home and work.
I met Hasan and Numan in the parking lot of the coffeehouse where we first met. They look sleek. Hair gelled. Cologne sprayed in plenty. One wears a leather jacket, and the other a yellow vest. Having only left the döner kebab shop, I am all sweaty from the bike ride, reeking of French fries and grilled meat. My hands are purple from having sliced red cabbage all day.
‘Are you ready?’ Hasan asks.
‘Ready for …?’ I respond.
‘The women! Get in the car and we’ll decide on the road.’
As we approach the bridge to Kehl, he asks for silence to make a call to the ‘Minister of the Interior.’ That is his wife.
‘I am with Numan and Oguz … The American. I am now entering Kehl … Need to hang up, the border police are staring at us … We will grab a drink … Yavrum [kiddo], let me relax a bit … I don’t know where I am heading after. I have no idea. L’Artichaut [a bar in Strasbourg] or something. I don’t remember the name. How do you expect me to? … Putain [shit]… Agora! [a nightclub in Strasbourg]. I am not off to Agora … Café des Anges, L’Artichaut, something like that … Enough! Are you looking for a squall? … Putain! Don’t you ever go downtown? Don’t you know what it is like? … But there are no nightclubs where I am headed to … Those are nightclubs … Do you want me to film where I’m going? … But that’s not the kind of place. Tranquil, ya! [Relax, will you!] Let me go out … I don’t know where! I will let you know when I find out. OK. Ciao.’
My night outs with men were often interrupted by phone calls, texts, Facebook messages and snaps. One’s wife, another’s mother, or the coffeehouse or shisha lounge mate would want to know where they were. As a child, similar questions were posed by my mother. She had no mobile phone to call or text my father. Instead, I was the one sitting across from her as she wondered when he would come home. He would return, eventually, but his presence was not always pleasant. Sitting in my room, I could hear the fight. Plates and glasses were smashed on the floor. My mother would beg him to stop. A thump! Much later in life I realised that was my mom being thrown around … Followed by her sobbing that was silenced by his cursing.
Recently, Hasan and I took the tram as his car was in the garage getting repaired. There, he told me he wasn’t happy with the person he had become. He tried doing things differently. He went to the mosque, a place he thought could help him to prevent going out and to remind him to spend more time at home. After a few months, he returned to his old self again. He blamed home for the failure. Every dinner ended with a fight, and some turned violent. Divorce was an option, but it was shut down by his mother and in-laws. Most nights he got in his car and drove around, often without a destination. Tonight, however, was an exception. We were off to the Volkswagen Garage.
On our way we stopped at the tobacco shop by the autobahn to buy cigarettes, followed by the gas station to fill up the tank and get some Red Bulls.
‘Damn – whenever I put on this yellow vest, we go fucking …’ Numan cries as we get in the car.
‘For real?’ I probe and continue: ‘It must be your lucky vest!’
‘I will never take it off!’ he responds with a big grin.
Over an hour into the trip, road signs signalling Karlsruhe appear. Yet none of us know which exit to take. We do not get mobile signals in Germany. All we know is that the street has a Volkswagen Garage next to it.
‘Where the heck is the Volkswagen Garage?’ Hasan exclaims as he steps on the gas pedal. We are going so fast that I can’t even ash my cigarette out of the window without risking losing it in the wind.
‘It would be a shame dying for a shitty cause,’ I mention, aware that my words insinuate extramarital sex, which, in Islam, is considered a sin. Hasan isn’t happy with my comment. Numan, however, agrees with me. ‘We are not cenabet [polluted] yet … But, well, we are on the way to get polluted, so I guess that counts,’ he says.
‘But what matters is your intent,’ Hasan replies.
Although this is my first time going to the Volkswagen Garage, I have accompanied men on trips to brothels before. Most recent was Villa del Amor in Offenburg. I didn’t know much about the man taking me there as I had only met him that night. With Hasan, things feel different. It is as if I know his mother, wife and children. Part of me wants him to go home and try harder to become the person he once aspired to be. Another part wants him to drive on.
And he does.
We are no longer on the autobahn, but a street with restaurants open late. Hasan idles the car to ask for directions, hoping the person he approaches is Turkish. We’re in Germany after all. Every other person must be Turkish. Yet this one isn’t. Words fail to help him communicate, but Hasan is adamant. He writhes in his seat and utters what he considers the universal words for sex, ‘fiki fiki,’ resembling the German word ficken. He seems to believe that his undulating waist, and use of those magical words, would lead us to the Volkswagen Garage. The pedestrian’s response is in German, which makes no sense to us. Numan and I are now laughing. Hasan isn’t.
A few minutes later, frustration takes over Numan. ‘Allah askına [for the love of Allah], tell me why we ended up coming here tonight?’ He mentions being content at home playing the console. He then reprimands Hasan for not having done his research on his phone by saving the directions.
‘What happens when she [the wife] grabs the phone and peeks into my search history?’ Hasan responds.
‘Then she will wait for you back home with a stick in her hand!’
Soon after we see a Volkswagen sign on a building. Here it is, the famous Garage. Next to it is a street blocked from outside view and closed to traffic by concrete plant pots. The sign at the entrance indicates that no men under the age of 18 and no women visitors are allowed. Photography is prohibited.
Around me I hear several languages spoken – French, German, Turkish and Arabic. The street is lit by red, pink and purple lights. On each side there are three- to four-storey apartments, a dozen or so lined up next to each other. Most ground floors have large windows.
Behind one, Hasan spots a woman who, Numan later tells me, Hasan visited almost every time they drove here.
The Volkswagen Garage has its rituals. For example, when a man picks a sex worker behind the ground floor windows, she walks him up to her room. Otherwise, he must walk into the buildings, pass the bodyguards and the vending machines, and climb up the stairs to continue the tour. The layout is like any hotel. Each floor has narrow corridors with doors on each side. Some are open and others are closed. Behind open doors, one can gaze at women in lingerie sitting on or lying in bed. Bodies, which come in many forms, appear aflame under the red hue. The three of us decide to walk around, marching by the men filling the corridors. On each man’s face I seek stories of a home, or a family left behind. I asked myself whether it was worth the trip for them. Here I am failing to bracket my morals though my mission as an ethnographer, which demands depicting life as it lays out. Sans judgement. The researcher me seven years ago wasn’t comfortable at the Volkswagen Garage. Today, I remind myself that I shouldn’t have cared so much for everyone chasing fantasies and hurting others one way or another. We all carry scars from the past. Some are even visible.
We stop in front of a room. Inside is a brunette wearing a black bra and matching underwear. Hasan initiates the conversation in French, which prompts her to stand up and walk towards us. She now leans on the door frame. Numan is next to Hasan, and I am right behind them reclining on the wall with my arms crossed. She says some words in Turkish, laughs, and continues in French. She mentions that she’s Bulgarian. Her words are directed mainly at Hasan, but her eyes – they are fixed on me. And mine on her. Then she asks something that cracks up the two men. ‘Il est pédé?’ Her head, nodding towards me, makes it clear that I am ‘the faggot’ she is referring to.
Despite its hypermasculine composition, my field was a queer space. It is where I learned how to queer my vision, speech and, partially, my writing. But the Oguz in Strasbourg did not identify as queer. And the Oguz in Karlsruhe was disturbed by that remark.
I force out what I hope is a smile, albeit feeling emasculated. This is not the first time I felt this way. Back in the döner kebab shop, Alparslan once told me to hold the meat slicer like a man. ‘Not like a newlywed bride that holds a dick for the first time.’
Though my discomfort has little to do with the fear of losing face, and therefore the respect of Hasan and Numan, it makes me act in a way that I rarely do in research, which is to direct the scene. I tell Hasan that I don’t want to spend more time by this door, which he accepts. We walk up the stairs, visit the second and third floors, and walk out to check out the other apartments.
We then take a cigarette break. Hasan isn’t sure which woman to pick. Numan reminds him that he would surely end up with the one he slept with before. ‘There is something about this girl,’ Hasan responds. Numan also wants to find the woman he visited on a previous trip but mentions she must be busy with another client. ‘You made a choice?’ Hasan asks. ‘No, I haven’t.’ I share with them how I feel unsure about this whole thing. Numan inquires whether I am a virgin. ‘No, I am not.’ ‘Why not fuck, then?’ he inquires. ‘Yes, but …’ I tell them about this woman, a pale redhead, with thick red lipstick and red nail polish. They want to know which one. ‘The one in a room at the very end of one of the corridors to the left, on the third floor.’ But I can’t see myself with her behind closed doors.
Hasan then makes a move to talk to the woman behind the window. They disappear into the building. Numan takes another walk, where he chooses a woman with large breasts who seems to pique his excitement. Left alone, I step outside.
I was put in a vulnerable position many times during fieldwork, including an instance where the police busted us for a stop-and-frisk. This was nothing new for the youth in housing project courtyards of the quartiers. But it was something exceptional for me, a Turkish man with fair skin and hair who never attracts the police’s attention, let alone gets a body search. The hands I felt over my thighs and crotch in search of drugs weren’t pleasant. Luckily, the hash delivery was late, and the men stuck the few grams they had up their asses the moment they heard a car pacing in our direction. In the Volkswagen Garage, however, my vulnerability was ethically unsettling. By being with them was I consenting to, and even promoting, a behaviour that would cause tears back home, and even lead to domestic violence? Hasan’s fights at home did turn physical, and here I was, partaking in a prequel to physical harm. Back in my room in Strasbourg, I reminded myself that these men would behave the same with or without me. Today, I know that this was my way of protecting myself from a violent thought that the play, in which I participated through observation and writing, was not all that harmless after all.
Hasan is the first to come back. A few moments later, Numan appears. We get back in the car and talk about the sex workers – how big one’s breasts were, how attractive the back tattoo of another’s was … Kisses were not allowed, but almost everything else was, except for anal sex.
Then comes the silence. Is it fatigue kicking in despite the Red Bulls we gulped down? Or is it the idea that the night is about to come to an end, and once playtime is over these men will have to return home and head to work?
A phone chimes. Numan’s phone picks up a signal. ‘Mine [his wife] sent me texts asking me what time I am coming home.’
‘When we get closer to Kehl I will turn on my phone,’ Hasan responds.
They go silent once again. This time it is my turn to break it. Bluntly, I ask why we had to do this trip. Why did they not have sex with their wives instead? I reminisce about the scene from Fatih Akın’s Gegen die Wand (Head On) (2004), where Cahit (Birol Üner) posed the same question to a group of Turkish men in Germany.
Numan looks at me, and in a serious tone explains how there are certain things sex workers can provide that his wife can’t. ‘Physically, or in terms of the treatment I get. I treat my wife as my halal [permissible], and the prostitute, as a prostitute. And maybe I can make the prostitute do things that I can’t force onto my wife. T’as compris? [Got it?]’
Hasan turns on his phone. The car fills up with the sound of consecutive notification chimes. He puts the phone over his ear to make a call.
‘Don’t blame me for returning late, blame Oguzhan [that is me], OK?’ says Numan.
This time the call is not to his wife, but to his mother.
‘Ana [ma]!… of course she [the wife] got sleepy … But you’re not asking me what happened. The car broke down … Don’t even mention … Putain! It stopped in the middle of the road. Where is she? Sleeping? … OK, let her sleep … Yeah … On the autobahn. We just entered Kehl and the police arrived. And the phone doesn’t work in this fucking country … I don’t know what will come out of it. I will visit the mechanic on Monday … The car came to a halt; everyone was driving by us like rockets … Anyways, let’s end it here. I am in Kehl. Numan is with me … I brought shame on him too … We took my car … I don’t know, I thought it was all fine …’
Numan asks him to tell her the car’s turbo was broken. Hasan turns to him and says that she would have no clue what the turbo is.
‘Anyways, there isn’t much left to drive. The police called the repairman … a tow truck. The guy came and opened the trunk … I don’t know. The motor was running but the car was not moving. He worked on the car for a bit. It was cold outside. He said some things in German … not a single word in French. Anyways, now the car is moving very slowly. I will drop these two and come over … What do you want me to do – leave them out on the street this late? … What tram! What bus! This late?’
Numan demands he not get angry.
‘OK, let them sleep. Of course they’ll sleep – look how late it is! … How could I have called you before? The phone started working when I got closer to Kehl. Attends! [Wait!]’
None of that had happened. We drove back from Karlsruhe at 180 kilometres an hour. The car’s turbo was fine. No tow truck arrived. The police stopped us, but only after the call. And that was for passport control, not the car, which continued taking us back to Strasbourg.
Would the wives of these two men know where we were tonight? Were they so good at keeping secrets? I know I might have answers to such silly questions already. But part of being an anthropologist is doing exactly that.
‘Am I crazy? Why would I tell them where we were tonight!’ Numan responds. Hasan intervenes to remind me that tonight was an outing to have a few drinks. Numan adds that even initiating a conversation on a night out is dangerous. The first image to appear in his wife’s head would be one where there are other women in the bar. ‘They think that we go to places where girls sit on the boys’ laps … But that is not the case.’
For Hasan, jealousy is the main issue: ‘Her [the wife] jealousy reached a psychotic level. She even complains about my looking at women on TV … I am looking because … you try dancing a bit like that, like those women on TV …’
Numan agrees. ‘Yeah, and then I would look at you instead!’
Hasan nods, and resumes. ‘Tell them, yes, I was with the prostitutes, so what? You know what? At that point she will be in disbelief. She will make you swear on it a hundred times. How come you went to them? How could you do such a thing to me … And if she believes you, then, six months later, she will bring it up again, and make you swear on it again …’
The night for me ends in the very parking lot where it began. It is now past two in the morning. I jump on my bicycle and begin the trip to my room in Hoenheim. Hasan would keep on driving. He would first drop Numan, and head over to his mom to pick up his wife and kids. He would then take them home, share the bed with his wife for a few hours, wake up, shower and go to work.
How he does that, I can’t tell … But why he does so, I think I do understand now …