Heart of Europe

Winter

2012-01-27T07:22:00.001-08:00

Locked in a dervish lodge as it's snowing stormishly outside.
The scene I seek refuge in is this:
I am in a supermarket queue to get snacks for my hotel bed dinner just off Piccadilly. There are 4-5 people in front of me and almost all of them on their mobiles. I decide to log on to the conversation of the man in front of me. He is having a conversation about a girl's life, he and his interlocutor- who I am sure is also male- are tearing her decisions apart. I feel for the girl.
It's a very solid moment, shiny and brittle with suffusedness. Stagy, larger than life. I half expect someone to come and ask me whether I have the right seat.

Politburo Files

2011-09-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

So I am in a museum cafe and my enthusiastic interlocutor tells me I am a bright young thing, that I could be something in the world of letters and I almost believe him as he tells me that he comes from a family butchers and knows what's what. Ah, my naiveté.

At the time, I have not even heard of Westminster School. Oh, Hampstead.

Ramadan

2011-08-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

...and the accompanying book, it turns out, is 2666, and the accompanying drudgery is a translation on natural phenomena- winds, today, hamsin and the like.

Let's do this properly

2011-04-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

Rory says when he realizes they need to burn the body of the Doctor. Properly, of course, is to put the body in a boat, set it alight, and let it float on the lake. Doctor who IS the Englishman's prayerbook. Nuff said.

My Blue Headscarf

2011-03-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

The blue headscarf I was wearing that day has grown purplish in places, the places that come right above my forehead, the places that are exposed to the sun at the perfect angle.
Three years, I've had of it.

England, my England!

2011-03-09T04:29:00.000-08:00

Returning from a dinner in Eton where my host did different accents at the table, including several shades of posh, I get off at the train station in Reading and start walking to my friend's place. A Russel Brand type of English guy approaches me and says 'I know this sounds very strange but do you have 60 p?' I smile, and when he realizes I won't pay up he starts 'Fucking...' and stops to consider, possibly, to go for a racial one and then thinking better of it '...bitch!' he says. All is well with the world.

English Words

2011-01-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

Oh daughters of Jerusalem,

Give me today

My daily split infinitive

That I may speak about over

Dark coffee, sitting at dark benches

Hall-style

Oh daughters of Jerusalem

Give me today

My heavy expletive

That I may chuckle head tilted back

And brush it off with a hand gesture

Cutting through the thick fog of

Derision

Oh daughters of Jerusalem

Give me a moment or a lifetime

Of your speeches and soliloquies

as I listen and watch, through a glass,

darkly.

Politburo Leaks

2010-12-27T13:41:00.000-08:00

Leaked Politburo Minutes
A couple of months before I arrived on the scene, Spilograd

A is invited to B's house on the occasion of C's birthday. B's wife has cooked a spicy Russian fish dish that A finds hard to eat. B then says to A 'You should write an insider's report for our journal. What subject do you think you can do?' A suggests writing an article about D. B and C say disparaging words about D, and then agree to give A free reign.
(After this presumably a lot of port and much fun was had by all. Ed)

It's got a kick at the end

2010-11-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

'Be careful! It's got a real kick at the end!' shouted our red haired, Yorkshire born, home counties bred hostess. It was the evening before I was flying out to Istanbul and I was at the grounds of a country mansion, and this was happening in the interval of the open-air play that our hosts were hosting for charity- for the new Ashmolean.
Just before the play had started, I had noticed a face I knew and could not think who it could be that I knew among la belle monde. But before I could push the brain cells further the play had started and I, as usual, totally played along with Wilde. In the interval the hostess, my friend's friend, took us into what her father had called 'Africa' before the revels had started ('For the gentlemen, if the port-a-loo queue is too long, there's always Africa', and when we were introduced and he realized he could not kiss me- the octogenarian- he had said 'Ah, local customs and all that') and then there we had it, the slinging rope, down you went from the tree house and just before you thought you'd hit a big tree, it would stop, right after a big kick.
And when my turn came, I did not even hesitate- my hands hurt and the kick almost threw me to the ground. And then I remembered. The face was that of our late warden's wife, who'd served us lunch in her kitchen.

Mannequin, Jean Rhys

2010-11-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

'The English boys are nice,' said Babette, winking one divinely candid eye. 'I had a chic type who used to take me to dinner at the Empire Palace. Oh, a pretty boy . . .'

Aleppo, Nov. 2010

2010-11-02T02:51:00.000-07:00

You will never walk alone
in an Ottoman han in Aleppo old town
you will come across a fridge magnet
of Krak de Chevalier
you will never, ever
walk alone

You will never walk alone
there will be Germans and Brits
going around with their Baedekers and Rough Guides
they will be one step ahead of you
ordering lemon and mint,
eating their humus and kibbeh

You will never walk alone
when a badly planned soujourn
has you switch hotels, lose friends
you will end up in a place
right across from the hotel Baron,
no, you will never walk alone.

You will never walk, or enter or exit alone
coming out of a mosque you will lead other women
saying
'Fawk'
and they'll ask you
'Wa min wayn ant?'

*

The pigeons drawing
co-centric circles over the roofless roof tops
the pigeons whose names I still don't know how to spell
dance
to the tune of the young man who's fed and bred them
whistling from the district of al Jdayda

Passing archways in the district of older faiths
I come upon familiar faces saying
words like 'inch' and those 'ha's
you only hear Anatolian throats utter
and I know I owe to them
this feeling of being at ease,
being at home

the ladies who've done up their hair for Sunday
and wear skirts that fall down
just below the knee-

*

In the morning
it is of course to the tune of Fayrouz
that the bakers bake their hubz,
and the goat-gutters gut their goats
it is to her voice
that the cleaners at the Baron Hotel
wash the veranda
and two Turks
find themselves taking a photograph
of a map of Syria
(not quite) decided, by L of Arabia
with a little legend of a castle
for Krak de Chevalier
(no, no R, you will never walk alone)

*

I love the women of Haleb
in the mosques, in the souq
with their 'argile in the cafes,
they smile and guide me

the persistent smell of jasmine
finds ingenious ways to reach me
walking towards the 'ala
I ask for directions, surprised at my own voice
that now sounds so Levantine

The Grand Cafe

2010-10-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

This,
the setting for my
Brazilian soap opera:
The Grand Cafe,
High Street, Oxford.

I enter with two friends,
and after some waiting in line
find a table to sit at, at the incredibly full cafe.
(and who would've thought that it was so popular,
and that anyone who's anyone would be there that morning?)
The girls order sensible things
but I am too much under the weather
under the atmosphere
of the city, of the cafe,
of the chattering classes
to concentrate and so say yes,
and no at several points
through the litany of offers that the waitress is citing
and end up with
with some rye-bread, marmite and overcooked mushrooms.

I overhear conversation
from the table behind me
They're talking of archives, grants, deadlines
as I cut my bread into identical pieces,
and then wash a couple of morsels
down with the earl grey

(of course, earl grey,
which I've learned to drink with milk)

I fidget
while fighting the specters in my head and
knock a chair behind me
and disturb a couple's
symposium

They look at me
as at a mad-woman-
Yes, I have only escaped the attic this morning
to come to 'Real England'

The one with the speckled face
puts his spectacles on and let's me know
with a movement of the brow
(how is that even possible?)
that they are not amused.

'Love is blind',
my friends tell me, and pay the bill
Holding both my arms, they guide me
towards the door.

Why Not the West Indies?

2010-04-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

Why Not the West Indies?

Why not the West Indies, Mr. Dyson?

Why Istanbul,

Why not the West Indies?

You said you had to correct

our dictation papers,

our spelling of

immediately, certainly

while there was a ship

in the harbour with

'English people', you said

'drinking and dancing'

and you gave us to understand

in the little English we spoke

that you felt marooned

doomed

to wait out the days

of your white, fragile burden

here, on our shores

But why here Mr. Dyson?

Why not the West Indies?

And at last, your labour paid

I spell words like Roseau, Windward

and chase them across time zones.

Now, I take photographs of calabashes

as if they were my daffodils

certainly, Roseau, calabashes

the mist that is sitting on the blue hills

and a thousand other creation stories.

Incidental Music

2010-04-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

Morcheeba is playing. I taste the local delicacy he has transferred to my plate and I think of witty things to say. I namedrop. It is not going too badly. Then I namedrop a name painful to me and this name calls forth stories on his side. The significance of which is impossible for me to gage. The little he knows about me is a good measure of the little I know about him. But I know I have hit on something here. He looks at me rather intently and asks. 'He is working on A., isn't he?' This may be the one single moment in which his real, vulnerable and almost tactile self has shone through.

Washington

2010-04-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Washington itself, is a Disneyland, very Baudriallard, giant signifiers, plaques gone wild. There are many people jogging, which recalls scenes from Burn After Reading. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

There is also a kite festival, bright skies and freezing cold.

I have soup at the Smithsonian Castle, and sit at a table with a middle aged American couple. They ask me what I do, and when I tell them what I teach, they say 'Ah, our son is learning Arabic, a special kind of Arabic, what was it? Sunni, yes I think it was sunni'. I smile. 'Has your son been in the Middle East?' I ask. 'Yes' they say. I know what is coming and still ask 'Where has he been?' 'Iraq' they say. I am relentless. 'What was he doing there?' 'He was in the army'. I could go on asking questions. I could even make a scene. I don't.

As part of my Grand Tour of American universities I make my way to Georgetown and for some reason when I get of the bus I feel I am in Stratford. Maybe because of all the Shakespeare related establishments that are in Washington. I enter a Body Shop and not far off is a Karen Millen. I am, of course, in my element. I slowly make my way towards campus and stop at the Bryn Mawr bookshop. It is run by two very old ladies one of whom has a discernible British accent. The other one is at the counter, transacting, ever so slowly, business. She adds sums on a piece of paper with a pencil and then looks at a table to calculate the tax. Then she can't calculate the change. The gentleman says it is quite alright, she doesn't have to give it to him. She insists, and the other lady arrives, looking hawkishly at the proceedings. The lady at the counter manages to give the exact change and now it is my turn.

She writes the prices of the books down. A Selection on Verses from the Koran. She looks at the price, looks at the cover and says 'I quite like the older version' she says. I wonder if she means the Bible. Then she looks at Priestley's An English Journey. 'Oh yes' she says 'We have some very good books here'. She does the sums and now's the time to swipe my card. She tries a couple of times and fails. The other lady, a character you feel must be played by Emma Thompson comes and says to me 'It should be alright. She can do it'. Then turns sternly to the hapless woman at the counter. 'You can do it Margaret. Take your time Margaret'. Margaret takes her time. It does not work. I pay cash.

I then continue towards the campus and have a quick walk around the grounds. As I am about to leave a notice a group of young men all dressed in black a-la-Reservoir-Dogs, and stranger than that, there is a woman who is walking ahead of them, turned towards them and so walking backwards, taking their photographs. Other people turn to look at them and they cast flirtatious looks back. Some kind of ad? As I exit the gate I hear their talk, and my radar catches the word 'Islam', and then I here the rest quite clearly. 'Hey, I think we should have a picture taken with the hijabi girl!' I want to stop, turn back and say to them a-la-Robert-de-Niro 'You talkin to me?'. Who knows what that could lead to? I feel strangely flattered. I am impressed that they know the word 'hijabi'. A bit more discerning than Sunni Arabic, I think. I have never been called that before. I feel validated. Maybe now's the time to make a scene.

But there's a bus I must catch and so I soldier on.

Raspberry Sorbet, East Coast Style

2010-03-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

so, as a visiting scholar in america, i am at a posh restaurant (the only thing posh about it is the restaurant, before you get any ideas), and after having had my fish, the waiter reads the desert menu to me (as they do in posh restaurants), and of course, it ends with the sorbet. i 'consider' the sorbet for a while, and say what the heck, as we are in america, and have the sorbet, AND the espresso (not like some other characters who, fighting calories, decide AGAINST the sorbet and only have the espresso). and then i walk back home in my victorian shoes. i get a sore left tonsil from the sorbet and still i am content, walking over the bridge towards home, as only the untermensch do in america, breathing in the spring air.

North Carolina: Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye

2010-02-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

So I am stranded in the south because the north is getting a lot of snow. It's plantation houses and biscuits here and I am staying at a renovated mansion that could be the setting of Kara Walker's nightmares. Or certain people's dream weddings. I spend days in the luxury and wallowness of a southern belle of a hundred years. They have prints of natives and ducks all over the walls. The silverware is quite exquisite.

Today, I ventured out into the world, and spent the better half of my time at a cafe working on my translations. I thought of Aschenbach. I contemplated on certain aspects of walking, picking up things and opening doors. A phenomenology, if you will. I bought a secondhand skirt from a very pretty boy, something out of a sad American road movie. He asked me the name of the author I gave a talk on. Then, responding to nature's call I entered a chinese. I bought fried rice, which in the hotel room turned out to be a good American portion that could feed a family of four. Walking down to my plantation residence I saw two dark SUV's, they had words painted with whitewash on them. Duke Fuck UNC. Duke > UNC, beautifully and academically economical. There were tents set up in the middle of the oxonianity of Duke, under the rain yesterday, people waiting to get tickets for the basketball game. I bought a Carolina t-shirt to commemorate the game, my groundedness and the phenomenology of the cafe (there was a guy with an Exeter College hoodie sitting behind me). Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye.

Arendt, Snow, Railtracks

2010-02-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

In preparation for a 'chance' meeting with a professor I read Arendt, having taken refuge in the carpet-floored inner-sanctum of my apartment which is the bedroom. My eye waters uncontrollably (I think the night cream seeped into it) and to the kitchen I go to pick a tissue. I see it snow as in fairy tales, in abundance, and the flakes are seeable only because of the light of the locomotive that is parked a few meters away from the window which covers the whole of the north facade of the apartment. The flakes fall down onto the railtracks, and the locomotive bides its time. It will be a white morning tomorrow.

A Tale of Two Bookshops

2009-11-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

This time around I ventured into Daunt Books, which had caught my attention on an early stroll towards the Wallace Collection. Inside the 'olde worlde' bookshop the first thing I noticed were the new Nabokovs neatly placed on the counter, giving me ample opportunity to leaf through it before the event in the evening. Downstairs they had a good travel section which featured no Daniel Metcalfe but the magazine which featured an article by Bijan Omrani and one by Alexander Morrison. I thought I'd discovered something rather extraordinary but when I opened the door to Alice's place, the issue was staring at me from the armchair- she'd placed it there, she said later, thinking I would enjoy seeing it. I am an open book! Daunt also had what looked like locals with their travel cases on wheels, doing their last minute book-shopping. There was no Nicholas Coleridge to be had.

At the Hatchard's next day I first asked for the Nabokov with renewed interest and all the staff lifted up their heads to look at me like meerkats and said sadly that it had not yet come in. I resolved to buy some Bennett and indeed, another lady was asking for him at the counter. There were a good number of signed copies of books- including Coleridge's Deadly Sins (which I bought) and William Dalrymple (which I thought was too expensive at 20 pounds). Downstairs Adam Thirlwell's Politics was there where I'd left it summer 2008, and there were two ladies talking about the wretched estate agents that harassed them about their 'houses'. One of them was going to some (important) one's house and said proudly that she was 'dining there on 5th December'. Upstairs I sat and read Rory's introduction to Arabian Sands in which he says that only as an Etonian can he understand what Thesiger says when he says 'First Field Colours'. There were also some copies of Metcalfe's book.

Oh my prophetic soul!

2009-11-06T13:21:00.000-08:00

A much belated introduction to Robert Byron after my summer 'travel-reading'. Here's an excerpt from his First Russia, Then Tibet, from the first chapter ''The New Jerusalem'

"Should any echo of the laughter provoked by my journeys reach the ears of my Russian friends, they will be able to ignore, or at best pity, such irreverence. Levity is the music that accompanies the European's whoring after false gods, gods which, in fact- and all fact is Marxist- do not exist."

The Spectre of England

2009-11-04T13:28:00.001-08:00

The Spectre of England (apres Walcott)

Down the Abrahamic stones of the distant past,
by the mulberry trees that shade the graves that hardly ask for it,
to the sound of thunder that comes from across the border,
he waits, for the sepoy to say something, to divulge
and looks lost into the distance, thinking, building an empire here
destroying one there, vertical like one of the seven pillars
of that proverbial wisdom
(ah, that room above the arch, the arch, the arch, the quad)
fearing he may let pass a word that could
heal.
He passes zebra crossings, watches the traffic lights
until he has come to a table where he can order
strong coffee, mineral water
with a view of a train station long abandoned
in this town of past wrongs beyond repair.
I almost missed him, but there he is
his hand with the up and down motion
of sipping coffe, and in the background
the noise of a hesitant rush hour
his dark blue suit and inner jumper
sensing rain with the coming gale, he stands up to go
this young looking old old man.
II
Walking the washed out walk ways, holding something precious in his breast pocket,
unreachable in his silence
he does not care about the carnage,
his travel companions are talking about. This figure
not quite a man, but this walking stick, this tall straight-line
this tower
from his city of sleeping spires.
The mist is his master, within which
he grew to like, to dislike, to keep silent
- the mist that nurtured him to be vague, in all appearance
and yet be true to his colours.
He enters a church that is blackened with the soot of candles,
and wonders how many said their prayers there.
III
The locals are dark and merry, the library is
in disrepair, his need to read is something palpable, and in the heat
he rushes to the market to find a second-hand shop
that soothes his nerves.
He grabs Anna Karenina in Russian and walks to a cafe
The youths are smiling under their brilliantined hair, the girls are dressed to the nines
The waiters are listless as they offer delicacies, the policemen stroll about
He sits there and shuts out everything,
indifferent to a world that tries to impress.
His postcards home are one-liners
as they have taught him not to care,
not to take to heart much what one sees
On his way to his rooms
he watches the traffic revolving around the opera house
and thinks he hears a familiar note
reaching him from within the closed shutters
His is an innate music of the mind that needs no strings.
Entering his room he sees the poster he bought in London sometime ago
Thinking it perfect for his kind of digs
His paper kinsmen stare at him from across the room
All is well with the world.
Think of the worlds torn apart, burnt, destroyed
Think of the splatters of blood, ash caused
By all this well-ness that fills your room
With the power he no longer has he looks at me askance
“Really N! I am not the beast you make me out to be”
IV
His forehead creased and be-freckled
He envisions the gorge, the river bed
The poplars bending over it, the little caravan
swifts flying overhead in concert.
The old Greek temple stands, full of tourist
And forever, that girl with the flower-tiara
It is as it should be, girls, hair and flowers
All this he sees in his mind’s eye
And now it comes to him as an aftermath, an afterthought
of the pillage, of the spoils of his silent war.
He picks and chooses
The figures that decorate his memory
And himself, vertical, on a straight path, not wavering
one wee bit.
The forehead creases- it is sometimes to much of a strain
To record images without a word to tag
To turn into some kind of story.
A vast sea of unseen sights stretch before him
As he plans his next foray into the wild
Silently, swiftly, he builds another frame, another altar
To his unfathomable gods.

Good Old Muscle Power

2009-10-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

So, a friend of mine has returned to university after she'd abandoned it ten years ago because of the headscarf ban- in the interim she married and had two children. Now, the ban is still in place in some universities, sometimes only in some buildings of some universities- evidence of the arbitrary nature of the whole thing. So my friend takes a couple of exams and yesterday as she is about to sit another, the janitor stands in her way with a no pasaran. She tells him he has no authority to stop her as he is not of administrative stock. But he is keen to make his citizen's arrest. Luckily, my friend's husband is with her and he physically pushes the janitor aside. The janitor can't now do aught and my friend sits the exam. I am now thinking taekwando can largely improve the educational lives of Turkish Muslim girls.

Confederacy of Asses- or the Cult of the Communicative Bums- or Ode to Pitless Bottoms

2009-09-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

From Baburname:
"On reaching Khwaja Sih-yaran there was a wine-party. Today orders were written and despatched by Kich-kina, the night watch, to the Begs North of the Hindu Kush. Giving them a rendezvous and saying 'An army is being got to horse, take thought, and come to the rendezvous fixed"

When all else fails, blame the Germans

2009-09-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

The Coalition Forces (or is that the name they assume in Iraq?) have massacred 70 Afghans in Kunduz. The BBC has been running the news with pictures of American military personnel visiting the wounded in the hospital, all the while re-iterating that it was the Germans who gave the order to 'exterminate'. Oh what a lovely war!

Vereschagin- Samarqand

2009-09-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

almost looks Art Nouveau

Journeying in Arabian Deserts

2009-08-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

The ides of August finds me translating a chapter on Prophet Muhammad's (p.b.u.h.) hijrat - journey from Mecca to Madina- and reading Thesiger's travels in the 'empty quarter'. It is very interesting to read similar descriptions- waterskins covered with cloth, milking strangers' camels or goats, and again strangers appearing from nowhere to inform you about the road or your enemy's movements.
Not long before Ramadan now.

Here's a fresh look on Rory

2009-08-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

This is on his Places in Between. The arguments may come in handy if for some reason I start disliking him at one point:

The argument of this book is that the people of Afghanistan are aggressive, primitive savages, something less than real people, animals who need the civilising hand of foreign domination to bring them to the promised land - which seems to amount to something like the mid-Victorian British empire.

Stewart travels to 'unknown' places that writers have been describing for decades, and produces cliches in ranks - they only appear fresh to us because the writing style he copies is itself so dated that nobody else writes like that any more.

Cricket

2009-08-10T02:59:00.000-07:00

It was always difficult to get another women's team to play and that day our luck had turned- almost. The other college's team was a woman short and so we had technically won, but there was going to be a friendly anyway. So our captain looked through the ranks to, possibly, give the other one what she considered a liability. The least sporty of the team were me and a girl with an Irish accent 'Nagihan can bowl pretty well, she should go for it' she said all of a sudden. I was rather happy to be playing at all, and so I went over to the other team.

As it is, what the girl was saying turned out to be true- sort of. When it was my turn to bowl I gave it my all and yet when the ball hit the ground, it had no life left in it, and it sort of sauntered towards the wicket and I wondered whether it would even make it to the line. But then, taken unawares by this slow progress the batswoman lost sight of it and pop it went to the wicket under her very nose and hit it! The other college's team couldn't quite believe their luck and they all came to me and did the whole cricket tap on the shoulder, 'Good show' sort of thing. I protested that I wasn't good at all and that it was a freak incident, the ball hadn't even bounced. The captain of the team said assuredly "Bouncing is overrated".

Then my 'trick' repeated itself a number of times, because really, I had no armpower whatsoever. After securing the team's 'friendly' victory I was out and I approached the boys who were keeping the score. All our coaches (who were all male) had gathered together on this day- I had never seen them so all together and they were quite a sight with their public school boy
(h)airs and cricket sweaters. They had enormous smirks on their faces and were laughing totally absorbed with themselves. They had not seen me coming. When I approached them in order to get into the pavillion for water I heard one of them say sarcastically "Whatever you say, cricket's the winner". Then he lifted his head up from the score log where he was scribbling beside my name and saw me and for a moment his face froze with guilt. The others first looked at him and then at me. I smiled and said 'I should say it is'.

Past Imperfect

2009-08-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

Reading about Fellowes' account of his characters' infamous night somewhere between Estoril and Cascais, I felt the obligation to write down my own not so scandalous but memorable evening on the very same shores. Nostalgia is a terribly contagious thing.

It was, naturally, another conference, my very first in fact. As is the tradition with conferences that run a week long there is a climax that usually comes midweek- an outing, a dinner that the hosts provide. Our Portuguese hosts had thought that this should be a dinner at the Estoril Casino. We took the slow train from Cascais - on the way back we'd realized it was quite within walking distance- and got off at Estoril, and the casino was quite unmissable, at the end of a park that sprawled all the way to the rail tracks which were right by the rocky shore. We took photographs in the fading light as everyone had dressed up more or less and we wanted to have documents to prove it later I suppose. As we approached the grand entrance I felt upbeat and said something to the effect of 'It could be interesting. We could see someone famous or something.' 'The Devil?' J interjected gleefully as he always liked to check how much the ways of European heathens gave me discomfort. As usual, I only smiled.

Passing the ever so sorry looking slot machines we moved into the great salon and were seated in some sort of balcony. It was pretty dark as the first course arrived- some kind of onion soup. We had contrived to sit across a very funny English academic and were trying our best to bring the 'absent-minded professor' in him. Then there was light on the stage and a boring array of men and women appeared dressed as tropical fruits. In the din, there was no way I could ask the waiter whether they had a vegetarian option and with the English prof's performance rather dull this evening I considered making an early exit, though I had no idea how I would go back to Cascais on my own at that hour. I looked at the slobs of meat the others were eating and then turned right to see that the female dancers were taking their tops off. I took this to be my exit cue and excused myself promptly and when I turned my back to the table to go J was trying to shout from behind 'But how are you going to....' Indeed, I did not know, but it was nice to get out into the fresh air. I loitered a bit in the park, and then decided I should brave the walk to Cascais. Once I had taken that decision I saw another group leaving the place and a rather worried J said 'We looked everywhere for you!' and another one of them added 'Yes, well, there was mass exodus after the second course, I don't think the entertainment helped'.
And so we all merrily walked back to our hotel in Cascais.

The Empire Does NOT Stop Here

2009-08-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

So I have been spending quite a bit of time on amazon lately and it keeps throwing writers at me, and this evening it's Philip Parker. I google to get to know him better and there's a guardian podcast. Excellent. The startled interviewer asks 'I did not know, for instance, that Romania was part of the Roman Empire' (come off it whatever substance it is you are on- look at the name woman!) Anyhow, she has presence enough to ask the million dollar question 'Could you compare the Roman Empire with any examples we know of today?' Philip toys with the idea of China when it comes to population but then concedes: 'The British Empire at its height would be something comparable". And on that note the podcast ends. Gimme a break.
Bring on the Gibbon.

Reporting from Antandrus, the Aegean Coast

2009-08-01T11:05:00.001-07:00

Having recently read in the Tatler that when it comes to beachwear you cannot beat the triangular bikini (market research I was carrying out for a friend of a friend) I headed down to the Aegean with my family who had packed up my beach-bag for me because I was otherwise engaged in northern climes. This is our first experience at a mixed-beach, and strangely one that caters to practicing Muslims. Which means there are a lot of what has been named 'burqinis' on the ground.
What my mother chose to buy for me is a very orange affair that no doubt would qualify me for the national Indian hijabi swimming team. Baggy trousers and a loose long sleeved top with a zipper that looks like a footballer's training suit- which, it turns out, is very last year, or very last decade as I discovered on the beach when I saw all manner of burquinis, from the very sporty looking to the dandy.

The Horror, The Horror

2009-07-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

An American journalist describes the refugee camps she has seen in 'Witness to War' on CNN (a programme whose short trailer that appears every five minutes contains three mosques in Istanbul interspersed with ruined Afghan monuments. Sloppy journalism? Hey, here are some pictures of nice mosques, let's use them!) She describes "acres and acres of makeshifT tents with children crying and having no one to turn to..." (and even some more melodramatic jargon I can't remember now) to the accompaniment of pictures of children scrambling for food.

Here's what Jean Rhys has to say about it all:

"Let’s say that you have this mystical right to cut my legs off. But the right to ridicule me afterwards because I am a cripple – no, that I think you haven’t got. And that’s the right you hold most dearly, isn’t it? You must be able to despise the people you exploit. "

Deformation Professionelle

2009-07-26T06:37:00.000-07:00

"The protagonist herself does not know where to place her own body in the social order so that it may have meaning. She starts to perceive herself through the eyes of the others as '(re)presenting a problem', is forced to relinquish her status as a legitimate subject and perceives herself as an object"

ooops! this is supposed to be chapter 3 of my thesis, not a diary

Afghanistan and Englishmen

2009-07-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

- Rudyard Kipling, extract from the poem "A Young British Soldier" published in "Barrack Room Ballads", 1892.

Cambridge

2009-06-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

I was thoroughly ill. It must have been the same year as Chawton, I can't even begin to calculate the year. I arrived in the town in mist, the conference was a bit of a blur, and then the clearest moment of the whole day was actually the evening meal at the I believe Thai restaurant. There was an Irish prof trying to chat up an Austrian postdoc. There was a lovely elegant Southafrican professor who was telling me about Muslims in Johannesburg. And then my concoction arrived. I had never, nor ever have later, tasted such scorchingly bitter ginger tea before. I am sure it did me a world of good. And then to catch the train (was I really returning to Bromley? Good Grief!) I had the people at the reception call a taxi for me. I don't remember whether the taxi arrived at all. But I remember getting out of the restaurant and being hit by the cold winter night, huddled in my wool scarf, I remember making my way through narrow streets with tunnels of car lights darting this way and that. And I remember the sense of utter lostness- I was just going the direction most people seemed to be going and some compass in me seemed to be saying this was the general direction towards the station. I do not know what made me so reckless. But I seem to have picture of myself from the outside, keeping close to a stone wall as I am half illuminated by a passing car, my head bowed in what seems to be a still from some black and white comic book. Strange tricks of memory.

Ode to the Swivel Chair, a-la-Nicholson Baker

2009-05-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

After my mid-morning walk I was thinking of writing an ode to the horse chestnut tree as they are now in full beautiful bloom in Etiler (and many was the day when we used the horse chestnuts as ammunition or tennis balls as dictated by our fancy) but here's an ode to the swivel chair.
A screw has, yet again, come undone, this time from the side facing the table. Now Baker would have calculated the number of hours spent on the chair, which side one was more likely to shift one's weight more, whether the position towards the table or the window would be more susceptible to coming undone.
I have already lost one of the screws, so the chair is surviving on three, I am guessing two is also managable, but when it is one, the chair is probably non-useable.
So goes Baker's Mezzanine, which is a very clever book, but which also takes forever to read, do not be misled by the slender volume. I have interspersed it with Zizek, Asad, Soueif and what not, and the last 30 pages are still quite resistant. I have already embarked on Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate.

Vereschagin - Russia and The East

2009-04-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

Delivering a paper on Russia and the East, I did not even know about the existence of Vereschagin, whose painting you see above has little to do with his eastern themes, except for the tromp d'oeil effect he likes to go for. In the Tretyakov Gallery I realized only after listening to the commentary that on the painting that stands to the right of this one, the Tashkent scene he depicts has a number of severed heads stuck on poles as a 'mullah' is giving a speech surrounded by them. The hand itches for another paper!

German Faces, Russian Faces

2009-04-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

"There are genocides happening today, and they are being shot off the front pages by Nazi cows - Nazi cows! - and interviews with Mortensen talking about playing a depressed Nazi: "I spent a lot of time in Germany just looking at people." Really? Five million have died in the Congo in the last 10 years, in a war for the minerals that we use. And Heil Honey I'm Home! has nothing to say about that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/23/nazi-culture-film-hitler

what an oppurtune article that speaks to my disparate observations in Moscow.
Mortensen- I was talking about his Eastern Promises at the conference, and as I was listening to another participant giving his paper about how Russian nationalism fared in the face of the Russian adoration of all things French, he seemed strangely familiar to me (and I know no Russians) and then I realized some of his facial gestures were exactly like the Mortensen character I'd been talking about. I'm guessing Mortensen also spent a lot of time in Russia just looking at people. Hats off! Now I'll have to go an see his depressed Nazi.

THE Embittered Marxist

2009-04-21T03:27:00.000-07:00

On the sunniest day of my visit to Moscow I was at a conference where I could follow only half of what was going on. But I could follow the man in the picture alright, with rebuttals in Russian and English to everyone who spoke. His remark to my paper about 'everyone having their own East' was "I think the Muslims and the Orthodox are no where comparable, I don't think you'll find our youth, Orthodox youth protesting on the streets of Paris even twenty years from now". But the Marxist in him came out when I picked one of the above seen bottles of water to fill out a glass. He said I should take the whole bottle, and I said one glass was enough to which he retorted "Oh please, take the whole bottle by all means (he did have occasional English mannerisms), now if it was our American friend who needed the water, he would have taken the whole bottle without asking." The American, one of the three people who gave their papers in English, simply smiled. I could only say "Do you mean to say that I have also failed in etiquette by not properly asking you? (which I really hadn't)" to at least try to make myself as culpable as the American (Moscow makes strange bedfellows) But then the silly conversation stopped, and when it was his time to give his paper, a number of younger Russian students challenged him, which my lovely translator summarized at the end as "They have just had a very interesting discussion about nationalism" Excellent. Now I know what I missed.

An Unexpected Find

2009-04-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

A Russian dissident sits across from me in the park.
He must be a dissident because
he's Russian, and he's
here
in New York City.
Does he know that Central Park
is
muggers only
after dark?

(Ahdaf Soueif)

A Boston Encounter

2009-04-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

Ecce Polis! We are riding a tram, huddled into a wintercoats, and we're returning from seeing a nice play in a nice university town. There are a group of girls frolicking at the back, singing, dancing and my companion asks me whether I remember a time being so carefree and doing such things. "Well, a couple of weeks ago when I was in London..." I start to tell her. She is an established psychologist and has been telling me about her patients half of whom happen to be musicians - professional or amateur. She sees one of them at the metro station now and then. By this time the girls have turned up their volume and the Rabindranath Marx looking guy sitting in front of me who has been listening to our conversation revolving around the play (Beckett's End Game) since we got on the tram with eager interest now starts to make eyes at me. No, of course not that way, he's got his girlfriend by his side but Rabindranath, let's call him Ed, with his Marxist beard and grey tweed coat suggesting the 1930's thinks me, for some reason, equally inconvenienced as he is by the girls. He probably has guessed that I have been sending Embittered Marxists left and right on facebook and wants to capitalize on this familiarity.
Then the girls leave. He takes a theatrical sigh of relief, clasps his master of the revels hands together and announces, bass "Now, our next act..."
"Yourself maybe" I venture.
At the next stop, taking a half bow, he gets off the tram.

An Atlanta Encounter

2009-04-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Since there is not much to be seen in Atlanta (except for Stone Mountain of course where we went to encounter a plantation but managed only to see the back seat of an American police car, more of that maybe later) I spent most of my time socializing, almost Oxford-style, bench hopping and trying to raise my voice above the din. At one dinner party with a German-language poster like Democles's sword over us, we ate, we discussed Iraq, Vietnam and Israel. And right after everyone had managed to upset everyone else, a number of us took their leave and one among us with a decidedly public school education (no matter which or where) and one that had tried to calm everyone during the debate retired to a darker corner of the room and asked the gentleman of the house "We shall smoke?" We had not quite realized that the event was black tie.
I met the same public school graduate, whom we shall call Snap's Master, at another party whose themes this time ranged from food-poisoning death to whether as a child one had been oiled and massaged. Love, too, came up, and as one of those present was sort of lamenting that his brother was in love with a Pakistani girl Snap's Master asked like nothing "Is she brown?" and then told us about the various nannies he had had, named after various fruits and flowers.

A New York Encounter

2009-04-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

What better way to spend the one Sunday you have in New York than to buy yourself a camera which should enable you to shoot your own news reports, thought my cousin. She had thought the same about the Saturday, but she had been recommended to go and shop at the B&H which, she found out later, was run by orthodox Jews and so no luck on Saturday. And so I come in fresh from Atlanta and so it is Sunday morning with us and a shop full of kippa wearing salesmen- men, of course. There's also a Metropolis like pulley and train system right above our heads, carrying I don't know what I don't know where.
So we munch on our kosher sweets, and two of the salesmen are very keen to get my cousin the best deal, when the sickly looking one disappers, we get into a convo with the healthy looking one, he asks where we are from and says 'So, reporting live from Turkey, eh?" "Eh" my cousin concurs. "Reporting more, like, from New York, from a shop that closes on Saturdays" I say. He laughs and adds "Well, you know, not only is the shop closed on Saturdays, but the website is down as well". Hats, kippas, headscarves off. The Spanish tourists are watching our conversation with hidden glee. Then the sickly salesman appears. He wants in on the conversation. "So where are you from?" he asks.
This time we want to play it. "Guess" we tell him. First he smiles signifying impossibility. My cousin says the inevitable cliche "Somewhere between the East and the West". He smiles impossibility for one more second, but then the cliché has worked and he says "Turkey?" We are now in a full-blown conversation. We want to take it somewhere but we don't know where. I venture "So where are you from?" "New York" he says. I try to push it a little to find some common ground and ask "And your people?" . "New York" he says again. In the sociality of the moment I loose grip of the situation and ask as I do any American "How about in Europe? Where are they from in Europe?" His look tells me before he says anything that I am touché. "Germany and Poland".
Silence.
"Interesting, I spent two years in Heidelberg" is not going to cut it this time.

An Exegesis of Shoe Throwing

2009-01-21T10:25:00.001-08:00

Yesterday a secular crowd gathered in Taksim to bid farewell to Bush. Turkish Communist Party among them. They had pictures of Bush and they were throwing their shoes at his likeness.
Now this makes me think of a recent debate on Turkish television. You have to know that Turks are religion obsessed. Some spend their life fearing it. Some spend their life defending it. But most spend their life asking incredibly creative questions like "So if I chew gum with no flavour when I fast, do I have to re-fast one day after Ramadan?". The latest debate revolved around the question of whether the ritual of 'throwing stones' at the 'likeness of the devil' (which happens to be a stone wall) was an essential part of the Hajj. The reformists were saying No, the traditionalists were saying Yes.
I think last night's scene provides argument for the Yea-sayers, secular or religious, throwing things at something you don't like seems to be a genetic tendency in human kind, and its therapeutic effects cannot be underestimated.

The Fight Against Terrorism, The Fight Against Wind Mills

2009-01-20T09:33:00.001-08:00

As Cervantes would've said, this story is not mine. So there will be similar errors and subfuscations in my telling. A friend just came back from a 'Gulf State' where they had a meeting of sorts for muslims, of sorts. A group wanted to add a paragraph about condemning Israel's actions in Gaza to the final declaration, but they were told, by the American (of sorts - Muslim) organizing committee that the meeting - a meeting that had the title ''Is political Islam a threat to the West?" for one of its panels - was NOT a political gathering and so it wasn't appropriate to speak about Palestine. There was much food and drink, the whole thing was a great Hollywood production of exquisite script followed to the letter, one that could put Obama's inauguration in the shade (bear with me). She also met a certain American Abraham (religious persuasion insignificant) who ended up in the same plane with her heading, let's say, to the most beautiful city in the world (yes, you can read into my partiality).
This Abraham had 5 hours to spend in the most beautiful city in the world before he took another plane to the US and asked my friend whether she had time to show him around. My friend did not, and her refusal probably set the tone for the rest of the day's events. We will never know what happened to Abe in those 5 hours. But by the time he got to the airport he was very tense, so tense that once he boarded the plane he decided he didn't like the look of one passanger. Later in the police station his excuse was that this particular man had a coat on - oh horror of horrors!- although the weather was warm. He insisted on getting off the plane. The plane was searched and nothing found. The flight was delayed for two hours.

In the greater scheme of things, I think Abe, corresponds to the Harlequin in The Heart of Darkness, flailing his arms about, his mind 'enlarged' by all the conferences he attends about political Islam that are not political.

The Book of Numbers

2009-01-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

Srebrenica. 8200...
Gaza. 1203...

Heart of Israel

2009-01-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

A former Israeli minister says that unlike Hamas, Israel is 'not trying to target civilians'. It is the 'idea' that counts, he tells us, not the actual 900 people dead.
What redeems it is the idea only.

Mistah Kurtz, he not dead
a penny for the old guy

Pestilence

2009-01-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

UrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfaGazzeUrfa

2009-01-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

La Question Humaine (or please leave Europe to its own demons)

2009-01-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

A nostalgic film about how all evil in Europe can be neatly traced back to the Nazis. One of the comments on the imdb website says that the viewer has understood 'why EU was launched and why we need it now more than ever'. So that executives from good European families can come together to form their own orchestras to play Schubert? Capital reason! And also so that black illegal workers can be efficiently picked up from Turkish bistros (interesting detaille) and put into custody so that intellectuals have enough space to do the serious business of gestating over the second world war. Another bout of psychose europeenne.

Joyeux Noel!

Sarajevo-Skopje-Belgrade

2008-12-22T09:13:00.000-08:00

Tesko Je Biti Fin

The film set the tone for my foray into ex-Yugoslav cinema, with its concerns about genealogies, cars and the nouveau riches. Beautiful nostalgic views of Sarajevo with its impossible minarets, and the melodrama of one family that verges on tragedy but swerves from it the last minute. (Spoiler coming!) The chance discovery of the man's impotence suggests dark thoughts about the baby's father, especially when the woman in Bosnian (maybe especially for a Turkish audience who's been fed news about 'war bastards') My favourite scene is when, as their taxi driver, he speaks to the Japanese war tourists after they have just been assaulted by a gun man whether they want to continue the excursion or go back to the hotel with the dexterity of a carpet seller in Sultanahmet 'Go home? Go go?'. And of course the endless discussions they have abıut the nes taxi-car he buys. There are also references to the Europe-wide ex-Yugoslav mafia that now organizes heists as far as Hamburg.

Senki (Shadows)- Manchevski

A disappointment after his Before the Rain, I have not been able to see Dust yet, I hear it's racist and antiTurk, sounds rather interesting! Senki is about ghosts that haunt a Macedonian doctor, it turns out they are the souls of the people whose bones they have been using as teaching material. There is an abandoned house. There is a tomato grove. The sign of the newer times is the scene when he enters a fist fight with his mother for the jeep, she cries 'I won't let you take my jeep', which he does of course, with force. Most significant scene of the film. I am also intrigued by one of the ghosts whose national affiliations were translated as 'Aegean' in the Turkish subtitles. She did look kinda Greek.

Klopka (The Trap)
Set in Belgrade about a middleclass couple whose son is diagnosed with a heart disease and who can be operated on only in Germany, for which they need 26000 euros. A mafia guy tries to exploit this by offering the father money for shooting dead some mafia head. Class crops up everywhere in the film nicely, the mother's students using their mobiles in class, trying to buy their grades, and the father's car stopped and cleaned by street children. Of course there is a lot of emphasis on the jeep once again. And the fragility of family ties.

and two related films on the side

Fraulein
about a totally unbelievable Bosnian character who is supposed to be very ill and working somewhere in Switzerland at a restaurant run by Serbs. The owner of the restaurant recaptures her love for life with the help of the sick Bosnian girl, who, having brought the woman back to life, disappears. There are scenes where we are supposed to ooh and aaah about how they are like a mother and daughter who are reunited.

The Banishment
much better Russian film Tarkovski style opening with trees and long landscapes and big sheep herds walking in the distance. You just have to take it all in as the background for the drama that unfolds, again about genealogy and husbands who learn they've been fathering children not their own- possibly. An abandoned house once again finds its inhabitants, however, the man has been away too long working and the family he comes back to is different. Half way through the film bitter truths are revealed to the audience in flashbacks. I later learnt that the script is based on a William Saroyan story, hats off! Will go see his exhibition in Tophane ASAP.

Janus-faced

2008-12-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Two nights before Eid al Adha, the day of Abraham's sacrifice, I find myself tired, a heap on the bed, and all I can do - I decide - is to listen to something interesting (even watching seems too much of an effort) and so I check out Radio 4's sample of afternoon plays and lo and behold, there is the story of how Richard Burton entered Mecca, and the Kabaa itself, disguised as an Afghan (echoes of course with Lawrence and the German guy feigning to visit Aaron's tomb when in fact he's searching for Petra) So along with the images and stories and news from Mecca coming from friends and family visiting Mecca at the moment for Hajj, I also get Joseph Fiennes' droning voice telling me why he's getting circumcized, then challenging the Arabs to quote as long a passage from the Koran and then as he enters the Kabaa, his sense of 'pure personal success'.

Who is Elif Batuman?

2008-12-06T00:52:00.000-08:00

(from her blog)

Who is that bearded man?

In my capacity as a relatively obscure writer, people come to me with all kinds of questions. “Will I enjoy Infinite Jest?” they ask me. Or: “Does Turkey belong in the EU?” Sometimes, they send me pictures of bearded men to identify—for example, this one, from the cover of a Korean book about IQ.

for more obscure stuff and the origins of the garden gnome see
http://www.elifbatuman.net/

Mirror Image

2008-12-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

I'm wearing a corduroy jacket and looking down into the depths of the abyss, only, this time, there is no river but a flow of cars. I am a non-participant observer who lifts her eyebrows when she hears one of the participants speak with a perfect British accent. Still I remain aloof. I take out my Iris Murdoch and read it like my life depended on it. At the end I network. A shy looking young woman speaks Russian at me.

Urfa and Its Saints

2008-12-01T02:21:00.000-08:00

remember, remember
the 21st of December

Reflections on Driving, Running out of Petrol

2008-11-26T00:15:00.000-08:00

How fast are women
in the city of your exile?

How fast
are you
in deciphering
the road signs
the gestures, the looks
languages and alphabets?

learning so much, knowing so much
in order to change gears
to keep mum.

In Praise of Oxford

2008-11-14T02:24:00.000-08:00

(dedicated to those who like the blasé pose)

For the inhabitants of Oxford are not in the world and when they do sally forth into the world (to London, for example) that in itself is enough to have them gasing for air; their ears buzz, they lose their sense of balance, they stumble and have to come scurrying back to the town that makes their existence possible, that contains them, where they do not even exist in time.

Here in Oxford, the one really decisive factor is not just that I'm a foreigner about whom no one knows or cares, about whom the only fact of any biographical significance is that I won't be staying for ever, it's that there's no one here who knew me as a young man or child. That's what really troubles me, leaving the world behind and having no previous existence in this world, there being no witness here to my continuity, to the fact that I haven't always swum in this water.

In Oxford the light remains the same from half past five, when the shops close and teaches and students return home and when the cessation of all visible activity first obliges you to notice it, until gone nine o'clock when the sun sets - as suddenly, apart from a lingering distant, ghostly glow, as if turned off by a switch - the signal for those who have determined on going out that night to rush impatiently into the streets. The same unchanging light, that accentuation of static quality or stability of the place, makes you feel as if you yourself were at standstill and even less a part of the world and the passing of time than one normally feels here.

There's as intense a longing for the known as there is for the unknown because one just can't accept that certain things won't repeat themselves. That's why I sometimes I envy Will, the old porter at the Taylorian, who must be twenty years older than me and yet, now that he's let go of his will for good, he lives in a constant state of joy and anxiety travelling back and forth in time throughout his life, both enjoying great new surprises and repeating things he knew before.

(That's enough Oxford nostalgia, Ed.)

The Second Coming

2008-11-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

For D. (you rock baby!)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Musical Chairs

2008-11-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

The scene is the following. B is driving the car up a winding road in Istanbul, S is telling me about X, joking. I have not done all my summer travelling yet. I still do not know many characters in the farce. A is about to be engaged.
Cut to 5 months later. It is now me driving the car up winding roads in Istanbul. S is in London. I now know many more characters in the farce. Some of them twice over. I wait for W’s call. X writes me an email to tell me he is in town. A’s engagement is off, but she’s just been to a party at the British Consulate where she mistook an Armenian priest for an Iranian businessman.
These things happen. Such is life.

In which N is kept completely in the dark

2008-10-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

in the dark, in the dark
planes whizzing above head containing one bound for-
the city of spires

Srebrenica

2008-10-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

When after cleansing the town of Muslims Mladiç, close to tears, says "Today we take revenge for Kosovo" I see the map of Europe crumble before my very eyes. Gone is my beloved England and the pretty lace of the low countries, they just disintegrate, Rome remains, maybe. I see the Balkans rise up to the skies. Russia to the north remains, maybe. All I can clearly see is this stretch from Kosovo to Istanbul, blotting out everything. All that has ever happened since 1389 becomes a footnote.
Henri Bernard Levy said Europe died in Sarajevo. I think history died in Srebrenica.

Tea and Sillery

2008-10-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

Nick Jenkins: Everybody seems to know everybody else
Charles Stringham: They do, that's just the way it is.

My mother, my mother
Think of the first question asked upon learning you were at Wadham.

Palimpsest IV

2008-10-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Erivan Açılımları

babamdan kaldı bir geyik
zaten onun da çoğunu yedik

Yerevan Associations

all my father left us was a deer
we already ate most of it dear

darling, darjeeling,
dear, deer, darjeeling

Southbank Vistas

2008-10-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

If it's not Lucian Freud it's

An Armenian, A Hikmah

2008-09-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

An Armenian character appeared towards the last pages of 'Cities of Salt' which had become a drag to read. The character is a driver named Akoub, and I realized this was the short version of 'Yacoub' when they laid his gravestone. An Armenian whose family ends up in Aleppo like so many others after the deportations. It is interesting that the Armenian name in an Arabic context is once again 'Yacoub' as in the Yacoubian Building.
The hikmah, in the spirit of Ramadan, is the following. The Prophet always recommended that people finish their plate to the last bit. He said that any given 'gift' from God contained benefit, but you never know in which part of the gift the 'benefit' is hidden. It might be in the last grain of rice on your plate, so eat up. So even when the book gets boring, read up, an interesting bit of information (that can be recognized only by you- it has your name on it, so to speak) might be hidden in the last page.
Such proved to be the case with my perseverance of A Dance to the Music of Time as well.
Amen(na).

A Kabul-based Fuel Trader

2008-09-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

Matthew Leeming, a Kabul-based fuel trader, told the newspaper that it had become increasingly difficult to get convoys of essential goods through to more distant bases.
“The Taliban’s new tactics of blowing bridges between Kabul and Kandahar, forcing convoys to slow down and become softer targets, is causing severe problems to companies trying to supply Kandahar from Kabul,” he said.

http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48604&Itemid=39

Oda Tiyatrosu

2008-09-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

My good cousin tells me our lives have become like a piece from the theatre of the absurd, or maybe an Oscar Wilde play. Enter X. Enter Y. Exit X. Enter Z. und so weiter... the scene is us sitting on the couch watching, possibly, In the Thick of It, while these characters enter and exit. We have such little dealings with them as we laugh away at the show. They plot, scheme, war and make peace among themselves. Sometimes they fill our cups of tea. Some make grand entrances, others quiet exits. They leave. They come back. The cycle repeats itself.

Second Sighting of Valley of the Wolves T-Shirt

2008-09-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

Watching the news item about the newly restored Muradiye Mosque in Filibe/Plovdiv, I saw an eight year old in the mosque wearing a Valley of the Wolves t-shirt, with the faces of various characters from the series imprinted on the shirt. I had not quite believed it when Tom had said that he'd seen one in Yerevan, but there's now proof. It also says something about macho tendencies in post-communist countries, any dark man with a frown and a gun is legit for streetwear. (even in Yerevan and the dark man is a Turkish ultra-nationalist!)

Ben Abdülhamid

2008-08-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

Ben Abdülhamid
sızlıyor her yanım
Almanlarla dostluklarım
zihnimde İngiliz kelimeler

Kudüs- kitlesem kapıları
deliklerden giriyor tefeciler, tüccarlar
Çeteleri besliyor Selanik
Ağrı'nın kar-pak zirvesi
uykularımı bölüyor her gece
anılarım, ve açılacak yaralarım

ben Abdülhamid,
sızlıyor her yanım

Al Quds- media contingencies

2008-08-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

I have been watching the ad for the documentary on genetics on MBC since I got to Amman "leke en tetehayyel maza yumkin en yahdus...." and today was the first time I got to watch it. An Anglosaxon production that is dubbed into Arabic.
Apart from very disturbing pictures concerning obsessive compulsive behaviour, we were also transported to Quds, where the Israelis were conducting research on genes that regulated a person's need for change. So we were shown pictures of an English/Israeli moving into his house in a settlement, the voice over saying that this was his nth move in so many months, and that he had the urge to buy any new electronic equipment, etc. His need for change was a "genetic condition", the documentary suggested.
All the objection that the Arabic translation could offer was calling Jerusalem "al Quds al muhtalla".

What Hamid Ismailov's "The Railway" makes me think

2008-08-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

as I record the number and patterns of the bedouin tents that have camped up the hill these past two months

way too many lands, way too many books to go looking for the beloved-

Palimpsest III

2008-08-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

This purple-blue-yellow evening finds me trying to decipher a Kabbani poem with the help of Hans Wehr, and I am transported to more than a decade ago, when I had not heard of the name Kabbani or Wehr, and when, in a dark and dingy cafe in Istanbul someone passes me 'To Beirut'.

Nothing is over, ever

This purple-blue-yellow Amman evening finds me running from one Abraham to another. Yet again.

Palimpsest II

2008-08-16T10:04:00.001-07:00

Qasr Azraq, Front Quad, if you please

Arabs, Turks and Englishmen, and stories told late into the night

Turks, Armenians, Palestinians

2008-08-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

I discovered the Fishawi of Amman the other day with a large group of Turks. There was Turkish coffee, excellent lemon and mint and cocktails, backgammon, the whole thing. There was also a book room, a photograph of Mourid Bargouthi and a burnt on wood portrait of Ghassan Kanafani. Obviously, the place to be. Oh, and then live oud music.

When the girl at the next table warned me about her nargileh we striked up a conversation in Arabic, she asking where we were from and then quite unexpectedly saying that we all looked very Armenian. Of course, I said, we're from the same part of the world, but you'll hardly find Armenians wearing hijab (she herself was a non-hijabi). Yes, she said, they're Christians, aren't they? Anyway, it gives you a warm feeling inside to see that despite the obvious difference, they still recognize Armenians on Turks' face. She, for her part, it turned out, was a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, from Nablus.

Germans, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, Turks

2008-07-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

We went to a concert of the Jerusalem Youth Orchestra in Amman this evening. The very many yellow heads we saw before the concert started turned out to be members of the University of Bonn Orchestra (whom I had listened to in Bonn- and that is another long story. Memories of fleeing Giessen and the train diverted through Mainz while I was reading a thriller with Mahler as the protagonist, in German, mind you) They played Khachaturian operatic pieces concerning the Kurdish Ayesha and Armen. Then there was a very sad Palestinian song with the refrain Sara, Sarai.
The Turkish presence was not limited to me and my friend- I had spoken to H of my suspicions that the kanun and ney music soundtrack of the opening audiovisual was Turkish, and the suspicions were verified when we saw the contents of the CD's they were selling outside with piece names such as Hicaz Longa, and the names of two Turkish musicians. I am pleasantly surprised. There isn't half enough cultural bridges between the two countries.

Turks, Jordanians, Circassians, Armenians

2008-07-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Having listened to an Armenian soprano singing the 'Room With a View' arya last night at the Roman theatre in Amman and having decided that the red haired violinist was of Circassian descent, here's a note on Armenian connections.
Firstly, Tariq Ali suggests that Salahaddin's family is from a village in Armenia though they themselves are Kurds. (note: visit to Ajloun castle is called for) And then I find out about Janset Berkok Shami, an Amman based writer, Jordanian, raised in Istanbul in the early days of the republic and then she finds out about her Armenian heritage.
The Circassians are still elusive, I will have to phone their center. Chechens, however, are accesible in Azraq.

The Art of Losing

2008-07-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

(To the tune of Wish You Were Here)

First
I lost my Baedeker
then, my Herge

But you Harriet,
shall always remain here

The Secret Sharer

2008-07-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

I see men going into battle
in their flying colours
waving their apologetic goodbyes

their battles for fame
their battles for love
and their battles for territory

and I
pin little flags
on my map of invasions
here a country, there a temple
here a river, there a gorge

and long after the battle is done
I am called to sift through the ruins
as they tell me their stories of conquest
and surrender

I, like Harriet, watch the men go by.

Dark Essences

2008-06-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

(after Zeki Müren)

What if there'll be separation in our fates
tomorrow
do not think that the story of those trembling branches
finishes with the fallen leaf
it is the finality of black earth
that will house this love for ever.

Do not cry
Do not be sad
face tomorrow with a smiling face
do not think
your beauty will fade away (for it did not belong to you to begin with)
with the white that has fallen
upon your silken hair

it is the finality of black earth
that will house this love for ever.

Valley of the Wolves- a Zizek moment

2008-06-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

On my latest to trip to Thessaloniki (on my way to Korça) across from the aisle where I sat, there was a man of quite some stature, bald head, quiet manners, presence. I was thinking it must be in the image of this sort of man that the director of Valley of the Wolves must have painted the various characters in his ultra-nationalist drama series, and I was thinking, there is no shortage of such men to be drawn upon on the streets of Istanbul. The puny extent of my knowledge of the series was revealed (puny, but knowledge it was!) when during the break a group of Turkish/Greek students (we need some qualification here, Turks from Thrace who are citizens of Greece) who studied in Istanbul who were going home for holidays surrounded the man and asked him whether he was a particular character in the series. Of course he was! So what I thought was the signified, was in fact the signifier! That was the cause of his presence.

Here we have the dangers of passive TV watching, much much worse than the active one.

The Good, The Bad, The Undead

2008-06-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

I do not remember what it was that had made me so upset. This was pre-Wadham. It was still Lincoln times. I had found myself sitting on a bench across from Christ Church, admiring the ivy clinging to the façade, trying to imagine the lives of the students inside. I was also feeling very small and sorry for myself. Then a woman approached me out of nowhere and asked me if I was feeling alright. When I lifted up my face she was startled and said "Sorry, I thought you were someone else" and then shared with me the story of the very clever British Asian kid who'd fled home, and how from afar I looked like her. I must've looked very small indeed. I had heard of the story alright and this case of mistaken identity cheered me a bit. The girl was dis/recovered, so far as I remember, a couple of days later.

That, is the first memory in the palimpsest.

Khor Virap Catechism

2008-06-10T12:04:00.000-07:00

Nothing's over, ever (Jamaica Kincaid)

Doppelgaenger to Doğu Beyazıd, doppelgaenger to the Soviet, doppelgaenger to the North Parade, doppelgaenger to Hrdlika, doppelgaenger to...

a place for sacrificial lambs, my guide tells me
I'm going up the stairs alright, going up the stairs...

A Song for My Mother

2008-05-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

Salonique: La Princessa ye el Caballero
Constantinople; Francoise Atlan (voice)
Taken from the album Terres Turquoises
Atma Classique ACD 2 2314

Pass the port Stephen, here's to Boris!

2008-05-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

"One could say that Islamic worship, education, and even legal codes were 'left alone' more than were those of any other religious systems in the colonial world. One consequence in some places was that by the time of independence, Muslim-majority regions lagged substantially behind others in the numbers of Western-educated, widely travelled, or highly qualified personnel they could command [...] Access to certain key skills and oppurtunities, one could almost say certain key aspects of transnational modernity, was greater, earlier for Hindus (especially West Bengali ones) in the former, members of Christian minorities in the latter, than among Muslims."
(my emphasis p. 102)
and rightly is our right and honourable friend Stephen puzzled by the following:
"It has also been argued that there existed in the West an especially intense prejudice against the Islamic world, different in kind and greater in virulence than that against other non-Europeans, operating across a broad historical period but persisting into the present. The problem with such a claim is the lack of comparative analysis which might test or validate the claim, measuring Western anti-Islamism against any other kind of prejudice, any other discourse of discrimination, hierarchy, stereotyping, or demonization. For that matter, it is hard to see just how one could quantify different kinds of colonial prejudice in that way, or assign them to a ranking order." (p. 103)

This is the end of Stephen Howe's chapter on Empire by Sea, in his OUP Very Short Introduction to Empire.
It sort of reminds me of the Monty-Python skit in which one of the actors dressed as a Tory MP says he will first make some general posh noises and then fall over backwards foaming at the mouth, which he does.

Ziauddin Sardar's "Orientalism"

2008-05-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

Sardar describes Orientalism as Europe's surrogate intellectual field for self-definition, along with a will not to know the truth about the "orient" so that it can remain the mythical place where fantasies concerning the European self can be played out. Dating orientalism further back than Said does, he shows that orientalist accounts are deeply intermingled with anti-Islamic sentiment. Said also sees this thread, however, because his reading remains secular (by necessity) Said remains closed to some aspects of orientalism, indeed, because the responses to orientalism have usually come from religious scholars, Said does not find them interesting, and as a result, a whole set of scholarship remains closed to him- and he cannot come up with instances that respond to orientalism critically, which is the main criticism that he gets from not just Islamic but also secular writers. So Sardar's contribution is best when he does provide the genealogy of these Islamic responses to orientalism, and indeed, responding himself, especially to Satanic Verses, revealing that Rushdie takes crusade romances as his model, as revealed in his choice of moniker for Muhammad "Mahound", the name used in chanson de gestes. Thus does the orientalist tie himself to a tradition of orientalism, which has roots in crusader mentality. However, in parts the slim volume falls short, and you get the sense that Sardar is being superficial for the sake of brevity, to produce this slim volume. Good effort, leaves you wanting more.

Jaffa History

2008-05-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

From wikipedia:
"The Arabs rejected the plan and on November 30, 1947, the day following the adoption of the UN resolution, seven Jews were killed by Arabs in Palestine in three separate incidents: at 8 o'clock in the morning, in what came to be seen as the opening shots of the 1948 War, three Arabs attacked a bus from Netanya to Jerusalem, killing five Jewish passengers. Half an hour later a second bus attack left a Jewish passenger dead. Later in the day a twenty-five-year old Jewish man was shot dead in Jaffa, where there were alleged attacks on Arabs by Jews."

and then the not so "alleged" attack, oh I see, it's called an "offensive" on Jaffa of course, not on real people:
"On April 25, 1948, Irgun launched an offensive on Jaffa, then the largest Arab city in Palestine, during which many of its Arab residents fled through the harbor. Haganah units took the city on May 14. Out of 70,000-80,000 Arabs, 3,600-4,100 remained."

So the 76,000 Arabs who may or may not have been twenty-five years old, who may or may not have been male must have just got on their luxury yachts waiting for them on the harbour, and left.

Law of Return

2008-04-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

"that Palestinian refugees from 1948 should be allowed to return to homes in what has become Israel - a move that threatens Israel's very existence as a Jewish state. " (BBC)

a very good example of spin where one thing is made to look as the direct cause of another: especially when the result is "threatening Israel's existence" which is the most unforgivable thing in the book. Once you read the word "threat", the preceding proposition of course becomes unacceptable to liberal minds in Europe, without really reading or trying to understand what the proposition is:
simply that people should be able to return to their homes

Bab al-Asbat

2008-04-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

(Lonely Planet: Although Süleyman called it Bab al-Ghor the name never stuck and it became known as St. Stephen's Gate)

Is this the gate
that we negotiated
with the taxi driver
for him to take us to the closest entry
to the Holy of Holies,
during that bit of night
when it is another day when you might
tell a black thread from the white

is this the gate
that launched a thousand...
no, unleashed a squadron
of Israeli soldiers
to 'capture' the city
and whose fame is now immortalized
on the wall of the muslim graveyard
that might be home to martyrs
other than St. Stephen?

is this the gate
that Palestinian school children
come in through early Sunday morning
to commit to heart verses from the Koran
that mentions the masjid?
the masjid in whose memory
Helena built Hagia Sophia,
and Süleyman built Süleymaniye
and these walls and gates
protecting his home away from home,
his Constaninople away from Masjid al-Aqsa

Bab al-Asbat
that finds no room in annals of today
but shall forever remain in the taste of the bread we broke
making our way towards home
during that bit of day
when you just start to be able to tell
the black thread from the white.

Tire 16.03.08

2008-04-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

They were here before us
we were here before us

My great grandfather who fled
(a flight similar to those who were here before us)
to found a dynasty, here on this patch of earth
one that perpetually warred
perpetually laid to ruin
all that he had ferreted
inherited
from those
that were here before us

we were here before us

the birds still chant
to the same tune
tempered by marble columns
imported from the ends of the Empire

red earth brick and round shaped domes
and that colour of blue in the sky
over the same old grey-green olive trees
they still chant in concert
with the church bells
and the call of the müezzin

they still sing to the birth of the praised one
as I today salute the dead
great grandfather who fled
and thus was named
"Gacan".

In Judea

2008-04-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

A stone's throw from Jerusalem
I was running away from one Abraham to another

But he
he was a sight to see
as if bargaining for his life
as he asked
to pass

and slowly
yet surely
waiting at the gates
wailing at the gates
someone else's longing
became mine
yet again

in perpetual resistance
in perpetual surrender
we set offf
yet again
on Via Dolorosa.

One that Disappeared into the Wood- or Stone Work

2008-03-26T12:47:00.001-07:00

Having persevered with the Dance to the Music of Time, I now like it and have understood at last why it was (not in so many words) recommended to me. It is all about how the have nots get what the have all's are supposed to have, all the time. How can Widmerpool rise so high, it is a mistake, surely, says Nick's smirk everytime he sees him. I wonder who D's Widmerpool could be. Ah so slighted by life, all one can do is turn to drink.

Charles Stringham reminds me so much of Matthew, and I don't believe he's been killed in Singapore. Anyone seen this guy recently?

Turkish Europeanization- The Musical

2008-03-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

Everyone, simply everyone knows a tune or two from this musical. My mother sings a particularly well-known one especially when she thinks I am living above my means, and we had sung it a lot at the time that my sister had bought a car, so now along my father's there were two cars to our name. We'd sing the line "Two automobiles/one convertible, and one not" (although obviously neither car was a convertible), and when my mom stays out of the house too much she sings the line "The woman is free, who can interfere with her business". All this to point out the cultural archive quality of the piece, even at a practicing Muslim (albeit rather informed of the "European ways") household like ours.

Having now penned an article or two about what I refer to as "Istanbul criteria", I decided to revisit this production of the musical (the original was written in 1933). It has been running for 24 years now, and there were several TV versions as well. Before going to the theatre this time around, I couldn't quite construct the whol plot-line in my head so I wasn't quite sure whether I had seen it from beginning to end. But when I watched it I realized I knew all the scenes, so yes, it turned out that I had caught a bit here and a bit there, and my memory stick had all the Lüküs Hayat lines stored in several different files.

Several contemporary references were added, like cell phones, and Starbucks, but these were tastefully kept as asides to the audience, the costume and the setting not changing. The setting is Moda- which Pamuk also mentions, but which of course still falls short of the mantra of the musical "An apartment in Şişli/that's the bare minimum", Şişli being right next to Nişantaşı of Pamuk fame.
I looked for references to multiculturality in the play, as I argue texts about Istanbul are always reviving, but found little evidence of it. The hero- a street-wise gansta (who has been played by the same actor with equal vigour since the very opening of the play 24 years ago- kudos to that. He is meant to be portraying a fetching but rough young man, and his counterpart is now played possibly by the third actress in line, tells you about how the two sexes age differently!) speaks of his debts to a Greek moneylender, and once when telling someone to leave in rough terms, he says "Okso", which I guess is a Greek word (and Brava- which could be Ladino?). It obviously is not harking back to multiculturalism, it describes, on the contrary, how the Turks recoil to the centre, and bring the wealth back to the centre, in the person of the wealthy elder sister returning from Egypt with her pearls- the objet a of the whole play, everyone trying to get at them (the bankrupt elites and the gangsta gang that wants quick money) which drives the whole action.

Another source of money is represented in the person of an Anatolian coal merchant who bids to buy the house in Moda. He comes into the villa and ends his sentences with "as it is my right"- a very apt critique at what some believe to be the upstart rich from Anatolia (whose daughters, as you will read in the press nowadays, have the audacity to claim it is their "right" to go to university) The "some" in "what some believe" surely includes the company and the director of the theatre, for throughout the play the actors make snide remarks (addressing the audience) about the "current establishment" who pay the actors very little and who want to tear down theatres etc. The "current establishment" of course being the AKP ruled municipality which the theatre works under.

That this play is part of the cultural archive and one that sanctifies the early republican period was made even more evident when at the end, during the standing ovation, the characters came to the fore one by one and after bowing, pointed to the screen above the stage which displayed photographs of the first ever players to have acted out these parts, in the very republican years of the 30's (a republican nostalgia, then, that runs counter(?) to the multicultural nostalgia)

but whatever the political ramifications, there will never be a crowd pleaser such as this, and the words and music correspond to something in the very heart and souls of Turks.

raising a script from the dead

2008-03-26T05:02:00.000-07:00

(Arguably) The best calligrapher alive, Hasan Chelebi tells how he grew to learn the art at a period when the Arabic language- reading, writing, reciting- was banned in Turkey. Everything locked up in libraries or attics (see Orhan Pamuk's White Castle), the one thing that was open to the public and that offered up vestiges of a forgotten language and a forgotten script were the cemeteries. So he started to haunt them, and indeed, learned his trade from a stone carver, who now presumably carved in Latin letters, but who preserved his knowledge of the Arabic-Ottoman script. This is how one traces his lineage through tombstones, how one revives a language with the help of the dead.

There is so much to be said about how the dead preserve our lineage. Consider the above, Christian tombstone in Cairo "el merhum iskender kasim"

Herkes kendi ahiretini hazırlarmaktayken...

2008-03-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

İstanbul is pus içinde
martılar kulaçlarken havayı ve suyu
ve bir takım kelaynaklar
hayaletler ve ifritler
cirit atarken çatı katlarında

herkes kendi ahiretini hazırlamakta

Palestine, not Israel, It's Nobody's Business but the Turks :-)

2008-03-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

My mother remembers the mass exodus of Jews from her hometown Tire, and what she remembers is that they were going to Palestine, as Turkish Jews still used to refer to it at the time (the 50's, they were being offered citizenship and land) That's why she still believes Palestinians to be Jews, and disinterested in politics as she is, when one tries to update her on the developments, one has to lay the ground for her each time, who is of what religious persuasion. I love doing it everytime and see the puzzlement on her face, indeed, it sums up the ridiculousness of the whole thing. She needs to be at these negotiation meetings and bring a breath of fresh air.

I'll be going to Jerusalem with her in a week, and after that she won't have any doubts or confusions about who lives where and who rules who. Alas and alack.

Anti-semites, Semites and the Semud

2008-03-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

Evliya Çelebi, the intrepid traveller and most renowned confabulator of the 17th century, has opened my eyes to the Semite-Semud-Thamud-Nabatean connection. For an account of a modern day (alas too short) travelogue of the lands of the Thamud that are in Saudi Arabia read:

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=21&section=0&article=81033&d=20&m=4&y=2006

and this

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9&section=0&article=21224&d=19&m=12&y=2002

A Tale of Two Boys

2008-03-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

The Turkish one that got killed in the latest atmosphere of aggression against Turks in Germany:
Although still unclear what exactly went on at the police station, Salih Özdamar said: "He received strong blows to his head. He is having brain surgery because of all the swelling in his head and on his face. How can a healthy man be put into a coma within six hours? How can that be?"

http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=18351

and the German one that was spirited away after the "abuse" incident at the Turkish resort last summer:
“It is outrageous how the Turkish judiciary is criminalising this young man,” said Monika Frommel, a German criminologist. “It suggests that the Turks have not yet arrived in Europe.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1987673.ece

Hanging Out with Pamuk's Aunties

2008-03-09T08:40:00.001-07:00

so we were, me and my outrageously glamourous hijabi friend in the Harbiye Theatre where we went to see Pirandello's "It is So If You Think So!". What one of the Warwick girls has called "zero tolerance people" were high in abundance in their badly-aged format, shooting us looks of interest/pity/horror the proportions of which kept fluctuating. Now we had been exposed to such looks before, but we both agreed the intensity had intensified (mark my semitic emphasis) in the last few weeks. As we sat there having our hot beverages (my glamorous friend won't be converted to tea) one of them shot us a what one could even call a coy look that said "Come come now little girls, out with what you really came here to do"

Now I had come with very little preparation about the play, but the set looked promising with perspectives going haywire. We were in rather a "Nişantaşı" salon (for further information see Pamuk) and a mother and daughter kept complaining about a woman who had recently moved to their apartment block- woe is me!- someone quite below their social standing, a woman dressed from head to toe in black, and who was kept locked up by a man.
You get my drift. (No, no, not Antoinette, we have other oppressed fish to fry)
Then they and their very curious friends (lo and behold, one of the actresses is the very lady who sat across from us at the cafe and gave us the coy look- step in Zizek, with your Virtual and the Real)kept enquiring about the man and the woman who's moved into the block whose common tie is revealed to be the daughter of the woman and/or the wife of the man, who stays an enigma, talked about, philosophized and politicised) over.
Both the mother in law and the son in law are brought to the salon to "testify" (for the Nişantaşı elites are a veritable court) as to their 'motives' and their relationship to 'the young woman who's locked up in some distant part of town'.

Many a character used the injunction "Enlighten us!" with various degrees of irony, which I thought was very deft. But of course no 'enlightenment' is forthcoming because their stories are contradictory, and the curious folk can't get the truth because- well well well, all the documents have been destroyed in a catastrophe (an earthquake) in the hometown of these new arrivals (which explains their black mourning clothes- and which neatly salutes an inaccessible past, inaccesible documents, the language revolution in the Turkish context)The story interests the town so much, the man stands to lose his job if he doesn't provide a satisfactory answer. But at the end it is him who decides to resign- the play really revealing the hierarchy between happiness and truth. It is the society's avid search for the 'great truth' which puts an end to this strange family's form of existence.

The curiosity of the society ladies was aptly exaggerated- it was the utter feeling of unknowability that spurred the investigation and you had to love them for it ("Do you sleep with your headscarf on?")

At the end, to end the various 'false' stories that both the mother/son inl aw pair and the socialites spin, they bring the "locked up young woman" onto the stage and she defies them saying "Believe whatever you're inclined to believe- but the truth is, I am noone!"

and that's that ladies and gentlemen. Believe what you want to believe for man is quite uncapable of changing or un-doing the stories already spun. The black clothes, the staying at home, there are reasons for all of it, but maybe this family is too tired explaining it all over again to people and even have gone beyond staying silent and have moved onto the stage of fabricating preposterous stories.

Not a bad strategem to follow, methinks.

A Note on Zizek and the Veil

2008-03-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

after his rather A Glance at the Archives of Islam, I think Zizek would fine the current debate on the veil in Turkey very interesting. Such that:
Zizek proposes women to be the philosopher's stone, that which lets men/prophets tell between truth and falsity. It is the woman's bodily presence that proves the litmus test: his references to the body of Hagar that unbalances hierarchy in Abraham's society, and Hatice as the first puts her faith in Muhammad and therefore verifies his claim. This, of course, is a rather nice way of reading what he says. Thus he says, women are central vessels of truth and therefore must be veiled, kept out of view.
The current debate about the headscarf in Turkey has also revealed the veil/headscarf to be the philosopher's stone, revealing the genuine nature of liberalism and the women's emancipation movement in the country. The republican elite who believe themselves to be the actors and writers of this history of emancipation have too readily written "the woman with the headscarf" out of the records of their history and have put certain other ideologies before the emancipation of women. Because the women in headscarf, they claim, has chosen to stay out of history, which should take us to more and more power to women. Quite an interesting point of view when those very women are trying to write themselves in, trying to get into universities while their un-veiled sisters protest and say "You shall not pass!"

But then, this takes me back to Woolf's Three Guineas- why should a woman want to enter an institution that is so obviously built on a patriarchal model. But this is the wisdom of the defeated and does not count for much in this eleventh hour.

How Not to Salute a Romanian Princess

2008-03-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

The ides of March, almost, and here's how things stand this very day

12:30 I arrive at the north campus, enter through the gates without the guards calling out that I have to put a hat (of my own choice) over my headscarf like they had 2 times out of 9 in the last week during which I have been testing the "lifting off the headscarf ban" at my almamater by dragging myself to the library to do some serious work on the thesis.
12:35 I enter the library, it's one of the librarians from my undergrad years, I daresay he recognizes me and does not ask for an ID (unlike yesterday when the younger porter did ask and I could not produce a photocopy of my diploma, which I now have folded and fitted into my purse- oh, but he let me in anyways)
13:25 I leave the library for my driver's training
14: 35 I come back, no one at the gates, no one at the porter's desk inside
16: 30 I leave the library to go down to the south campus (which is the real heart of the uni) where a Romanian princess is guest of honour at a very odd conference, about Turkey-Romania relations. My interest lies in the fact that one of my very old profs to whom I am indebted very much indeed will be talking about the history of the university in the interwar years. I wanna see him, ask how he is and see if he remembers me. I can't imagine how he will fit his talk to the theme- but maybe he was not asked to do that either. I am also thinking the programme is very eclectic and there won't be much of an audience
17:00 I arrive at the south campus gates and as I pass them I am on the phone to one of the Warwick girls, planning the Indian evening tomorrow
17:03 I have passed the gates and there's a guard shouting from behind "Miss, you have forgotten to put on your hat!" I shout back "Well, I don't have one, I am not a student anyway, I am alumni, and I am here for a conference". "Then you'll have to leave some sort of identification". I retrace my steps, show one of the porter's my folded photocopy, he informs me the conference is at the Rectorate. I think, that's a small place to hold a conference.
17:25 I get into the rectorate and for some reason the door closes with a loud bang behind me. I head for the info desk where the guard tells me the meeting's upstairs. Just as I am headed for the first step he says, making a gesture of outlining his face and then pointing to his chin "But you can't enter like that" I say "Ach, sooo!" and go back the way I came, going back to the Pirandello of yesterday- while the town, the husband and the mother pushes this way and that the woman declares "I am nobody!"