Turkish Europeanization- The Musical

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

(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...

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 :-)

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

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

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

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

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

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!"

Sex, Wine and Puppet Theatre

and all of it in the Anglican Church in Istanbul on a Friday night. It was a wierd introduction to one of the bizarrest constellations for a church. Down an alley from the pedestrian and more and more Oxford Street look-alike (OK, let's make that Kalverstraat) Istiklal Street, round the bend from the Kısmet (no-alcohol served!) Market and (the possibly alcohol serving) Hamburg Coffee House, we come upon a Norman looking, I say Jesus College, my cousin says Leuven-esque church. There's a crowd that makes you wonder if this church has also been converted to a night club Freud's Style, but as we cut through the crowd under let us not say hostile, but definitely perplexed gazes to pass the gates because, yes we do have tickets, we go down the stairs into a lovely garden where we are met by Quisimodo impersonators, with masks and hands outstretched for alms.

We are set in the mood for a night of soul-moving puppetry, but alas it doesn't deliver. At the portico they have set up a wine stand, understandably, to warm the audience, and we will be entering "this is my blood" territory, so all's cricket, and more so when I hear unmistakably subcontinental voices, yes, there are three, possibly Bangladeshis right by the side of the table, and when we leave the performance they are still there, with no wine left on the table, possibly having been wise enough to enjoy the early spring night in the lovely garden rather than endure the what was the worst puppet theatre production I have ever seen (though I have to say they are not that many)

Firstly, they had not quite decided whether they wanted to puppeteers to be a part of the show or not. They moved about the place as, if not more, visible than the puppets themselves and the rather unclever set design with a lot of ropes and ladders required quite a bit of getting around in order to make the puppets move. They started off with playing music and song rather than making the puppets talk, which was alright, but half way through the show the priest started to speak of sins of the flesh- that is the rather bad actor under his mask that blocked the mouth, so he was hardly audible. We were, all the while standing up at the very back groundling style, for having a ticket did not ensure a seat, as it turned out.

The most aesthetically thought out scenes were the shadow/puppet scene where Esmeralda and what's his name make love, and then the priest raping the now possibly dead Esmeralda (the puppets were so badly handled that it was difficult to make out what they were doing- there was a rather stupid scene with Quisimodo and Esmeralda doing something with ropes and chains, for the life of me, I did not understand what it was all about- most of the time was taken up with the puppeteers moving about the place anyway!) Anyway, it was an interesting moment, the audience with wine in their hands watching puppets commiting several of the deadly sins in a church. (a church, one has to point out, that is adjescent to a mosque)

As we left the church we discovered the deadliest of these sins- commercialism. The crowd as we entered had blocked the huge "Doluca Wines" poster that was put at the entrance. So this was no more than a gimmick to let the unsuspecting consumers taste the wine, the "theatre" was just your average "animation". I am still perplexed about the fathers of the church though- there seemed to be noone that would be from the congregation (does the Anglican church have a congregation in Istanbul?) and I wonder if they were aware of what they were letting in themselves in for.

Maybe this is worth starting up a correspondance with Rowan Williams for, signed a friend

A Dance to the Music of Time

This is the discovery I have made for my pains for watching a series (the first Staffel anyway) in which they make the same actor play a character both when he's 15 and 25! maybe it is a subversive comment on the passage of time...

Don't talk to me about Matisse

talk to me instead

of dinner parties

of monsters with champagne breath

and reclining on the sofa

how names and learned and forgotten

Germany will tear us apart, again

I watched the delectable Sam Riley play Ian Curtis in Control- and brushed up on my Brit Punk. They started off as Warsaw and then renamed themselves after the prostitution section of concentration camps, it appears. The film ties in nicely with the German film Requiem which I've watched recently with equally interesting dance scenes and where the young hero/ine goes into fits. In Control Ian Curtis's doctor was also played by an actor with a German accent, and then he goes and falls in love with a Belgian girl- played by an actress again with a German accent- a German citizen of Romanian origin. Alexandra Maria Lara (Plătăreanu- the surname that dares not speak its name) also happens to be Sam Riley's girl friend and they live in Berlin, if you please.

Ah, this is what I so much love Europe for. Do take a seat dear, just mind you leave your name outside.

On another note, it was so touching (dare I say refreshing?) to actually see a man break (and a pop-star at that) into pieces because he cannot handle his relationships- rather than leave the usual wife- girlfriend- wife- mistress trail.

Inter Milan as Aumerle (of Richard II fame)

Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought
For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross
Against black pagans, Turks, Saracens (IV.1)

this must no doubt have been going on in the mind of the lawyer who filed a suit against Inter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/12/wfootball112.xml

It is not for nothing that Turks are the most symbol obssessed Volk and have been talking about yet another 'symbol' for the last few months.

Cairo Reading

I have been trying to finish my Cairo reading and have at last gotten somewhere, although not quite the end. I finished reading The Yacoubian Building today by Alaa Al Aswany. The style was so much like Mahfouz, I even thought Aswany must be his pen name. I had actually started reading Midaq Alley to see whether there was a particular thread in Egyptian literature that I could follow--- and lo and behold, I had chosen the very two books that seemed to be part of a trilogy.

Aswany's more risqué, of course, written as it is in the new millenium, however the themes of honest girl sells her body for money, the young man's hopes are thwarted, the greedy merchant who considers getting a second wife and who gets into politics gets his comeuppance, political 'stands', the cunning crippled and the unrepentant sexual deviant... And for Mahfouz's World War II, there is Aswany's even sexier terrorism. Whereas Mahfouz's novel takes place around Halili, Aswany's takes place downtown on Talat Harb.

However, one more novel wants to get into this discussion here, and that is Shafak's Flea Palace. Yacoubian Building and Flea Palace both hark back to La Belle Epoque, levantine cosmopolitanism, whatever you may want to call it. And they do this also through the fact that both apartments' original owners are Armenian. Exiled Armenians and their apartments in ruin has become an Eastern Mediterrenean topos of lost multiculturality. I think there's a paper in there somewhere.

Eastern Promises- II

Today, having made my way through the blizzard, and seeing many interesting sights on the way, like the opened iron gate of a Greek church that is always closed up, and the path that looked so enticing but...
I was on my way to discover Kurdish sufis, however, when I entered the apartment I was met with smiles and one particular one I couldn't quite place and which bugged me during the whole conversation. Like the smile of the vanishing cat in Alice in Wonderland (thank you Zizek), the lamella, the undead, the excess that bugs you until you have attached a body unto it.

Forty days
After forty days of having to see the faces you have to see
shaking the hands you have to shake

Forty days,
in a man-forgotten land
surrounded by man-forgotten tombs
man-forgotten tombstones on which
are inscribed the lives of the undead
in a man-forgotten language
as you go looking for
errors committed
in a man-forgotten alphabet

and yet how that smile
opens a thousand gates
pulls you to a thousand shades
of eastern promises
kept
and unkempt
till you put a name to it
in that man-gotten, man-forgotten
alef-be.

The Conversation That Did Not Take Place at the Cecil Hotel

Her heart skipped a beat when he
told her this one story about the man she loved.

***
Many, many moons ago
on a beautiful winter evening
as wintry as it could be in Alexandria
we had stopped to take
the usual ablutions
the usual salutations

entering the white washed mosque
there were children waiting
holding hands
holding shoes
and when we had taken enough photographs
taken in as much as we could
I stepped out alone

to be hailed
by his friend who took me to one side
and offered me coffee
as we sat on
rickety chairs and placed our cups
on a rickety table
he told me how he knew him,
how everyone knew him
how two men stranded on a desert island knew not each other
but knew him

thus chid
I went back to the bus
back to those known constellations
back to the hotel with the pyramid view.

Islamic Law: Everyone's Talking About It

After the 'Friday sermon' delivered by the staunchly secular opposition party leader in Turkey on Wednesday on the correct way to wear Islamic dress, quoting from the Koran and speaking of "Big Sins" and "Smaller Sins" (I think he was trying to say that not wearing a headscarf was a smaller sin that should easily be committed if one wanted to go to university) with the know-how of an Islamic televangelist, today the Archbishop of Canterbury says that implementation of Islamic law is unavoidable in Britain. I quietly refer him to Nadeem Aslam's apocalyptic "Maps for Lost Lovers" if he wants a depiction of what that could lead to. Britain has been forewarned.

Here the archbishop:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080207/tuk-sharia-law-unavoidable-archbishop-6323e80_1.html

Here Nadeem, the oracle:
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2004-02/aslam.htm

Joseph's Inmate's Dream in Saqqara Tomb

"12.36": And two youths entered the prison with him. One of them said: I saw myself pressing wine. And the other said: I saw myself carrying bread on my head, of which birds ate. Inform us of its interpretation; surely we see you to be of the doers of good.

Eine Stadt Sucht Einen Mörder

Returning from Old Cairo where the Coptic community still live, we were accosted by a group of taxi drivers who all wanted to take us to our next destination- The Citadel. The brouhaha was caused because the first one we stopped did not speak English and hence revealed our origins- we were looking quite Egyptian a minute ago. A rather complex and intriguing bargaining happened between the drivers and we were led to a rather dingy looking car- that was it, we were going to reclaim our freedom, and so on we walked, with three taxis driving behind us in our walking pace. We walked, we crossed the streets- and yes, ended up taking a taxi that was involved in the very first argument. There was no escaping the net. We could've tried a bit harder, but we had to make it to the bus that was to take us to the airport quite fast.

This made me think of the various networks of the city and reminded me of Fritz Lang's Eine Stadt Sucht Einen Mörder, where the networks of beggars and burglars join the police to search for a child killer, as all these groups have men covering certain parts of the city. The Cairene incident made me think that one should add the Taxidriverbund to the list.

Because evil will find you

this
is a colonial disease

whether in Damascus
or two hour's drive from Vienna,
evil will find you

how'ever you may try to skirt it.

Eastern Promises

I checked my breast pocket
for eastern promises today
and found one
polished to perfection
hard to improvise
hard to utter
without premeditation.

The Leuven Tune

The following is a free (read faulty) translation of a song I'd listened to managed to record two summers ago in Leuven. It has fascinated me since. I have to find a Belgian music enthusiast to tell me who the singer is.

The blue in your eyes
Wilderness
The allure of princesses in your soul

The hair that cries in deserted carosses
The sparrows that singe themselves as they fly
The air circulates and turns
Each time I hear your name

I want you to give me reassurance
You can lift my chin up, let me sleep like a nightingale
That no one should embrace you

Because each time it is like the pain of death
Pain of faith
Pain of being childlike again
An anxiety

Come here
And put me in order

The red colour of your skin
And fingertips on fire

it was impossible that you should sleep naked
in the night, when the ache awaits
And afterwards the divan, the sofa
Without rules or explanations

Without expense, without laying bare
To believe that your everything was dead
The soul, the core, to infinity

Merry Christmas

Had this been a time to celebrate
in my own calender
I would've wanted nothing more
or less
than the red flowers I found this evening
on my desk, waiting
for a name to be put on them.

it is I,
Mrs. Dalloway
who's arranged them
to be put there
by simply being a very good
daughter and cousin.

Çoban Çalılığı Anıları

babamdan kaldı bir geyik,
zaten onun çoğunu da yedik

The Turkish March According to Zizek

This comes very timely, after I have purchased a book on Opera by Zizek (and in German to boot!)- I guess he doesn't treat them any more or less discerningly than he does film, so I should be alright, I think :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/opinion/24zizek.html?ex=1199163600&en=47c5664276e90d20&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Maps for Lost Blitcons

I have just finished reading the very very sinister Maps for Lost Lovers, and turning to the internet for help have found unequivocal praise for it. TLS and London Review of Books do not report, but the Guardian does, in laudatory terms.
Every single ill that you can imagine that is attributed to Islam can be found in this book, it's almost like a check-list.
However one thing I find very hard to stomach is that the book implies that blind Islamic adherence is also at the heart of the fact that abortion is condoned in Pakistani communities if the baby is female--- subhanallah- so far as I know Koran is the only holy book that speaks of the plight of just such babies when speaking of judgement day: "And when the female infant buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed (so she may testify against those who killed her)" (81:8-9)
Blind adherence to Islam would stop anyone from messing with female foetuses, methinks.

Conversation Starter/Stopper

Overheard at a dinner party

the rah-rah-rah son of landed gentry: (addressing the crowd) ... I can never get my father to read that rag
the racial/social debu/dilittante: What does you father do?
rah-rah-rah: He's the Minister of Defence
debu/dilittante: Oh

Zauberberg

She came to me with the tell-tale signs of her distress
An urgency to the step
A shortness to the skirt,
And the kohl reluctantly smeared over the eye-lid

It took her some time to name it

Here they had dined together
And here, they had had coffee
This mountain was the mountain from where
They had observed the villages beyond

And it took a giant’s reserve
To keep my mouth shut or exempt
From asking questions as I
Gorged chocolate covered pineapples and bananas
under the cacaphony of the Europe’s biggests christmas tree,
Thinking, everyone to their own devils
(oh, that sofa, the sofa, the hands, the shoes, the receding hair
and whispered questions below the decibels of the general conversation
the hand shake, the promise unkept)

The day wore on, and another
And then the goblin confronted us
With an outstretched hand and a smile
And she fed her with fruits and conversation
And when it was time to go to bed
She made one last offering

“Take him!” she said to me
but I had heard these cries before
I had heeded such words before
And knew them to be the false maps they were
For the uninitiated
For the disinterested,
for the little hopeful girl I once was.

But now I sail through life
With not a care in the world
And these goblins,
these magic mountains,
these false friends,
the ghosts of Europe
can’t touch me anymore
for in my breast pocket I keep
enough eastern promises
to last me a life-time.
***
darling, darjeeling
dear, deer, darjeeling.

Past the Mission

behind the prison tower/present hour
looking for a way to catch up
with the music of time
getting ready for the next mission
to conquer Jerusalem

The Maiden of Istanbul's Tale

Not once had she been to Jerusalem
and yet she had such stories to tell

Chiswick Tales

The Long Way Home

As I sit facing the sun,
Reading the words of a long lost lover
England passes me by,
The river, the dogs and the joggers

Reminding me that had I
Defected
This would’ve been my stretch to walk
On sunny November mornings,
And over there,
With its boathouses
Would’ve been my workplace

This is the house
Where the first telegram was sent
And this, where, a certain calligrapher lived
But the book in my hand tells me
It doesn’t matter if these stories are true
What matters is that they shape the future to come

The future,
Elided by so many unheld promises
So many unheld hands
So many cross-named lands
Constantinople, for instance, or Jerusalem
Where Furnival fought and fell
Where Eyüp fought and fell

Sitting cross-legged in this drift-wood house
I count all the sign-posts
All the check-points
that do not add up to my defection
walking towards Furnival
walking towards Eyüp,
taking the long way home.

Sleeping with Rumanians

In the great tradition of listing who one has slept with, along with my predecessors Tracey Emin and a certain Ms. Eker (to quote Emin "it's everyone I have slept with not made love to!!"), I now continue from where I left off- that is the Germans, see entry October 2, 2006 http://nhaliloglu.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html

I was the one who suggested it. I had just realized that the German girl at the reception desk at the Ibis Hotel had not quite understood how many nights I would be staying (I noticed there were at least 4 Germans in the hotel staff- is there some sort of an Ibis exchange programme?) and so I had had to clear out that morning. Of course I could've headed to Oxford straight, but there were several conversations that had been cut unfinished as it happens at conferences, and I wanted to pick them up, if only for another day. And of course I quite liked Anamaria (I do sincerely hope she will read this at some point, it would mean we're back in touch- sorry about the pun!).
We had met a couple of months ago in Thessaloniki, in fact, when I first saw her she was enquiring after her lost coat in that Woody Allenesque mode of hers, a coat, it turns out, she had bought in Istanbul and which held dear memories, hence the Woody Allenesque insistence on her tone with the hotel staff (who incidentally were quite trying on the nerves) Then one thing led to another and conversations about Lisbon and her friendship with J.P. There we were, friends, though in between she had had a personal crisis and not written to me, there we were, in Northampton Ibis Hotel, me roomless for the night and going up to her and saying "I say, what if we split the cost tonight and share a bed?"

The evening had started with us, a group of conference guests, looking for somewhere to have a drink. "Down town" Northampton was quite small, and each time we made a circuit looking for some place, the number of open establishments were dwindling, and the number of police presence increasing. The fifth time we crossed the town hall one of the officers gave me a strange look and we decided it was time to quit patrolling and sit some place. Indeed, we found a nice pub where my request for a cup of tea was treated as everyday and around 11 we went back to the hotel. By the time we reached the Ibis, which is close to the train station, so not exactly a posh spot, three burly men had taken post at the door. It looked like now we actually had to pass bouncers in order to get into our hotel. They greeted us kindly, asking for nothing, and once we were inside, we saw that the bar was full of blond women and men who looked like they had jumped out of an episode of EastEnders. They did not even see us come in, we quietly took the lift up to our room.

Anamaria fretted over her packing as I eased into bed. Last I heard her voice she was wondering where she should put the bottle of wine she had brought as a present for her friends in Reading. Then, sometime toward 2 o'clock, we were woken up by a fire alarm. A-ha! I thought, same old tactic as in St. Cross to see whether people have taken people into their rooms. I half heartedly put the scarf on, got into the corridor and saw only one other person there, bleary eyed, asking me whether one should go down. We decided against it and went back to bed. Anamaria had not budged. Then a couple of hours later there was shouting and running in the corridor. This time we both got up. I heard police sirens and went to the window. They were causing such flashes and racket that I thought there must at least be a dozen of police cars down there. It had happened. The headquarters of the notorious white women trafficking and drugs syndicate had just been discovered. It was right in the cellars of Ibis Hotel Northampton, this piece of earth, this England....
I then saw a man run across the street and sirens getting louder. I turned back to the room. The racket continued for a while more and then Anamaria told me how the night before the man above her room had paced up and down the whole night. It must have been the spooks who were waiting the right moment to attack, eh?

The rest of the night we slept well and in the morning went to the conference venue. The people with whom I had wanted to continue the conversation had all but left, but we enjoyed the cold Indian food buffet anyway.

Zizek as Closet Ottoman Revivalist

Once again 'the bearded one' is using Turkey as the stick to beat the EU with. Turkey as that lamella (the Ottoman "undead"), if you will, that nags at European consciousness, revealing all the points of contention between European nations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2197161,00.html

Rediscovering Nasreddin Hodja

Reading Ziauddin Sardar, and the way he juxtaposes Nasreddin with Rumi opened my eyes to the possibility of reading Nasreddin as a sufi philosopher, to whom I believe I am already a disciple, through my mother's stories

One day they told the Hodja that his wife was going around and travelling too much, something not befitting the wife of a hodja. He said "No, that can't be true!", and when asked why he said "She can't be travelling all that much, had that been the case, her route would've her taken her home at some point!"

Hieronymo's mad againe

(upon watching Starter for 10)

what a pointless time to remember

the lesson unread
the sin unwashed
running up and down the stairs
up and down
running noses, in sync
what a useless time to remember

but of course each Ramadan will bring it back to me
each beginning, and each end

mad againe,
for just a while

A Few Days in September

French film about intelligence personnel... very good acting, excessive camera work which is beautiful but pointless, a cross between a 'French' film and a spy thriller, with a baddie who contacts his shrink continuously on the phone, and father figure issues, shared with the two kids.
The two Arab corporate men were also quite good- not au fait with what's going to happen on Sep 11, but being informed by it by a CIA agent (one of them was being played by - I think- an actor from Lost. The fact that he speaks French so well makes me think he's Iranian, again perfetc American casting! Iranians for Iraqis!)
The film also reminded me of the effort of another film I've seen recently, The Stone Merchant, which was trying to place Italy somewhere important on the fight against terror, and this one seems to lift its head up and says, hey, we in France are also involved with these efforts, more or less.

This is England (film about 80's in England)

very crucial scene that stiches things I have been reading recently all together

one racist-leaning skinhead asks a Jamaican rude boy who belongs in a non-political skin head group whether he feels himself to be Jamaican or English. After hesitation the boy says 'English' and then the racist skinhead applauds him and goes on a diatribe about 3.5 million Pakis infesting England, living in council flats, in a country that fought to keep out the enemy through two world wars, and that this boy should be proud to call himself English.
an Englishness defined against the Germans (the two world wars) and Pakis (taking up jobs and flats), and the boy of Jamaican origin is welcomed into the fold possibly because he is considered to be part of the history described in A Small Island, good Jamaicans protecting the mother country against Germans.

the Faulklands victory is portrayed as empty, the last attempt to define some national identity, and the vacuum is then underlined by Saun throwing St. George's Cross into the sea....

12 July 2007

Visit to Trakai
My history as
a series of Stalinesque manouvers
from this side of the Urals
to that

standing in the rain
looking at his iron face at a shop window
huddled in my Gestapo coat
was my rude introduction
to uncle Joe

to be repeated
with a difference
over the rolling hills of England,
through the lakesides of the Baltic,
and along the banks of the Rhein

Summer Reads

The Islamist

Volumes to be said about this one. Started its life (for me) on a rainy day in a pub in Shepherd's Bush. Resisted it for a while and then succumbed, and now happy about it. Accompanied me in Damascus and my observations there- good investment. Very acute observations, however some very naive. That is the main problem of the book- it's thoroughness is unbalanced. Some observations are very superficial and stereotypical while others go in depth. Appreciated the Saudi Arabia bit. It's insistence on calling the British Intelligence to more vigilance when it comes to Muslims makes it read like an informants report- which is a real shame because it does offer a very interesting snapshot of Islamist movements in London. Eye-opener for a hill-billy from Oxford. To be consulted for my upcoming definition for 'British Muslim' and worse 'British Muslim Novel'.

Bizi Bırakıp Nereye Gidiyorsun Türk (memoirs of a Turkish officer in Syria and Palestine)

Not Seven Pillars of Wisdom but hey! Considerably shorter and very heavy on unit manoevres, now and then cultural clash with the Arabs, with the protagonist falling ill now and then, which hit home with girls running with high fever in the house in Zabadani, and no one got spared the diarrhea. There's also a curious meeting with T.E. Lawrence where he offers him money but of course the Turk refuses. But the best is the passage where he is trying to convince bedouins that he knows more about Islam then they do. He devises a contest and beats them all :-)

The Pickup

Book read on promise. The reward was the unexpected reference to Shahrour, and through Göle, of all people! So Shahrour has entered main stream, although word on the Damascene street is that he is a scoundrel, and how can you trust your eyes with a dentist? (and this coming from a half-blind man, so one has to mark his words) Here I am looking at how Rhys plays with subjectivity in her novels and comes Gordimer with her bag of tricks, I mean, Rhys looks so elementary after that, I may as well throw the diss into the bin. Very cross with Gordimer. I did not like the protagonist(in), her motives were a bit too vague whereas the 'Middleeastern' (Syrian? Yemeni?) guy looked much more believable. This 'ethical turn' in the South African novel was also there, with the sexual harassment case. Who can say which country belongs to whom blah blah blah

Ahmet Mithat Efendi Avrupa'da

The father of the Turkish novel visits the Stockholm Exhibition, and then takes off to Paris with a married Russia woman, to discover the similarities between the two cultures--- well, both lagging behind Europe it turns out, but unspoilt human nature etc. etc. Madame Gulnar (her pen name) speaks perfect Ottoman Turkish and translates Pushkin into Turkish. So another to be reckoned with in the Utrecht database (make a mental note!) Of course far more progressed than the 'Orient', Ahmet Mithat finds little fault with the orientalists' treatment of, say, Egypt. Anyway, orientals at the time were not quite so militant about correcting misconceptions. Where did all this laissez-faire go? *sigh*

Sweetness in the Belly

An Irish girl brought up in a shrine in Morocco spends her youth in Harar. Now despite the improbable story-line, the protagonist was much more believable. I really like the idea of a sufi order around Bilal Habeshi, it turns out it is Camilla Gibb's brain child. Probably not Muslim herself. Again the question. Does the British Muslim novel have to be written by a Muslim? Or is it enough that the narrator or the focalizer is Muslim?

Small Island

Started in an overcast June day in a basement kitchen and ended on the beach facing Chios. The bits in Jamaica were really nice and chimed in with Rhys's descriptions, me feeling I'm doing something for the diss. What a wonderful 'founding myth'. I am tempted to write to one for British muslims. Did they fight in WW2? where can I get such info? (maybe yahoo questions) does a community need to have fought in WW2 to be considered to have contributed to the 'nation'? I enjoyed even the jungle bits, which I would not have had I not spent my last hours in Istanbul watching 3 episodes of Lost back to back!

Homo Faber

Thanks to Merle. Had I not been sent this book, Max Frisch would have remained as the writer of Biederman und die Brandstifter. What rubbish! Anyway, now he's a cross between Isherwood and Auster in my mind. Kept thinking of Neubauer as I read the book and my terrible gaffe. Again relished the plane bauch-landing bits no doubt due to my Lost-mania. There's almost a touch of McEwan as well, with him introducing scenes and unravelling what they mean slowly afterwards.

Maze

Greek writer based in London. Looked promising but again a novel about troup movements with not much to lighten the page--- certain aphorisms about the end of the Ottoman Empire. Text book. Will probably ditch it for Hanan ak-Shaykh's Only in London in my search for the British Muslim novel.

the road from Damascus

It was not the same thing.
The grass was thousand feet below and we were watching it from the plane rather than our backs on it looking upwards comfortably to see the craft.
We were not talking about Isherwood and Auden.
We were talking about Eliot and his poems with an oriental theme, the journey of the Magi and one other with a very long title which he had read and I not. We complained about Lonely Planet and impressed each other with our educated questions. So what are the Mosarabs? what is the difference between the Sunnis and Shiites? do you celebrate the Reconquista? what do you say on your rosary?
and then he told me where he came from they did not celebrate the Reconquista but the battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes had lost a hand and then I had to recommend White Castle. But they did play Moors and Spaniards alright, each family having chosen their side quite some time ago and sticking to it no matter what.

The strange sensation of speaking once again.

Damascus

26.07.07, Dimashq

(to be sung to a commercial tune)
Writing back from the colonies,
Hey!

Why I joined the group
(I wanted to go to Damascus, I wanted to learn Arabic enough to show off to my European friends, I wanted to walk in the footsteps of Paul- wink wink!)
What I saw
(utter chaos, bigotry, lack of sense of history, condescension, utter ignorance)
Why I left
(too hot, waste of time, didn’t want to strangle that woman!)

tropique
triste
tristesse de tropiques
or something along those lines (thank you Muldoon, yet another Paul, another Saul, who took pains to convert me)

time, here, is trimesterly
the day, the night, the early day which is still night, till you can tell a piece of string from the blackness outside
pieces of string that were lowered deep into the night
to save Paul, to save Saul

the barbaric hordes
to what we were:
the followers of the true Belief
those who have done away with stones
and excessive weeping
we were oh so superior
to go into that chamber
and mix with the princesses of darkness

and yet
I could see
under the archway
the landmarks of my own kin
the birthmarks on my own skin
from a time when we were far more closer
to being one

look at those columns rising
right above the bonbon sellers
they were here before us
we were here before us

C-h-o-p-i-n
or a plethora of girls everywhere I go
(but dear Christophine, I did not fight for this liberty
so please don’t worship me
it was a gift from my fathers
and that you fail to understand
to know, Christophine
to know all this and then turn my face away from it
that has been my victory
auf Achse Christophine, auf Achse)

and out there in the dark
with the city’s glimmering lights
as we pass through cafes and cafes
full of men
the only company I wanted to have
was of those failed Roman soldiers who
having accepted defeat
are courteous to the locals
and are tolerated everywhere
for their degenerate and faulty ways.
(and are obviously always auf Achse)

27.07.07

I remember
I remember her boredom
and disappointment as she entered
that little open air cafe
where men were playing the oud and she
was for a moment all-ready to give herself away
to the music
and then
when they made for the Temple and he
proferred her a piece of cloth to put around her head
she remembered who she was
dear Harriet
I remember her words
words I iterated
I remember the Temple
the one the likes of which I sought back at home

But now I shall remember moments other than this
other ouds playing into the night
in the courtyard of times spent, empires spent where
what remains are words like Istanbul, effendi and all the rest
and yet with all our smiles induced by not a drop of alcohol
we were gay
like war-children
playing in and around the rubble of their own home
tip-toeing to the notes of C-h-o-p-i-n

30.07.07, Zabadini

round and round
goes the book in circles and crescents.
around the table are smiling faces dressed in white
and a calmness descends into my heart
as I look on the arid hills
I remember dear old granny,
And a great aunt who has recenlty passed away
She used to tell us stories of this land
in that honeyed cadence of hers
and our hostess
in my great aunt’s white scarf
smiles as we try to read the book aloud
and if she opens her mouth I am convinced
she will ask me how my mother’s doing
how my studies are going
and when I’ll earn enough money
to send her to Hajj one more time.

Two days ago,
in the Roman theatre
sang a footsoldier of the Moors
about the fool moon
and the coming of the awaited one
His name
Speaks a thousand conquests
And Roman defeats....

And I
Climbed the steps
in that age-old way that I had always imagined I’d climb
the pyramids
reserved for those
wearing skirts
Rupert, dear old Rupert
Singing of rabbits and bears.

01.08.07, Zabadani

is this the face
that launched a thousand ships?

Standing by the fruit-juice seller
Eyeing us through the slit she had in her veil
And smiling all the while a knowing smile
She classifies us
as the pure who have come
to learn an ancient art
for which she has no use.
is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

wherein the only expression you will find
is one that asks, one that wants to learn
one that is anxious to be good, to please

is this the face
that resisted defacement
after a thousand assails
after a thousand sails
is this the face
that repelled a thousand ships
to be conquered
by other soldiers
that have never seen the seven-hilled Roman city?

the new conquerers
in their transparent whites
and air of ordering around

how long will they last,
till it is their faces
that draws you and me to these shores, Christophine
till it is their faces
that launch a thousand ships
that will bring havoc
on their palaces and kings.

10.08.07, Zabadini

A History Lesson:

Because evil will find you.

After all these years of hide and seek
And engaging in other petty games
it will seek and find you
in valleys deep in dryness and conflict

She packed up her bags and left
She mounted on a horse and sped out of the city
But no,
Reminds us Faith
Not for ladies of our ilk, such behaviour
Remember how Harriet climbed the Pyramids
with those dainty shoes of hers and her knee-lengthed skirts

not for us those dainty shoes,
not for us those knee-lengthed skirts
for us, the chiding of men sitting on chairs
speaking of all the ills of the world
all the fears of the world

but as we walked through the little shafts of light
in that age old bazaar, a late copy of the one back home
we were merry like two school girls
and let our eyes be dazzled by all the cheap colourful, plastic toys
and further on we made small talk
with men sitting on chairs, behind stalls
(but you see, we were not their daughters to chide)
with the power of speech
our tongues bewitched them all
and we sailed through those little streets
and the courtyards of everyday palaces.

The old man can no longer pack up his bags and go
It is going to be Aisha, believe me Faith
who gets up on that horse and go
like so many centuries ago.

ticking off/on the map

In a Russian cafe in Lithuania, realising that Ghetto comes from the word Gatve, or indeed Gasse.... the blogger is in Lithuanian, but more importantly, someone jas just logged onto yandex.ru on this very computer.... so this is sort of waters I have entered.... speaking of which it poured down a little while ago so better go get my umbrella.
the Uni is closed to visitors due to graduation.... am parched
tick tick tick
trickle
treacle

Northern Lights

(dedicated to D. who was recently asked the same question, but under very different circumstances)

It was late
late into the night
when he asked
Sind Sie Deutsche?

the sun had set
and I had already left
the Heide, der Fluss

I no longer knew
my can trash from my bio
I now left
all the lights on

It was deep into the night
when he asked
Sind Sie Deutsche?

I knew not how he
discerned or
distinguished
my accent or
my dress

it was in Stockholm that I was addressed
late, too late
Sind Sie Deutsche?

after all the misplaced smiles
after all the misplaced good will
it was late into the night,
when I had already left
the Heide, die Autobahn
that I was so addressed
under the northern lights of Gamla Stan.

Coventrieren

They were not known to abide by rules of war
as attested by one Gaul, who spoke about their breaches before
but I find myself suprised, and sometimes amused
everytime
this comes to pass
and I am stranded with a silly expression on my face
on my side of the sidewalk
as I keep the conversation going,
like never really happened

but my battlements are on fire,
my aide de camp has been slaughtered
and forced to keep the upper lip stiff
I smile and joke
while they raze my house down
and pillage the orchard
that shall no longer bear fruit

A Change of Chronotope

Sitting there in the sun
on a bench I no longer recognized
I heard the birds and realized I was free
Life was no longer measured by the distances
of space and time leading me to or away from the beloved

Giessen Revisited

Ha ha- not quite Jeremy Irons, but hey!
it does feel like a World War away that I was trying to become a part of this place
and today, as people were showing me where various rooms were
and were helping me plug certain things into various sockets
in all their helpfulness
it felt just like another venue
I was expected to perform at
and perform I did,
saluting at one instant
my startled audience
with a handwave.

The Center Holds :-)

lest we forget

Swedish Mountain Passes

Early in the evening,
A duck cuts into the purple,
Ducks into the dark blue
Of the surface that is rippling
In the calm air

It is the breath of the ducks that’s rippling the surface
It’s your voice whispering “Swedish mountain passes”

Swedish mountain passes
Were the last words you said to me
The last words I heard you speak
That actually meant anything

Swedish mountain passes

Swedish mountain passes
Of high and low altitudes
where either side is laden with fruit
with blueberries, mountainberries, strawberries
swedish mountain passes
that are laden with fruit
with names I cannot speak

it is your ghost that haunts this lake
this evening,
the ripples on the surface,
the face I have sat across at the table

Early evening by the lake
A duck cuts through the deep purple
Dives into the unspeakable abyss
To the rhythm of your voice repeating
Swedish mountain passes.

Uppsala

Here I am once again in the land of smelly supermarkets and shiny happy people--- well never mind the statistics for suicides, that how I know them.
Am sitting in a sunnier and happier version of the Stockwerk in Heidelberg where everyone brings a smile into the kitchen decked with Swedish furniture, and where I am sitting working on my paper.
I had a nice chat with Stella in her blue-white flowe patterned dress, on which I complimented her, to which she said it belonged to her grandmother and which, she said, she made to fit her slenderer body by sewing it up! Very talented girl who's thinking of going to Denmark for a year in order to secure a place as a medical student.
The plan is to go to Friday prayers soon, I hope we catch some of the glorious sun that I can see from my table position.

Babel

we used to speak the same language,
love between us was a given

when we turned to the sun
our skin used to turn to the same colour,
our hands would shrink to the same shape

but now I lose you in this multitude
for I understand not what you say,
these towers, this curse
that we brought upon ourselves.

Remembering and Forgetting

(As I enter the room and T. is talking about forgetting in a cadence that is painfully familiar)

repetition
with a difference
repetition
of a name
of my name
with a difference
oh, what a difference
that hue of tweed makes

tweed
grey or green
uttering words of
forgetting
oh, for that getting
closer
or
not so closer

remembering
times spent on the green-
grass of this newfoundland
never suspecting
the future to come
the fissure to come

remembering
the girls we once were.

I like England and Trifles

wondering on İstiklal with Lizzie, we chanced upon a shop run by subjects of the Empire, the Empire that was. It turned out the lady had gone to my high school, and her friend called me "mignon" and "sympathique" only in a way that they could. It was a serene moment, a salute to a world that is now lost.

what care I, that the wannabes and the have-lots are fighting it out?

der Heiden Heiland

Licht! Mehr Licht!
to deliver us from the pit
-less valleys of the Rhine or the Lahn
where we are named and maimed
each according to his own demon

lest we stay
lest we stay

Routes and Roots (or Unintended Consequences)

The morning of the second day we set off for Vergina, me sitting next to Gabriela, who had just that morning introduced me to her compatriot, Anamaria, our lady of the coat. She sat across the aisle from me and we talked about Istanbul (where she had worked as a language teacher) and Lisbon (which she had visited). Gabriela and she were talking about the train journey lying ahead of them- 24 hours to Bucharest. It sounded all very romantic to me of course, the whole thing was like a scene from Fortunes of War, actually, Anamaria a very propable character from the Manning story. Thus I felt ensconced and fancied myself as Guy Pringle. We passed many pink infused peach orchards and then arrived at what our guide called the telly-tubby mound, with good reason.

The tombs and the jewellery were impressive, but I could not enjoy them much due to very little amount of sleep. I tried to wake myself up afterwards with a cup of tea-bag tea (and Liptpn at that!) and found myself sitting at the same table as my compatriots, who had already started ticking the Turks off their list. Yes, I was another item on the list. We made polite talk, I was as terse as possible without being rude (an attitude which I have not yet decided whether to rue or not)

After the visit we decided to have lunch with the Romanian contingent (still very happy in my role as Pringle) and after Mr. Parker suggested that we have a sandwich at the Three Little Pigs joint, we passed, and then came to a restaurant where everything happened to be at least a euro more expensive on the bill, as compared to what the menu said. Anamaria said she would complain, Gabriela and I convinced her not to. Our fish was good, and they had brought us deserts "on the house". Then we walked to Aristotle Square where I met up with my parents, and the girls veered off to the bazaar, where they had been hoping to find nice jewellery, but which did not yield much, contrary to the guide's suggestion. We bumped into them as we ourselves were looking for the wool rug, and then we had conversations about Bursa, Istanbul and Yozgat with various members of the shopfolk in the bezesteni, I ended up buying a nice coral ring.

My mother and I then took several urban buses which took us to outskirts, and then I barely made it to my own session. After that my parents left for their hotel, and we went upstairs for the "gala dinner". There were even more Romanians at the table, so I was more than happy, thinking I must really get that train at some point in good Pringle style. After the food, the Greeks did halay, and invited all to join, and join the others did. It was a very convivial atmosphere indeed, best I've ever experienced at a conference. Dancing, I mean, how can you beat that?

Calypso's Tales

Once upon a time in Oxford, many, many moons ago, A Greek professor was talking about Turkey's entry to the EU, defining Europe as a place where she/one would go, and still feel at home. My retort to that had been, it also worked the other way around. Turkey was European to the extent that I (as a Turk) felt at home wherever I travelled in Europe, and said that I felt completely at home in England, and especially London (as a hijabi, among other hijabis)
She then said that Turkey was not only Istanbul, and that one had to consider all those chador wearing women in Anatolia (not wanting to take over the discussion I refrained from explaining that the chador was more of an urban clothing, that women in Anatolian villages preferred local clothing- baggy trousers and flowery headscarves, nothing to do with chador whatsoever)
Calypso had already said that, for all she cared, she wanted Istanbul to be part of the EU, for that was where her grandparents were from. That had done it. I swore (unconsciously, it must have been, for I only realized this urge when I saw the call for papers for Salonica) that I would say the opposite of that at some point in the future- make known that expulsions had not been one way. "I am very happy to be here today, the city where my grandfather is from"
But of course, in the event, I said no such thing. Because I had other worries, plans and aims at that time... but it is always so with me, my prepared lines are overwritten by more pressing needs and interests, and I guess I like it that way too.

I kept returning to Calypso's statement throughout my stay in Thessaloniki. So, then, this is where Europeans (as I know them) would feel at home? women crossing themselves each time they pass a church, the stores closing for siesta right after lunchtime (and woe to you if you should want to have a snack and do some last minute shopping), the waiters adding their tips onto the bill by themselves, where the third letter of the alphabet is not C, but G (a friend of mine kept looking for building (G)amma where she was staying at, which turned out to be the third building on the compound, not the seventh..... I raised my proverbial glass to Calypso and said "Have it your way darling!" and rued that I had not known the state of affairs those many moons ago to enjoy the (unintended?) irony of what she said.

Selanik-Salonica-Thessaloniki

After I missed dinner at the Capsis Hotel, putting my parents to bed and sending off various e-mails for deadlines, I got one of the Greek girls, whose twin, I later discovered, was hovering about the place as well (I've got the imprreshaun, I'm just a cawpy) got me a cab, and it took even her to explain where the taxi driver was to take me a couple of minutes. The place turned out to be one of a pair of communist blocks- in one of them was the concierge who took me to my own building, which had a sort of porters lodge with pigeonholes and a green steering- phone device of some sort which looked like it had seen the days of Stalin, and upon which various icons of Maria, Dimitrios and Child Jesus were selotaped. From the main building came some alternative rock music sounds but I was too dead to engage in the social life of the Esties.

After passing a couple of pairs playing table tennis in the spacious entrance hall (one of the elements of the communist look), I took a lift to my floor, reminiscent of the high-rise Heidelberg student accomodations and I entered my room happy to find there was a washbasin in international student-room style, though tilted it was and leaking, just like the radiator. The green curtain had got loose in parts and it was not wide enough to cover the windows anyway. The window gave onto the upper part of the hill with some more buildings Kuşadası style, and then the green summit of the hill. I went to the window at the end of the hall, to discover a nice view of the town, albeit none of the sea itself. I then ventured onto the loo to find that the floor was of that hideous (mock?) grey-blue marble which I thought was particular to Turkish public toilets (which the Turks have, thank God, given up almost completely, but it remains my childhood nightmare still). I shall not get into the nitty gritty, but it was not pleasant, let's put it that way. I then got out of the toilet using, it turns out, the wrong exit. For the toilets had two doors on either side opening onto the two adjescent wings of the building. I got in and got out, had a Matrix moment, and then found my way back to my room and then slept like a log (after connecting to the wireless for a fleeting second actually)

After attending a conference session where two Turks were speaking- rather intelligently for that matter, one about Rushdie and one about Moris Fahri, someone I really must get my teeth in (he has a blurb on the Mazower book) I met my parents of Egnatia, and we walked to the sea front, not much of a sight due to the haze. After inquiring after the Friday prayer to a few random Turks we bumped into, discovering there was no mosque, and me learning that Greece was the only European country that did not have a functioning mosque in its capital, we were in time for the prayer at the Rotunda, where my father prayed sitting by the Ottoman fountain, and me, in the shade of the minaret, looking onto the Byzantine ruins. We also discovered Ottoman tombs in the garden, and the minbar of the mosque lying on the ground under the newly blossoming peach trees. From there, we walked upto Atatürk's house, like excommunicated Catholics to the Vatican. I then set out for my conference, missed the free lunch, had spinach böreks at a nearby cafe and then entered the next session: translation as cannabalism, abjection as negating all that does belong to one's body, and immigrants being baptized in to Orthodoxy and assuming Greek names.

Hovering around and above these sessions was one of the organizers who then turned out to be named Dionysos, you get the picture. The euphemism is, I think statuesque, rather big is the colloqial adjective. He was the perfect chimera- dark curly hair and very thick glasses, reminiscent of this Jewish-butcher acquaintance of mine, and yet at the same time fitting into the stereotype of the rather large Orthodox monk engrained in Turkish cultural memory. And of course, Salonica being what it is, he can well be both.

After that session I went to Venizelos' statue where my parents had started to hang out and then we took a cab to the Yedi Kule (Seven Towers), named after the seven towers prison in Istanbul, however, possessing only one tower. The driver turned out to be from a family from Istanbul islands and to prove his lineage he gave us a saying in Turkish "Gavur yan yan yürüyor, bir de kendini beğeniyor" (The non-muslim/heathen is walking side ways, and yet he likes himself) I wondered whether he actually knew what it meant, I guessed this was what his grandfather must have been confronted with often, to have the sentence be passed on in the family.

The tower was closed, and we walked down to the ramparts where we enjoyed really nice views of the city, mistaking Panorama for Olympos mountain. Then we walked down to the town through a circutous way, through the old Ottoman quarter and typical Ottoman houses. I caught the last half of the modern dance and started talking to a Romanian lady, ended up having dinner at the same table, biber dolma (I asked for yogurt but they didn't have any) and for desert helva and wonderful kadayıf with Greek syrup and cinnamon.

On the way back the Polish woman who had been eyeing me mustered up the courage to ask me if she had to wear a headscarf should she visit Turkey. I was too tired to retort with "So tell me, do I have to wear a two centimeters skirt like the one you are wearing when I come to Poland?" and just asked "Whatever gave you that idea?" She said, "No it's just that I have never been to an Islamic country".
"I'm sorry" I said "to have dispelled the myth. You wanted me to say, yes, didn't you, you actually wanted to be forced to wear one, now you're all upset because you won't have to buy a beautiful scarf and wear it". The Romanian lady laughed and told me I shouldn't shatter people's prejudices and expectations just like that. We were both very mean :-)

A Sweet Lineage

"The very sweet-toothed should not leave Veria without trying the local speciality, revani, a syrup-soaked sponge cake" (The Rough Guide)

Revani, in the shape of "yogurt tatlısı" has been our staple sweet at home, nowadays only cooked for Bairam due to our ever expanding figures as a family. This year for Ramadan Bairam I was the one who cooked this desert, a rite de passage, and a passage of tradition all in one. Here's a recipe for it in English

http://www.yogurtland.com/2006/10/19/yogurt-tatlisi-yogurt-dessert/

and a Turkish one for good measure

http://www.maksimum.com/yemeicme/tarif/1535.php

Oxford-Tiflis-Cairo-Salonica

The first people to greet me in Salonic were the two Turkish speaking Rum ladies from Tblisi, who were complaining of their lot, and who kept making compliments about my Turkish. They had been estranged from their "own people", and thought them far too degenerate, telling me again and again the tea that they had been offered in the port town of Samsun in Turkey on their ardous journey to their new Jerusalem, Salonica. Only later did I realize that this was now a socio-cultural phenomenon in Greece, they were opening their doors to "Rums" from all over the place in order to boost their population, the country has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.

Just as I was congratulating myself on the progress I was making on my itinerary to the Esties, the Student Guest House, I lost the way when I got off the bus, having dropped my hard-attained city map on the bus as I was having the heated conversation with the Georgians. I asked the way a couple of time, even tried to take a taxi to the place, but all to no avail, the Greek experience had begun. Although they were really nice and smiling, noone seemed to be able to help me, all faces registering wonderment when I showed them the name of the place as if I was speaking of an address in middle earth. One particularly sweet girl warned me that buses would not be running regularly today anyway because of student demonstrations, and that I should keep trying the impossible taxis.

Then I approached another guy who turned out to be a Ph. D. student from Cairo, studying veterinary medicine. He was doing the "sister-brother" thing and insisted that we take the bus, totally ignorant of the fact of the demonstration and not taking me seriously when I told him about it. But he was to believe me soon afterwards because just as he was suggesting that we wait at a busttop at a road which was so obviously cordonned off, we saw people coming from the head of the street, their faces covered in snow caps, or whatever they're called, and then the police moved in, we crossed the street, and then heard gun shots. After that the students started to pelt the police with cobble stones, as we hurried to get inside what seemed to be a stationary store, underground. The last I saw of the squabble was two, not one but two students lighting molotov cocktails and hurling them in the direction of the police. Welcome to the country of unrest, I thought with imperial glee. They were always thus, and always shall be.

The commotion lasted surprisingly short and then we came out, and saw nothing but a couple of stones on the pavement as testimony of what had happened. I also thought of the group of young people sitting at the three lavish outdoor lounges at the bottom of the street like it was Nice in July in their fancy dresses, and where they had run to during the confrontation. Also the terror in my Egyptian friend's eyes and my insouciant folly as we hurried into the stationary. He had actually been afraid, while I felt as if the city was putting on a show for me. One of us had probably experienced violence at first hand, and one of us was used to be just a news-audience.
We went to the top of the street and walked along the main artery for while, two main attractions appearing on our right hand side, the Galerius arch and the Rotunda, and he telling me that Atatürk's house was not far from that spot. I had tried nicely to tell him that he need not bother himself with me anymore, that I could find myself from then on, he took it badly, and told me he was acting only like a "brother". That shut me up alright. We took a cab with a couple of other young people and when we arrived at the hotel where the conference was to take place, we got out and he did not let me pay.

Like the Rum taxi driver who had spent time in Beşiktaş had not let my parents pay when he took them to the hotel. I was watching a modern dance troupe whose piece talked to me of immigration but was actually, it turns out, about cloning. "I've got the impreshaun, I'm just a cawpy" one of the girls kept saying. And then they packed bags and unpacked bags which later led to the hotel staff to put Anamaria's Turkish coat into that prop-case, a coat which she would be looking for for two days, and a coat after which she was inquiring when I formed my first false impressions about her.

Ka-ra-ve-ri-a

Veria, oh Veria
shall you remain
a country of the mind,
a lost heaven
for the fallen angels
of an Empire?

Veria, oh Veria
years of neglect
and forgetfulness
erased you from the annals
of written history
while you remained
a tune on the lips
of my grandmother who'd never seen you
harping
on the years of hardship
particular to the dispossessed

Veria, oh Veria
I have seen your peach trees,
admired your lush plains
without knowing
your name, your black name
what's in a name?

once found
twice lost
Ka-ra-fe-ri-a

Life of the Party

As I visit
the friendships
that meant everything
to-the-girl-with-the-clown's face
to the girl with the clown's face
'round here

Oxford, 10th March

Zombies and Tramps

Once more onto the breach-
sitting in Wellington Square
cross-legged, cross-eyed
wishing myself surrounded by own kin

I wait
for my time to come

crawling towards Bethlehem.

Good Samaritans, curtesy of Rhys

...Beware
Of good Samaritans - walk to the right
Or hide thee by the roadside out of sight
Or greet them with the smile that villains wear.

R.C. Dunning

Confessions of a Roman Soldier-ess

"I had to stop in my tracks for fear
I'm walking on the miles I laid"

I had to stop in my tracks for fear
he's walking on the miles I laid
for one much less
the Roman soldier

Death of an Armenian: The Blackest Hour

That boy from Trabzon about to enter a stadium, wearing the killer's white beret seals it. "What's the big deal, a journalist gets killed, an Armenian to boot. Noone made such a brouhaha when Turkish soldiers got killed"
The black bottomless pit that opens up that no amount of telling can untell.
How can we have lived with it all this while, all this while not knowing
And after such knowledge,
what forgiveness?
what poetry?

Sarı Gelin: Death of an Armenian

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/23/news/turkey.php?page=2

A Thousand and One Nights of Betrayal

Consider the scene
at some chique restaurant
where I sit demure
and play along
for once

My parents utterly happy
that I have given in
to what they believe to be commonsense
and what I know to be
failed attempts

to

connect

a thousand and one times
I have spoken the speak
a thousand and one times
I have acted the act
over there.

over here, now, a thousand and one nights
I shall give in
a thousand and one nights
I shall erase
a thousand and one nights I shall
betray
me-mo-ry

Istanbul Latitudes

It is a little known fact
that
Istanbul
is first a trope
then a city

One can write a set of vilanelles
as a late-
comer to this art of
subterfuge

Pall-Mall, Chiado, Vienna
these are all latitudes
to Istanbul:
the place of forgotten births

A Learned Trick

This is how you disappear from the face of the earth
You don’t stay at a place for more than one week
That’s how noone can know
Where you are at one given point of time
Except for those you choose to tell
...
That’s how you kill yourself off off the story

The Chance Meeting

The Chance Meeting

After years of lines have paled
what we had at once recognized
in each other's faces
on that fatal October day
of fundamental misunderstandings

you should see me
wearing that black leather jacket
once again,
and that scarf of the colour of fire
and feel disoriented for a second

then come sit across from me
pleased to find me converted to Nabokov
and tell me about your latest poem
to which one day I might write the annotation

and I will tell you how I
the intrepid traveller, travelled on for our sake
and share with you the horror stories
of which you had had a glimpse
once on a visit, that had left you cold and looking for other pastures.

Toasting your success and my failed defection
we shall drink our afternoon tea

If only

Narrative and Identity

Instead of a poem
here's a reference to your pitless bottom,
spurred on by a
compulsion for compassion
I was advising my friends the whole night long

compassion for the German,
compassion for the English,
compassion for the American

compassion for the ones who
are ridiculed in absentia

and before I discuss this with myself
critically and
come to the conclusion that
compassion breeds injustice

I shall throw the whole thing
to the pitless bottom
of an Italian restaurant in deep Teuton country.

what I see from my window

The first thing is one of those iron crane-cum-tower Zeugs that have transmitters on them, for cellphones, no doubt. It rises from the midst of a now orange-red-green-brown looking wood. On its right, I see a cluster of German-forest type houses, which could well be B and B's (we once went past one). On the left, hidden behind the now flimsily clad trees are three Hochhaeuser, which could well be student accomodation. Then, if we move towards my window, is the Schwanteich, the orange-yellow-red-green dance continuing there as well. Then come the houses across from the street, and on die Ecke is not your Pakistani newsagents, but the Pamukkale Döner joint. It is open 24/7, I saw another happy Teuton leave it with a döner in his hand just now. Underneath us is the district's DVD place, so there's always Betrieb here, cars coming in and parking. Yesterday on the three occasions that I heard some noise coming from outside, they were all Turkish, unbroken with German-- except for when Nikola came to tea.

This is Wiesecker Weg 1, Giessen

lost art

I have lost the art of living simply
every act is a statement
every silence a violence

Looking-glass-world

Looking-glass-world

Heart of Europe

isveç, norveç, danimarka
belçika, belçika, hollanda

Condonances

We are here
to please
pleased each time
that we please
despite the appease-
ment we hardly ever cease
to try to please

How sweet
and sour to see
the pleased
expression where one
has ceased
to hope to please

Pleased
to please
Once more the old demon
has creased
their foreheads and the sides of our
cheeks

Once more teased
into going on with the impossible task
to please,
To please,
Without cease.

(Stockholm, Oct. 2006)

Beyond the Pale

Contemplating on the huge
gaping hole of distrust and misgiving
my unwilling native scout's mouth transformed into when I
told him I'd ford the river
"Munch", whispered Shiva in my ear
that goddess of self-destruction
and partner in my unheard of crime.

(I crossed
without my scout
and met friendly Indians on the way
that directed me to the feast.

beyond the pale,
I could still hear the screams)

24.10.2006

Wrong Hands

These are the wrong hands into which,
weapons of individual destruction have fallen

the power to understand
the power to correct
the power to make you crimson with despair

These are wrong hands
that touch the keyboard
that rise in silence
to ask a question

The hands that you
sometimes touch on the steal
these white, small hands
are the wrong hands

Monsieur Le Coton

Monsieur le Coton has won,
let's see for how much longer I can go on defending him

Wales- the back water

Incident at Gwenyd

This is earth:
Peace was never its forte
But to find it, we take a walk
My friend and I and the fish
I’d been served at breakfast. White
houses we’ve passed today, made of stone.

Early in the day, we visited the fort. A
morning wind swept the stone
Pieces crack, fall, turn to earth.
We’re now near houses all painted white
against the long walk
of the rain: trickle trickle. The last of the fish

go under the bridge we’re now on: stone
sturdy, grey. Men in white
overalls in the water, hoping for fish.
Then, we hear sirens, forte
and then an improbable traffic jam appears. The earth
is gyrating as people stop their cars and walk.

The ambulances turn left. The earth
is awake and green. We walk
towards a policeman. ‘Oi’ he shouts, forte
his face is white
like the flesh of the fish
“There’s been an accident” he says, voice of stone.

We change direction, like fish
sensing stiller water elsewhere. The tip tap walk
of the drops on our umbrella; a pianoforte
in tune with the hushed splash of our feet on stone
Drop by drop it ekes out: the smell of earth.

There are no houses now. Just stone
walls in between fields, white
metal arrow signs and one says ‘Forte-’
The rest has been eaten out by rain, friend to earth
They reign in these parts where we walk
by the river, where our kin fish.

My friend makes a dash for the side to fish
for wild strawberries, as I find when I walk
towards her. Her white
hands hand me some, cold as stone
But the warm smile is her forte
Now her cheek is smeared with earth.

We then lift our heads to the sound of the helicopter, white
Against the smoke that’s rising in the West, forte
“God have mercy.” Wet like fish, we stop, stranded on earth.

(Summer 2002, on my trip with Silke)

and there is that chance meeting with a fellow Mainzerin that I simply have to blog, next

The Moonstone

I have left Hans Castorp on the field of battle and have taken the train to England :-) (and further to the subcontinent)

I find The Moonstone very much to my liking.

The mind goes back to so many years ago when through Leyla Neyzi I had met this very clever girl, who was doing God knows what now, at the time, but what I remember is that she had at some point taught English in Malaysia.
We sat in Akmerkez and talked. She had worked on Wilkie Collins and was so enthusiastic about him, telling me I had to read him. I had made a mental note about it, and I had many lives after that, the mental note getting a bit dusty but still stuck there. And then in class in Heidelberg I listened to someone talk about The Woman in White, the mental note was put in relief once again, and at long last, last month I bought The Moonstone on İstiklal Street, and now here I am reading it.

It is very clever so far. It is a book that is the documentary of its own writing. A bit of Tristam Shandy, not quite as preposterous. There are a lot of self-narration references, so I find myself underlining. I could do worse than have a Victorian paper to my name :-)

Kiss the Girls

It was a week's
worth of opened doors
that did me in

one
after
the other
leading all the way
up the benighted staircase
towards the proverbial attic

but after all that knighthood
after all that chivalry
he refused to play
Rochester to my Antoinette
for this is a PoCo creature
that dares not light a fire babe

...

and you prefer to kiss the girls,
you prefer to kiss the girls.

Sleeping with Germans

One spring night in Stockholm, I find myself sleeping with two Germans, neither of whom I fancy very much. We are in a little cabin in a boat-house. Above me sleeps a Japanese girl who has one of those thick Europe guidebooks, and is thinking of going to Istanbul as well. Across, in the other bunkbed, are the couple from Düsseldorf.

When I arrived at the boat, I went to check the sanitary facilities.

The 'bathroom' is full of young women who are applying various stuffs to their faces and hands. I check out the loo and then think better about it- resolved to sleep on a full bladder. I wash my face, joining the other girls by the mirror. Before I know it, I am in conversation with one of them, who has a thick German accent. I hold back the information that I am studying in Germany as long as I can, but then it comes out. And when that comes out, of course, my German woes follow suit. Like all her compatriots she looks amazed that I am not having a good time in Germany. I decide not to give her the Germans are such unfeeling b******* banter, and tell her that my problems lie with the language. I tell her I had difficulties in the first few months because noone was willing to speak English to me. She is perplexed. "I never miss an oppurtunity to practice my English", she says to me. It is late in the evening and there is no sense in trying to explain to her that my English presents not an oppurtunity for practice but cause for alarm in Germany.
It turns out we're in the same 'room'. We go in, start to change into night clothes. Then a key turns in the door and in comes a male of the species. It is now my turn to be perplexed. I tell him that this is the ladies' quarter. I had thought myself clever to have found a hostel that does make such distinctions. Then the German girl comes to my side and says that he is her friend, and that she trusts that it won't be a problem?
It's a problem alright. I am on this boat secure in the knowledge that I am not crossing the boundaries I have set up for myself, boundaries that I have been defending relentlessly lately, boundaries that have given others cause for concern and contempt.
"I will be very quiet, you won't notice I'm here" he says very sweetly. The human element. He does look totally harmless. But I am still confused as to how he could be in the ladies quarter, I feel cheated. I could take the issue up with the management if it came to that. Then the German girl explains, she has put down her name for two people, they must have thought the other was also a girl. Some part of me is enraged. (why, why then bother with calling this the ladies quarter, and why not book a room in the mixed section, why why why) The audacity to think that the world will just oblige with the way you see things... of course he is harmless, I can see that, but there has been a covenant, I came here on the grounds that........

But I know perfectly well why this is happening to me. Like I knew perfectly well why last night, for the first time in my life a guy came up to me and asked me to dance with him. Some jolly folk dance, of course, but I know, I know. It's because I came to Stockholm to run away from things, feeling so righteous about the values I had been preaching, the segragation of the sexes, fidelity...

The German girl, maybe, understands the extent of her blunder and tries to normalize things. Tells the guy that I study in Heidelberg. As we all lay in our beds, we sing praises to the town's beautiful hills and then wish each other goodnight. Michael falls into sleep pretty fast and starts to snore just a little. The girl calls out his name. He turns to his side and stops snoring. I am in bed, in my little kerchief round my head. I sleep well despite the full bladder, the river rocking me into wierd dreams. I get up earlier than anyone else for the conference's morning session, pay for the room and leave.