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