Postcards from Istanbul

The Definition of Wrong

2011-08-18T02:16:00.001-07:00

Where I grew up in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, lawn ornaments were common, from gnomes deer, both grazing and attentive, flamingos, the back sides of women in polka-dot dresses apparently working in a garden, to the random, rascist lawn jockey. Most were funny, kitsch, and seldom ironic, yet with the exception of the lawn jockey, somehow fit into the land or lawn scape.

Here in Cappadocia, however, lawn ornaments are just wrong. A few examples suffice as evidence.

Milk maids over Pigeon Valley

Perhaps she should get a bit closer to the animal.

Driving Miss Rebecca

2011-08-12T22:51:00.002-07:00

In a previous post, I alluded to the way in which Georgians drive. It deserves a post on its own.

There are apparently three rules of the road, the first two of which are fast and first. When the roads are relatively clear of other vehicules, our drivers reached nearly terrifying speeds. What's worse, however, is their need to pass others, on curves, in front of oncoming trucks and farm machinery, up hills, on mountain roads... We foreigners, packed in the back seat with ministery representatives and assistants, cringed and cowered at near collisions, but to our Gerogian colleagues, it was business as usual. It is the law that front seat passengers and drivers wear seatbelts. Apparently, it's safe in the back seat. Nevertheless, some drivers are insulted when you reach for the required belt, and insist you don't wear one. I assure them that I trust their driving (a blatant lie), it's just the other crazy drivers I'm worried about.

Without question, the most hair-raising of all is the ministery driver who calmly took our lives in his hands. Thankfully, I only once had the pleasure of being his passenger in the 5 hour drive from Zugdidi to Tibilisi. Just before reaching the capital city, we encountered heavy traffic including car carriers and other massive trucks. At one point, while passing a long semi, he realized that the oncoming tractor-combine was approaching too closely and rapidly for him to maneouver around and in front of the aforementioned vehicule, so he quickly swerved left onto the nearly non-existant left shoulder, barely missing a concrete barrior before speedily returning to his proper lane. It is customary for Georgians to cross themselves when approaching the many churches on either side of the road. I believe I crossed myself before the driver recovered his proper place in the right-hand lane.

The last, but certainly not least rule of the road is that farm animals have the right of way. Cows roam freely in the villages and on the edges of the city, herds of which are sometimes slowly driven down and across roads. Some tend to stand in the middle of the road, contemplating whatever it is that cattle contemplate, with little or no inclination to move forward, backward or sideways. It is the driver's responsibility to accomodate them. I swore on several occasions that the outside of the windshield would be covered in bloodied hamburger and my cracked skull from the inside. I'm more than happy to say there were no collisions between car and cow.

Rustavi Photos

2011-08-11T00:55:00.001-07:00

These photographs correspond to the post below. Entrance to the public school in Rustavi

The rear of the building is in worse shape but requires an effort to photograph.
From a window inside the school

Another window view

This gives a better view of the condition of the building.

My classroom

Due to the flash, this room seems less dingy and more cheerful than it actually is.

The dangerous floor and my foot

The teacher's desk

The private restroom for students

Again, due to the flash, this appears brighter and cleaner than it is.

The private restroom sink

A poster project by a great group of teachers

The reference to slavery is very tongue in cheek, at least I hope.

An Unexpected Addition to My CV

2011-08-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

A friend called me about a month before school finished to ask if I wanted to make a pile of money. Well, yes, why wouldn't I? E-mails sent, a contract signed, and I found myself one of a group setting off to Georgia (the nation, not the state) to train teachers. Again, I accepted a job for which I wasn't exactly qualified, but they needed bodies yesterday, and for that, I do qualify. Oddly, and to my surprise, one of my first thoughts on hearing about a job connected to a major publishing company was "This could be good for my career." Where that thought came from is a small mystery to me because I never think in those terms.

The Project

Recently, the Ministery of Education of Georgia decided that, beginning from first grade, all students in public schools will have English lessons. Additionally, they chose a series of books ranging from levels 1-6. This is an ambitious project, revolutionary for the educational system of the country. Our job was to introduce the new books and to train teachers how to use the first level. The Ministery's goal, as I understand it, was to train all its English teachers, roughly 10,000 over the course of July. In total, 11 of us trained approximately 5,000 which is not too shabby for a month's work. We traveled to villages where teachers came to us at schools varying in (dis)repair. The teachers themselves were a mixed group of those who spoke English very well, to those who could utter only a few catch phrases or sing She'll be Comin' Around the Mountain. (To my regret, I missed that performance by a woman in her 70s.) At first, several of the trainers were met with resistance. Previously, teachers were allowed to choose which books would be used in the classrooms and therefore many felt forced upon to make sudden changes. Since I came a few weeks later than the rest, and since word had spread in particular after a spot on the news, I encountered little resistance and no aggression.

Rustavi

After a death-defying car ride from Tibilisi with colleagues, and an assistant from English Book, the store with which the publishing company is connected, one of the other trainers pointed to an abandoned-looking, shell-shocked Soviet era building in the village of Rustavi and declared that was the school. In my very own subtle and polite way, I said, "Shut up." Yet, that was where my day was to begin.

My classroom was furnished with desks and chairs of dubious stability, a teacher's desk, the door of which fell into my hands as I opened it to reveal rusted metal stands for science experiments, a green board dating from god knows when, and a dirty parquet floor whose wooden slabs often lifted off the ground when walked on. Everything was covered in a layer of dust. I set up a laptop and tried to connect it to a projector to show training videos from the publishing company against the wall. For the life of me and our assistants, I couldn't get either to work and therefore became CD, DVD and unqualified teacher-trainer all wrapped into one package. And it was a sweaty package indeed. Working in temperatures in the low, humid 40s with no air currents, I consumed litres of bottled water and fanned myself constantly. Since I'm a very active teacher, (I jump around, gesture a bit wildly, dance and sing...) I became very unfeminine, dripping sweat everywhere.

Now for what might possibly be a bit too much information. Despite copious sweating, a person does need to relieve herself after drinking litres of water. Here, however, we showed heroic restraint and ventured to the toilets only when absolutely necessary, sometimes waiting until after a hair-raising, half hour journey to the hotel. Students at this school can choose to go in what first appears to be a closet but which reveals itself to be a "Turkish toilet" equipt with a small sink and cold water. Both are filthy and badly lit. Their second option is a room with about six tiled, doorless stalls, (who needs privacy?) also containing Turkish toilets. My colleagues discovered the key to the teachers' restroom which seemed luxurious in comparison. Through a kind of storage room for broken furniture and faded Christmas decorations, there is a small, similarly dirty room with a seat toilet. This was liberally wrapped with Soviet style (think thin Kraft paper) toilet paper before use. Needless to say, travel experience has taught me to stock my bag with moist towelettes. I don't leave home without them.

As you have probably concluded, the rest of the school was not a joyful place, and I often thought about what it would be like to study or work there. The stair railings are dangerously loose. Many of the windows were cracked or broken, and the radiators date from an earlier epoch. From the windows, the building exterior seems to be peeling off in chunks. Some of the floors were recovered in cheap linoleum, an improvement over the loose parquet. One small room on the ground floor is dedicated to prayer, complete with icons, prayer books and models of churches. For some reason, I found this a charming space.

While I have painted a dingy picture of the school, my week working in Rustavi was not unpleasant. Our assistants, Tako and Mari, were fantastic. They helped me connect seemingly unconnectable projectors and cables, they brought us fresh hachapuri for lunch and made sure we had bottles of melted ice to drink throughout the day. With an ever-present representative from the ministery, they trouble-shot problems and answered questions that were not understood in English or outside of our domain. And both women are incredibly nice. A number of the teachers were quite motivated, creative, and responsive despite the changes forced upon them, the heat, and the distances they had to travel to the school. I've become invested in the project and hope to return over one of my school breaks to observe teachers, maybe teach some first graders (that will be an unprecedented event!) and actually have some time to see and appreciate the country itself. After work, we had very little energy or motivation to do much more than sit around the hotel. Days off were generally taken up by bus or ministery van rides (for a godless woman, I certainly relearned to pray) to another village, so we didn't have much opportunity to actually see where we were.

After Rustavi, I went to Kutaisi and Zugdidi for three days each. More posts on these places and a bit of Tibilisi tourism to follow.

Good Fortune

2011-06-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

Before I stopped at the convenience store near my apartment the other day, a young pigeon fell from either the sky or off a balcony above me, just left of my center. It landed a few centimeters from my foot. Apparently, it's good luck if bird poop hits you, but what if the whole animal does?

Bird Watching

2011-04-18T05:16:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to my mom. I vividly remember her green, cloth-covered Field Guide to Birds that sat conveniently on the engine of the two-toned van with the sliding door named Betty. Often, somewhere between here and there, Mom would let out with an excited “Bill stop the car! It’s a Pileated Woodpecker!” or some other unusual bird. On rides between Bloomer, WI and Winona, MN to watch the barges float down the locks on the Mississippi, we kept our eyes out for herons, egrets and cranes. When the Great Snowy Owl made his appearance, there was great rejoicing.

The service bus picks me up at 7:13 and arrives at school about a half an hour later.I sit in the princess seat in the front. The city falls away to tree covered hills, military grounds, a random shack with a slow stream of smoke rising from it. Packs of dogs roam the road side and fight over trash near the trees. In the fall, flocks of birds, probably seagulls, gather under a grey sky. Light reflects off their flapping wings, and the whole flock twinkles, white then light grey. Smaller migrating birds form one shifting body, dipping, swooping densely packed, then more loosely so, but never crossing an invisible boundary. About a month ago, I began to notice massive brown hawks, sentinels on fence posts and bare trees. I count them, collect the sight of them like trophies, sometimes as many as four before or after the school day. One recent morning, shortly before arriving at the turn-off, I sat trophy-less in the princess seat, but was rewarded by a group of thirty storks, resting on their way between here and there. The following morning there were seven, and then they were gone. One stork picking at the ground on his long spindly legs near the roadside is an impressive sight, a whole mess of them even more so. A friend once told me about migrating storks gathering near the Bosphorus in September, but I’ve missed them so far. Yesterday, the bus passed a mass of grey, slender-necked and long-legged birds, swirling in a widening, ascending spiral to veer off individually in an irregular line heading northwest.

I don't ask Suleyman to stop the service bus. For some reason, I like to keep these moments private.

Ashurbanipal

2011-03-23T06:13:00.001-07:00

Recently, I have found myself becoming attached to friendly street animals. For example, in the last month, I have twice noticed a full-grown Bassett Hound wandering near Topkapı Palace, bothering the guards and getting his picture taken by tourists. Shame on who ever bought the dog and kicked him out on the streets when he got too big to handle. I certainly have no time for a dog, but I nearly took him home. Last week, I fell for a cat in the Grand Bazaar. There are a few cats I have been fond of in my life, but I've never wanted to own one. This Tom was lovely, a kind of tabby but with larger circles and stripes than normal. And he did love being petted and scratched and clearly was not aware of just how dirty he was.
It occurred to me that maybe I needed a little animal in my life that likes human contact. Don't get my wrong, I do love Shuppiluliuma, the now 5 and therefore considered elderly rabbit, but she's not comfortable cuddling. I don't like to force my animals to be what they aren't. The other rabbit, Cenk, died about 2 years ago. Unfortunately, my fish died after about 3 weeks. I suspect the rest of the same fish from the same pet shop suffered the same fate.
Long story short, although I had no plans to come home with a new rabbit, I found myself with a little, 6 week old, black fur ball in my hands. His name is Ashurbanipal after the last great Neo- Assyrian king. According to Wikipedia, his name means "Ashur is creator of an heir." There will be no heir creating in my home, as Ashurbanipal is in a completely different room than the Shuppi, and neither the twixt will meet. He does the usual rabbit things, jumps and twists, and is very proud when he manages to climb on top of the box in his cage. He also tolerates cuddling.

The Loud Princess

2011-03-02T04:29:00.000-08:00

As most Turkish schools, the one I work in consists of a lower primary, junior high, and high school combined. While the buildings are separate entities, they are all connected to each other. To get from one to the other, you walk straight through from the ground or second (in European terms) floor. Alternatively, you can go outside and walk to one of the many building entrances. This connection causes some difficulty as there are rules that apply in two of the buildings but not the high school. For example, high school kids are allowed to use their cell phones during the school day, while thankfully, the kids in my block aren't. I never realised how very huge high school students are (were we that big at Bloomer Senior High?) nor how loud they can be. I am forever convincing high school students to go outside rather than through my block, to put their phones away and not smirk about the request, and a laundry list of other infractions.
Today, I found myself on the twisted portion of the stairs, carrying 8 dictionaries and facing the same handful of high school kids I've faced countless times, not realising there was a small army of them behind me coming down the hall. Now, many of you know I can be loud myself, and only after a minute of "no you can't's" and "yes we can's", I watched the whole group turn around and head back to their building. I'm sure it wasn't my great authority that convinced them, but rather a desire to get to where they were going and not to hear the crazy American teacher's voice.
It was only then that I realised I was wearing a tiara, a prop from my previous lesson.

More Stuff I Made

2011-02-14T05:24:00.001-08:00

Wheeled Bird

May I present a few of the latest archaeologically inspired objects to emerge from the kiln? The wheeled bird is slimmer than those in an exhibition at Yapı Kredi last year. I haven't quite figured out how the originals were made. At least it doesn't tip over on its wheels as I thought it might.

Mice and a Spouted Vessel

Originally, these were going to be hedgehogs. Clearly, that didn't happen. These are quite small. They fit in my hand. Not all at once.

Anthropomorphic Vessel

A spouted vessel in the Louvre was the inspiration for this piece. The original has a hat, but I chopped it off of this one. It looked far too phallic.

Demendgehogs

I alternate between being very fond of these two creatures, or thinking they're just acceptable. They look a little demented, hence the title.

When You Feel Like a Complete Idiot

2010-12-20T05:19:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful sun-shining Saturday morning, all the more glorious because it was the first we'd seen sun in a week. I got myself up and out of the apartment relatively early, walked the 2 blocks to the bakery for breakfast, then another block or so to grab a bus to Taksim. Of course, since I was riding backwards on the double-decker bus, and even though I go to Taksim often, I had no idea where I was, so I got off the bus a stop or two too early. After 10 minutes of walking on the crowded street, I spent at least twice the amount of time picking out clay tools at the ceramics hobby shop. Back to Taksim Square to buy a paper and as usual play chicken with the other pedestrians, then head to the Metro. I took the subway from one end of the city to almost the other, then got on a dolmuş to Sariyer where I exited at Çayırbaşı. Here, I went to Anatolian Arts, a store in which you can find reproductions of Hittite ceramics, glass and ceramic pomegranites which apparently are quite popular though I prefer copper ones, juniper "rosary" beads, and other artsy craftsy things. While I was shopping for a friend's Christmas present, I stopped to pet the annoying little dog who I assume belongs to the nasty woman who works in the store. I'm not a big fan of little dogs, but it was much easier to humor this one than it was to be annoyed by it. The nasty unnaturally blonde, dog-owning woman sat at the computer and sporadically shot me nasty looks. I thought nothing of it. She's just that way. Purchases purchased, I walked the block to the ceramics studio and made a French press of coffee. I need coffee when I wake up in the morning, and just about before I begin any project before 5:00PM.

While the kettle was heating up, I for some reason looked down at my feet and realised I was wearing two different shoes.

To market, to market

2010-08-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

Monday is market day in Nevşehir. I will never tire of a good market, and this one isn't bad at all. The labyrnthine streets are lined with awning-protected tables. My favorite part is the fruit and vegetable section. It smells of sun-warmed peaches and strawberries. There are small mountains of eggplants at 1 Lire a kilo, piles of peppers, neatly-lined pears and plump figs, both purple and green.

Some of the venders grumble amongst themselves when I take pictures. "Tourists, foreigners.." I imagine they're remarking that it's as if I've never seen a vegetable before. Others, such as the man above, are more than happy to strike a pose.

Okra

Sweet peppers

Nice to look at, but I still can't eat them.

Many of the venders heap their produce on newspaper, or leave them in crates on the ground.

The cheese market

This market is not for those with a sensitive stomach, as the animal odors that waft from the cheese, especially on a hot day, are quite strong. The cheeses are kept in open basins, in jugs and plastic buckets, either placed directly on the blacktop or on plastic crates.

Tulumu peyniri in animal skins

Some of the cheeses are stored in animal skins. I don't know how expensive they are, but the flies, I assume, are free.

More cheese in an animal skin. I think it's a goat.

Cabbage on a side street

I am still struck by the size of the cabbages. They're wider than my backside. At the end of the street, you can buy a handle-less broom in any size.

Still Life with Cabbage

Once in a while, I'm really proud of a photo, but have to admit this was a complete accident.

Popettes for 25

2010-08-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, one of my favorite meals was spaghetti and popettes. "Popette" is a bastardization of "polpetta, " Italian for meatball. My grandmother's family made these meatless meatballs because, as I understood it, they didn't have a lot of money. Made primarily of bread crumbs and eggs, they act like little sponges for pasta sauce and are quite delicious. I wrongly used to think that it was a secret family recipe until Pina, a Sicilian married to a local Turk, told me it's a commonly made dish in Italy. So much for carefully guarded family secrets.

I first made Polpettes A la Turca a few years ago. Since it's impossible to find parmesan cheese in Cappadocia, I have to make due with what I can find, and instead use Tulumu Peyniri, a crumbly but soft "village" cheese. It makes for a tasty popette, but does not go well with pasta sauce. Instead, we eat them plain, with our fingers.

Last night, we were about 25 for dinner. A group of French friends were invited, a pair of couples from Rome offered to make pasta, and Taner's wife Serpil brought her lentil soup. Somehow during the day, two other small groups of Italians were also brought to the evening table.

I spent a good portion of my day preparing the bread and cooking. Here's my recipe for Polpettes for 25, breakfast leftovers guaranteed. (Really, some foods are better the next day.) To be honest, this recipe isn't written in stone. I can never remember from one time to the next how much of what I used.

8 large loaves of bread from Uchisar Market, not nasty sliced white bread from a plastic bag.
1 1/2 kilos of full-fat tulumu peyneri. I suppose the half-fat version would work as well, but who are we kidding? This isn't diet food.
62 eggs
2 heads of garlic, or more to taste. (Normally I would use a bit more garlic, but a person needs to consider her guests.)
Olive oil, not extra virgin.

Sit in a sunny spot. Split open all the bread with your fingers so it can sit in the sun and dry a bit. Pull the bread apart to make small pieces being careful not to squish the soft inner parts. No need for bread glue. This took me about 1 1/2 hours, but the process is a kind of meditation.

Crumble the cheese with a fork and mix with the bread crumbs. For this amount, you will probably need to use more than one huge bowl.

Finely chop the garlic and add to the crumbs and cheese. Get your hands dirty, and mix until the ingredients are evenly distributed. Admittedly, it's difficult to tell if the garlic is well-mixed throughout, but I kind of like a surprise chunk of it.

Add the eggs. Get your hands really dirty and squish the crumbs and cheese through your fingers so the bread is completely soaked in eggs.

Depending on the bread and whatever day it is, you might need more or fewer eggs. The mixture, in my opinion, should be wet enough to form "meatball," but shouldn't be runny. I think the correct term for the texture is "gloppy."

Form balls of the mixture, then flatten them like a hamburger. You can make them larger or smaller. I like to make them about the size of my palm. Make sure to pat around the edges so they don't fall apart when frying.

Heat olive oil in a big pan, not so much that the popettes float in it, but enough so that the oil comes half-way up their sides. I use olive oil, but not extra virgin. It tends to break down when heated. You can also use vegetable oil, but I don't recommend it.

Carefully place the popettes in the heated oil. Flip them when they are crispy brown. Make sure they're cooked in the center. I don't know anyone who wants to eat raw-egg-soaked bread.

Serve hot, warm or rooom temperature. I prefer to eat them with my fingers, but those who are more refined than I can certainly use a fork and knife.

Three Times Lucky

2010-08-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

Last week, a friend from Istanbul came for a visit. Since it has been so hot, and since there wasn't enough room upstairs for all of us to sleep comfortably, Nicky and I decided to sleep on the terrace. We piled cushions of woven and embroidery covered bags on the floor and threw sheets and blankets over them. It's pleasant to sleep under the stars with the wind blowing gently. As far as I know, the few bats didn't fly too closely, and I refused to think about insects that might creepy crawl there way over and around us while sleeping. The nights are a bit chilly, but at about 8:00, the sun beats down unbearably hot.

One morning, I woke up with the sun burning a small hole in my face. I stumbled into the kitchen to make my coffee. Because the transition between sleeping and waking is a long one for me, it took me a while to find the Italian coffee pot and fill it with water and coffee grounds, then locate a lighter for the stove and a something for heating the milk. While the water was slowly making its way through the coffee into the upper part of the pot, Nicky came in holding my pillow away from her body and laughing. On the pillow case was a great gob of bird poo, slowly and viscously sliding its way downwards. Since, as I mentioned, the transition between sleeping and waking is a slow one, I failed to see the humor in the situation.

As I was trying to verbalize that the poo was headed toward the floor, the lid of the coffee pot blew upwards and coffee exploded all over the wall, the stove, and one side of my person, including my face. Fortunately, the coffee wasn't hot, but the noise and spray was, needless to say, startling. I still wasn't able to put a sentence together. Pina, hearing the explosion, came out of her bedroom, concerned. After she realised I wasn't burned, she found the newly painted walls and my face very funny and had a good laugh. I, however, failed to see the humor in the situation. And the bird poo was still sliding floorwards.

After cleaning myself and the kitchen, (Nicky took care of the poo) I went to the store just down the hill. As usual, I asked if anyone needed anything. No one did, but Murat offered to go with me. Murat is 10 at most and a gorgeous kid. He's one of the few people I can tolerate while cooking because he carefully helps me, cutting tomatoes, mixing the salads. He's also extremely polite and asks if he can use my computer before grabbilng it and turning it on. I was pleased to have his company, even for the short trip to the store.

I offered to pay for the package of two milk puddings that he had chosen, but he paid for them himself. As we were returning the store, he handed me a plastic spoon and found a place in front of a blocked door to sit and eat. I had the impression that he wanted to share this treat as our little secret, and for that, it was delicious.

With a little distance, I realise now how lucky I was, three times, that day. First, my head was not on my pillow when a bird shat on it. Second, I am not disfigured from coffee, and third, Murat shared his pudding and a little private moment with me, in the shade, on a doorstep.

The Apricot Thief of Uçhisar

2010-08-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Roger Hours, who every summer makes the most glorious apricot jam. If he likes you, he will give you a jar. If he likes you, you are a lucky person indeed.

Pigeon Valley

In the evenings, when the temperature drops from intolerable to pleasant, I often take a walk near Pigeon Valley, specifically to steal apricots. Past Goreme Onyx, a large jewelry store invaded by busloads of tourists, I turn into the driveway of Yemini Restaurant to visit my favorite dog. He's huge. Unlike most sensible people, I am not afraid of this Kangal even though I know they can be dangerous. He must be terribly bored all tied up with little place to run. The men who work at the restaurant are now familiar with me from my frequent visits and sometimes wave at me from a distance. There is a small poodle-like dog who runs about freely. Often, when I'm visiting, she runs for the larger dog, jumping and playfully snapping at his face. Clearly, the Kangal does not like this attention, but patiently stands, completely aware that he could snap the little one like the preverbial twig.

Noble the Kangal

After dog therapy, I follow the dirt road above the valley and walk next to fields of chick peas, squash and other vegetables and through vineyards. Once, I was surprised by a fox who was equally startled by me. He ran across the fields, white tipped tail in the air.

Butterfly on a sunflower.

The outside of the butterfly's wings look like dirt, but when opened
reveal a white-spotted black ground.

Apricots

Before stealing apricots, I check the ground to make sure many have fallen. To my logic, this means no one else is eating them except me and insects. When I find a tree particularly burdened with fruit, I find it difficult not to strip it bare. Many of the apricots are freckled by the sun and would probably be rejected by customers in a supermarket. I've learned not to be prejudiced by these spots, as they are usually sweet and perfectly edible. There is one tree with tiny fruit, slightly larger than gumballs. These are the tastiest. I sample from various trees and fill plastic bags from the market with them to bring back to the store.

Sunset

As the sun begins to set and before heading "home," I make a second visit to the dog. On my way back, I give handfuls of fruit to the various merchants whose stores I pass. They think I'm a bit nuts, but I don't really mind so much.

Here is my recipe for stolen fruit dessert, but you can also use ones that you have procured by honest means.

Use a big pan, the kind used for making spaghetti sauce.

Split the apricots in half and toss the stones on the compost pile.

Cut peaches into smallish pieces and put them in the pan with the apricots.

Squeeze a few oranges into the pan, or use orange juice. Use enough so that the fruit doesn't burn and stick to the bottom, but not so much that you'll end up with orange juice and fruit soup.

Add cinnamon to taste. I like a lot of cinnamon.

Cook on medium heat for about an hour, more if you have the time. The longer it's cooked, the thicker the juice gets.

This can be served warm over really good vanilla ice cream. Please don't waste the dessert on average ice cream. If you do, don't tell me.

If you live in France, you can skip the ice cream and pour creme fraiche over the fruit instead.

You can use other fruits as well. I've made this with apples, pears, and plums in different combinations.

Peppers on a String

2010-08-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

Summer vacation truly begins after a string of peppers hangs from the exterior wall of Ala Turca Old Collection.

Eggs with Legs and other stuff I made

2010-06-07T10:02:00.000-07:00

Personnages autour d'un bassin

Almost every Sunday, I go to a small ceramics studio with friends. Lately, I've been more concerned with nonfunctional objects inspired by ancient pottery. This one is an abbreviated version of an object in the Louvre. It's not a complete success, but I consider it part of a learning curve.

Dysfunctional Teapot

I'm very fond of the shape and feel of my teapot. Unfortunately, and despite the greatest care, the lid somehow fused with the pot during the glaze firing. Like I said, it's a learning curve. Besides, after I had made it, I learned that the clay body probably isn't food safe. Now it's a sculpture.

An Egg with Legs

Another Egg with Legs

More Eggs with Legs

I was afraid the one on the left would crack during the bisque firing, so I made it into a bank instead of a vessel with spouts.

Small Fish

This one's my favorite. It came about kind of by accident. The learning curve took an upward swing.

Sometimes kids surprise me

2010-05-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'm so proud of my 6th graders that I wanted to share one of their projects. We're currently reading The Tale of Despereaux, the story of a tiny mouse that falls in love with and saves a princess. He also loves the light and is fascinated by the colors that spill onto the floor from stained glass windows. One of my teaching partners had the brilliant idea to have the kids make stained glass windows out of paper and colored acetate, and have them describe what the windows symbolise and how they might fascinate Despereaux.

Objects of Desire

2010-05-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

A few weekends ago, I was in the Spice Bazaar stocking spices for my dad. He likes the ones for potatoes, chicken and meat. The spice mixtures, teas and henna are mounded in barrels and scooped into plastic bags to be vacuum-packed for shipping. Because I want to practice speaking, and because I think it's respectful to at least try and communicate in the language of the country in which I live, I haltingly requested my dad's spices in Turkish. (I do realize that it is more than slightly hypocritical of me not to speak Turkish better than I do and not to make more of a concentrated effort to learn the language. I have a full shelf of Teach Yourself Turkish books but only read them for a few weeks after buying them before I get distracted by something else. Lessons are a possibility, but just the thought of sitting in a three hour lesson, three evenings a week after teaching all day exhausts me. And my weekends are sacred. But I digress.) After I had chosen a selection of spice mixtures, the salesman said "I want to say this in your language. Thank you for trying to speak to me in my language." Often, salespeople will tell me that I speak very well with varying degrees of sincerity. This man, however, appeared genuine in his compliment, and struggled to express himself in English. I was enjoying the encounter enough to buy a few more mixtures, even though I'm sure my dad has no need for lemon pepper and special flavorings for rice.

Several months ago, I was on a mission to find something in particular in Çukurcuma, a section of the city near Taksim Square known for its overpriced antique shops. I never found the thing for which I was looking, but that's beside the point. A series of signs advertised a new store called "Objects of Desire," a place where one can find unique and memorable items for the home. I found the store and was taken by the amount of very cool objects inside, vintage sunglasses, toys, kitchen wares, clothes, crowding every centimeter of shelf space, spilling over into the narrow passageways. It was a bit claustrophobia inducing, but I pressed on from one room to the next and spotted a thing or two that might have fit the description of the object of my mission. Since I don't like plastic and didn't want metal, I tapped gently on the sides of the display cases that might have been worthy of my hard-earned cash.

The very surly man, the owner I assumed, answered my grammatically incorrect questions with impatience. Determined, I continued to look and ask until finally he looked at me with the greatest contempt he could muster and snapped "Look, why don't you just tell me what you're looking for!" Taken aback, I imagine that my facial expression first conveyed shock, then anger. "Well, you keep on babbling in Turkish!" This time, I am sure my face immediately registered acute anger, and I replied with all the indignation I could muster in return "I'm leaving" which was answered with a snotty "Fine" over the man's shoulder. I think I'm a polite person, at least I usually try, but I couldn't just leave without comment to this man who until the previous minute had not given any indication that he spoke English and allowed me to continue in a manner that clearly offended him. "Most people appreciate that I at least try to speak in their language, but if you're going to be a complete asshole, I'm not going to buy anything from you."

I tried not to let the experience bother me, especially because vendors often compliment me on my language skills with varying degrees of sincerity, and because there's a man in the Spice Bazaar who is genuine.

The Crone

2010-05-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

For as often as I make the pilgrimage between here and there, I'm sure I cross paths with some of the same people more than once but never notice them either because they blend into the crowd, or I'm not paying attention. There is one woman, however, whom I have seen on half a dozen occasions and for whom I've kept an eye out for the past few years. She's hard to miss, but not for her great size. I have no idea what her age is, but it's very, very old. If she could stand up straight, she might reach my nose, but as she's nearly doubled over at the waist, she comes up to just below my shoulder. Because she's old and hunched over, she has a very slow and awkward gait. Despite her lack of speed and mobility, and with her backside swinging slowly from side to side, she fearlessly makes her way across the street regardless of the color of the light, and as often as not, stops traffic for a moment or two. Once, I helped her carry her bags across the street and made sure she got on her bus without mishap. Another time, I sat next to her for several stops. She told me about her heart and blood pressure problems, smiling, as if she were talking about good weather.

I hadn't seen her for a while and sometimes wondered if she was still amongst the living. While returning from the Spice Bazaar recently, the tram at Eminönü stopped, doors open, much longer than usual. Those of us who had craned our necks to see of there was a problem soon realized that the hold-up was due to my favorite crone being guided onto the train by a kind stranger. I say crone with affection, and because she is covered from head to toe in black, skirt, blouse, large head scarf longer than a nun's, with face and hands exposed. Immediately, a seat was vacated for her. She spoke to no one and everyone, her sharp chin jutted, her tongue seemingly too large for her mouth from of her lack of lower teeth. All eyes were on her as she dramatically flapped her thickened, claw- like hands. "I was so scared, oh I was so scared!" And yet, she had that talking-about-the-beautiful-weather smile on her face. Several women approached her to ask where she was going, a question she either didn't hear or didn't care to answer directly. Between her declarations of fear, she must have said something funny because half of the people in the tram car laughed. The women insisted and volunteered to accompany her.

As she exited the bus, with one woman on each side to support her, I watched to make sure she reached her bus. As usual, she crossed the street with her very kind strangers against a red light and stopped traffic for a few moments.

The Compliment

2010-01-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

I have four siblings, very close in age. There’s about a year between each of my sisters and me; my brother came along after a three-year gap. My parents were very unusual in that they took us on Sunday afternoon drives to watch the barges go through the locks on the Mississippi River, and for long vacations in a borrowed camper or our two-toned van with a sliding door named Betty. When we were quite young, they took us to out to eat as a special treat. I’m not sure how they did it, but they put the fear of god in us and we were very well-behaved in restaurants. To be fair, we weren’t perfect by a long shot, but we knew it was a privilege to go, and we also realized that many of the kids in school were never taken anywhere because “they wouldn’t appreciate it.” Initially, the waitresses would look at us with dread, but almost inevitably, would compliment my parents on their children’s good manners.

While on the tram the other day on one of my frequent pilgrimages to the bazaar, a tall man with three small children boarded at the Tophane stop. His girl must have been about four, the boys three and two. There weren’t enough empty seats for them all to sit together, and no one was giving up theirs. The man guided his children to three separate seats while he stood in the aisle between them. He spoke gently, and his children obeyed without a fuss. The girl was wearing her brand new, bright pink coat and all of the other pinks in her wardrobe. She wore very thick glasses. Without them, one of her eyes probably would have crossed to the center. One of the boys had his hood pulled down over his forehead. All of them were thrilled to be riding the tram and smiled so broadly their cheeks must have hurt.. They didn’t yell or even talk to each other, but giggled quietly in their own seats. The smallest was very taken by his reflection in the Plexiglas guard in front of him. As adjacent seats opened up, the man shepherded the kids to the spaces next to each other.

As I watched this family, I thought about the waitresses who complimented my parents. My Turkish vocabulary doesn’t include "well-behaved," (though it should so I can better speak to my students’ parents in their own language) so I thought that “These children are very sweet” would sufficiently carry my message. Before I exited, I approached the man, looked him in the eye and uttered my carefully rehearsed sentence. He looked at me oddly. While I was mentally reviewing my pronunciation, he replied “I don’t know English” in a thick accent. I think he thanked me when I quickly retranslated my little speech back to English, but I had to jump off the tram and couldn’t be sure.

No More Stuff in 2010

2010-01-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

I generally don't make New Year's resolutions. Why set myself up for the inevitable failure and the mild self-loathing that comes with it? I am, however, making an exception to my rule this year.

Once again, I emptied my room of possessions, this time for the painters to transform the walls from a light mint green to a lovely neutral beige. Better for the lovely, earthy colors of my accumulated stuff; antique trunks, old wooden tools and bent-wood boxes, bowls and kilims and other textiles. I am overwhelmed with stuff. Against my genetic disposition, I cannot accumulate more things to stuff under the bed, in drawers, in piles.

As a consolation, I am allowing myself to buy more shelves. For my stuff, of course.

For when you feel like an idiot

2010-01-02T04:23:00.000-08:00

I hit the snooze button once more than usual. It was so dark, and so very warm under my two, count them two, down comforters. As usual, I spent too much time waking up with a cup of coffee and couldn't find anything to wear. I looked at my watch, swore, grabbed my new black scarf from under a pile of clothes, dashed out the door and nearly ran up the buns of steel hill.

The service bus and I simultaneously arrived at the pick-up spot. I settled myself in and buckled the seatbelt. My scarf was oddly wrapped around my neck, so I adjusted it. It was then that I realized that my scarf remained under the pile of clothes. I had wrapped a pair of black leggings around my neck instead. And they were inside-out, tag waving, a white flag.

The Red Balloon

2009-12-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

I sat in the perfect seat on the bus. The Bosphorus was directly in front of me, the full and hazy moon shone just off to the left. It’s best to ride the bus at night, when ugly buildings are obscured by darkness and points of light reflect off the water.

An elderly lady got on the bus at Beşiktaş. A young man kindly gave her his seat just next to the door before she would have ricocheted from one side of the bus to the other as the driver accelerated. She was short and round. She wore the usual nondescript clothing, but the scarf lightly wrapped around hair was playfully patterned. I have never seen a face so wrinkled, like a topographical map of a mountainous region. At one time, she must have had the most sparkling, twinkling, clear blue eyes, but now they looked as if they were coated with a thin film of melted Vaseline. In one hand, she held a bright red, promotional balloon on a white stick. She was very pleased about something, maybe the lights on the Bosphorus, maybe with some secret thought, maybe with the balloon. Whatever the reason, she smiled continuously and spoke animatedly to the driver. I stared at her, forgetting that it’s rude, and smiled myself.

As she got off the bus, I imagined her skipping down the sidewalk.

Dropped from the Sky

2009-11-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

As I was turning a corner outside the Spice Market today, I heard two women asking a salesman about leeches. You can buy them from a number of large water bottles around the market. The women checked their phrase books and notes while speaking to the leech seller, but spoke to each other in French. Well, a) I’m kind of fascinated by the leeches, and b) I’m kind of a whore when it comes to speaking French. By that I mean, I’ll speak it when and where I can and will often insinuate myself into a conversation if I can find a way in. I’ve given many directions and much advice on trams and on the street. Since these women weren’t getting the leech information for which they were asking, but were clearly having a good giggle, I did indeed insinuate myself into their conversation.

According to the leech man, the blood suckers don’t eat anything. Water is sufficient. Frankly, I’m sure they must eat something, but suspect they aren’t fed once up for sale. We talked about how they’re good for migraines, how they swell when applied to the skin, and speculated on what to do with them once they have been used. Apparently, one just gets rid of them. They don't make the best of pets.

The conversation continued. Did I know if French schools here hire French nationals? How would one’s sister go about applying? How long have I lived here, has my behavior changed since moving here, have I notice that some women refuse to speak when asked for information? (Yes, apply over the internet, 4 years, yes but in subtle ways I don’t notice until I go back to the States, no.) The women’s traveling companions joined us. Did I know of a change bureau? They were out of lira but didn’t want to change more than a small amount just to get back to the hotel before heading to the airport.

I accompanied them to buy Turkish Delight (I really dislike the texture but don't refuse it when offered it on holidays). The traveling companions were a bit nervous about getting back to the hotel on time because they hadn’t been abroad before, but I didn’t detect any impatience from the first two women. Between the market and the train, we had a short but rich conversation about vegetarianism, their very moving visit to the mosque in Ëyüp, karma, happiness, humbleness, and how we really just appreciate a good tagine. In the underground passage leading to the tram stop, I helped one of the nervous women buy a battery operated, dancing zebra doll. I always wondered who bought them. Now I know. With contact information exchanged, I brought them to the correct side of the tram station and used my newly topped up akbil (short for akıllı bilet, meaning “smart ticket,” a magnetic thing used on public transportation) as each of them pushed through the turnstile and onto the tram. No need to exchange 5 Euros to get back to a hotel.

According to the last woman to make her way to the tram, I was dropped from heaven into their path. I don’t know about that, but I had a fine 16 minutes with some people with whom I'd like to be friends. In French on top of that.

Observations

2009-11-30T07:53:00.000-08:00

I just got back from my first Kurban. I won’t give you the details of the sacrifice as it might be disturbing, however, I will tell you what I thought about as I witnessed from the balcony. It felt a little like watching an opera from the box office.

First, I thought about what little I know about the Mithras cult and its rituals, of purification through bloodletting, and how dangerous, sticky, and smelly the process must have been, and how very manly those Roman warriors must have felt.

I thought about ritualized community bonding. Sacrificing a heifer is not a one man job. There is necessary cooperation and knowledge passed from one generation to another. Hold this, cut here, no like that, wait, slowly slowly, stop. Health to your hands.

I thought about wintertime wood cutting as a family, hauling and loading logs onto the truck, stacking them in the garage, chopping, then bringing them into the house. Don’t tell anyone, but I really liked hauling and stacking and chopping.

I thought about being an observer. Here in Turkey, I usually listen more than contribute to conversations, though I’m able to understand more and more, slowly slowly. I can often follow, but by the time I can throw in my two cents, the subject has already changed. Oddly, this role of observer is almost the same one I used to play during holidays at home, watching and listening to my own language, seldom if ever participating in the traditional, competitive and dreaded (by me) game of charades. Here, as there, I’m more comfortable being the observant outsider.

Nostalgia

2009-11-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

Once again, I’m in Cappadocia on a school holiday. This Friday is the first day of Kurban Bayramı which commemorates the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. On that day, I will for the first time witness the sacrifice of an animal, a calf I believe. The animal will then be cut up and distributed amongst the poor, family members, and friends. Such distribution falls within the tradition of charity promoted by Islam. Not for the faint of heart, it will probably also be the last time I witness such an event, yet I am curious about it.

In the meantime, I visit friends and acquaintances, walk in valleys where I’m prone to stealing crisp apples (no one else seems to be picking them in forgotten orchards), revisit favorite places and look for wooden tools and boxes in antique stores. Recently, I found an old knife sharpener fashioned from a forked tree branch, some nails and a cylindrical stone. Beautiful in its own rustic way, but too large (and probably too expensive) to carry home, I have to be satisfied with a photo of it.

I love one small street in Uçhisar in particular. Its houses are ramshackle, and there is always some kind of activity in front of them, usually related to food preparation. On any given day, a shalwar wearing woman might be making pekmez, often called grape molasses, in a huge circular pan set over a smoldering fire. Another might be opening walnuts with a knife, or emptying pumpkin-like vegetables for their seeds. Chickens and goats vie for the leftovers, clambering over a shallow pile of manure waiting to be brought to a field. Sometimes, a cow makes itself heard from behind a door. In the autumn, both men and women patiently chop wood with short-handled axes, seated on low chairs or tree stumps next to piled twigs. There is no natural gas heating in Uçhisar, so many people heat their houses with a ceramic stove fueled by coal and or fire. These stoves generate great but very localized heat. I’m reminded of how much time and energy the process of living and feeding can take.

The other day I went to Ortahisar to look at the “castle” and the antique stores around it. As I was walking through a very narrow street, probably gawking at houses, I heard a merhaba (hello) behind me. An elderly gentleman named Hasan led me through a grapevine surmounted door to his home. At one time, the stone house must have been quite magnificent, with an inner but small open area, stairs and doors leading to various rooms. Now, it is a cluttered shithole with piles of potatoes in corners, apples in crates, dusty jars of pickles on shelves, and all manner of junk jumbled in piles on the windowsills. It’s as if nothing can be thrown away just in case it might by some miracle work again or prove of value to some unnamed someone. While his wife, Cahide, made tea, Hasan showed me his three sheep in an adjoining building. I drank enough tea to float to the dolmuş stop. I was fed more than acceptable grapes from the vine, and questionable apricots and apples in homemade pekmez. Cahide ceremoniously pulled a stack of scarves with oya trim out of a bag and “convinced” me that a gold-sequined one would look wonderful on me. Although I have stacks of oya trimmed scarves at home, I purchased one from her at a slightly inflated price. I’m prone to making such pity purchases and she knows how to work a customer. Cahide showed me one room in the house, her very small bed and sitting-room, the arched ceiling and walls thick with white paint and the atmosphere equally thick with an accumulated odor. Maybe Cahide and Hasan accost every foreigner wandering behind the castle, and maybe those wanderers also make pity purchases, I don’t know.

I’m still awed by stone houses with their vaulted rooms. Abandoned houses on the hillside are often marked by crumbling foundations and a standing arch supporting air instead of walls. I like to explore the interiors of extant houses, testing wood floors before putting my full weight on them, and venturing into their littered cave rooms. Some have simple but beautifully carved fireplaces and blackened walls. I wonder what it was like to live inside them, how they would have looked covered in textiles, how they might have smelled like fresh bread, stew, people and animals. Currently, there is much restoration in the old village of Uçhisar. Caves are being emptied of trash, and ruins are being cleaned before rebuilding begins. Part of me welcomes such restoration because it means the architecture is appreciated and jobs are created. Another part of me prefers the ruins, the disorder and the possibility of discovery. Would this village be as attractive to me, all brand-spanking, newly restored? Is it possible to be nostalgic for something I never knew?

The Chicken Report Part 2

2009-10-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

I received the following message from B the other day:

one of the chicken hatched and if ı can find a photo ı will atach it with the e-mail(his name is çiki and he is 2 days old)

According to the vet, "çiki" (pronounced "cheeky") is a rooster. According to B, (see previous installment) he's very noisy. He will be paying a visit to our English lesson tomorrow.

The Chicken Report

2009-09-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

While writing a letter about himself to me, one of my 6th graders asked an interesting question. He wanted to know the word for “when birds come out of their eggs”. Although I had no idea how or why the word “hatch” had any relevance to the assignment at hand, I wrote it on the board for him.

The following day, while marking the letters, I learned that B likes technology, inventing machines, and “hatch chicken eggs” because it “helps” him. Curious. He didn’t, however, tell me how it helped him in that or the following letter draft.

Intrigued, I caught B in the corridor. I told him that he’s a very interesting person, and wanted to know exactly how hatching chicken eggs is helpful to him. B is a little thing with an impish grin. He first looked at me as if I have eight heads, and then he shot me a broad smile.

“It helps me with technology.”

“How many do you have?”

“Two.”

“What do you do with them?”

“We’re going to put them in a cage.”

He looked at me as if I had sprouted a ninth head when I told him I wanted to see pictures.

Later that day, B caught me before the lesson, still grinning.

“Miss Rebecca, what day do you want to see?”

“Day? How many are there?”

“7.”

“OK, I want to see 7 pictures.”

When his printer was fixed, he proudly brought me a picture of an egg incubator, a domed contraption with two eggs in it. He explained that he doesn’t have to turn the eggs because the machine does it by itself. Clearly it was the 6th day as indicated by the number in the corner. No need to see the others because I’m sure they’re almost identical.

Every day, B gives me a new report. His sister is going to film the chickens when they hatch. Well, she can only film them if they hatch in the morning. They’re going to hatch on either Saturday or Sunday. She’s going to bring them to school.
Clearly, B and I have bonded over the chicken report. I’m not sure what we’ll talk about after the chicks have hatched and turned into ugly adolescent birds. We’ve got a while to think of something.

Burning Bridges

2009-06-17T06:03:00.000-07:00

Even as a kid, I was aware of my over-sensitivity. I held people to unrealistic standards which, unfortunately, they often couldn't meet, (could I? I don't know.) resulting in my great disappointment. For example, when I was in early primary school, I can't remember exactly how old I was, Francisco visited Bloomer with family members from Venezuela. I loved him. Of course, anyone from another country who could speak another language was an exotic human being in my book. I loved him because he was an adult who actually paid attention to me, to us kids. We were special to him, and I especially appreciated it as the middle child lost amongst many. We weren't shooed out from under his feet in the kitchen. He actually listened to what we had to say and played a mean game of King of the Hill.

One day I stopped talking to Francisco altogether. We were going on one of our family day trips to somewhere in the car. While I enjoyed these trips, I always hated the pre-trip tension, the I-can't-find-my-shoes, do-you-have-the-fill in the blank... On this day, I couldn't find the pair of shorts I was supposed to wear. In a panic, I grabbed someone else's elastic waist-banded ones from the clean laundry basket, not realising they were my brother's, and somehow managed to pull them on backwards. When Mom informed me of both, Francisco laughed. He could have been responding to something else, but I was certain he was laughing at me. My buddy Francisco laughed at me. I was so hurt and disappointed that I never spoke to him again until he eventually asked me, down at my level, directly in my eyes, why I was ignoring him. I squirmed, and couldn't answer. I don't think I had the words, and I certainly didn't know how to deal with my hurt pride and embarrassment. At the same time, I think I was kind of ashamed because good little Catholic girls are supposed to be forgiving and forgetting.

Apparently, I am now an adult, though I sometimes have my doubts about that. I’m still too sensitive. Friends tell me not to be bothered by things I can’t change, yet I remain bothered when I think people are being mistreated. Unlike my younger self, however, I can at least distinguish if the mistreatment is intentional, or at least done by someone who should know better. And sometimes I still burn bridges, though now I have language to express my anger and disappointment.

There is a bridge I want to burn. The bridge I want to burn is attached to an institution, not one person, but then again, institutions are made of people. I don’t appreciate liars. I don’t appreciate the misogynist boss who makes inappropriate jokes, who revels in the humiliation and discomfort of others, knowing that his underlings cannot speak out for fear of losing their jobs. I have no respect for the immediate superior who feigns innocence when confronted with a, to her, difficult question, who ties my hands and forces me to be a page-turner rather than a teacher. I have less respect for an institution that plays loose with labor laws, who treats its employees with disrespect, unprofessionalism and an utter lack of compassion, a group that allegedly promotes education while fixing the grades of its “best” students for the sake of appearance, thus undermining its teachers and those students who are not the "best." An institution that sees fit to wait until the last day of classes to clear out its foreign language department by firing teachers who were still hard at work when they got the call to the principal’s office. Although it is still possible for native speakers to find decent jobs for the fall, it is nearly impossible for the Turkish ones to do so.

I want to burn this bridge and scatter its ashes. I want to scald the ground on which the bridge was built, make it unliveable, destroy all its plants to their roots and curse it a thousand times.

Stuff I Made

2009-06-14T11:24:00.001-07:00

Today I went to the Pera Museum to see the exhibition Masterpieces of World Ceramics from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A is one of my favorite museums. I often consider going back to London just to visit it and the British Museum. I often find ceramics to be equally, though differently, as moving as paintings or sculptures. They’re tactile. I’m drawn to simple, rough pieces that have no interest in hiding their dirtness, pieces with earthy glazes and odd or even sophisticated shapes. When I’m in the Louvre, I usually skip the painting rooms (too much drama, too much flesh) and head to the ancient Near Eastern archaeology sections. Today, I probably embarrassed myself by doing more than one little happy dance before more than one exhibition case.

I know I really like a piece of art or craft when it makes me want to paint or make something, and I’ve wanted to paint or make since this afternoon. Although I spend large portions of my free time making silver and semi-precious stone jewelry, I miss getting my hands dirty. I miss the texture and mass of wet clay, rolling a flat piece in the slab roller, stamping and incising, coiling and joining, cutting tiles, not to mention obsessive compulsive glazing. I miss flipping open my idea book, taking stamps and needle tools out of my art box. Since I don’t have available studio space, I’m going to pat myself on the back and show you pictures of things I made a few years ago, inspired by pieces in museums and pictures from the archaeology section of the Bryn Mawr College library. The actual things are in shoeboxes, stored in a friend’s attic, waiting for me to figure out how to get them to Turkey without breaking them.

I call this group the cavalry.

This is my version of a Boetian bell idol. Her legs are clappers. She makes a pleasant, musical little sound when shook. She sounds nothing like she looks.

These are my little boat people. This is my least favorite of my versions of the subject, but the only one of which I have a picture. My favorite one is on loan (probably permanent) to an archaeologist friend. It would be nearly impossible to get it acrosss the ocean without mishap unless I called on the V&A packing crew.

I am most attached to this one. He's an abbreviated version of an ancient one with four horses. His little hat is separate and has holes in it for string intended to attach to his head. His hands and the horses muzzles have holes for reins, though I never got around to putting the string through the holes. I never got around to fixing the axles with string either.

I call him Ben Hur. I didn't quite understand how to structure the chariot to hook up to the cart correctly. Next time.

I don't think of myself as an artist. Instead, I'm more of an amateur. It seems to me that many real artists and craftspeople don't get emotionally attached to what they produce, maybe because they produce so much, or accept that what they make will (hopefully) leave their hands for someone else's. I'm highly attached to my little guys, even if I can't get at them.

Wisteria Lanes

2009-06-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

Spring has gone, flowers have been replaced by summer fruits. In either season, my neighborhood is a colorful one. These are some of the flowers that are gone.

I walk up this street every workday morning to the bus station. The doorman at the apartment building just beyond the bend is forever sweeping and clipping.

Like thickly clustered, fragrant grapes, wisteria creep up and cascade down the wall below the blue house. A sign says "Beware of the dog." I've never seen the dog.

Along the Bosphorus, the hills are covered with Judas trees. I don't know whom they betrayed. New leaf greens and reds stand out against evergreens and trees not yet awakened.

Privacy Interrupted

2009-06-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Recently, as I was watching the cats play in the trees outside my kitchen window, I caught a movement on a neighbor’s balcony out of the corner of my eye. I had never noticed anyone on that balcony before. An elderly woman in a long printed skirt, nondescript sweater and dark headscarf sat down on a chair. She had the deep-set, darkly rimmed eyes and etched wrinkles of a dried apple doll. Although I felt guilty for watching her, I couldn’t help myself. She leaned her head forward and covered her face with weather worn, swollen hands. She sighed. She looked up then down, then covered her eyes in a gesture that could have been despair. She sighed again. After five minutes, she stood and slowly entered the apartment.

I wondered what her story is, with whom she lives, whether she suffers or is in good health. I thought about the stories she could tell and hoped that someone takes the time to listen to them.

Decisions, Decisions

2009-06-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

It is once again Sunday, sunny and hot. Normally I clean on Sundays, with or without the aforementioned Attention Deficit Housecleaning Disorder. This fine day, I’m not frantically moving from mess to mess, but slowly shifting and organizing. I shift and reorganize far too often, never quite finishing, fully aware that doing so is a reaction to no small amount of displeasure at being unsettled, of unhappiness with the immediate surroundings of my room, of not living in that ambiguous picture of my perfect space but instead amidst strangely arranged but wonderful objects collected between here and there. Enough.

At the root of this disorganization is, I think, an unsettling feeling of always being in transition, not quite where I want to be personally and professionally. Enough.

I used to think that at about the age of 27, life would automatically be sorted. Career, home, marriage, kids… I also used to be disappointed that random people don’t actually break out in song as they do in television commercials. OK, maybe I’m still a little disappointed in the lack of spontaneous singing and dancing, which may be the reason why I do both while walking the hallowed halls of school.

Recently, I made a career decision, one that will hopefully ground me in other areas of my life. I had hoped to go back to teaching at a university, English instead of art history, either preparatory or academic writing courses. Get a little critical thinking back into my teaching, sink my teeth into something meatier than the ridiculous and soulless ESL books we force on kids who hate them. Such a switch might or might not have involved moving house once again, possibly to Ankara, and possibly to my own place. Without a signed contract, I can’t make decisions about where to live or even what to do for the summer.

To make a long story short, I am going to sign a contract next week to teach middle school English at a bit of a distance from where I live. There is a service bus for teachers that will pick me up near the bus stop and drop me off at school. I will stay in my apartment. It’s not an ideal space, but I love my neighborhood. Because I will take a cut in pay, I can’t afford to live by myself, especially not in Rumeli Hisarı. Although I’m very happy to live alone, I’m also quite happy with my current housemate. So we can’t have the beautiful furniture I would love to have because the cats sharpen their claws on the chair and couch. We have, however, decided to make the improvements we can, to paint the walls and get the kitchen in more practical working order and somehow insulate the rooms better so they’re not quite so clammy in the winter. Eventually, I will have my own space, but for now, I’m fine with sharing.

What is most sobering is accepting that I will continue to teach adolescents instead of university age, young adults. An acquaintance who taught at one of the private universities made me aware of the reality of teaching prep courses. Often, those students in prep are spoiled rich kids who have studied English for at least 8 years but can't pass a proficiency exam. They can be very difficult to teach.

My decision to sign was influenced by several factors. First, unlike at my current place of employment, there is a curriculum. I will be able to teach literature, real books, unwatered down by editors who suck all meaning out of a text. I will be the only teacher for my students. Most importantly, the teachers whom I met are happy with their work (staying in one school for 5 and 8 years is telling) and by their honesty. So the administration doesn’t really take great care of their foreign teachers, at least I know this up front. In other words, they weren’t blowing any smoke up my backside. I appreciate that much more than the empty promises and superficially warm greetings I have received. Hopefully, with this new job I can begin with a clean slate and a more accepting attitude towards ridiculous decisions I did not make and cannot unmake.

Enough. I’m going back to shifting and organizing. Hopefully, I will actually finish.

Bubble Burst

2009-06-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

I think my most joyful moments are those with little significance. Ephemeral. Soon forgotten. Making faces at little kids on the bus. Singing the Friday song. (This song has only one word and means “Friday” in Turkish. It is sung, obviously, on Fridays.) Eating a Magnum ice cream bar while walking home without dropping a bit of chocolate coating on the ground.

My recent favorite moments have to do with soap bubbles, the ones that make my hands between sticky and slimy. I blow them on the sometimes empty playground and watch them, shiny and reflective, between the ugly concrete buildings. When there is a little wind, they are picked up and swirled in circles towards open windows and above the top floor. Surprisingly, the high school boys, who spend an inordinate amount of energy being cool, fight, almost giggling, to take the bubble bottle from my hands. The football (“soccer” no longer sounds right) playing 7th graders chase them. One very observant boy asked me why they’re different colors. They all think I’m a bit crazy, and that’s fine. I have a reputation as the nutty teacher with funny glasses who sings to herself and dances down the halls to uphold.

Last week, I blew bubbles all the way home. Random taxi drivers smiled and said something incomprehensible, macho boys, their shirts unbuttoned one too many, laughed. Some women looked at me disapprovingly. That too is fine, as I have provided them with a moment in which they can feel superior to another human being.

I like to watch as the bubbles get caught in the turbulence of passing cars. Some brave ones manage to cross the street and float in front of those who are indifferent. Some are much longer lasting than others, slowly fading in shininess, no longer oil-slickly reflecting, barely an outline between themselves and nothingness, until they disappear. I try to pinpoint that split-second between something and nothing, yet never succeed.

The other day, I saw that the lower primary kids were having a picnic on a small patch of grass, all gathered around their plates. I blew a stream of bubbles over their heads to their great amusement. Several jumped to their feet to chase and squeal. One of the teachers snapped pictures. I was pleased with myself. Shortly thereafter, a woman came up to me and verified my name. She told me she didn’t think what I was doing was a good idea. Just look at the teachers’ faces. And the kids had been sitting so nice and quietly. I had to respect her for approaching me. I don’t remember if I said anything, but quickly made my exit. I thought about it for probably too long, about how I would feel if I was a teacher in charge of the kids and a random school employee imposed herself on my picnic in such a way. I guess I understood. It took the wind out of my sails, and I didn’t blow any more bubbles that day.

Happiness: a definition

2009-06-06T23:19:00.001-07:00

Recently, I became obsessed with buying a hammock, the kind with its own metal support. It’s easy to find those you can hang between trees, but you need trees sufficiently large and properly spaced to hang one. After several frustrating shopping trips, I found a rope hammock to my liking and a support for it. Unfortunately, one wasn’t made for the other. Thankfully, my housemate is more gifted than I at making do with what one has, and the hammock is now installed on the lower level of the small front garden, in a spot almost tailor made for it.

I like a good rope hammock, the kind that conforms itself to my form and the effects that gravity has on it, suspended, but not so low that my backside touches the ground and not so high that I have to do gymnastics to get myself in it. I like to lay almost still, hands behind my head, thinking of nothing and everything. For some reason, I can’t be anxious about the recent decisions I’ve made about my job, home, future… I look at my feet and am happy that I am still pleased with my tattoos. That’s a good thing because they’re going to be with me for a very long time. To my right, I can still see a sliver of the Bosphorus and between houses and trees, the moon as it rises. The plum tree sometimes drops a fruit. The neighbors’ dog might stop by for a short visit and a pat on the head, disappointed that there’s no game of fetch.

My happiness is marred by one thing. On the slope of the hill below the garden is one of the biggest fig trees I have ever seen. Countless figs are growing large and heavy on its many branches. Due to the steepness of the slope and the height of the tree branches, I will be able to reach very few of them; my definition of frustration.

Do you know what this is?

2009-05-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

One of the great advantages to living in Turkey is easily available, really good produce. Tomatoes taste like those grown in the backyard garden. Strawberries are deep red, fragrant and sweet. Seldom if ever does anything from the street market have the taste or texture of cardboard. There are, of course, new discoveries. Right now, green plums are in season. These are quite sour and require some getting used to. My current favorite is called "yeni dün" (“new world”) though the significance of the name escapes me. They look a bit like apricots and have three smooth pits. The tree in the front garden is loaded with them. You might find me under this tree wearing a broad grin and eating just to the point of nausea.

There is another kind of produce in season at the moment, though I’m not sure if it’s a fruit or vegetable. At first I thought it was a variety of asparagus with a horrific skin condition. The photos are actually flattering. Apparently, you peel back the outer layer and eat the center. If I understood correctly, they taste a bit like little green plums. I bought a bunch but couldn’t bring myself to eat them.If by chance you do know what it is, would you be so kind as to tell me?

Attention Deficit Housecleaning[*]

2009-05-31T07:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up restless at an ungodly early hour this morning. I did the dishes. For someone who doesn’t cook much, I generate mountains of them. The alarming number of ants scurrying to the compost bucket under the sink prompted hours of attention deficit housecleaning. I accept ants, but do not embrace them.

Attention deficit housecleaning is self-explanatory. In the middle of one mess, you notice another and proceed from hither to yon, kitchen gel with bleach in one hand, vacuum at the ready, potentially creating a greater mess in the process. I think it results from a scattered mind. Mine has been more than characteristically untidy lately.

It seems as if I’m always in search of a job. I’ve had the same one for two years now, but can no longer tolerate it. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, maybe I’m too idealistic in that I care about education over appearances, maybe, as a therapist once said, I have difficulty being an adult, maybe I need to accept that those in positions of power over me are, more often than not, idiots. Maybe. Maybe the problem lies with me, not others. Oh…. wait a minute. I’m only part of the mini-exodus of native English speakers from school. Whew. Still, there’s the matter of a job. And without a clear picture of what will happen in the fall, I can’t solidify plans for the summer. I do have options, I probably will sign a contract with another school if they would just send it to me already.

And another thing. I just finished proofreading a survey on architecture. It was like visiting old friends: why yes, I remember giving that lecture on San Vitale in Ravenna and haven’t thought about Peter Behrens in ages. Then I remember how much I really miss teaching art history, how good I was at it, especially in front of a classroom of reluctant artists taking their obligatory survey courses. I then think of the pile of notes and photocopied articles from various London libraries stashed in the storage space under my bed. Not knowing what to do with them, reluctant to recycle the papers yet knowing I’m never going to write that dissertation (well, I wrote about 30 pages of it), I shift them from one space to another during the winter-summer, summer-winter clothing switch. No, the world didn’t stop turning when I officially opted for ABD (All But Dissertation or All But Dead, take your pick) instead of PhD. And yet, I think of those less intelligent and even less enamored of art history than I with their completed dissertations…

But wait, there’s more. I regret the time wasted playing Spider Solitaire, yet I can’t seem to stop myself. I drink too much coffee, can’t seem to quit smoking despite the acupuncture treatments that oh so many years ago were highly effective.

I won’t bore you with all the “what ifs?”, the rehashing of long-dead but damaging relationships, the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s, the “why can’t I just get myself together and be more productives?” especially since I know full well that the weird little paths that I’ve either followed or made in the past years have gotten me here, here where I’m generally quite happy and at home.

The kitchen is nearly spotless, and the grout in the shower a different color. I’d like to say that my thoughts too are in order, but that would be a lie. I think a little ironing is in order.

[*] I wish I could take credit for the title; however, I stole it from a friend.

Pause Pipi (Pee Break)

2009-05-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

Recently, I stopped off at the Louvre. (Let me interrupt here just to note how nice it is to start a story with “Recently, I stopped off at the Louvre.”) It’s usually best to visit a restroom upon arriving at such places, especially if, like me, you tend to get lost despite a familiarity with the building, the plan for which is gripped tightly in your hand.

Close to the museum entrance, there was a newish boutique called “Pause WC” (Toilet Break) its shelves stacked with designer toilet paper, a wine with “pissoir” in its name, and a selection of appropriately themed books. The boutique was attended by uniformed men and women both friendly and professional.

A sign at the cash register discreetly showed the pee break prices: 1Euro for a special toilet, 1.5Euro for the “spa japonais.” I don’t know what was special about the first because I was distracted by the promise of the Japanese one. I paid the fee. For the price it had to be good. A very kind attendant asked me to wait patiently because someone was using the remote control. I waited.

Behind a curtain and a door, I was given a lesson in using the toilet. First, you have to sit down, but don’t worry; each one is cleaned with 99% bacteria killing antibacterial cleanser after each use. You must sit, because the spa only works when it detects weight.

“To use the remote control, aim there at the side of the bowl. This button is for a stream of water, these are for massage and this one is activates the dryer. I suggest you try all the buttons.” I learned that such toilets are "smart" ones in that they remember a person by their weight and will automatically adminster that person's preferred massage sequence. I of course waited until the instruction giving attendants had exited and quietly closed the door.

First surprise, a warm seat. For this, I was unprepared. I tried the buttons. The first sent a perfectly aimed stream of water. I marveled at its accuracy. The second emitted a steady ps-ps-ps-ps, also accurately aimed. The third was a variant of the second, pssssss-psssss- pssssssss. I cannot say if it was an entirely pleasant experience, yet it was indeed memorable. I finished with a very powerful air dry.

Upon exiting, I returned the remote control to the cash register attendant, and announced, “That was the best pipi break I ever had.”

On the Street Where I Live...

2009-04-02T11:56:00.001-07:00

Istanbul is a city of both great beauty and equally great ugliness, sometimes on the same street. Rumeli Hisari remains one of the "authentic" areas of the city, complete with old and crumbling wooden houses, restored ones, gece kondu ("night" houses illegally built), modern rectangular blocks...
The photo above is of my neighbor's house. She's the one who wanders the streets collecting bits of wood with which to build a new one. From the image, you can't quite appreciate the scope of the scrap pile. The one in the back is even more impressive. My kitchen window looks out onto her mess and several plum trees. I like to watch the cats play in the trees.

Recently, I stopped to say hello to my neighbor. We went through our usual ritual, "Who are you, where do you live, what do you do?" She then abruptly dismissed me with a flick of her hand. I accepted my dismissal. While headed down the stone path, I turned back to see her giving me a friendly wave.
The other day, she was seated on the curb in the sunshine, shoes and socks removed, examining her feet and talking to several people. My housemate told me they were asking her to sell her land so they could build a new residence in is place. While her home is indeed an eyesore, I hope she said and will continue to say no. For some odd reason, I like her and her determination.

I live on the ground floor of a three level building where there is access to a garden and sort of patio area. This is Ayda, the top floor neighbor's dog. We often play catch, although she doesn't understand the rules of the game.

This is my building. As an apartment, it's nothing outstanding, though the views from the balconies are. I have balcony envy, though we do have limited views of the Bosphorus from the garden.

Out the front gate and to the right is an abandoned house. Sometimes I'm quite sure there are squatters inside, though I have no direct proof. I dream of winning the lottery, then buying this house and restoring it. In fact, I dream of restoring several houses within a two-block radius. To the left and downwards is a shell of a building. Recently, parts of its wall collapsed onto the stone path in front of it. These paths are actually streets with names. Apparently there are many in Rumeli Hisari. This one is Durmus Dede (Grandfather) Sokak. It is slippery when raining, and always steep. In front of the collapsed house and during the right season, it is spattered with figs and a pomegranite or two.

More decisions

2009-03-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

Again, thank you for your comments. Wish I had another gripe about English. I'm sure one will come up sooner or later.

To take a decision is something a group does and it's an action that was done in the past.".... That decision was taken.... , they then took a decision on the matter"...and really the word would be " made" in 90% of the time.

My British neighbors, who are quite daft in most ways, TAKE decisions all the time, even though they're usually wrong. They have bad judgment in general and she is drunk by noon on most days. I think it's an Anglo thing--a Britishism. But since you are in Istanbul, it doesn't really matter, since although most Americans MAKE decisions, they are apt to also MAKE a mess.

Real people make decisions and take actions.
Committees, because they don't actually do anything except make decisions, would like to flatter themselves by considering decisions to be actions; thus they speak of themselves "taking decisions."

Taking more decisions...

2009-03-23T12:40:00.001-07:00

More comments - thank you!

I'm from the midwest and we all make our decisions. I've never taken mine anywhere.

In Hollywood, one takes a meeting...to make decisions.

Because I now do considerable editing work, I am intrigued by the question you raise about "taking a decision." I did a tiny bit of Internet sleuthing and came up with three sets of comments that seem to conclude that "taking a decision" is a Britishism. Are a number of your English-speaking colleagues either British themselves or the products of having learned their English from British teachers? That might explain the use of "taking." I myself always use "make a decision," or, if the end result is generated by deliberation by a group, I think I would use "arrived at a decision."

Taking decisions... comments

2009-03-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the comments! The following were sent to my e-mail account. If you don't see a comment you sent directly to the blog, I might have accidently deleted it... Please forgive and resend??

A decision is made, or in the case of consensus, "come to", "reached" or "arrived at". This indicates a journey of sorts, weighing pros and cons, considering possibilities along the way and then arriving at a place where deliberation stops and action (or non-action) is "taken". My two cents.

Yes, groups "take" decisions. It's perfectly correct. But it's also a quite formal, and perhaps somewhat pretentious. A lawyer or a clerk of the court might write/speak this way, but I don't think it's normal. In academia, at least the parts I'm familiar with, a department would, after discussion, "conclude" or "decide". If there were a lot of argument, the department might "reach a conclusion". I can imagine the faculty as a whole "taking" a decision, though, or a board of directors, so probably the phrase has legal, or legalistic, overtones.

I make decisions. My children make decisions. The committee made a decision.

I take pills. My children take pills. The committee takes no chances.

I outen the ligh--- oh no that's Pennsylvania Dutch.....

I think the difference has to do with British/American English. In England, people regularly take decisions. In America we make them. I think.

Taking a Decision

2009-03-22T11:01:00.001-07:00

One of the hazards of being an expat is developing the potential to use your own language incorrectly, not in big glaring ways, but in little ones, and not realizing it. Once in a while, I catch myself saying “I opened my phone” instead of saying “I answered” it, even after many frustrating attempts to convince a student that one turns on the lights/projector/television etc. I’ve almost resigned myself to “opening” rather than “turning on.”

There are misuses of certain words, however, that irritate. Forget about kids who announce “Hocam, I’m boring,” (indeed Tolgay, you are) in the middle of the lesson, or those who say “funny” instead of “fun,” or “scary” rather than “scared.” I can’t really be too fussy about that, especially since I only learned grammar through studying other languages.

No, the examples that grate on my nerves usually come up in the English office. For a group of people whose job it is to foster communication, we do it very poorly. Announcements are not announced in meetings, but are posted on the walls, bulletin boards and storage spaces. Posts have included such gems as: “All unit plans must be sent until Friday.” (“Until” instead of “by” is frequently tossed around because, I think, it’s the same word in Turkish.) I fixed it after about the 3rd such notice.

The following example annoys me no end, and not just because I really like to be right as often as possible. At my school, we “take decisions.” To me, this is like nails on a chalk board. Never in my life have I heard of a “decision taken” until I started to teach here. Where I come from, we make them, we don’t take them. Like “opening the lights,” the source seems to be from a direct translation from Turkish. Finally, I asked – and politely thank you! – if I could change the notice on the white board to read “made” rather than “taken” and explained my reasoning. We just don’t say it.

The following morning, my colleague opened a Longman dictionary (the same one we insist the kids buy but seldom if never use) to show me that decisions are indeed taken, but when they are taken by a group after deliberation. Far be it from me to argue with the dictionary. The dictionary has all kinds of good, useful but not often or differently used words. I admitted the error of my ways.

And yet, I’m still bothered. As a result, I’d like to take an informal survey of my fellow native English speaking friends. Do you ever take decisions, with or without a group, sans or avec deliberation? Please don’t look it up in the dictionary, just let me know how you express the completed act of coming to a decision. I'll post your responses.

I thank you in advance.

Moonlight

2009-03-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

Unless it’s raining or I’m wearing impractical shoes, my favorite part of the day is walking home from the bus stop. Turn right at the mosque and down the steep hill. Below and to the left, the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge spans the Bosphorus. The endless stream of cars crosses under its lights contrasting with my peaceful street.

Last week, there was a full moon. In the evening, the ever present clouds cleared. The moon shone brightly to the right of the bridge, visible between buildings flanking the street. An elderly woman walking ahead of me set her bags on the ground. She turned moonwards, and with eyes closed and elbows bent, placed her hands palms up in a gesture of prayer. She mouthed silently. I didn’t want to interrupt her private moment, yet couldn’t help sneaking peaks at her as I passed. I doubt she knew that she had provided me with a most beautiful instant.

A Question

2008-12-22T12:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, a friend asked me what I miss from my childhood. What a lovely question. I often focus on negative memories, or, because I am surrounded by them, I relive the awkwardness of adolescents. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, sorting memories, trying to differentiate between nostalgia and lack, and the things whose importance or pleasure I may have exaggerated or over-sentimentalized since.

I miss penny candy. It gave me great joy. I would do some chores around the house to earn 25 cents with the sole intention of riding my bike to the Ben Franklin Store to buy candy. I would choose with great care 24 pieces with one cent left over for tax. The process was a long one, and almost as enjoyable as eating. I would make a pocket out of the front of my T-shirt and study the bins of Smarties, rolled licorice with a little sugar dot in the center, root beer barrels. Kits were more than a penny, but worth the investment because they had four individually wrapped pieces in one package. I would empty my T-shirt pocket on the counter, and the lady whose name I never knew who always wore the same matt red lipstick, a blue smock and cat eye glasses would count them, take my quarter and return my purchase in a small paper bag. Back home, I would eat one piece after another, feeling a little sad when I had finished them and was only left with a small paper bag full of wrappers. Years later, after I had moved away, the same lady whose name I never knew who was wearing the same smock glasses and lipstick (I always assumed it came from the Avon lady) told me that she remembered me and penny candy. For some reason, I was embarrassed.

I miss fishing and the silence of my grandfather.

I miss my dog, the one I shared with my dad. Brandy was an English Setter. Her eyes were surrounded by black spots. She wasn’t the best hunter in the world, but she was gentle.

I miss believing just a little bit that life could really be like a television commercial in which people really do spontaneously burst into song because they really like Dr. Pepper.

I miss the apple tree in the back yard. Dad built two platforms in the tree. I spent hours reading in that tree, swinging from branches, daring myself, my siblings and friends to jump from the higher of the platforms. I miss daring to jump, scared of breaking a bone, but doing it anyway.

I miss getting into trouble. Not the trouble itself, but what preceded it. Taking the hose out to the sandbox under the apple tree to make an unholy mess. Jumping waves in Lake Superior despite express orders not to get wet. Eating the peas on the pod before they were ripe and without permission. Too bad I didn’t think to hide the empty pods farther away from the pea patch.

I miss my Spider Bike with the banana seat, plastic basket with ugly plastic flowers on the front and a raccoon tail from the Corn Palace in South Dakota that I bought with my own 50 cents tied to the back. Popping wheelies. Taking the shortcut through the creamery and maneuvering around the fences no-handed. So that bike nearly killed me one summer day, I still miss it.

I miss winter. A kid’s winter, not the one I have to slog through to get to work and back. Walking to the ice skating rink with my skates over my shoulder in a special bag made for me by my godmother, wearing four pairs of socks and jeans made a little uncomfortable by the extra long johns underneath them. Tobogganing down the golf course hill and spilling the sled. The smell just before it snows. Red cheeks.

I miss Christmas. I miss the anticipation of it. Obsessively decorating sugar cookies. Making Christmas present projects at school, wondering if they were stupid or if Mom would like them. The snow village and nativity set that Mom set up on the bookshelves over a layer of cotton, the little skiers and skaters, houses with red cellophane windows that one day we thought would be fun to poke out with our fingers. The red felt stockings that Mom made for each of us (mine has a snowman on it) filled with an orange, a big candy cane and pocket change in the toe. Dad would make egg noodles the week before Christmas. All the chairs were draped with them. Some of these were for the traditional Christmas Eve chicken soup. I miss Christmas carols, not the ridiculous version of Jingle Bells that was playing on a loop in Ikea today, but the kind we used to sing in church. I miss Christmas Mass, especially when we were old enough to stay up for the midnight one, driving to church and picking our way through the cold parking lot early enough to find a good pew. I especially loved the wooden nativity set at the altar and kept track of the Three Wise Men’s progress to it before Epiphany. One of them had a beautiful elephant.

Home

2008-12-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

I recently moved to Rumeli Hisarı, a very different section of Istanbul than Beşiktaş. My old neighborhood, its blacktop and concrete, its ugly rectangular buildings, is not the most aesthetically appealing one. Rumeli Hisarı is more like a village. Its narrow, irregular streets are lined with ivy-covered stone walls. Some of the streets are paved with flattish stones and are flanked by fig and pomegranate trees. Some mornings, as I walk to the bus stop, random people stop to offer me a ride up the steep and winding hill. I take their offers.

From the front garden of my building, I can see a small slice of the Bosphorus, the lights reflecting off the water in the evenings. There were two fig trees in the back yard, but the landlord in all his wisdom cut them down. Fig trees are quite hardy and these will probably grow back in the spring. When they mature, I hope they drop their rotted fruit down the back of my landlord’s neck to his shoes. There is a compost pile to the right of the steps leading from the back to a narrow side street. I am quite fond of the compost pile and regularly heap swept leaves and vegetable peels on it, happy in the thought that I am making rich, dark dirt.

I have an unusual neighbor. I can’t tell how old she is: she could be 40, she could be 70. Clearly, life has not been easy for her. She’s short, a little round and walks with a slight limp. Her clothes are old, worn and usually quite dirty. At one time, they were probably very colorful, but now are dull and gray. She wears them in layers, and they don’t always fit her well. Her hair, too, is lifeless and gray, the color of dirty snow with just a hint of yellow. In contrast to her appearance, however, she is incredibly lively. She energetically marches around the neighborhood at all hours of the day and evening. For teeth, she has two coffee-colored stumps. One is on the top left, and the other on the bottom right side of her mouth. Because of her lack of teeth, is difficult for me to understand her. I suppose many people wouldn’t bother to talk her because she is an odd, albeit regular part of the neighborhood landscape, but I have decided that she’s harmless. The first few times I talked to her, she looked at me suspiciously and spoke sharply. Maybe she was worried I would hurt her or steal from her. Later, she began to smile at me and ask questions – sometimes the same one three or four times. “Are you married? Where do you live? Do you work? How long have you lived here?” At least I think that’s what she asks me. Every time I speak to her, she shows surprise that I don’t understand her, and disbelief that I am a foreigner who doesn’t speak Turkish very well. Yesterday, I saw her near the Spice Bazaar, sitting on a low concrete ledge in the rain. She was selling tissues out of a vegetable box set on a plastic garbage bag. She looked at me blankly, then slowly, I think, she realized she knew me but didn’t know from where.

She lives in the house next to mine. In fact, her house looks a lot like her, built of ill-fitting, grubby layers. It’s made of bricks, odd bits of wood, and looks as if it’s held together with glue and chewing gum. My neighbor may be poor, but that doesn’t mean she has no projects, no dreams. At the front and the back of her house, she has piled great stacks of wood and other building materials. I often see her dragging chunks of wood, boxes or even clay roof tiles through the narrow streets to add to her piles. According to my other neighbor, she’s planning to build herself a new house.

I don’t know her story. I don’t know if she has a family, if she had a husband or children. I don’t know if she’s happy, or even if she’s really as crazy as my other neighbors think. I don’t know if I want to know.

Alaturca

2008-08-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

After I so abruptly left the hotel in a fit of anger, vented in the direction of friends, and suddenly felt unburdened, I was in need of a place to stay. I wasn’t worried, as several people offered to put me up for at least a few days. My main concern was for my rabbits.

Let me back up for a minute. I brought the rabbits with me. Because the airlines allow dog and cats but not rabbits, Cenk, Shuppiluliuma and I took the night bus from Istanbul to Cappadocia. I didn’t want to ask my housemate to be responsible for them for a month, and I miss them when I’m gone. The trip was kind of rough. The bus people were very kind and let me check on them whenever we made a stop. On the way to Cappadocia, they were accompanied by several pigeons in a box stacked on top of their cat carriers. Maybe they were comforted by the cooing that resonated in the luggage compartment. My friends Taner and Nevzat made a huge, divided cage for them. I like to think they were quite happy in it.

Taner, as you may remember from an older post, is the owner of Alaturca Old Collection, a carpet, kilim, and souvenir shop not far from the Uçhisar Castle. (It’s not really a castle. More on that later.) He is partially responsible for my financial ruin; I buy kilims from him. In the evenings, I often went to Alaturca to relax, have dinner, maybe a beer or two. My Italian comprehension improved by listening to his friends who were visiting from Sicily, not to mention absorbing backgammon strategies. I especially like the atmosphere that Taner, his helpers and friends have developed in Alaturca. Of course, it’s a business and the goal of a business is to make a profit, and pay the employees and bills on time. Often, there is a high degree of pressure from carpet and souvenir sellers anywhere in Turkey. A walk through the Grand Bazaar is never without accosts from the leather, carpet, narghile, ceramic sellers. The approach here is quite different. Passersby are invited to drink tea, coffee, maybe a glass of local wine, to sit and chat, to give and receive tips on where to best see the sunset. No pressure. One French family was so pleased by the hospitality – they had arrived by chance while olives, cheese and wine were being passed – that they returned the following evening with wine from their own region.

This room is full of treasures: jewelry,
shawls, embroidered and embellished clothing...

Following my departure from the hotel “employ” (I worked in exchange for lodging and meals) Taner came to my rescue by offering me and the bunnies a place to stay in the pension above the shop. Without exaggeration, I had one of the best weeks of vacation at the pension. Italian coffee and Turkish pastries for breakfast. Freedom to come and go unchained from my computer. Puttering. Making jewelry and playing with decorations from Turkmeni brides’ headgear. I especially loved the kitchen. It’s simple, but big. I cooked. Everyone ate happily.

From across the street

Taner and Ferhat

We drank raki with melon, a happy combination.

We ate many dinners under the awning.

Every morning, Ali and Nevzat set up all the
tables and trays, hang kilims, roll out the felt rugs...

Every night, they put everything inside.

Balloon over Uchisar

Early one morning, I heard an odd noise, like a large welder’s torch, from somewhere above. A handful of balloons were following the wind over Uçhisar.

Before

Before
One fine day, after I had bought an antique nomad milk filter for too much money (I knew it was a little pricey, but it made me really happy) Taner informed me that he had rooms upstairs full of old things. I was welcome to dig. And dig I did. One fine morning, when it wasn’t too hot, I took it upon myself to pull everything out of the storage bin and spread it out on the roof. I found countless treasures: chains for horses, stirrups, balances, wooden tools, farm tools, wooden boxes to hang on the wall for holding spoons, old mouse traps like cages, a beekeeper’s mask, a mess of old embroideries, parts of old spinning wheels, keys and locks… We hooked up the hose and I washed metal plates, bowls, trays and odds and ends, stacking them on the ledge under the nomad tent awning while greeting anyone who passed below. I got really dirty. It took me three days to put everything back. I’m going back over Ramazan Bayram to hang pots and pans from the beams and rusty shearing scissors on the walls. Someone’s got to do it.

After

Peppers

2008-08-24T06:25:00.001-07:00

I don’t really like peppers. Bell peppers, stuffed peppers, long skinny ones… Sometimes, I actually hate them. Their smell makes me nauseous, especially when they’re being cooked. I make an exception for the small dried and very hot ones called “birds’ tongues” in French that are used to make pasta arrabiata.

I do, however, like stringing things: beads, popcorn and now peppers. It was too hot one day to do much of anything, but I needed to do something fiddly. The rooftop of Ala Turca is lined with pepper and tomato plants growing in blue plastic bags. Nevzat picks the peppers and puts them in the fridge. I found them. Ali brought me a big needle and some thick thread. As I chatted with a French woman and her daughter, and as Taner spoke with some Italian customers, I threaded many peppers. I hung them on the outside wall, off the tent post, and under the window like a garland. The Italians received one as a parting gift. They’re quite pretty, like Christmas. The peppers, I mean. The Italians were atractive too.

No words needed

2008-08-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Princess Diaries Part 3: Abdication

2008-08-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

I spent a month of my summer vacation in Cappadocia. There are many entries on my list of places to go in Turkey, yet I consistently return to my favorite village, Uçhisar. This was a working vacation; I once again went to work at the fancy cave hotel, this time to edit websites, write letters and help the manager correspond in English. While my experiences there have been extraordinary (Sports Illustrated shot its next Swimsuit Edition at the hotel and other Cappadocian sites this summer. I don’t really care for such exploitation of women, but I did rub elbows with some well-known photographers, make-up and hair people and editors who are quite nice) I will no longer work at the hotel.

For some time now, I have had an inner conflict about the place as a business. Usually, I was treated well, (although my time wasn’t always respected due to some weird power plays) partially because I’m American but also because the work I do, for essentially nothing, would otherwise be very expensive. However, I have problems with the way in which the employees are treated. The working world in Turkey is a very different one than that in the US. Certainly, there are jobs in the US which are notorious for poor owner-management-employee relations. I can cite many examples from my past “career” in retail management as evidence. Yet here there is a different kind of hierarchy that is tolerated in the culture, and work can be very hard to find. Although it is none of my business, I find it very difficult to watch fellow personnel insulted, humiliated and otherwise abused in ways which I think are extreme even for this business and country.

In addition to my discomfort about the disrespect extended to the employees, I also had a moral issue with some of the texts I was editing. Without going into the details, I felt at odds helping sell the business as something it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong: it’s an incredibly beautiful hotel with exquisite antiques and textiles and an incomparable view. I don’t feel comfortable going into the details on this public a forum. Suffice it to say that I am not motivated to make money out of selling fiction (unless of course I write a novel someday…), and I do not care to work for people who routinely lie.

Maybe I’m too much of an idealist, but I had decided that this would be my last working vacation the first week into my month long stay. I left the hotel office a week early due to a conflict with the owner about taking some of the Sports Illustrated people shopping in Uçhisar because they asked me to, despite the fact that I had his “permission” which he later denied, and later denied even giving. It’s not how to do business he says. The goal is not to make the customer happy unless the proceeds go into the owner’s pockets through heavy commissions. I was so angry I cried. I hate that I do that. It’s a horrible cycle. Anger comes out my eyes, I get mad that I’m emotional, and the compounded anger raises eye ward again. When I said that I would be finished the following week, that I could not work here anymore, the owner told me I could leave now. And I shut my computer, told him I would be out of the lodging the next day and left. His last words to me, shouted from the office were, "And I don't want to hear this story from anyone in the village!" He has no idea that there were additional reasons for leaving, nor will he.

I regret that I left so quickly that I couldn’t say goodbye to my friends in reception, the restaurant, the kitchen and in housekeeping.

I still have 98% of my work on my computer, ready to be delivered to the appropriate person in the Istanbul office. I could take the high road and deliver it, but I doubt it would be used.

Luckily, I have friends who welcomed me and the bunnies. More about that in a following post.

Off to work

2008-08-21T06:24:00.001-07:00

Off to work

I live in the personnel lodging, the ground floor of an odd house, with 5 others from the hotel. It's odd in that whoever built it didn't finish little things such as putting in the last tile in the bathroom, nailing in random bits of molding along the floor. The space under the front steps serves as a chicken coop. One morning, the landlord opened a little side door to release chickens, roosters, a whole lot of chicks and one big ugly turkey. It's not a castle, but it's not bad either.

The best part of living in the house is the huge dog out front. He's at least part Kangal, the national breed of Turkey. I call him Köpek (Dog). One of the neighbor boys swears his name is Ateş (fire). Since the dog responded the 9th time the boy called him by the name, said boy remains convinced it is the right one. I stick with Köpek.

Every morning, I meet Köpek out front. After a week, he has become accustomed to me and now thumps his tail when he sees me, raising little clouds of dust. After a brief greeting and a good scratching behind the ears, we head off to work at the hotel, towards and through the old part of Uçhisar.

Woman sweeping with a twig broom

We pass houses, say "good morning" to others going to work or about their morning business. It's not unusual to navigate around tractor, horse or donkey-drawn carriages. One morning, a man in a pickup filled with large crystal chunks drove by, announcing from his truck speakers that salt was for sale . Sometimes, we're joined by another dog.

Piles of chick peas

Tea drinkers

The men drinking their early morning tea stare at us as we walk past. (Click on the photo to enlarge it.) At first, I thought they were looking at the woman with the huge body guard dog, but they stare at everybody.

Although kids will often curiously approach Köpek, delivery men and municipal workers seem visibly afraid of him. Köpek remains oblivious. Despite his size and apparent strength, he cowers at motorcycles and is indifferent to cats and most other dogs.

We walk through the small park and past the bakal (convenience store) where I buy Tutku for the waiters and where Kemal lets me borrow Time Magazine with a promise to return it the following day, to reach my favorite Greek-house- lined street. Some of these houses are abandoned, others in various states of decay, and others are currently in reconstruction. I follow the progress of a group of stone cutters who chip away precisely and seemingly effortlessly at stone blocks. They're used to me calling the dog and watching them work.

Stone cutters

If it's not too hot, the women who sell handmade lace and oya trimmed scarves sit on their doorsteps. The woman at the onyx shop and my new friends at the terrace restaurant
yell "Good morning how are you?"

Looking over the valley

About half way down the hill, Köpek stops to stretch on the very low road barrier and looks over the valley as if to appreciate the view before we finally reach the hotel.

This is usually our morning ritual. This morning, Köpek found the lower leg of a recently butchered animal, maybe a goat, next to the dumpster in front of the house. He grabbed the leg in his great jaws (I once fed him lamb chop bones. He chewed them like Pez.) and trotted back to his spot in the dirt. Food trumps me any day.

Nohut

2008-07-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

It's good to know from where our food comes.

On my way to work at the hotel, I saw piles of a kind of straw on the sides of the streets. Because I am nosey, I picked one up to see what was inside a sort of thin-walled pod. I discovered a single chick pea (nohut in Turkish) inside. Now I know.

Dried Apricots

2008-07-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

Across the street from the Post Office in Uçhisar and overlooking Pigeon Valley, an elderly man has laid out his apricots to dry in the sun. Knees bent on the concrete, he arranges the fruit to look like little dessicated soldiers lined up in rows. Every day, their colors change, from bright to burnt orange.

Tandir Bread

2008-07-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

Şerife Anna and I don’t share a mother tongue, but we do have a common language of the stomach. Every other day or so, Şerife Anna makes tandır bread. A tandır is a simple traditional oven. It’s nothing but a cylindrical, flat floored hole in the rock. All cave homes have them.

Şerife prepares the oven by burning twigs and branches until sufficiently hot coals remain at the bottom, then places several metal plates in the tandır to absorb the heat.

Then, she coats rounded dough with an egg mixture, forms a hole in each piece of bread, and sticks them to the side of the tandır The oven is covered with a large metal plate until the bread is golden brown on the top.

Şerife then removes the bread with a kind of hook.

I prefer to eat tandır bread when it’s warm. The crust is chewy-crunchy, the interior soft. It’s best with lots of butter or crumbly village cheese that has been stored in clay pots.

Please note: My original intention was to place the above text next to the appropriate photographs. After fighting with and losing to Blogspot, I am settling for this compromise.

Mulberries

2008-07-03T13:51:00.001-07:00

The mulberries are in season in June. When I lived outside Philadelphia, I was the only person I knew who ate them. Between here and there, next to sidewalks and on lawns, huge mulberry trees drop their fruit to leave purple splotches on the concrete. The birds and I are the only ones I’ve ever seen eat them. I used to sneak onto lawns, grab as many berries as quickly as I could, and walk down the street with stained fingers and lips.

In Turkey, there are both white and black mulberries. You can buy dried white ones in the stores that sell nuts, dried fruit and leblebe (roasted chick peas. Yum.) There is a very small ice cream shop in Bebek, about the size of a closet, that sells the best black mulberry ice cream. When they’re in season, you can buy mulberries from the markets and even on the street. Since they are fragile, you have to carry them carefully. More than once I have arrived home with a soggy paper bag of mulberry juice.

Between my apartment and work, there are several white mulberry trees. The fruit is not too sweet and very refreshing. Every day, I stop and eat them. I pull the branches to reach as many as I can. More often than not, the perfectly ripe ones drop to the blacktop before I can pick them. Sometimes, I interrupt another person guiltily involved in the same sport. Sometimes we ignore each other, at other times we help each other. I’ll pull the branches and point while a stranger picks the fruit. Then we give each other moist towellettes from the bottom of our handbags and say “thank you.” (Always have a packet of moist towellettes handy, especially in the summer heat.)

The ripest, plumpest and juiciest berries, the size of half of my thumb, are always out of my reach towards the top of the tree. They taunt me.

Saturday Tradition

2008-05-18T00:26:00.001-07:00

On Saturdays, I go to Sultanahmet to visit friends who work in a ceramics shop on a corner facing the Hippodrome. These friends are like a little family, transplanted from Avanos in Cappadocia, who live and work together. Each of them has special tasks assigned according to their complementary skills. Two are master potters. Zafer is charged with giving demonstrations on the pottery wheel on the ground floor. Ibo, unlucky at gambling but lucky in love, speaks fluent Japanese and therefore is in charge of the Japanese tourists. When business is slow, he and Zafer can be found diligently studying Japanese and English respectively. Erdal, a folk dancing expert with years of experience organizing Turkish Nights, speaks Italian and several other languages. He also makes a fine çi köfte, a very spicy kind of meatball made with finely ground, raw beef and bulgur. Şaban, another master potter, speaks very good English and can sell ceramics like nobody’s business. He very conscientiously describes the stages of making ceramics, from forming vessels out of clay to the calligraphic painting and glazing processes involved, and the uses of Hittite libation vessels reproduced in the Avanos workshop.

So on Saturdays, I make my way to Sultanahmet with a treat. Sometimes it’s chocolate or ice cream, maybe fresh strawberries, sometimes börek. On sunny days, we sit outside with tea or homemade Cappadocian wine, watching tourists pass and guessing their nationalities. The shop sometimes doubles as an information booth. At the corner, visitors often consult their maps looking a little lost and on the verge of in-the-middle-of-the-street-dispute so common in tourist areas. Often, they refuse the help offered them from the shop, only to turn back after a few minutes of confused wandering. If business is slow, Şaban teaches me how to play backgammon. I’m not good at it. There are little Turkish lessons for me, and English grammar points for them. Recently, I explained the passive voice to Zafer. I’m good at that.

After a pilgrimage to the silver market yesterday, I stopped to buy baklava for the Saturday tradition. I pointed at a handful of varieties and asked for one portion of each. One portion there was about three times the size of anywhere else, and I accidentally found myself with a box of about 1 ½ kilos of syrupy goodness.

Outside the ceramics shop, a backgammon game with an uncle was in progress next to a huge chestnut tree. I wonder what this uncle thinks of the crazy American who regularly stops by with food. Zafer brought me a plate, and I carried half the baklava to the sidewalk. Once a waitress, always a waitress. A few cousins and a brother arrived; a large bottle of Coke appeared from somewhere. Passersby laughingly remarked that they didn’t know it was bayram (a holiday.) I retrieved the remaining baklava packet from the kitchen, in case.

An elderly neighbor lady with head scarf and hennaed fingers regularly passes by and sometimes sits on the corner. She, like many others like her, sells packets of tissue and mastic flavored gum the consistency of rubber to earn ekmek para (bread money.) Sometimes I buy tissues from her, but yesterday I had already purchased from another lady much like her. Her accent is so thick that I can understand only one in about fifteen words she says, but I do understand when she refers to the American woman who visits on weekends. She was invited to sit and have baklava. She asked for and received a glass of water. Although her eyes said otherwise, she declared she wouldn’t eat because she would rather take some home to her grandchildren. “Teze (auntie) please help yourself and then take some home.” Teze almost greedily took a portion the size of a small slice of pie and happily ate with sticky fingers. She then asked for the grandchildren and with our consent lined a plastic bag with napkins and deposited a few choice pieces in it. At each ever quicker reach into the baklava packet, she looked up as if to ask permission, eventually emptying the box into her syrup soaked bag. Grateful, and happy with a surprise for the children, she thanked me and shuffled her way around the corner to wherever she lives.

Buying Silver

2008-04-27T12:22:00.001-07:00

My latest obsession is buying silver beads to make earrings and other beautiful things. I usually buy them at the Tavuk Pazaar, near the Grand Bazaar. Tavuk means “chicken.” There aren’t any chickens in the bazaar anymore, but there are lots of silver and bead shops. Recently, I was disoriented (well, I’m often disoriented. I got myself lost and found yesterday for about 20 minutes between here and there. At least I was in an interesting place.) while looking for the bazaar. A random man sitting on a stool in the middle of the sidewalk asked if I wanted to go to the Grand Bazaar. I asked for directions to the Tavuk Pazaar. Another random man in a bright red sweatshirt asked me why I wanted to go there. When I told him, he said he had a silver atelier in the area. If I went with him, he would then take me where I wanted to go.
I assessed the situation quickly. I decided that if he tried anything, a good public “Shame on you!” would suffice to get rid of him. He took me across the tram tracks, down a side street, into an ugly building, up the ugly building stairs and buzzed us into the workshop. A group of men were working on various parts of silver rings, “Turkish Bulgari.” After a tea, a chat about teaching English and a gander through their catalogue of relatively ugly merchandise (the rings were nice), Aslan guided me to the Chicken Bazaar.
After I had purchased a handful of silver beads, I managed to communicate that I wanted some silver wire. Aslan steered me down a smaller side street to his friend’s workshop. We walked into a dirty corridor and entered a small room where four men were working diligently. One was carving the final details into molded silver crosses. Another was shining something. Yet another was using a huge punch press to make Turkish flag symbols, the crescent moon and star, out of a narrow sheet of silver. Each moon and star fell neatly into a box.
Aslan spoke to his friend who measured a few meters of wire. It was too thick, so we ventured to another side street to an even dirtier little room. His friend put the rolled wire onto a metal thing and fired it up with a blow torch. Then he attached it to a machine that spun and stretched the wire. After I deemed it perfect, I paid the man a whole YTL and we made our way to the street.
About this time, Aslan started to take my arm and repeat my name. Time for my exit. My usual line for anyone trying to sell me something or for whenever I really want to leave is “My friends are waiting for me in Taksim.” Sometimes, I have to repeat this line several times before I can disentangle myself. Aslan headed me toward the tram and on his merry way back to work.

A Visit

2008-04-27T11:40:00.001-07:00

My parents came for a visit recently. It’s strange to see family and friends here, but strange in a good way. Usually I go to see them, or describe to them the places I find interesting. In many ways, we have no idea what each others’ lives are like. It’s a relief, in fact, that my mom and dad have seen where I live, and now know that I’m no more in danger of contracting bird flu or being attacked by terrorists than they are. Now they really know I don’t live in the Middle East. What’s normal to me, though, is sometimes little surprising, and maybe sometimes uncomfortable for them. For example, my dad often remarked upon the number of mosques and had many questions about Muslims. At times I found it kind of frustrating, yet on the other hand it’s understandable. We have a very unbalanced view of Turkey in the US. (Frankly, I never thought about Turkey much before I moved to Istanbul, except to be jealous of friends who came here on archaeological digs, and to want to see Haghia Sophia after having taught about it so many times.) More importantly, I think they now understand why I want to stay. Instead of thinking that maybe I’m running away from something, I actually have a place here and (big gasp) a purpose for staying.

Walking with Nevzat Photos

2008-04-27T02:25:00.001-07:00

The door on the left is to a chapel, on the right, a church.

Inside the church

The yellowis bit is part of a cross, now damaged, on the ceiling. It's surrounded by medallions and what appear to be twisted vines.

The church door.

Nevzat showed me where his family has land, where he used to ride on the thresher when he was a kid because it was fun. This little church is on one of those plots. You can still tell where fruit s and vegetables were planted on the now relatively abandoned land. He said that when his grandparents were alive, the church was intact, therefore the interior wasn't exposed as it is now. One day, part of the church fell down. They cleared the rocks from the church wall, and continued farming. Unfortunately, there are no photos of the undamaged church.
If you look carefully, you can see that the small windows are blocked. Clever little birds made their mud nests in them, with a little entry tunnel.

I refused to climb into this chapel. To be precise, my knees refused. Nevzat found toe-holes and made it up the slope without trouble. Most Turkish names mean something; rain, freedom, warrior... I think in the remote past, Nevzat meant slightly crazy goat.

I asked how the monks managed to get up the hill. Apparently, it was much easier these many centuries ago because the ground level has sunk considerably.

Nevzat took this picture. I can't take credit for it.

Rock formations

The lower floor was used for bees.

In a chapel

A chapel dome

I can't tell you the names of the little churches and chapels because they have none.

A house

Once a chapel, then a dove cote, now eroded.

Looking towards Uchisar

A four-story dove cote in Pigeon Valley

Walking with Nevzat

2008-04-27T02:23:00.000-07:00

While my parents rested at the hotel, I took another walk with Nevzat. We started in Pigeon Valley, looped around Uchisar, crawled in cave homes, up and overlooking valleys with vastly different rock formations, crossed through water tunnels, passed little springs, rambled through the trees and climbed into churches and chapels. The fruit flowers were blooming, little birds were singing and the tortoises were procreating. It doesn’t look like a comfortable thing for them, but they did it with gusto, clacking their shells against each other’s. We said hello to people working in their gardens, some of them in the middle of nowhere. I wondered how they got their produce to their homes. When the ground was a bit slippery or steep, Nevzat held his hand out for me, palm up. I felt like a lady. I wondered if anyone saw us from a distance, and what they thought of such a delicate gesture.
For four and a half hours, we walked. I’m most interested in the chapels and churches, the buildings sculpted out of rock, the thought and planning that has to go into extracting rather than adding material to form a little dome, a pilaster, an altar space. Some of the chapels had little tombs cut out of the rock floors, the bodies long gone. Some had painted walls and ceilings. I try to imagine the depth of faith a monk had to have to carve out a space and isolate himself from the world, or of the coming and going of people in the landscape. Four and a half hours later, I returned to the hotel, sunburned, sore and very happy.

Balloon

2008-04-27T01:04:00.000-07:00

I could go on and on about what an inexplicable experience a sunrise balloon ride in Cappadocia is, about how vertigo isn’t an issue because the ground gently falls away from you, about nearly touching trees, about floating in silence except for the gush of gas and flames and hot air, about heat on the back of your neck. I could. But I won’t.

Tulips

2008-04-27T00:46:00.000-07:00

Every Spring, Istanbul has a Tulip Festival. Thousands of tulips are planted along the roads and in parks. The flowers and the return of the herons to Gulhane Park are signs that a new season has finally begun. Here’s to Spring.

henna

2008-02-24T12:10:00.001-08:00

These are my hands with henna. It's funny how people react to them. Some start to sing songs which I assume are associated with the ritual, others turn up their noses in various degrees of disgust. It's for old village women they say.

Photos from Cappadocia

2008-02-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

The Princess Diaries: Season 2

2008-02-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

I recently returned from another two week, working vacation in Cappadocia where I again gave English lessons and edited texts in exchange for room and board at a very special cave hotel, the Museum Hotel in Uchisar. Again, I was fed far too much extremely good food, explored one of my favorite places free of many tourists, tramped in the snow, and cleared my head of the first school term. For several of those days, I returned to my room, Castle, where I could look out onto the balloons rising in the morning, or across to the Buket Hotel, or in the other direction to whichever valley is beyond the window. I can't remember which it is. Not only do I love the room, but I love the fact that I have to go through a tunnel, slightly bent so as not to hit my head on the doorways, to reach it. I’m a lucky lucky woman.

Walking

2008-02-21T12:29:00.001-08:00

For the past two days, we’ve the worst snow in Cappadocia in 15 years. This morning, there was no evidence that I had helped shovel the night before. I learned an important lesson though. It's much nicer to shovel with a wooden shovel than a metal one.

Because the roads were so bad, the personnel service bus left early, and I had few friends with whom to speak. I was bored, so I wrapped myself up warmly and walked up the hill to the very small shopping area in Uchisar to buy some chocolate. I also wanted to buy a toy or something for a German boy who is staying here with 3 adults. He seemed so stir crazy. I got him some pastel pencils (no regular colored pencils to be found) and gave him an old sketch book. Before dinner the following evening, he shyly presented me a drawing of fairy chimneys with an erupting volcano in the middle. It’s really sweet.

As I was walking and talking to the few people who were shovelling snow, I noticed one open shop. It looked so cosy and warm from outside the steamed windows that I decided to enter and look around. Three men were sitting on low chairs, eating from an equally low table. In the center of the table was a huge terra cotta cooking vessel with a shallow edge, filled with ground meet and eggs cooked on top. No forks, just scoop up the food with a little bread. They invited me to eat (I am so well-fed at the hotel that I can never fit anything else in my ever larger person) and tea. After the meal and tea were finished, Taner showed me the rest of his shop concealed by a kilim hung over the doorway. I found some lovely things and learned that what I had thought was part of a pulley was actually a carved walnut, roasted coffee bean cooler. Such a beautiful solution to an everyday task. I looked at the special combs women used to comb the wool for kilim yarn. It's a very different technique than carpet yarn combing. I couldn’t resist one made of metal, like a bent and incised fork for pulling wool through to retain the length of the wool fibers. According to Taner, I have very different tastes than most people. Guilty.

Taner later showed me some of his kilims and carpets. Of course the first thing I saw was a beautiful, 40-50 year old tuylu of naturally colored wool. Tuylu means “furry.” This kind of rug is called tuylu because, after it’s woven, long strands of mohair are pulled through and knotted on the underside. They look kind of like shag rugs but furrier. And nicer. It's a very good thing I didn't have my wallet with me. Besides, what am I going to do with one more tuylu in addition to the three I already own? I told Taner about my silly dream to buy a nomad’s yurt and fix my living room (when I have my own, of course) as a tented space. He didn't think that was odd because he intends to do something similar with one of the rooms in his shop. It would be a place for his guests in the pension above to relax and drink tea. So, maybe I'm not completely crazy. When I told him about my project (not yet abandoned) of learning about kilims, he said the best way would be to stay in his shop during the summer and watch the repairmen. In exchange, I would sit in the front of the store and say hello to passersby and woo them into the shop. If I went on a tour, I could, without pushing of course, steer the tourists in the direction of A la Turka Collection. Now, this is the second time that someone has offered me a job selling carpets. Is it my winning personality and enthusiasm for the merchandise that compels them to do this? I don’t care. It’s nice to be offered random jobs.

When I told Taner of my plan to ask a local boy (who knows secret places better than a kid?) to be my guide to the hidden spaces in Uchisar, he recommended I call a friend of his who can show me the cave churches and chapels in Uchisar. I know where two are. These aren't painted churches. Apparently there weren't a lot of Christians in this village in comparison to Urgup and Goreme where there are plenty of paintings.

Later that week...
By coincidence, my friend Irfan was shovelling snow in front of his closed shop at the time I was walking past it. I drank many glasses of tea with him in his shop last year. He’s an art historian and guide, so we have much to talk about, especially regarding Byzantine churches in Cappadocia. Because it’s so dead here in the winter, it's better for him to lead tours than to have one or two little sales every day. We stood in the street and talked about some of the buildings in Uchisar. He's got quite a bit of knowledge in his head about the town, and I want to pick every last bit of it. He told me that there was a caravansary in Uchisar, not a large structure similar to others on the Silk Road, but one carved into a cave. lrfan played in its stables when he was a child. He has a project to convince the municipality to move the road that is covering parts of the now rubble-filled caravansary and restore it to a decent condition. I'm all for that. I shared my bright idea to propose a graduate seminar on historic preservation in Uchisar at the Middle Eastern Technical University. Some say it’s too late for Uchisar, but I can have my little fantasy.

I stopped by to say hello to Taner in his carpet/antiques shop. I have this huge problem (yep, it's really a problem) that when I stop to say hello for a few minutes, I'm offered a glass of tea and wind up talking for a while. Maybe it’s because people are bored in the winter. Or maybe it’s because I talk a lot. It’s more likely due to the fact that people here are incredibly welcoming. When I told him I was interested, he immediately called his friend who was there in five minutes. I recognised Nevzat, a nut brown, wrinkled man with a few missing teeth. He often hangs around the castle to offer his services as a guide. We had even spoken briefly the day before in front of the castle near my favorite antique shop. He doesn't speak much English, but he guides other guides from elsewhere because he knows the area so well. For 30 YTL (I could have bargained for less, but there's a hell of a lot of snow here,) he will show me the churches we can actually reach, and many of the old abandoned houses. Life is good.

Nevzat

2008-02-21T12:27:00.001-08:00

From inside an abandoned house

This morning, I met Nevzat in Uchisar village. Uchisar is at the peak of Cappadocia. The old village is made of an irregular terrace with houses extending from the side of the hill. The stone houses don’t exactly cling to the hill because they’re connected to caves and therefore extend from it. In other words, the houses are constructed and carved. Some houses are in disrepair, the caves inside filled with dirt and rubble. Some of the houses are being restored. Nevzat pointed at certain houses and told me the nationalities of the people who had bought them. French, Japanese, German. A little further down the hill is a series of fairy chimneys, our destination.

Nevzat

We followed a road I had not yet explored, down the side of the hill. I made him stop in the empty houses, and despite the snow, we managed to get to second floors. He explained to me which rooms were for storage, which were kitchens with a tandir, a hole in the floor that served as an oven. From there, we entered a cave structure, an apartment-like building with many houses, kitchens, dove cotes... I would never have dared enter by myself for fear that I would collapse with a floor. Most of the time I wasn’t scared, yet we did cross some slightly treacherous territory. At times, we had to exit the cave interior and climb across the exterior. When you touch wet tufa, your hand gets a bit sandy. I was a little afraid I would slip and fall while moving from one cave to another. Nevzat always took my hand when it was a bit iffy, and he pulled me up more than one snow-covered tufa staircase. I was struck by the contrast between my very white and his brown, farmer like hands.

I wish I could show you every detail, the pigeon cotes with little niches, almost like those for religious statues. Some of the rooms had few niches, others were dedicated solely to the birds, with rows of niches, places for food, a carved column in the center. Some of the chapels were turned into pigeon houses during the Ottoman period. Most that were originally carved by the Ottomans have paintings on the exteriors where the birds entered, in the same burnt sienna color as in the churches. Since these were on plaster, they are better preserved. Some of the Arabic is probably legible, and there are pictures of men on horseback, birds, and other symbols. I tried to ask Nevzat why the cotes almost always have paintings. He thought I asked what they were for, and explained how the inhabitants collected the pigeon poop, put it into packets, and carried it to their gardens by horse. I skimmed a book I just bought on Cappadocia, that explains that it was believed that pigeons are attracted to color. There are very few birds in them now. Nevzat explained to me, if I understood correctly, that bats killed the birds, sucked their blood and left the dead bodies.
We climbed up and down winding staircases, looked up through chimneys. Nevzat showed me where wine and pekmez (grape pectin, a kind of molasses still eaten in Turkey) were made in rectangular structures, where the animals ate in the stables, where horses were kept (now how the hell a horse got up into the fairy chimney I do not know), where the bakeries were. In one kitchen, we entered a slightly twisting tunnel. Nevzat walked backwards, bent over. I followed with my little flashlight, equally bent over. The tunnel circled around the kitchen, and we re-entered the room.
We made our way around the Uchisar hill, climbing, descending, not paying much attention to the snow. I took pictures like there’s no tomorrow, until, unfortunately my battery died about an hour into the tour. Where’s the charger? In Istanbul. Duh. When I get this problem solved, I’m going to hire Nevzat for another tour. And why not? This was the best 30YTL I’ve spent in a good long while.
Nevzat and I communicated quite well, even though my street Turkish doesn’t cover a lot of vocabulary and the accent is different than the one to which I am accustomed. I even think he got to kind of like me because the snow didn’t bother me, and I was adventurous.
He knew that I’m interested in churches and chapels, so these were our main goals. There are a surprising number of chapels in Uchisar, tiny ones carved into the upper parts of the fairy chimneys. Many are closed due to erosion, but we did manage to go into about 6 of them. Each one was a little surprise, tiny barrel vaults with apses, sometimes a bit of a dome, a small decoration carved in a ceiling. Some had graduated pillasters, niches for what I assume may have been icons or candles. One had a grave in the floor. One had regularly spaced incisions that reached the summit of the dome. These were painted directly on the stone in a burnt sienna color, nearly the same as the henna on my fingers. Needless to say, I was completely captivated.
The previous day, I had learned that a homeless man lives in one of the fairy chimneys underneath a reachable chapel. Homeless? This guy has a satellite dish on the exterior of his cave house. I peeked in the open door. It looked quite comfy cozy to me. This was one relatively easy chapel to reach as there is a staircase with a railing up half of the exterior. What kind of upset me was the rubbish he stored in the chapel, old cans, bits of beds, wood, bottles. And this was a lovely little one.
We looped around the Museum Hotel towards 1001 Nights hotel. There are a monastery and at least one chapel in the rock structure. This was the one scary part. We had to do a little rock climbing to reach the interior. Nevzat managed to get me in and out without a problem, though I admit to sliding on my backside to descend. I’m happy to say the climb was worth it. Each little chapel, not matter how small, has slight differences. This one is blackened on the inside. Recently I learned that fires were lit in many churches to deliberately cover the paintings in soot. Whether or not this church was indeed painted is difficult to say.
Down again, around more cave houses and fairy chimneys. There is a little tea house below. In the summer it must be beautiful. We sat out on the balcony and warmed ourselves in the sun. Despite the level of snow, we visited the one church I had found last year, near the shepherd’s cave. This is a larger carved structure, with a blackened apse and now blocked windows. One of the larger window frames is decorated with something I would love to have, a piece of wood with diagonally shaped holes carved in it. Many of these retain the original volcanic rocks that were pushed into them. This technique, of forcing rocks into wood is reminiscent of the duven, threshers, that I like so much. Yes, they’re tools, but I find then quite sculptural. Nevzat pointed out the hole in the ground near the apse/altar space that looks like a tandir. It’s actually a baptismal font. Last year, I had not noticed the bits of original Byzantine paintings that are barely visible: an outline of a saint here, a decorative motif there.
From the church, we climbed upwards towards the castle. I thought the tour was over, but no. Nevzat led me down some stairs, down a street, through a doorway and into the snow. We climbed to another chapel, this one next to a room recently used as a chicken coop. The rock itself was quite eroded, so much so that a large hole had formed. I regretted the camera problem because the sky was perfectly blue. It would have been a great photo.
We ended the tour with a cup of tea in Hasan’s cave store. I was invited to have hamsi, but I don’t think I’ll make it since I have at least one more lesson this evening. Due to the snow, we weren’t able to reach a few other places. Nevzat is happy to repeat and extend the tour next week.
Now I’m a bit sore from walking in the snow and caves for three hours. I’m not complaining.

Restaurant Theatre

2008-02-21T12:22:00.000-08:00

Some days, I don’t have many chances to have great adventures. That's alright, because daily life here isn't so bad. At least an hour or two every day, we have what I call "Restaurant Theatre" with the wait staff. I even wrote a little script. We role-play; you're the waiter, he’s the customer. It can be pretty funny. Sometimes we snap our fingers and chant “What do you recommend?” It’s very musical. Some words are more challenging than others. For example, “Smoking section” has proven to be difficult to pronounce.

It’s refreshing to have motivated and enthusiastic students. It’s also rewarding to know that they have actually learned something and can apply it. The other night, French Mehmet (he speaks a little French. There are 8 Mehmets here. I get them all confused.) applied what he had learned while serving an American couple. He said "May I take your plate?" and “Would you like coffee or dessert?” I could have hugged him right there, but it wouldn't have been appropriate.

Snow and Scenery

2008-02-21T12:21:00.001-08:00

Between lessons, I go for walks, sometimes alone and into Uchisar, sometimes with the manager, owner and their dogs. Together, we hike below the hotel and above some of the valleys. The snow is quite beautiful, especially on the low mountain range in the distance, or crystalline and fragile at close range. At some points, you can look over the valleys. Each one is different, depending on what is contained in the tufa. A high iron content can turn a valley pink or red when the sun hits at certain angles.

I can't describe to you how incredibly beautiful it is here in the snow. The light changes frequently. As the sun and clouds pass, and the shadows change, each view is a glorious photograph. Unfortunately, I cannot capture the subtlety of these changes with my camera.

Ding Ding Ding

2008-02-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning, I went to Goreme to try to find a charger for my camera and to visit the Buckle Church at the Open Air Museum. I had forgotten that on winter Sunday mornings, very little is open. While I was wandering around looking in carpet store windows, a man opening his shop asked me inside to warm up by the fire with some tea. A fine way to occupy my time. Soon, his friend and shop partner joined us. We had a lovely chat in French. After two glasses of tea and offers for another, I finally excused myself to head to the museum with a promise to stop back on my return because one of them wanted to ask about Christian iconography that he never understood.

The Buckle Church was as wonderful as it was last year. I took a long time to study the paintings on the walls, identifying the stories told during my years in the Catholic school and from my Art History lessons both learned and taught.

On the roads to and from, there are signs with arrows pointing to the direction of churches not in open air museums. There are many in the Goreme area. I had often passed a sign for El Nazar church and decided to follow the direction of the arrow. Since the top layer of snow on path to the church had been cleared, I thought it was near enough to the road to take a short detour and make it back to the hotel for lessons. I walked. And walked. The path curved once, then again. I thought about turning back, but decided I’d come this far and it would be stupid to give up. I walked a little more until I saw another sign but no sign of the church. At this frustrating point, I took a good look around me and thought it would be better to appreciate my surroundings than complain about the distance. Finally, I spied to church with cleared steps and a closed door.

Fortunately, I spied the ticket office, from which a man in slippers greeted me and took my 5YTL entrance fee. I was charmed by the church interior, its form and paintings.

As promised, I stopped to visit my new friends before taking the bus to Uçhisar. Since it the bus comes less frequently on Sundays, I had to wait an extra half hour. In that time, two others stopped by for tea near the fire, one carrying a welcomed box of fresh baklava. As promised, I answered questions about the relationship between Jesus and St. John. One man asked about the henna on my hands and who my new husband was. I almost missed the bus.

The following morning, the hotel manager looked at me with a mischievous smile and asked, "Do you have a boyfriend in Goreme?" Ummm, what? These towns are so small, and there's so little going on that gossip travels fast. Apparently, word got out that I stopped for tea at the carpet shop. Even though my intentions are to talk and look at things, the men think there’s going to be a little ding ding ding for one of them with the lone foreign lady. Sorry. No there will be no dinging.

Ode to a Stove

2008-02-21T12:17:00.001-08:00

I think my favorite place at the hotel is next to the wood burning stove in the dining room. There is always a pot of water, simmering with cinnamon sticks and cloves on top of it. I eat breakfast or drink my afternoon coffee next to the stove. Not only is it warm, but from the window next to it, there is a panoramic view of the valleys below. I like to watch the shadows move across the fairy chimneys and the hills; at night I watch the lights from Goreme, Urgup and Avanos in the distance. We all gather there for lessons and to keep warm, chairs in a half-circle. Despite our language differences, we have silly little jokes that begin around the stove and continue throughout the day.

By now, the central heating has been installed in the restaurant, and the stove has gone, destined for somewhere else. I will miss it on my next winter trip. Maybe I’m a little nostalgic, but I like the whole hearth and home idea, I like that people come together near the fire, not just for warmth but for camaraderie. Central heating is a wonderful thing, yet I can’t imagine us huddled around the radiators making jokes.

More walking

2008-02-21T12:07:00.000-08:00

It will probably take as long to describe today’s walk as it did to walk it.
Instead of going up the hill and directly to the village, today I decided to walk around the other side, to the left of 1001 Nights hotel and following the shepherd’s route. The shepherd’s route is obvious. You just follow the tracks and sheep manure in the snow. I learned today that you also pass the shepherd’s house not far from the hotel. Today, four of his five children were playing on the roof or in the snow. Their faces were smeared with dirt. I wanted to throw them all in a full bathtub with a bar of soap. I also learned today that this shepherd is not a nice man. (I had my suspicions last year). If I understood correctly, the hotel owner gave all the children books, pens, notebooks and clothes for school, but the parents don’t make the kids go. Neither are they responsible for their children’s hygiene or manners.

As I made my way over the sheep’s path, I noticed patches of bloody snow. I assumed that one of the semi-feral dogs was injured in a fight. Sometimes the paths are treacherous, and I carefully picked my way over the icy patches, determined not to land on my backside.

I clambered up the hill to revisit the church and look at the huge oven below. Because there were no dogs in front of the sheep cave, I assumed it was empty. To my surprise, there were roughly 40 lambs, some of them little little, busily eating straw, some inside and on top of the wooden manger or out of the those carved in the cave walls. Who knows how long this cave has been used in the same way, centuries maybe? For some reason, I found the farmy smell of hay, animals and manure, and the sound of lambs determinedly crunching straw very comforting and homey. I also realized that maybe it wasn’t an injured dog that colored the snow, but a sheep giving birth. At least, that’s what I’m going to believe.

Up above the cave, I followed narrow streets between empty, ruined houses. Of course, I entered. One of the caves actually had a tandir with a stone lid balanced to one side. The tandir of course was full of glass bottles.

A little girl in a bright pink coat was building a snowman with her mother. She stared and stared at me. Three women came down the street, all with hands nearly blackened from henna. We compared our different shades.

From there, I took the indirect way to castle, stopping to say hello to Hasan who offered me a glass of tea. Then off to say hello to Taner who was on the roof of the building he’s repairing to extend his carpet, jewellery and antique shop. I climbed the rubble filled stairs to look at his progress, walked over planks set up for wheelbarrows and refused to attempt the unstable looking ladder to reach the higher roof for a view of Avanos. A nice view, I’m sure, but my arthritic knees don’t like ladders. Nevzat was there, smashing unwanted ledges and shovelling the remains with the energy of a goat.

Just below Taner’s store is a tiny little shop in which a man carves little statues of Cappadocian fairy chimneys from the local pumice. Since I had already tried my hand, however briefly, at carving the stone, I have wanted to make something with it. What, I’m not sure. The man who runs this shop is white haired, but looks younger than Nevzat’s 55. I find it difficult to understand him, not because of the language difference, but because he must have had some kind of medical problem that took his voice. In my Tarzan Turkish, I asked if I could buy a piece of pumice to carve. He looked at me oddly, then controlled his curiosity. After I chose one from a large pile, I asked the price and he said 3. I assumed he meant 3 YTL, but by 3, many people mean 300 old lire or 30 kurush. I gave him 3YTL. Maybe he was feeling generous, maybe he thought I was nuts, or maybe he thought the price was a bit excessive for a piece of rock, I don’t know. He spontaneously gave me a small statue, maybe 2 ½” tall and wrapped it in newspaper for safe keeping. I gave him a kiss on both cheeks as is customary when receiving gifts. Then, he demonstrated how to use a pumice stone on his foot, and put that in the bag as well, maybe because he appreciated a kiss on the cheek from a younger, foreign woman. Yes, I’m bringing back rocks to Istanbul.

Feeling adventurous, I took another of the narrow roads in between the houses. These aren’t paved roads, just the narrow spaces in between rows of houses. I finally saw one of my snowball fighting friends from last year, a little boy with an impish grin. I like to think he recognized me even before I told him that I had seen him last year. Of course we threw snowballs at each other and grinned impishly.

Despite the fact that I ran into more ice than anticipated, took little detours to avoid it, and stopped to pet the Kangal, a huge breed of dog indigenous to Turkey, in front of a nearby hotel, I was only 3 minutes late for my lesson with the restaurant staff.

Mumin

2008-02-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

Mumin, otherwise known as Mehmet, one of the cooks whom I had met last year invited me to his home to meet his family. After the other customers left the restaurant, we made our way up the hill to his house arm in arm to keep from slipping on the ice.
His house sits behind the one in which his mother, sister and her two children live. It’s very small, but he built it himself and is very proud of it. The decorations are simple, many of them handmade by his wife. I learned, again, that if you compliment someone on something they have made, you may well receive that thing or something like it as a gift. I later returned to the hotel with a bag full of scarves with oyas, a white cotton scarf with beaded decorations on the edges made by Mumin’s mother, and towels with handcrafted trim.
I played with his older son while the baby slept, and had a simple conversation with the rest of his family while Mumin’s wife cooked dinner. Aysegul, Mumin’s wife, spread a table cloth on the floor and set a low table on top of that. We sat around it, well, I had to switch to a chair because my knees can’t take low tables, for a simple meal of eggs, olives, chunks of well cooked meat, bread, jam and honey followed by tea and good strong Turkish coffee. It was one of the nicest meals I ate during the whole vacation.
As Mumin escorted me back over the ice and down the hill, he explained to me that it doesn’t matter if his house is small, if he doesn’t have many things. He’s close to his family and that’s what matters. He’s happy.

Food

2008-02-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

There is a lone Asian man staying at the hotel. He leaves early in the morning to hike with his special walking poles. At dinner, when the waiter brings his food, he carefully takes apicture of each dish. Except, of course, the soup.
Speaking of food, the new food and beverage manager arrived. She's reintroducing authentic Turkish food into the restaurant to replace some of the more European dishes currently on the menu. (There are many Turkish dishes on the menu, she’s adding more.) As she ponders the new menu, she experiments in the kitchen. I have benefited greatly from her presence in that area. Last night, I had tender lamb chunks in a tomato based sauce surrounded by eggplant puree. Simple to make but so good. She told me how and I just might try my hand at it. This evening, I had grape leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts and currants followed by what is roughly translated as water borek. There are about a million kinds of borek, all of which I do so enjoy. This one was made with layers of thin dough, not quite as thin as phyllo, in between which was lovely white cheese. I don't want to think of the butter content. At breakfast, I have sweet and savory millefeuille borek, kind of like little croissants, with either herbed cheese or chocolate and bananas. I really don’t want to think about the butter content.

Henna

2008-02-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

I have a very special relationship with the staff here. For some reason, they really love me. The other day, I noticed that Nur had a bit of henna left on her hands. I love the way hands are hennaed here. This morning, after breakfast, we sat near the tandir (a carved hole that serves as an oven) and she put some on my hands. She had some prepared in a bit of plastic wrap. It looked like pureed spinach and alfalfa, but smelled much better. She made circles on my palms, and covered all of my fingertips. Sherife Anna, the round cook who makes the best yoghurt and desserts, grabbed a metal baklava pan from the kitchen and played it like a tambourine/drum. Apparently, before women get married, there is a kind of hen party. The bride has her hands done as mine are, and there is singing and dancing. We laughed a lot. After the henna was in place, Sherife Anna wrapped bits of paper napkin around my fingers, and laid some on my palms. I was instructed to sit in front of the coal burning stove with my hands in a warm spot to set the color. I looked darn funny with my bandaged fingers, hunched over to warm them by the fire.

Road Trip

2007-12-19T12:30:00.001-08:00

Recently, I went to south eastern Turkey with a friend from the States. Here are some of my favorite photos in no particular order.

Nemrut

Beehive houses in Haran

The oldest beehive house in Haran
Nemrut
Nemrut

Nemrut

Aremeia

Aremeia
Protection from evil in Haran
Never offer children gifts in Haran
Haran castle

The Oath

2007-12-19T12:21:00.001-08:00

I love most of my students, even when they drive me crazy. Sometimes I love them because they drive me crazy.

Utku is a special case. I alternately want to drop kick him across the room or pick him up and squeeze him. Despite the fistfuls of candy he eats between every class, he’s thin as straw. He has a squeaky little voice that emanates from a tiny little face punctuated by a big toothy grin that usually appears after he has said something inappropriate or just plain out of context. Since he has an attention deficit disorder, he is forever squirming in his chair, picking something off the floor, out of his pocket or off of someone else’s desk. His best friend doesn’t want to sit next to him (please don’t say to him hocam he’s my best friend in the world) because he’s too disruptive in class. Utku now sits with his desk firmly abutted to mine, almost directly under my nose.

Last week, we began a story telling project using paintings as starting points. Utku was particularily interested in the Roman soldiers in the Oath of the Horatii. He described the three men with arms raised in oath. He spoke of the swords to which they were pointing, pausing just slightly for dramatic effect. With an ever so slight Irish accent, he proclaimed, “The little bastards” and grinned his oversized grin.

I had to control myself from falling on the floor with laughter.

Hopeful and Hopeless

2007-11-08T13:30:00.000-08:00

There are days when I seriously doubt whether or not my kids are learning anything. Well, that’s a nice way to say it. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. And yet, there are days when I know why I do.

Recently, the 7th graders have been learning about Ancient Egypt. They have (erroneously) learned that archaeologists are scientists who study artifacts. They also learned what an artifact is. Now, as some of you know, I’m an honorary archaeologist with a bit of experience in the field. And, as some of you might know that while it’s important to me that my kids learn their English, it’s maybe more important to me that they develop their critical thinking skills. With that in mind, I developed a very special project for them, one which took me weeks to prepare. (I’m kind of slow.) They would be archaeologists themselves. Of course, they also had to work on summary writing because that’s the skill in this week’s lesson plan.

People can’t just call themselves archaeologists without a little training. Without boring you with the details, we discussed how it’s possible to learn a whole lot about ancient people by examining the objects with which they were buried. We looked at some of the artifacts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial. I had my reasons. They were purely selfish. But the kids got the message. Afterwards, they were ready to look at some artifacts of their own and make their own interpretations.

Last weekend, I prepared the artifacts. This of course included going to the labyrinth of stores around the Spice Bazaar looking for stuff. Then I spent hours making little things out of air-drying clay and digging through the bits and pieces odds and ends that I tend to collect and put in jars. I concocted 5 bags of artifacts, all from one cemetery, one each belonging to a man, a woman, a girl, a boy and a shaman/priest-like figure. That all but the last are related by common artifacts could be noticed by the more attentive members of the groups.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been artsy-fartsy, so I rather enjoyed my play time and am very proud of my handiwork. I made little babies wrapped in blankets, dolls, axes, shields and swords, bull heads with gold-tipped horns, flutes, masks, toy chickens, and cooking bowls. I found ceramic toy horses I had made a few years ago, tiny crochet hooks, little bells (no whistles), earrings I no longer wear and a whole bunch of other bitty things. Most of the ready-made artifacts were waiting in jars on my bookshelf. I lined my artifacts up on the table and giggled at them before carefully placing them in Ziploc baggies.

Before beginning the project with the kids, I gave them a little lecture about how much work the project took me, and how I had to trust them with the things I had made, therefore they must handle them with care. Then I set down the rules. No one could complain about who was in their group. The designated group leader was responsible for receiving and returning all the intact artifacts. They had to be quiet and respectful, and they had to take detailed notes.

And it worked. My first group was so good, I almost cried. OK, that’s an exaggeration. All the classes who participated were serious, careful and thoughtful. They asked lots of questions. They experimented with different hypotheses. They got it, even the one slower group who had earlier in the week earned my trust. One group with the little girl’s bag learned that maybe archaeologists can’t put together all the pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes, they can’t make decisive conclusions because the evidence just doesn’t make sense. In one class, the group with the protective objects correctly identified their owner as a shaman. (It’s the same word in Turkish.) I almost kissed Mehmet for that one. Another class understood that the family consisted of a mother, father and two children with only one hint: the same kinds of beads were in the mother and daughter’s bags. God love ‘em but I was proud of my kids.

Yet with joy comes sorrow, and my success today was tempered by my group of hopeless kids.

I have one class of 16 students. It’s the smallest 7th grade class because it is the worst on several levels. Each and every one of these 12 boys and 6 girls has some kind of learning and/or behavioral disorder. There’s a near complete range of psychological ones as well. Forget learning English. These kids have difficulty understanding their mother tongue. Don’t get me wrong. I actually like some of them and am fully aware that they did not choose to be the owners of their respective disorders. It’s a good day if I send no one to the office, don’t give a written warning or don’t send for the assistant principal to haul someone out for a lecture. I’m happy when the level of chaos remains low. Two of them recently took to calling me a terrorist. “You terrorista. You live Kurdistan” followed by something spoken so rapidly in Turkish that I could not understand a word. I got the gist. (This is not the group that I previously allowed to talk about the PKK. I ain’t that dumb.) Because I knew that these kids would torture me if I responded angrily, I just told them to sit down and be quiet. My teaching partner gave them a good talking to in Turkish for me. Bless her.

These are the kids on whom the administration has given up. The vast majority of them do not belong in this factory of a school, yet it is nearly impossible to expel them due to laws in Turkey governing education. The boy who last year brought a knife to school and this year a shotgun shell might have been expelled after many reports, but only after a series of psychological tests. It doesn’t take a trained expert to understand that the boy does not comprehend the difference between right and wrong.

They’re not completely stupid though. They’re smart enough to know that since I don’t speak Turkish, they can pull things that they would not dare with other teachers. Today while they were working in groups, drawing pictures of the warrior king from Sutton Hoo, I turned around to see one of the girls smack a boy. She was provoked, but I didn’t see the provocation. As she had been verbally warned several times, I sent her to the office and gave her a written warning. I later discovered from the principal, who is extremely supportive of me, that they had a little bet going on during the class. The boys were deciding which of the girls in the class would get pregnant and by whom. They’re 13. Indeed the girls were scandalized, but they were not innocent in the matter either.

Yes, it’s sad and hopeless.

Potentially Stupid

2007-10-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

Two of my six 7th grade classes are extremely difficult. Forty minutes with a variety of learning difficulties and behavioral disorders can make me want to hang myself. (I’m doing research on how to deal with ADD. Hopefully it will help both me and the kids.) Yesterday, I did something that was potentially stupid but at the same time very positive with one of those groups.

As you may know, 12 Turkish soldiers were killed near the Iraqi border on Sunday. The following day, many of the kids in one of my classes were excited about the prospect of military retaliation. In particular, A felt it was good and necessary to kill terrorists. He expressed his enthusiasm by shooting a roomful of imaginary terrorists with a gun formed by his hand. Without giving my opinion on the matter, I managed to settle him and several students who vocally supported his actions.

Yesterday, A entered the classroom with a colored map of Turkey, Iraq and surrounding countries. Before the lesson began, he excitedly tried to tell me what he thought was going to happen, what he thought should happen and where the terrorists were. He was trying so hard to express himself in English that I didn’t want to discourage him. At the same time, if one student holds my attention before the lesson begins, the rest of them go completely nuts and are difficult to settle down. I asked him to sit down, but promised we would talk about it later.
I gauged the mood of the class. All of them were interested in what A had to say and wanted to talk. Had I thought that any one of those students would be offended or upset, I would not have touched the subject. The kids clearly felt a need to talk. While the topic is a sensitive and potentially offensive one, I decided to change the lesson plan on the spot. I called A to the front of the class, and told him he could be the teacher for a few minutes. It was his responsibility to tell the others to be quiet if needed. He went through his routine.

B (these are their first initials) who is normally silent unless called upon, felt compelled to join A at the head of the class. He too tried to express himself in English. When the effort was too difficult and his thoughts flowed too quickly, he fell back on Turkish. T translated for us. Everyone listened. No one imitated gunfire. There was more interaction in English during that lesson than in any other before. Although I do not agree with A, B, T, Y nor C’s opinions, I was really proud of them for their effort. And while I don’t agree with them, I think it is important to give kids a forum in which they can express their opinions if they are not violent or overtly offensive. Clearly, their opinions are shaped by their parents and I was therefore careful to remain neutral.

A produced a handwritten list of 100 kids from the 6th-8th grades who wanted to join the Turkish soldiers. Not all of the names were boys’ names. I found that quite interesting.
I found it odd that the PKK was not directly named for the first 15 minutes of the discussion. Whether they assumed we all knew who was responsible for the 12 deaths, I don’t know.
According to A, the terrorists live in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. They spend the day in the city and at night go to the mountains to train. Where exactly those mountains are, he could not say.

While remaining neutral, I started to ask them questions. “Who is in the PKK?” “Americans, Russians...” I was the one person who mentioned the word Kurd. Blame was placed on Americans. “The Americans do this, they do that...” I interrupted to remind them that I’m American. A look of surprised realization came over T’s face and she quickly apologised for offending me. I told her no offense was taken and that although I am American, I do not support what my country has done and is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Additionally, and I think they understood, I told them that I would never say that Turkey was good or bad, or that the PKK is good or bad. (Really, I’m in no position to say. Nothing is black and white, I haven’t lived with this reality before, and I never want to be one of those foreigners who steps in to say how things should be run. Additionally, I do not pretend to understand the situation.)

I asked if they knew what the PKK wanted. I drew a really bad map of Turkey and made a circle where I think the PKK wants to establish their own country. IP corrected me, took my chalk and drew a line down the middle of my map. When I asked them why they wanted their own country, they stared at me blankly though they understood the question.

To be honest, not much of the discussion made sense to me, yet this was the first time there was a sustained discussion in my class, and it was the first time of few of them voluntarily spoke. For that reason, I was very proud of my kids and told them so. It’s not often they receive compliments.

During the break, I told a few of my fellow teachers about the class. They were horrified. I later told the assistant to the foreign language department director that we had a discussion about the PKK and terrorism and that the kids were amazing. She didn’t recognize the students’ accomplishment in English; in fact, I don’t think she even heard I said it. Understandably. Without getting angry, she firmly told me never to talk about it again, the subject was too sensitive and I could expect angry phone calls from parents. I went back to the teachers’ room fearing that I would be called into someone’s office the following day to answer for my actions, knowing that my students and I nevertheless experienced something positive.

No parent has called so far. I will never touch the subject in class again.

My second potentially stupid action is to post this story on a blog. I’m not so paranoid to think that some government association will track me down to question me about what I’ve written, but I do know that I’ve opened myself to negative criticism, not to mention being called stupid.

Misconceptions

2007-10-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had a phone conversation with my dad. He jokingly asked me how life was in the Middle East. As with many jokes, there was an underlying sense of anxiety to it. Slightly offended, and wanting to set things right, I firmly reminded him that I don’t live in the Middle East. Technically, I live in Europe. While Istanbul isn’t as “European” (whatever that means) as say, Paris or London, it’s not Beirut either. I live in no more danger than in New York or Bloomer, Wisconsin for that matter so don’t worry about me Dad.

On a recent trip to the United States, two of my ultra-conservative, hyper-Catholic (we are meant to suffer in this world so we can gain an eternity of happiness) relatives made derogatory references to my proximity to Muslims. With mouths squeezed into sphincters “So, how are those Muslims treating you?” and “Whatever you do, don’t let those Muslims get you down.” In both instances, my back went stiff and all the hairs on my neck stood straight. I wasn’t nice to the first relative by coldly stating that there were stauncher nationalists and more narrow-minded people in the same room as we were. Their beloved Christian, god-fearing George Bush and friends are far more dangerous to all of us than the man from whom I buy dried figs. I was too aggravated to deal with the second. I can’t unpaint that black and white world, a world in which there is only one true god and all other people regardless of religious affiliation will burn in the hellfire of damnation.

It’s already established that I’m going to hell in a hand basket.

Some days are just good

2007-09-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

It’s Wednesday. Wednesdays are my worst days at work. I teach six out of eight school hours. Three of those are with my two most difficult classes. Two of those hours are back to back. If I can get even one of these groups to open their notebooks by the fifth time I’ve told them to do so, I will have achieved a great goal.

Despite Wednesdays, I do enjoy my job teaching 7th graders. Yet, there’s something missing in the order of an intellectual challenge. At heart, I’m an art historian. I miss researching and teaching it. I miss the kinds of questions we ask of objects, wrapping my brain around what something built/painted/constructed/sculpted might just mean and why, not to mention how those things are made. And I miss talking about such things with other people who care about them. Rather than just complain about it in my recently developed lazy fashion, I decided to find a project. I am now going to learn about Anatolian kilims. Just for fun. No papers to write, no tests to take, no proving to anyone that I am a dedicated student.

There is a very special carpet and rug shop in Ortakoy, run by a kind and generous woman. She’s one of those elegant and graceful people who would make me feel like a huge bull in a tiny China shop if she weren’t so very nice. Once I sat in her office for a good while, sipping tea, staring at a kilim hanging on the wall and wondering why its weaver made some odd design choices. On a whim, and possibly because it’s Wednesday, I decided to venture to Ortakoy, tell her (the shop owner, not the long-dead weaver) about my project and ask for her advice. Since it’s a bit presumptuous for a relative stranger to ask someone for advice out-of-the-blue, I brought pastries for her and her family for “iftar,” the meal that breaks the sun up to down fast during Ramazan.

I was warmly greeted. I was warmly thanked for the pastries. I explained my project and why I needed to have it. She was excited and pleased, maybe because I had asked for her help, probably because she loves kilims, even more than rugs. She led me to her book shelf and pulled out a large volume. Lovingly, she opened the pages, pointing out illustrations of how wool is cleaned and certain patterns are woven, and charts of various ingredients for dyes. The symbols, she said, are not the most important thing. Oh no. It’s the wool and how it is prepared. I was convinced. Reading is a good way to start, she said, but the best way to learn is to watch the making of the kilims. (That’s a project for further down the road.) She assured me that it would not be a bother if I came to ask questions. I left after a story or two and happily walked home to Besiktas.

I stopped at the bakkal (convenience store) across from my apartment. It was just after fast-breaking. Ahmet Bey and his helper were hunched over their meal, a pan of eggs and pastirma (a salty, dried meat), a dish of pickled vegetables and bread, set on a low, paper-covered table. I respect those who fast and do not want to interrupt their long awaited meal. As I was setting 2YTL on the counter for a carton of milk, Ahmet told me, in no uncertain terms, to sit and eat. His assistant brought me a fork with which I ate from the same pan as these friends. Last year, one of my Turkish students critically called Turks uneducated and primitive because they often eat from the same dish. I disagree. Maybe I misunderstand this ritual, but I like how it makes us hunch together, both literally and figuratively. But god help me, I’m the messiest eater and had dropped more than one chunk of pastirma in my lap. I don’t think anyone really noticed. After a glass of hot tea, I thanked Ahmet and excused to go home.

I weighed my Wednesday work day against my random experiences and decided that overall, some days are just good.

How to take a shower

2007-08-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

Some apartments in Istanbul that were built in the 1970s and ‘80s were equipped with very basic bathrooms. For example, the shower consists of a shower head and a drain on the floor. These may be situated close to a toilet. In subsequent years, the bathroom may have been modified. Mine is one of those. A square plastic “floor” with a shallow rim sits below the either hand-held or stationary shower head. It is surrounded by a curtain suspended by a rod held by a chain from the ceiling. Because the room is small, and due to the above-mentioned modifications, taking a shower requires preparation.

Except during the hottest days of summer, turn the water heater dial to 2. While waiting for the little light to turn green, make and leisurely drink a cup of coffee and contemplate the day ahead.

When the water temperature has sufficiently risen, remove the mop and corresponding bucket and the clothes basket stored in the shower and place them under the sink.

Lift the drain cover below the toilet brush holder and place the end of the plastic hose extending from the shower “floor” and behind the toilet over the opened drain. Since we tried to unclog the shower with commercial drain cleaner (the package said the product was safe to use on plastic pipes: unfortunately it deformed the hose) this hose must be propped against the drain cover and the toilet brush holder to prevent a large puddle from forming on the floor. These procedures take less time to perform than to describe and soon become habit.

While taking a shower, be careful to avoid water from escaping the immediate area to further prevent puddle formation.

Accept that no matter how diligent you are, or how carefully you have propped the hose, you will invariably cause water to leak behind and in front of the toilet. This usually happens when you are in a hurry or late for work.

Following your shower, mop the floor, pushing water down the drain. Reverse the above preparatory procedures, i.e. replace the mop, bucket and clothes basket, and turn the water heater back to zero.

Have a second cup of coffee and resume contemplating the day ahead.

Washing clothes in the same room also requires certain procedures, yet in comparison, these are much simpler.

The washing machine in our bathroom is hooked up so that water can enter the machine, but not automatically exit it through a drain. After loading the laundry, remove the hose from behind the machine and place the hook shaped end into the toilet. Failure to do so will result in a flooded bathroom. Adjust the dials to the desired temperature. Push the power button and jam a toothpick in the space between it and the adjacent button so that the power remains on.

Be grateful that you have a washing machine in the apartment.

To be clear, I’m not complaining. I like my apartment, and don’t mind the bathroom at all.

I Kind of Hated My Job

2007-08-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

My unexplained absence for the past few months has been due to a lack of computer. When I left my previous job, I had to hand in my laptop. (See below.) This is not to say that I have not made some priceless observations. Au contraire. I’ve got them stored right up here. (You can’t see me, but I’m tapping my forehead with my index finger. Not a hammer.)

I’m now writing to you from my new, indeed my very first brand new to me, computer. That I bought it and the office software package all by myself and primarily in Turkish, is a point of pride.

While I take time to organize my thoughts on a recent trip to the States, the end of my first year teaching in a private school, and the 25th high school reunion which I did not attend, I leave you with the following. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t post it earlier.

I Kind of Hated My Job
Due to lack of teaching space in the school, I used to teach on the ground floor of a converted villa. It was alternately used as a ballet room for the little kids, a storage space, the chess activity room, an office for teachers and administrators who wanted to hide for a few hours, and an English classroom. Since the beginning of the year, I fought with the powers that be to respect the space as a classroom. Every week it was something new: cleaners and maintenance people doing little repairs or moving furniture in the middle of class, the chess teacher rearranging everything and trying to muscle his way into the space... My younger students had the attention spans of one tsetse fly between them and didn’t really need such distractions.

The school also had, and as far as I know still has, a cat. He was a dirty -should- be -white -but - sidewalk –colored, and was "adopted" by the school when he was a kitten. The director is so full of himself that he baptized the cat with a feminine version of his own name. Unlike the director, the cat dropped a pair of testicles, but retained his given feminine name. The housekeeping staff left food for him during the week. A constant presence in the school, he habitually slept directly in the middle of the floor in front of the first floor staircase, ignoring children and teachers who would carefully walk around him. For a few weeks, he took it upon himself to spray the desks in the English department offices, rendering it impossible to work in them. We were going to take up a collection to get him snipped, but he must have gotten wind of it because he subsequently chose to mark the 6th grade room instead.

One Monday morning, I went to the villa early to set up a projector to watch Bowling for Columbine, and to chase out the two women who usually worked in there until after I brought my students to it and reminded them that I had a class. (They were always shocked that I was going to use the room for teaching purposes. Clearly, a teacher leading 8 students carrying notebooks wasn’t much of a clue.) Much to my surprise there was one desk in the room. Hmmm. How to hold class with one desk and no tables? I found the principal, in whom I had little confidence, who feigned surprise at the lack of proper classroom furniture. Indeed she was the one who instructed the staff to move them in the first place. She decided to look for a different classroom for me, as if one would magically appear in a broom closet. I told her I didn't need desks immediately as we were watching a film, but when and if she did find some, to replace them during recess so as not to interrupt my lessons.

The kids were happy to relax, and asked permission to use the large pillows stored on the side of the room opposite the classroom area. (The room was quite large as it was the bottom floor of a converted house.) Two minutes later, the girls had installed themselves in the place farthest from the projector to concentrate intently on something. Ah, it was the cat. As if it was a rare treat to caress a filthy creature that they saw roughly 20 times a day. I noticed that there were food and water dishes and a litter box in the corner. Hmmm. It did not bode well.

I gave the group my usual, "look at this face and tell me how happy it isn't about wasting time therefore don't aggravate me anymore" speech. Because I can be quite threatening, they complied and soon we were watching the film projected against the whiteboard. Not 3 minutes later, the cat started to traverse the floor with one leg twisted underneath and behind him. Michael Moore became priority number two. Slowly, the cat dragged himself to the litter box where he proceeded to make a deposit of the same number. Of course, all eyes were on him, including mine. My classroom had become a large kitty box. Since the smell of cat deposit makes me want to lose all 3 of my morning cups of coffee, I opened windows as the cat continued his ass-scraping, post litter box journey across the floor. Perhaps prompted by my angry reaction, one student asked the rhetorical question "And this is supposed to be a classroom?" Because the students were concerned about the cat, I'm not so cold-hearted that I didn't notice something was wrong, and because I wasn't going to get anything done otherwise, I told one of the girls to pick the cat up gently, set him on a pillow and pay attention to the movie.

During break I shot an e-mail to the principal to tell her that the lack of desks was disrespectful to me and my students, and that while I have sympathy for injured animals (we later learned that he had been hit by a car over the weekend and was put in the room by the security guards,) my classroom was no place for a cat to relieve himself.

Sometime during recess, a few desks were replaced in the room and I could proceed with my young tsetses as usual. I had warned them that the cat would be in the room, that he was injured, and that they were in no way shape or form to bother him. 10 minutes before class ended, the friendly maintenance man entered the room with a cardboard box, put the cat in it and took him outside. The litter box full of presents was, of course, left in the corner. It took me a few minutes to redirect the attention of the boys, my flightiest of tsetse flies, and a long moment to calm my anger.

When I left, the cat was sitting in the box near the exterior door of the villa.

When I returned to the classroom two days later, the litter box and deposits remained. I resisted the temptation to tip its contents on the principal’s desk.

Post Script
1. I want to emphasize that not all aspects of my job were intolerable. The majority of my colleagues were (and probably still are) remarkable people.
2. Despite the fact that some of my students had the attention span of a tsetse fly, I do love them and will miss them.
3. The cat was subsequently taken to the vet hospital where his broken hip was repaired. For about a month, he kept a low profile but recovered nicely. He was not, however, fixed.

Tiny bunnies

2007-05-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

Cenk and Shuppiluliuma have grown. They're now at the age at which their ears seem to big for their bodies. They often sleep side by side in their "house," groom each other, and fight over hay and lettuce. These photos were taken about four weeks ago.

Signs of Spring: Tulips

2007-05-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

Herons, tourists and artichokes arrive with spring. Istanbul also celebrates the season with their native tulips. These are from Emirgan Park. Some are so bright, they make your eyes hurt to look at them.

Enginarchitecture

2007-04-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

At the bottom of the horrifically steep hill on which I live, there is a covered market. I stop there regularly to buy fruits, vegetables and greens for the bunnies. The merchants recognize me and nod hello. The man who sells dried fruit sometimes invites me to sit behind his counter to drink tea.

If you never stepped outside the market walls, you could still tell the season by the changing piles of food. Recently, strawberries came in season. Mounds of cherries will be ripe soon enough, but now are too expensive. Later there will be mullberries, so fragile that if you're bag of them is heavy, half of that bag will be full of mullberry juice by the time you reach home.

Enginar (artichokes) are now in season, and bless them but their's is a long one. Some vendors sell nothing but. They sit with huge piles of them, deftly cutting and discarding the leaves and choke, then selling them in plastic bags with water.

Today at the market, one vender had built himself a green fortress of carefully stacked artichokes, as if prepared for a seige. Surrounded by three and a half walls, he sat in the middle, littering the floor with a speed that demanded my respect.

The Deaf Leading the Yabanci

2007-04-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

As a reward for sending a slew of CVs and cover letters yesterday, and because today is, if not technically at least in reality, the last day of vacation, I decided to explore an area of Istanbul I had never seen. In the current issue of Cornucopia, an upscale magazine about Turkey (some think it’s too chichi, I like the photos) there is a short article on Itfaiye Caddesi. Running parallel to Atatürk Bulvari, it is apparently a place where many from Southeast Turkey have immigrated. According to the article, you can hear Arabic spoken in the neighborhood. Additionally, it is peppered with Byzantine churches. Most importantly perhaps, there you can find excellent honey in the comb. These are three things that please me: listening to Arabic, (I don’t understand a thing, but I’m used to it) Byzantine churches and the honey I have just recently learned to appreciate.

I armed myself with a detailed map of the area ripped out of a magazine. Often, maps are useless to me. I couldn’t find my way out of many bathrooms with one. I always have to turn them upside-down or sideways to match the direction in which I am going. My sense of direction is nearly hopeless so I rely on large monuments to guide me. Still, when I successfully follow a map, I pat myself on the back.

There was no back patting today, not yet. As I was walking down Itfaiye Caddesi (I got there by accident) I stopped to locate a museum which was across the street on my torn out map. An old man clutching prayer beads stopped and asked me where I wanted to go. After several attempts at telling him, he motioned to his ears, shook his head, took a folded piece of paper out of his canvas case, and motioned for me to write. Haaaa (this means “now I understand"). He’s deaf. I wrote the name of a Byzantine church for which I was also looking. I didn’t want to look stupid because the museum was within sight just across the street. Regardless, or possibly because of our difficulty communicating, he took the map from my hands, motioned for me to follow him and stepped out into traffic. Unable to tell him that my PTSD (due to being struck by a car several years ago) now and then rears its ugly head, I followed. Apparently there is a god who protects small children and elderly deaf men. And me, but only by association. He stopped a man standing in a store front to ask directions. The man didn’t know, but closed the door and took us down the street to what I believe was an emergency vehicle station. The emergency vehicle man looked carefully at the map, circled a place on it, gestured as he gave us directions and wished us a good day. I could pinpoint the moment he understood that before him was a Tarzan-Turkish-speaking foreigner being led by a deaf man by the subtle change in his expression. There was no disrespect, just curiosity. I had an image in my head of three blind cartoon mice.

My new friend and I ventured, he with a slight limp, a tilt, an occasional stumble and a giggle, across Atatürk Bulvari. Clearly, he is not fazed by regular suicide missions. I was pretty sure the church was in the other direction, but he was already halfway across the street. We stopped frequently to ask the location of the old neighborhood church. He stuck his head in several stores, loudly declaring "Yaaabanci (yabanci means foreigner) wants to know…" I think he was enjoying his position as tour guide. At one point, he walked into an open door onto someone’s private property. Unaware of the barking German shepherd and the house owner, he tried to get directions from a woman and small child. The owner looked at me quizzically. I pointed to my guide, my ears and shook my head. After the man gave us directions he left, only to pull up beside us in his car. All of us had a good laugh before we were deposited at a parking lot facing a small, brick, Byzantine church turned mosque. It was lovely and unexpected, with remnants of mosaics in the small pumpkin domes. The interior was painted a pristine white. It was not, however, Zeyreki Kilisesi.

We stopped to look at two tombstones; one of the poet Necati Beyin Kabridi (I think), the other of the historian/ philosopher Katip Celebi. My guide silently uttered a short prayer.

On the other side of the boulevard and up the hill, I noticed a Byzantine dome. I gestured to it. My friend started to cross the busy street without looking again, so I pulled on his sleeve and pointed to an underground passage. Up the hill, around a café and past a series of ancient columns. This indeed was the correct church. We attracted enough attention – my friend speaks very loudly – so that, although the church turned mosque turned museum was closed, the man holding the key agreed to let us enter. According to a sign, the building has been recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Site, and I have recently learned that restoration on it has been halted due to lack of funds. Unfortunately, photographs of the interior are forbidden. I would love to have images of the brick walls and high domes, all in various states of decay. There are seven extant original floor mosaic motifs, one of which is visible when a sort of fake grass colored rug is pulled aside, a padlock is unlocked, and a small wooden door is raised. This one is of Samson getting his hair cut.

My guide and I silently agreed on a sort of communication by writing on a piece of paper, nodding and gesturing. I learned that he is 76, has been in Istanbul for 55 years but had never seen Zeyreki Kilisesi before, studied law and became deaf sometime during a bout of meningitis and TB. The whole time, I kept hoping that he would not ruin the experience by asking if I had a husband, if I had kids, or telling me about an estranged wife. An Italian man of the same age would give me a sad marital story before giving me a wink and a nudge. As if. As far as I can tell, there was no hint of such hopes on this fine day. For that, I was very grateful, particularly because this man apparently has no fear.

Following a short bus ride, we went to another small Byzantine church turned mosque. He motioned for me to follow him behind the building to look at brickwork, a bit of sculpted marble and the height to which the ground has risen since the church was built. As I was taking photos, he motioned me to a building across the street with a cultural center in it. After climbing four floors – the man is quite nimble for one with a slight limp and a tilt - he knocked on a few doors until someone opened for us. Apparently, we interrupted some kind of meeting, but were welcome after I was introduced as a teacher who wanted to take pictures from the balcony. We were offered tea and a mercemek köfte, a kind of meatball made with red lentils. One of the men in the meeting gave me a quick tour of the center, pictures of folk dancers and their website address.

Sensing that I might otherwise find myself in all of the Byzantine churches turned mosques in the near vicinity and needing to buy dirt and hay before the stores closed, (a person needs hay for bunnies and more dirt to grow parsley for them) I wrote that I was going to Taksim to meet friends. Certainly, my grammar was far from perfect, but he understood. Since I can’t pat myself on the back for my map-reading skills, I will for my level of Turkish. I realized that I know more than I thought, and might actually be able to use the future tense correctly every once in a while. But I wasn’t allowed to leave quite yet. Across the street from the church is a Federation for the Deaf where I was introduced to a group of men who clearly have respect for my new friend. Tea in a café followed (Simitizza anyone?). Soon, we were writing bits and pieces on the paper. We finally introduced ourselves, and Remzi wondered why I have a Jewish name if I’m not. He also wrote me a little note, part of which I understood and concerns visiting the buildings designed by Mimar Sinan. I have been instructed to have a Turkish friend translate the whole thing for me. Not one wink or nudge.

Oh, I did hear Arabic spoken in a garage-like structure where several men were building cheap particle board desks, but I didn’t have the chance to buy any honey.

Anne geldi

2007-04-27T01:35:00.000-07:00

My room mate's mother recently visited us for a weekend. I like her. She kind of reminds me of my Italian-American gramma. She sometimes points to my "Turkish balcony," or slightly pudgy stomach, as if to say "Where did that come from?" and then pushes food. Every morning, she prepares an elaborate kahvalte (breakfast) with cheeses, eggs and sucuk (a garlicky sausage), olives, and sometimes my favorite balkaymak. Bal is honey, kaymak is usually translated as clotted cream, but I think that's not quite right. In essence, it's a potent combination of fat swimming in naturally produced sugar. Liberally spread on freshly baked bread, it's one good reason for living. In her honor, I bought a special tea glass with a blue "A" (anne means mom) fused to the side.

I've learned to live with one of her habits, and from an informal survey of friends, have discovered it's quite a normal one. Each time she visits, she rearranges. One day I came home to discover that the door leading to the living room had been taken off its hinges to make room for the new furniture arrangement. Just last week, I discovered that the same door had been discretely stored behind the kitchen cupboards for months. After she leaves, I have to search for the new locations of spices, the trash can... She does clean out the fridge and that's a good thing. Sometimes, in her fervor but with a lack of options, she puts things back in the same order as she originally found them on a previous visit. Keeps me on my toes.

Metin's Words of Wisdom

2007-04-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

I was dreamily thinking out loud on the service bus after school today. I said I was going to go home, make a good cup of coffee, sit on the balcony and read a magazine. Maybe after that, I would embroider. Metin looked at me and with conviction said, "Seize the rest of the day."

Indeed.

Miss Mary

2007-04-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

The following is from my niece Mary. It speaks for itself.

HI!!! My name is Mary Hable. I’m over four and half years old. I live in Lino Lakes, MN with my Mommy and Daddy and two kitties, Chippy and Sophia. I have Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC). TSC has caused things to grow on my kidney, heart, skin and my brain. The things growing on my brain are called tubers and they have caused me to have seizures since I was born. I have been on over ten different kinds of pills to try and stop my seizures but they haven’t worked all the way. About two years ago, I had surgery to remove four of the tubers from my brain and some of my brain to hopefully stop my seizures. It worked for three months. I still have some seizures but they aren’t as bad as they used to be. When I wasn’t even a year old, I was having really bad seizures, sometimes for more than ten minutes each. They made me and my brain tired. Because my brain was tired all the time, I couldn’t learn as fast as other kids. Even though I’m over four and a half years old, I can only do about what a two and a half year old can do. I started walking three weeks after my third birthday. I can’t talk very much but I understand just about everything. I know some sign language too, like “help”, “please” and “potty.” I still wear diapers even though I can go on the potty if I want to. I go to school with other kids that are behind and we have lots of fun.

About one in six thousand people are born with TSC. That’s more than have Lou Gehrig’s disease. The affect on everyone is different, from not even knowing they have it to death within moments of birth. Most people with TSC have seizures and growths on their skin. There is no cure for TSC. Please help me raise money for TSC research so maybe one day all people born with this disease can live typical lives or better yet, people will never again be born with it. We have a long way to go but with your help, I am sure it can happen. Thanks and I Love You! Bye!

Cenk: Warrior Prince

2007-04-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

Shuppi was quickly outgrowing his little cage. He soon would not have been able to stand up to his full but short height. Once again, I found myself in the Spice Bazaar, but this time to look for the largest available cage. As I was drinking my glass of tea, I reached inside a cage to pick up a little ball of fur. He was very soft, very rambunctious, and quite adorable. Thankfully, I have a very tolerant room mate. Now Shuppi has a new friend.

Cenk (pronounced Jenk and means Warrior) is a slightly nervous bunny. He doesn't care much to be held, and he will only tolerate a short hypnotism. Although he is younger than Shuppi, he's surpassed him in size. From the size of his back paws, I predict he will be significantly larger. Eventually, they will grow out of this cage and I'll have to think of a better housing solution. Additionally, they'll both have to be fixed to prevent aggressive and territorial behavior. So far, they get along quite well. They cuddle and groom each other. They sit in their little house side by side. It's so cute it's nauseating.

Shuppiluliuma

2007-04-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Recently, I went to the Spice Bazaar to buy basil seeds at the plant stores. It’s not necessary to venture to Eminönü to buy seeds, but I like the crowds and activity. Since I was near the animals, I decided to have a little bunny therapy. I have a weakness for them. Some people say rabbits don’t have personalities. Some people are very wrong. After watching me play with some pink-eyed, white ones, (I’m not a fan of pink eyes but they were easily accessible) the pet seller dragged me (oh that was tough) into his store. He handed me one little fur ball, then another. I became rather attached to a tiny gray one, about a month old, who sat calmly in my palm. I was tempted, but I have a housemate who has a dog. I sat with the bunny. I had a glass of tea. I made a quick phone call to my housemate to ask if it was alright to bring my new friend home. Twenty minutes later I was on the tram with a new cage, dwarf rabbit food, bedding, and a tiny box full of one tinier dwarf bunny.

Shuppiluliuma (Shuppi for short) is named after a Hittite king. He’s small, so he needs a big name. While he is tiny and growing, he’s very fast. Unfortunately, he’s not exactly stable on his feet. As soon as he gets up a good run and a twisting hop, he loses footing and slides a bit. Rabbits have a behavior that we call “prairie dogging.” They stand on their hind legs and look around at the world. Shuppi exhibits such behavior, but overestimates his abilities. At times, he overextends himself and falls over. Undaunted, he does laps around the apartment, exhibiting a knack for getting into places he shouldn’t. The dog is a bit jealous and very curious, but so far hasn’t done him any harm. Shuppi pays very little attention to her, much to her disappointment. His playtime is, of course, supervised to avoid any mishaps.

Currently, Shuppi’s favorite food is parsley. I’m afraid I may be overfeeding him as his belly has become quite round. I put a vase of greens near his cage. This morning, he had already eaten everything within reach. Raised on his back feet, he succeeded in biting a stem above his head, gave a good tug, and fell over backwards, a bit of parsley clenched firmly in his teeth.

I used to have rabbits when I lived in Philadelphia. Norman Murray Feldshu, a female, non-practicing, Jewish, mini lop lived in the kitchen. She died a few years ago at the ripe old age of seven. Pippo Spano, named after a painting by Andrea del Castagno (a pet’s got to have a good name) a rescued, gray, male, dwarf mix rabbit lived in the living room. He loved Norman. As soon as I let him out of the cage every night he would run to Norman’s cage and deposit little gifts for her. Both of them, frustrated by their unrequited love, made the most unnerving grunts. Pippo was fond of running up the stairs, jumping on the furniture, eating popcorn and my housemate’s Akkadian translations. Recently, I had been thinking about Pippo, who was adopted by friends a few years ago before I went to London. After I brought Shuppi home, I learned that Pippo had died the week before. He too died at the ripe old age of seven. He had a really good life.

A Package

2007-03-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

I had an awful day at work. Woke up tired. Schedule mishaps all day and a chess tournament in my classroom when my students and I were supposed to be in it. The usual.
After work, I got on the bus, barely able to stand up. All the seats were taken and people were standing in the aisle. One man was sitting next to a seat on which rested a package covered in a plastic bag. I pointed at the package and in my Tarzan Turkish, asked if I could have that seat. He sighed a heavy sigh, looked at me as if I had asked for his left kidney, then slowly and deliberately folded his paper, put it in his pocket and got up. I said, no, no not a problem. He bitterly insisted and guarded over his package from behind the seat. I was too tired to argue, and not capable of telling him to put the thing on his lap.
More people got on than off the bus. One after another, they asked me if they could have that seat. I said, in Turkish, "It's not mine." But whose is it? I pointed to the guy, who explained something. After four people in a row asked me, the whole front of the bus got involved. But whose is it? I pointed, lots of I don't understands followed from both sides, followed by a series of "t-t-t-t" and why don't you sit down and put the package on your lap? I didn't understand his replies. Finally the man, who I noticed smelled like stale fryer grease, picked up and stood with his package in a huff. Three stops later, he got off the bus. All eyes followed him, there was much giggling as the conversation continued almost until my stop. One woman jokingly gestured that she was going to give her water bottle its own seat when one became available. Laughter all around.

I wish I understood what they were saying.

Herons

2007-03-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

There are several signs that spring is arriving soon. (Granted, we haven't had a true winter. Despite my pointed requests to the powers that be, there was no snow, and therefore no anticipated days off of school.) One of my favorite spring signs is the nesting herons in Gulhane Park near Topkapi Palace. Last week, I heard a rumor that they had returned. On this fine sunshiney day, I confirmed the rumor.

When I was a kid, my parents used to pile the five of us kids in the pale urine colored Oldsmobile stationwagon with the Triple A sticker on the back to drive somewhere in the middle of nowhere to watch the herons nest. My mom would excitedly point to a place off in the distance, at the top of the trees. "See, they're right there!" Although I never actually saw them, I might lie and say that I had. I was bored as a kid in the back of a urine colored station wagon could be.

In contrast, when up close and personal, the Gulhane Park herons fascinate me. Some of the trees house as many as seven individual nests of older couples with larger ones, and the new home owners building from scratch. One couple was having a bit of trouble setting up home. A large twig, part of the foundation, transported from way over there fell slowly to the ground from a dizzying height. The herons are most beautiful when the wheel and float with their impressive wingspan fully spread, a tuft of black feathers upright on heads extended from long graceful necks. My own short and inflexible neck hurts from craning it to follow their flight.

(These photos were taken last year on a gray and rainy day.)

Balloons on the Bosphorus

2007-03-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

I wrote this about a year ago. Recently, I haven’t had much time to walk on the Bosphorus, but have glimpses of the water every day as I walk down the hill to the bus stop.

My main source of exercise is walking on the Bosphorus, and about that I have no complaints. Usually, I take about an hour to walk from Emirgan to Bebek or farther, or Emirgan to Yenokoy. Granted, I dawdle. I have some kind of ADD that makes me gawk at jelly fish and trash swirling in the water, or shellfish packed in double layers on sea moss coated rocks. Lately, since the weather has been nicer, a few enterprising men have set up long strings of balloons on the water. They then sell hairy macho men the chance to shoot BB pellets at the balloons and show off to their girlfriends who either don't seem to care or giggle. The numbers of little old men pushing carts of packaged sunflower seeds and big round sugar wafers have increased.

Lately, my primary obsession is the birds on and around the water. There are, of course, your garden variety seagulls that sometimes swarm in frightening numbers in a Hitchcockian way. Once in a while, towards Istinye or Tarabiye, you might see a heron. One kind of bird, the name of which I don't know in English but which is called "karabatak" in Turkish, amuses me. They look like small, squat ducks with black heads and charcoal gray bodies. Their bills extend up between their eyes. Sometimes, a small group of them will take turns waddling then jumping off of a small raft-like thing, one by one almost hesitating, talking themselves into it, then plopping into the deep end and swimming off as if there's nothing to worry about.

From a distance, you can see city block long rows of some kind of bird, I don't know which, flying low, just skimming the surface of the water and flapping as if their little lives depended on it. The speed with which they cover the water is impressive. Sometimes, as a group they decide to rise above the water by about a meter and then, as a group, they decide it's not such a good idea and lower themselves back to the surface.

My absolute favorite bird is the cormorant. They settle on buoys and small boats. Sometimes they raise their wings and balance as if they've just applied a roll on deodorant and are waiting for it to dry before putting on a shirt. When they feed, they suddenly bend their necks and dive into the water. I like to silently count the seconds and try to anticipate when they'll come up, shaking little fish in their beaks. It's nicest when there's a handful or so of them. They dive one by one, and one by one reappear, swimming along at a good rate, the tuft of feathers at the top of their heads standing straight like a little aviary mohawk.

Last week, I saw some swans. All I could think of was the images of dead swans being stuffed into large plastic bags, or bulldozed into plastic lined pits by men wearing plague suits. And I hope against the inevitable bird flu that will migrate here and possibly lead to the deaths of "my" birds.

2007-03-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

Me in the middle of the housekeeping staff.

2007-03-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

Tired of shoveling snow, the staff puts on a "folklore" performance.

2007-03-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

The girl in the middle followed me and insisted I take a picture. She called the little guy with the necklace over for the photo. He proudly and self-consciously strutted with his pearls bobbing on his chest.

2007-03-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Balance.

2007-03-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

Trees and snow.