A Change In Scenery

Well, the big move out of the apartment is complete. I've moved from crowded yet hospitable Mecidiyeköy to the distant Baçeşehir (for which the university is named) Where I'm staying reminds me most of St. Louis, Missouri. Humid, lots of mosquitos, but some well-kept grass, a few unoccupied benches dotting paths through the grass, and no one going outside without good reason. I can't say the change is unwelcome, despite the bug bites. No internet access except the in building's foyer, I would have traded the TV and mini-frige in every room for an ethernet jack or wifi signal. But the majority of residents probably wouldn't agree with me, judging by the number of blaring television sets being watched by kids drinking cold beer.

To get to my new temporary home I board a minibus from the campus here in M.köy and go for a thirty minute trip down the highway that skirts Istanbul, along the highway are high-rise apartments, built in clusters, or nice homes splattered over a hillside, great empty spaces between them. Close to the city everything is concentrated, and buildings near the freeway are draped with advertisements. But further away it looks like some sudden growth along highway five or eighty in California. All the buildings are uniform in design and age, laid out in a logical pattern of regularly intersecting streets with sidewalks. It just doesn't feel like the lawless Turkey I've come to love.



Then we have these folks, in exactly the same spot as I saw the super right wing party from the country side of Turkey, they have also come apparently to tell the dwellers of Istanbul how they should feel about culture and politics. But they're so adorable in their dresses and hair ribbons! Greeks and Turks, oh my! There were lots of Turkish flags and pictures of M.K. "Can't Touch This" Atatürk so perhaps this was more of a cultural heritage, reconciliation thing than a political rally. It did seem to be drawing the tourists. (overweight people with cameras, they stand out more than they think.)


Waiting for the minibus outside the Campus in Baçeşehir


Sheep being herded while I wait


Camouflage

Multimedia Can't Replace My Negligence

But it's a good distraction from my lack of updates.
Here is a video I shot while dazed in the glaring sun. Something I found hard to find in the shops here, sunscreen. There are tons and tons of sun milks and oils for tanning, but I need a bit more than SPF six to not look like a lobster after being left out in the sun for an hour. The video is of the third daily prayer call " العصر " I staked out a good spot where I can usually hear two mosques very clearly, but the wind had picked up that day (thankfully) and only one came through very clean. It's also a great overview of my neighborhood, taken from the top of my favorite staircase. Enjoy!

I'm getting ready to move out of this apartment, hopefully I won't be spending the last month of my stay here on someone's back porch, but then again, the nights are very mild and pleasant after 10pm.

Salt and Scurvy

Today I learned the Turkish method for removing soon to be stains from fabric right after it has been dirtied. There I was, chowing down on my rice and some topping involving ground meat, tomatoes, and french fries when splat, got a drop of delicious juice on my sleeve. "Fast fast, salt!" Apo nearly shouted at me.
"What?"
"Salt!"
So I went for the salt, rubbing it on the stain apparently wasn't was I was supposed to do because Apo took over, emptying a packet of salt on top of the stain and giving it a slight press to make it stick in a clump. I was instructed to leave it. After several minutes I became curious and brushed the salt off my cuff. I can't really tell if it helped, there's only a slight discoloration on my cuff now, it'll come out in the wash. Maybe the magic worked, maybe it would work better if I had gotten on it immediately. This is why we should all carry those little paper packets of salt in our pockets.
An insult I've been hearing people call at one another is 'Şerefsiz' which actually means, 'scurvy.' I guess calling someone a scurvy dog is still being done away from pirate-themed parties at college frat houses. One of the students always has a little insult match with Apo whenever she goes down to the cafe. They switch between calling each other the English names of animals, and traditional Turkish insults like 'stupid villager'.
School is near empty now, many of the few remaining students actually have finals tomorrow so those numbers will plummet further by the end of this week. The Turkish students have some strange habits, being rich many don't seem to have a problem with spending money in ineffective ways. Such as, one student, who I didn't actually recognize, told me he only comes to class once a week, but he hired a night tutor, so it's alright. If he (or his father probably) is going to pay for him to learn English, he might as well go to the first before considering a second. But often have I been ridiculed here for such thinking. "Why do you want to do everything in an efficient way?"

Here is a political rally I went past in a taxi. It wasn't very high energy, the guy on the megaphone kept taking long pauses to squint at his notes. Baby, if you're reading your politics from notes you ain't feeling it!

And here's a cute kitty.

The Rain brings the Snails and Makes Everything Green

Hello from sunny Istanbul, where it's been pouring rain the last few days, something I haven't equated with summer for a long time! We dearly miss Ayeshah, who has left for Canada. With the end of the school year the team is breaking down and people are going on to other projects. Finals for the school are on June 26th, though most students have already finished and left, or have given up and stopped coming to class. Learning English is difficult, the world might be better off with Latin as the lingua franca. Facio Liberis ex Liberos Libris Libraque, anyone?


The beautiful Bosphorus, seen from Beshiktash. This ship was swarming with tourists, several navel ships like this one were anchored with ferry boats going up to them. I suppose some sort of holiday was in the works. We already had the 'Conquering of Istanbul' holiday, and the 'Beat the English at Sea' holiday, and Ata Turk / Founding of the Republic holiday (that one was huge, May 19th)


And this bird was sitting in front of my door looking menacing and cawing at me when I came home. It seemed to have an injury and fell off the stairs after this. It probably didn't make it out of the garden alive. (lots of big cats on the prowl) Many birds look different from their counterparts in the western hemisphere. Also the plants look different too, maybe some wild mammals (like squirrels and foxes) as well, but I just haven't seen any living in Istanbul.

Viva Melli!

Sorry about the lack of updates, everything seems to be winding down this month.  Friday afternoon I went to see a football (that's soccer) match between some faculty and students from the school.  I taped the match for them which gave me a good chance to practice using the new video camera.  They all demanded CD copies of the match and I think I can oblige.  A funny thing happened as I came home, it was right before sunset which comes about 8:30, and my neighborhood seemed waaaay too quiet.  I knew the second I walked in the house and flipped the light switch, no electricity.  I started laughing, this was something you just heard about happening in far away foreign cities, it's normal for them not to have power, right?  It was totally weird, looking at other apartment buildings you could see people moving around with flashlights, having a later dinner by candlelight, or just sitting near the windows taking in the last few sunbeams like I was doing.  It was like someone hit the breaker on my entire neighborhood, the night was deep and dark and light showers fell on our quiet neighborhood.  I hope everyone slept as well as I did!  The power came back sometime early Saturday morning.
Yesterday I hit the Beshiktash clothing bazar again and picked up a few more dress shirts, they may be imitation or stolen, but they've got good stitches and all the buttons, that works for me.  Later that night I went to eat and Haci Baba's and found myself chatting with the cook and his friends for a good hour after dinner.  This man was amazing, and really gave me proof of a discussion I was engaged in back in America.  "Do good societies produce bad people?"  This man has never been to school, works seven days a week, and came at me in six languages.  He only speaks three fluently, but WOW.  Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish, English, and Russian.  He has to be much more resourceful than an American in the same social economic situation, so is he a better person because his life is harder?  Does having a society on the top of the list make us fat and lazy because we know by the end of the day we'll probably still have Air Conditioning and a Coca Cola?  He told me his dream was to move to Holland and make kebabs there.  So, more power to him.
And today, lovely Sunday.  I learned a valuable lesson, namely why I hadn't shaved my beard for two years.  I look terrible without one!  Well, two weeks and my beard shall be back, more powerful than your could imagine.  And the big let down, my boys Team Melli lost their debut game in the World Cup.  Buck up, there's still two more matches!

The Empire Strikes Back

The other day as I walked home I was enlisted by three young boys to pick berries from a tree that hangs over the stairs near my flat. Because of my hight I could pull the branches to where they perched on a cinderblock wall. They picked the plump ripe berries, eating some and putting others in a grocery bag. The fruit they called 'tut', the Persian word for mulberry. They looked like mulberries, except instead of being crimson like those I remember in America, they were white, large, and squishy, like maggots. Now, I've noticed many plants and their fruits looking different here, (heck, here sumac is a spice and not a poisonous weed) but I'm still hesitant to eat that, especially when it's growing out of the city streets. But hey, maybe next time.
A new mall opened in Levent last week, the good Apple people have opened a store there and told me to come visit. This mall is something else, it feels like a canyon (it's called 'Kanyon' actually), the center is open to the sky and it snakes around a bit with four levels. I should take some pictures, its architecture reminds me of something see in San Francisco, much more appealing than Cevahir. Most of the stores were specialty boutiques with only a very few items, like handbags, or shoes, or t-shirts. Like the Ottoman Empire, a t-shirt company that makes some really fun designs. I don't see myself paying sixty for a t-shirt, but there was this one shirt featuring the silhouette a mounted rider about to throw a spear, it read "The Empire Strikes Back." Maybe...

The Great Clothing Bazar

Now anyone who has visited Istanbul has heard of the Great Bazar, or the Spice Bazar. Places where you can find lots of carpets and other novelty items mixed in with clothing, furniture, and a bit of everything else. It's less expensive than stores, but if you look foreign you'll probably be finding your deals a bit more believable after some truth comes to light. But this isn't about the Great Bazar, it's about a crazy press of Turks every Saturday taking full advantage of the fact that Turkey produces a staggering amount of designer clothing in it's textile factories.
The whole thing is a loop of one block, facing a fairly busy street, I noticed it before when I was taking a cab back from Beshiktash one day but I never ventured into the crowd. The number of people packed into there was insane, and you couldn't see more than ten meters ahead, not only because of the crowd, but merchandise was hung in the narrow channel to the point where I was ducking to pass some of it! This was anarchy, the merchants were up standing on chairs, tables, wherever they could be seen as merchants, many were partially stripped down because of the heat and yelling out their prices, "hepsi, hepsi! iki buçuk! IKI BUÇUK!!!" meaning everything was two-fifty, this guy was standing on a table, throwing cloths in the air like they were tossed salad! I saw a man with a tray of sandwiches, wrapped in cellophane, balanced on his head, weaving through the bedlam, selling them to people as they bumped into him. Absolute chaos, underwear stretched out on hoops, suggestive phrases on the crotch, milk crates overflowing with perfume bottles, bathing suit and towel merchants, a chinese couple selling knock-off hello kitty merchandise along with a bunch of more traditional items and bath products. There was one very sullen looking merchant without a single customer. His entire stock consisted of shirts, purses, and backpacks with what looked like Queen Barbie printed on them. Poor guy must have thought he had the next big rage.
The crowd was mostly women trying to get at the latest and greatest finds from the merchants. Now Turkish women might be a bit short and even a bit scrawny, but, as my companion that day pointed out, "they eat only meat and bread, they're butch." And she was right! I had a respectable looking old lady elbow me in the kidney when I wasn't moving fast enough for her tastes and was shoved out of the the way more than once, yikes!
But the deals were worth the stifling heat. Most of the clothing was women's (understandable considering who was doing most of the shopping there) but I found a few stalls selling men's fashion. Now, most of Turkey's textiles are shipped to places like America and sold at the nice high prices we're used to paying or they show up in stores in Turkey, where they are sold at noticeably lower prices, but some of them find their way through various channels to places like this. Isn't much point in making knock-off Levis when the factory is up the street, eh? But I wasn't there for jeans, not in this weather! I found some great summer dress shirts at about a tenth of the price they would be in America. I'll be heading back next Saturday for a couple, or several, or half a dozen, more.

A Brush With... The Countryside

I think I've previously mentioned the villagers, the non-urbanized Istanbul dwellers from the Turkish countryside who come to Istanbul mostly to find work. I've heard plenty about them from the native Istanbulians, such as all villagers are slow-witted, their speech is hard to understand, and other broad prejudices. But one of the more interesting criticisms I've been told is that the villagers are responsible from keeping Istanbul from being one of the great international cities of the world, such as Paris, London, New York, or Tokyo. (I always thought Istanbul ranked up there, but apparently I've been mistaken) The nineteen eighties saw large immigrations to Istanbul from the villages, and supposedly the resulting over-crowding is what has kept Istanbul from going big-time.
This is a strange view to take, but it might have some merit. I don't know much about Istanbul's reaction to villager migrations, the official population of Istanbul is around 15 million people, though migrant villagers push the number closer to twenty million. Government money for public works and the like is given to areas by population and most villagers work on a temporary basis, returning home for the census. So perhaps the person who spoke to me meant Istanbul was being 'worn down' so to speak by the villager population.
Or perhaps the person meant the villagers were keeping the appearance of Istanbul in poor light. One person was expressing their anger to me that when the earthquake in 1998 struck Istanbul the international media reports only showed poor families (probably villagers) who already lived in rubble by local standards. The villagers are the people leading horses through the streets selling watermelon, or pushing the carts calling out for people's discards, or just trotting down the street pulling a large sack mounted on a hand truck, filling it with cardboard. I can't help but see the villagers as occupying a place in Istanbul where they trade their work to keep the city functional, similarly to how many Turks from the countryside travel to Europe and work in industry and other jobs no longer wanted by the native populations. So, if this is damaging to Istanbul on the international scene, I see it as a result of inadequate response to a population influx. Not the fault of people migrating to find work.
That said I had a very interesting brush with the countryside last Sunday, coincidentally Sunday was the celebration of the fall of Constantinople. (For more information on this see "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"[1, 2]) This is normally celebrated in Sultanahmet with plenty of dancing in traditional garb, and lots of tourists being sold carpets and fez caps. Out in Mecidiyeköy things ran a bit differently, to set the stage it's important to know the geography of where I was. There is an expressway that runs around Istanbul and cuts through the city to cross the Bogazici Koprusu, the southern of the two suspension bridges that cross the Bosphorus. Just next to the school is a gigantic intersection, where a large city street or two meets this expressway in a tangle of concrete and asphalt and at the center is a large triangle where no traffic goes, the occasional simit cart is parked there, maybe a guy selling bus tickets and cigarettes. But that night the intersection was packed, traffic was stopped, and the center was packed with busses. Our destination lay immediately past them, so we took a route through the bus camp.
For starters, I think Islam is fantastic, and living in a muslim country for six months now has been wonderful, this is a description of a political ruckus and not an attack on any religion. As we approached we couldn't see what was going on, at first traffic just seemed to be worse, but standing on one of the crosswalk islands were a couple young boys wearing blue and white cardboard hats decorated like the Turkish flag, but an extra star and some stripes. The boys were blowing horns like it was new years, and they were crossing the streets recklessly or incredibly hesitantly. (a sure sign they weren't from Istanbul) We got among the parked busses and I had a pretty good idea what this was about, busses named after suras of the Qur'ran, men in thobes and kufis and the ladies peering out from their abayas from the busses. We'd walked into a rally for the far right wing, islamist party in Turkey. I was with two Turkish friends of mine, proud to be muslim, but spaghetti straps draw some harsh looks anyway. It was later explained to me they were from the country and every year come to celebrate and make a political statement. After we made our stop we passing through again on our way home. The busses were pulling out, it seemed they were making a whistle stop tour of Istanbul, or maybe they were just heading back to the countryside.