Back in the 'Bul, Baby!

Oh my, it HAS been a long time, hasn't it? Back in Istanbul, and I've come to the realization that the magic is chipping away like the paint on an old house. I am glad to be back, but at the same time I feel like I didn't quite get enough America on my recent return. There a few things that I miss immensely, and they are reason enough to return at the end of the school year; namely, baseball, expansive city parks, easy access hiking, my three wonderful nieces and one nephew, daily bike rides through the country, Sunnywood and my grandparents, and that matter of fact take it or leave it American attitude that helps us all enjoy life just the way it is.

Having said that, I did miss a few things here. Working (and collecting that envelope of cash), Turkish lessons, my few Turkish/Turkey-based friends, and the prospect of great holidays in far away places.

And while we're making lists, I'll enumerate those those books sitting on my shelf that I plan to finish:
The Pickwick Papers
Denisen's Out of Africa
The Brothers Karamazov
Hemingway's Short Stories
T.C. Boyle's Stories
Three Cups of Tea
Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky

Today was filled with meetings. Actually, just two long ones. I despise meetings and so I decided that the only way I'll be able to avoid meetings for the remainder of my life is to become a famous writer. That is still, as it always has been, in the works.

Lastly, my wonderful uncle John Riley behooved to me his digital SLR, replete with three lenses to boot! I will be using that this year as my side arm in my ventures around this city and country, ala Henri Cartier Bresson!

Ancan anone tell mewy it i that some buttons work onmy omputer while I type into this blo and some don't. This is an exampleof te trouble I'm having withturkish internet. What the hell!

Holiday in Iraq

News flash: Iraq is hot. And it's kind of boring. I took a minibus from Hakkari all the way to the border near Silopi, hopped in a taxi at the border and got the driver to do all my paper work for me. Took about two hours total, and in true Turkish fashion (Turkish Kurds are still, in my mind, thoroughly Turkish), rather than staying in their cars and arrive at passport control in an orderly fashion car by car, everyone jumped out of their cars and sprinted to the passport control window. They pushed and shoved and raised their palms in the air to emphasize how angry they were when they yelled at each other.

I arrived in Dohuk and stayed at a crap hotel. After I'd paid for it, I went in and pulled the curtain aside only to find a cement wall staring back at me. Sleeping in what was basically a closet wouldn't be so bad, except this is Iraq, it's hot, and the power in the city gets shut off at night. So, the hotel generator kept dying, which meant I woke up every time the ceiling fan stopped. The place was run by a kid who had to have been a good five years younger than me and at least five inches shorter. The bathrooms reflected his youthful devil don't care attitude in that they were disgusting. Of course, squatters will never be inviting, but these were absolutely repulsive.

Nonetheless Dohuk has a bustle to it that's hard not to like. I came to Erbil today and althogh it's big there is nothing to do here. There is a large citadel but it's closed off save for the main road running through the center of it. I ate two felafel sandwiches today at two different places, mostly to kill time. I also spent a whole hour in a rug museum only because it had AC. Now I'm in an internet cafe and updating my blog because I might otherwise go insane from boredom. Although, I am meeting up with a friend of a friend of a friend tonight, so that might salvage my Iraq experience. Whether it does it not, I'm still out of here tomorrow morning, making a B line straight for Istanbul and then American on Monday!

I will write more on Kurdistan and what Kurds think of this place later.

Travel plans

So about those dogs. My landlady had Annabelle (the big, furry one) shaved. I didn't see her for two days because she was apparently hiding in embarrassment. Ostensibly comfortable enough with her new look to make herself public, she finally came out last night on to my terrace while I was watching a movie with a friend. I heard my landlady laughing and calling to her. I came out and before me was a skinny, hairless, quite pathetic looking dog. I started cracking up and tried to pet her but she ran away from us to the outdoor stairs. The neighbors came out to see what all the hub-bub was about. They took one look at her standing on the stairs and just started laughing hysterically. At that point the poor dog probably thought, "Forget these assholes," and she ran off to the park across the street. I haven't seen her since.

Anyway, I'm traveling to a place I've wanted to go for a while. Tonight I leave for Eastern Turkey. It's the land of Kurds, and most Turks as me why on earth I want to go there. I'm excited to see what this other side of Turkey is like, especially after hearing so many things (good and bad) from so many people for the last two years. My itinerary is as follows:

Istanbul to Trabzon
Trabzon to Erzurum
Erzurum to Van
Van to Ani and Dogubeyazit to Van
Van to Hakkari, Sirnak, Siirt and Mardin
Mardin to Diyarbakir and Mt. Nemrut
Diyarbakir to Istanbul

I'll post some thoughts after the trip, as well as some photos. Herkese gorusuruz!

Dogs

Turkey has a dog problem. Anyone who's come to visit me knows this, especially those who visited me last year at my old place in Ortakoy. Surely, you can't have forgotten the eight or ten dogs that sauntered out into the street below my apartment at midnight like a sketchy 1950's era New York gang and proceeded to yap, bark and howl at absolutely nothing. They all seemed to have decided that the middle of the damn night was a perfect time to flex their vocal cords, barking at the ground, the stars, one another, and wandering in concentric circles, or weaving slowly around cars and garbage cans like clueless, empty-eyed dementia patients who'd inadvertently escaped the grounds of the mental hospital. Trying to sleep through such a pointless raucous is enough put one into a mental hospital of one’s own.

My tactic for combating the noise was to chuck water balloons from my window, which rarely worked. I also visited a gun shop several times to price bb-guns, but I was too cheap to shell out two hundred lira for one. At one point I came across a story by Paul Bowles, in which he describes how he didn't have it in him to poison his neighbor’s incessantly barking dog, so he fed it a concoction of medications for seven straight nights to give it the appearance of being rabid, with foaming mouth and all. On the seventh day the owner shot it, and Mr. Bowles slept in peace from then on. I googled "medication to make a dog appear rabid" but my search proved fruitless. My solution: I moved.

At my new place in Etiler, there are two dogs that sleep all day on my terrace and protect my complex from intruders at night. They have Turkish names, but my friend Patrick and I gave them English ones: Annabelle Lee and Gertrude. One is very cute, fluffy and big. The other is short, fat and ugly. You can guess which one is named what, I'm sure.

One night I came home at around 3am, and as soon as my head hit the pillow a dog began barking: non-stop. When I say non-stop, that is very much literal. The only pause it took was the half second it needed to take a breath between barks. Thinking it was Gertrude—she is always the culprit—I stormed out on to my terrace muttering curses and chucked a glass full of water in her face. She jumped up to her feet and skittered off the terrace. I returned to bed and the barking continued. "Shut the hell up!" I yelled out my window. The barking paused for a second and then resumed with more intensity. As I slammed the pillow over my ear, I suddenly remembered a dog being left on the top terrace of the building adjacent to mine back in the fall. I removed the pillow and strained to hear for the source, and sure enough, it was coming from that building and it was echoing everywhere, which made the dog sound as if it were no more then several feet away. I marched down to the building where the dog was and proceeded to press repeatedly every buzzer panel for every flat. I went back to my place and the barking continued.

The next day my landlady and I did two things: we visited the kapacı (a sort of door man/caretaker of an apartment building) and explained our grievance. We also called the municipality. Thankfully the barking stopped after two or three more nights. Apparently the owner of the dog was in America and the kapacı was left in charge. Not knowing what to do with it while it barked and kept him awake, he threw it out on the terrace to keep the whole rest of the neighborhood awake. When the owner returned he stopped this inconsiderate practice.

True to form, the municipality people showed up two weeks later, long after the problem was solved. They noticed Gertrude barking and tried to take her and Annabelle away. My landlady, not far from tears, implored them to leave the dogs alone.

“But someone had complained,” they'd said.

“Yes,” she said, “it was me! But it wasn’t about these dogs, and now there is no problem anymore.”

“But this dog is barking,” they said. “Don’t you want us to take it away?”

My landlady managed to convince them that Gertrude and Annabelle were not a nuisance, that although they did bark occasionally, it was nothing like the dog we originally complained about, and that if they took these dogs away everyone in the complex would be very upset because we all love these two dogs very much.

They had her sign a paper saying that she approved of the dogs remaining and they let Gertrude and Annabelle stay. And although they bark from time to time at night, they give me plenty of pleasure when they wag their tales and run to me when I come home from work, enough to justify a lousy night of sleep now and again.

Futbol

Two things I learned about soccer tonight: 1) South Africa, simply put, is tough as hell. They're almost impossible to knock down, they keep running when they're supposed to fall and draw a foul, and they don't do that rinky-dink-pussy-footin'-"I'm-in-so-much-pain-because-you-touched-my-shirt-sleeve"-rolling-around-on-the-turf-acting bullshit. And 2) Brazil is good, always has been good, and will continue to be good. Nevertheless, South Africa played a great game--no, an amazing game--against the favored Brazilian squad and although they lost in the last five minutes 1-0, I'm predicting that they'll go deep in the World Cup next year. Good for them. I'm sick of European and Latin American teams named Brazil and Argentina winning all the time.

The U.S. plays Brazil on Saturday in the Confederation Cup final. And in case you hadn't heard, the U.S. beat Spain, the best team in the world, last night 2-0. If the U.S. can pull off a victory I might shit myself. That would not be good because I'll be in Taksim at a bar, and I certainly don't want to get caught with a load in my pants that far from home. But you know what? To see the U.S. beat these arrogant Brazilians would be worth the $5.50 I'd have to shell out on a new pair of undies.

Go Yanks (no, not the ones from NY)!!!

Summer, Mousavi and Iran

After a wet and rainy winter I sort of forgot how f-ing hot it gets in Istanbul. Waiting in traffic on a sweltering bus high above the Bosphorous, my memory was jarred awake by the thick, slightly tangy underarm stench of several swarthy Turkish men who reached up to grasp the bus's hanging hand grips. I briefly wished for winter, but once again recalled how last February I was wishing for summer. Then I remembered that last winter was also the last time I had updated this blog.

Is anyone else wondering what awful fate awaits Mir-Hossein Mousavi after the Iran election protests whither to a whimper? I predict an arrest, brutal interrogation, swift trial and permanent house arrest a la Aung San Suu Kyi. What's important for us Americans to take note of? Well, now you all see that Iran really isn't a country comprised of a bunch of fundementalist Islamo-fascists.

And by the way: over two years ago, I said to a number of skeptical friends, "The US will not bomb Iran before Bush leaves office." No one believed me, but I was right.

Cheers!

Von, Two, Three, Four!

Last Monday I celebrated a very special day. It's probably a day none of you have ever even given thought to. That day was my 10,000 day birthday. Yes, I had been keeping track of the total days I've been on this earth, and I have to say I am damn proud of being 10,000 days old. Actually, 10,005 days old as of tonight.

In a numbers based society, where those with the highest salary, biggest house, fastest car and most massive breasts get all the fun, one can feel rather inadequate. I have a low salary, a 50m2 apartment, no car, and, thankfully, no massive breasts. If I'm judged based on numbers, then I sure as hell don't add up to much in the eyes of the elite. Even in my cowboy boots, I barely flirt with 5'9", I've never climbed a mountain that was more than 4,000 meters, and, compared to most of my friends in Turkey, I really only speak one and 3/4 languages. So I've learned to take pride in more obscure numbers. No longer am I only 27. I'm freaking 10,000 days old. So back off.

I suggest you do the same. Calculate your day age (don't forget to take leap years into account), and you'll seriously feel a welling pride in legitimate accomplishment. If you're going bald, actually sit down and count every single hair on your head so that the next time someone tells you you're going bald, you can say, "Screw you, I have 73,253 individual hairs. And that's just on my head!" If you are unfortunate enough to speak just one language (that is, if you are American) you should instead boast that you know a grand total of 15,000 words, which you can shuffle around to create an infinite amount of syntactically correct sentences. And if you make only $2,700/month like I do, you should probably tout your monthly salary as 270,000 cents. Better yet, convert that $2,700 to Zimbabwe Dollars and suddenly you're a goddamn billionaire (the figure comes out to $67,500,000,000 ZWD, which is more than Bill Gates's total worth).

Indeed, all those numbers being thrown in your face like countless grains of sand can really bring you down. But remember that it's all a matter of perspective. Once you understand this, then you'll be more inclined to look on the bright side of life. Happy counting.