For photos of my day-trip to Princes' Island, go to the following link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047472&l=608e8&id=26310454
Saturday, August 4, 2007
The Ezan
Cliches simply don’t work. In describing Istanbul, tired phrases like “east meets west,” “very European,” or, “Islamic but secular,” suffice only in reporting what one already knows. Yes, east does meet west, but these directional terms are hollow and make us jump to conclusions at best. When you look at the details, however, at what a superficial observer might call the minutia piled atop these foundational clichés—that is when Istanbul comes alive and transcends the hackneyed phrases that visitors use to classify such a place.
I don’t profess to know anything about Istanbul at all. I’ve been here for one week and have seen so much that my mind has become a muddled mess. I feel as if I’m on vacation, waiting for my two weeks to end, for my plane to bring me back to New York. I don’t feel like I’m going to be here for two years. My mind is constantly trying to grasp and store everything it processes, like one of those housewives who’s won a $5000 shopping spree, careening down the aisle, using her forearm to plow the shelves of all their contents into her already overflowing shopping cart. That is my mind.
While I can’t yet give any definitive description of this city, nor do I think I’ll ever be able to, I can tell you a little about that minutia I mentioned before. I can tell you about the piercing minarets that rise above the smooth domes of the countless mosques, giving an otherwise horizontal cityscape a touch of verticality. They are very tall and thin, wrapped in two galleries where a muezzin would have sung the call to prayer if it weren’t for modern audio technology. They reach up, up and up to the blue sky and taper off into a conical shape at the top.
Earlier, I saw the Blue Mosque, built in 1603-1617 on the site of the Great Palace of Byzantium. It is called the Blue Mosque because of its blue inner tiles as well as the light blue color of the tops of the six minarets and domes. As my teacher friends and I approached the main entry, we saw a few more-devout Muslims washing their feet at the outdoor faucets. Nearly everyone else didn’t bother to wash; we just took off our shoes and carried toted them with us in a plastic bag inside the mosque.
When I saw my first mosque here, which couldn’t have been more than five minutes after leaving the airport, I felt a little jolt, like how I feel when I’ve been dreaming about falling and I suddenly wake up just before smashing into the ground. I’ve never seen a mosque before in person, only on television when CNN or the History Channel has some feature on Islam or the Middle East. The Muslim world, in spite of all the attention it gets in the news, is a place so far removed from our minds and personal experiences that it might as well be in a completely different universe. We truly know nothing about that with which we think we are so familiar. Do you think that the seven o’clock news provides all your necessary knowledge of Islam? The news is nothing more than reportage on terrorism and why, ostensibly, the Muslim world “hates us.” I can’t tell you how many people cringed when I told them I’d be traveling to Istanbul—a safe, cosmopolitan city in a free, democratic nation, not to mention populated by an exceedingly hospitable people. I haven’t yet gone to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan or Egypt, and I’m sure those countries are vastly different from Turkey. But I am nonetheless in a Muslim country, and I’ve had to flush my mind of all the preconceived notions I was fed by the media. Now, every corner I turn I find myself faced with that exotic, fairy tail-like image of the mosque, as if I were reading a picture book of Cinderella, and, taking a break, I look out my window and discover the castle from the book cover looming royally in the distance. And I’m now reworking my notions of Islam and the Muslim people simply by observation. Simply by staring at a mosque and listening to the ezan.
The ezan; that seemingly melancholy song of the muezzin, undulating between desperate highs and poignant lows. The call to prayer has become cliché to the West; we hear it in the opening credits of movies, as the camera pans smoothly over sandy dunes or shakily makes its way through the streets of a desert town; or in tourism commercials, where beautiful dark skinned people stroll down white beaches. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful song of supplication, God’s praises washing over the varying notes like rolling whitecaps, flooding the alleys of the city with a sudden piety. The first verse is comforting and slow, like the motion of a cradle rocked by a mother’s invisible hand, back-and-forth, “Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest.” Later the rhythm remains the same, but the ezan gains urgency, the high notes fluctuating like the footsteps of a runner gaining speed; “Make haste towards prayer. Make haste towards welfare.” It ends abruptly, and you find yourself waiting by the window, ears straining to make out the next note, but it never comes. Only a car horn sounds in the distance and for a moment you think the ezan has begun again, but it hasn’t.
Shortly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, in a fit of Turkish nationalism, the ezan began to be sung, according to a new law, in Turkish. It is interesting, considering Arabic is considered to be the language of God, how nationalism trumped religion, such to the point where Turkish could, in some capacity, replace Arabic as a liturgical language. This was obviously the mild manifestation of an otherwise aggressive agenda that has dictated, until less than a month ago when the Islamic rooted AK Party won a landslide election, much of modern Turkey’s history—that is, fundamentalist secular agenda replacing fundamentalist Islam, the brand of Islam we associate with other Muslim countries, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia. In 1933, according to islamonline.net, the muezzin Tobal Khalil was beaten and arrested by police after he delivered the ezan in Arabic at a mosque in Bursa. President Ataturk promptly stated through the Turkish News Agency that the question was less about religion than about the language, and that such offenders would not go unpunished. In the late 1940’s Adnan Madris defeated Ataturk’s successor and abolished the provision that banned the Arabic ezan. I'm glad because I can’t imagine the ezan being sung in any other language.
True, today the ezan is played over speakers that sit atop the gallery rails of the minarets like gray pigeons surveying the stone streets and orange roofs before taking flight. But in spite of the song’s lack of authentic delivery, it still sends a sensation of reverence through me. In the early morning, when only the shopkeepers and stray cats populate the streets; in the afternoon, when bronzed shoe-shining boys shed their dull clothes and stern faces and dive from the cement banks into the Bosporus; just after sun set, when the wind begins to blow in my white curtains and a skittish dog yelps in an adjacent neighborhood; all throughout the day, the call to prayer reminds of the reverence with which I am to remember God. Today, the ezan sounded in the evening, and, looking up to the closest minaret, I realized my gaze was overlooking a stone Christian church, whose simple cross sitting atop the peak of the roof was dwarfed by the rising towers. The minarets seemed to grow taller during the song, and I felt as if they were leaning down like a parent and nudging me in the direction of holy ground; their singular voice tried to coax me through the doors of God’s house, be it the stout mosque or the stony church. I remained in the street a while, looking up at the cross and the minarets. I entered neither the church nor the mosque, but I lingered and my thoughts were on God.
I don’t profess to know anything about Istanbul at all. I’ve been here for one week and have seen so much that my mind has become a muddled mess. I feel as if I’m on vacation, waiting for my two weeks to end, for my plane to bring me back to New York. I don’t feel like I’m going to be here for two years. My mind is constantly trying to grasp and store everything it processes, like one of those housewives who’s won a $5000 shopping spree, careening down the aisle, using her forearm to plow the shelves of all their contents into her already overflowing shopping cart. That is my mind.
While I can’t yet give any definitive description of this city, nor do I think I’ll ever be able to, I can tell you a little about that minutia I mentioned before. I can tell you about the piercing minarets that rise above the smooth domes of the countless mosques, giving an otherwise horizontal cityscape a touch of verticality. They are very tall and thin, wrapped in two galleries where a muezzin would have sung the call to prayer if it weren’t for modern audio technology. They reach up, up and up to the blue sky and taper off into a conical shape at the top.
Earlier, I saw the Blue Mosque, built in 1603-1617 on the site of the Great Palace of Byzantium. It is called the Blue Mosque because of its blue inner tiles as well as the light blue color of the tops of the six minarets and domes. As my teacher friends and I approached the main entry, we saw a few more-devout Muslims washing their feet at the outdoor faucets. Nearly everyone else didn’t bother to wash; we just took off our shoes and carried toted them with us in a plastic bag inside the mosque.
When I saw my first mosque here, which couldn’t have been more than five minutes after leaving the airport, I felt a little jolt, like how I feel when I’ve been dreaming about falling and I suddenly wake up just before smashing into the ground. I’ve never seen a mosque before in person, only on television when CNN or the History Channel has some feature on Islam or the Middle East. The Muslim world, in spite of all the attention it gets in the news, is a place so far removed from our minds and personal experiences that it might as well be in a completely different universe. We truly know nothing about that with which we think we are so familiar. Do you think that the seven o’clock news provides all your necessary knowledge of Islam? The news is nothing more than reportage on terrorism and why, ostensibly, the Muslim world “hates us.” I can’t tell you how many people cringed when I told them I’d be traveling to Istanbul—a safe, cosmopolitan city in a free, democratic nation, not to mention populated by an exceedingly hospitable people. I haven’t yet gone to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan or Egypt, and I’m sure those countries are vastly different from Turkey. But I am nonetheless in a Muslim country, and I’ve had to flush my mind of all the preconceived notions I was fed by the media. Now, every corner I turn I find myself faced with that exotic, fairy tail-like image of the mosque, as if I were reading a picture book of Cinderella, and, taking a break, I look out my window and discover the castle from the book cover looming royally in the distance. And I’m now reworking my notions of Islam and the Muslim people simply by observation. Simply by staring at a mosque and listening to the ezan.
The ezan; that seemingly melancholy song of the muezzin, undulating between desperate highs and poignant lows. The call to prayer has become cliché to the West; we hear it in the opening credits of movies, as the camera pans smoothly over sandy dunes or shakily makes its way through the streets of a desert town; or in tourism commercials, where beautiful dark skinned people stroll down white beaches. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful song of supplication, God’s praises washing over the varying notes like rolling whitecaps, flooding the alleys of the city with a sudden piety. The first verse is comforting and slow, like the motion of a cradle rocked by a mother’s invisible hand, back-and-forth, “Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest.” Later the rhythm remains the same, but the ezan gains urgency, the high notes fluctuating like the footsteps of a runner gaining speed; “Make haste towards prayer. Make haste towards welfare.” It ends abruptly, and you find yourself waiting by the window, ears straining to make out the next note, but it never comes. Only a car horn sounds in the distance and for a moment you think the ezan has begun again, but it hasn’t.
Shortly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, in a fit of Turkish nationalism, the ezan began to be sung, according to a new law, in Turkish. It is interesting, considering Arabic is considered to be the language of God, how nationalism trumped religion, such to the point where Turkish could, in some capacity, replace Arabic as a liturgical language. This was obviously the mild manifestation of an otherwise aggressive agenda that has dictated, until less than a month ago when the Islamic rooted AK Party won a landslide election, much of modern Turkey’s history—that is, fundamentalist secular agenda replacing fundamentalist Islam, the brand of Islam we associate with other Muslim countries, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia. In 1933, according to islamonline.net, the muezzin Tobal Khalil was beaten and arrested by police after he delivered the ezan in Arabic at a mosque in Bursa. President Ataturk promptly stated through the Turkish News Agency that the question was less about religion than about the language, and that such offenders would not go unpunished. In the late 1940’s Adnan Madris defeated Ataturk’s successor and abolished the provision that banned the Arabic ezan. I'm glad because I can’t imagine the ezan being sung in any other language.
True, today the ezan is played over speakers that sit atop the gallery rails of the minarets like gray pigeons surveying the stone streets and orange roofs before taking flight. But in spite of the song’s lack of authentic delivery, it still sends a sensation of reverence through me. In the early morning, when only the shopkeepers and stray cats populate the streets; in the afternoon, when bronzed shoe-shining boys shed their dull clothes and stern faces and dive from the cement banks into the Bosporus; just after sun set, when the wind begins to blow in my white curtains and a skittish dog yelps in an adjacent neighborhood; all throughout the day, the call to prayer reminds of the reverence with which I am to remember God. Today, the ezan sounded in the evening, and, looking up to the closest minaret, I realized my gaze was overlooking a stone Christian church, whose simple cross sitting atop the peak of the roof was dwarfed by the rising towers. The minarets seemed to grow taller during the song, and I felt as if they were leaning down like a parent and nudging me in the direction of holy ground; their singular voice tried to coax me through the doors of God’s house, be it the stout mosque or the stony church. I remained in the street a while, looking up at the cross and the minarets. I entered neither the church nor the mosque, but I lingered and my thoughts were on God.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
On Ortakoy, Teaching and Very Busy Clerks
This is my blog. Read it in remembrance of me. Yeah, so I envision this blog as being half literary and half not literary. What I mean is I'll post updates on what's going on in my life: school stuff, travel stuff, Istanbul stuff. Things that most of you want to hear--at least, I think most of you want to hear it--minus the boring details. But I'm also going to post essays about my Istanbul experiences, which will contain, as any good piece of writing should, a lot of details. But first, I'll begin with a general update.
I flew in late Friday night and a driver brought me to this beautiful neighborhood of Ortakoy. It's right on the Bosporus, just south of the Bosporus Bridge, and a few miles north of the famous Taksim/Beyoglu neighborhoods. The old section of Ortakoy has narrow, stone streets running every which way, with little cafes, restaurants, and steet vendors. Along the water is an open kind of yard with benches, where a lot of young people sit all throughout the day and evening. I was told that a long time ago, the Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived together in Ortakoy. Even now, as you'll see in my next piece, there are several mosques and a Christian church. Across the main road, the new part of Ortakoy begins, which is basically comprised of hotels, shops and banks. It's nothing special, but it is very central; it reminds me a bit of Astoria. My hotel is in the new section, but it only takes me a minute to walk to the old section. My apartment, which I'll be moving into in a week or so, is another minute or two up the road, further into the newer part of Ortakoy.
Yesterday I went with two of my colleagues (two Aussie girls named Yolandi and Tracy) to the school where we're going to teach. I found out that I'm going to teach fourth grade. I was quite dissapointed, but I consider it a tradeoff. The school is bright, airy, and the teachers and staff are kind and caring. It's also really close to my apartment; I could even walk to the school. The middle/high school (grades 6-12) is very far away, up near the Black Sea. It would take at least an hour to get there by bus. Considering I have to be at the school from 8-5, I'd rather not be commuting two hours a day. Besides, last summer in Costa Rica I taught older students ranging in age from 13-21, but it was a veritable nightmare. I had major discipline problems and the living/commuting conditions were horrendous. Here, I won't be teaching the grades I want, but I'll have ample free time, decent wages, a curriculum (thank God!), and a studio in a beautiful neighborhood. I'm here to live, not to work. Work is just a means to the ends of a fulfilling experience.
I begin my orientation on August 6th, but the school year doesn't begin until the beginning of September. So these days have been a vacation. I haven't gotten out of my "Ortakoy bubble" too much yet. Took a tour the other day of the Golden Horn area and saw the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, a lecture on carpet making, which was more of a sales pitch than anything, and an old Christian church, which the Ottomans so kindly left us, but not before destroying many of the beautiful iconic paintings and mozaics of Christ, Mary and the Disciples.
Yesterday I got a taste of Turkish bureaucracy. Yolandi, Danielle and I went to the police station to get our six month residency papers. We visited all three floors at least twice, bringing one paper to one clerk, taking another paper to another clerk. Luckily we had a very nice Turkish girl doing most of the work for us. Her name is Nilufen and she is the pre-school director's personal assistant.
The whole six hour bureaucratic experience was entertaining, though, particularly when we began a running commentary on one of the bald clerks. He and three other fat men sat at their desks behind one much younger and skinnier clerk serving the entire line of people waiting for their papers. The four fat men sat hunched on their desks or slumped in their chairs, chatting aimlessly, staring and pointing at the air-conditioner in the window. They finally dispersed to their respective desks, but did no work. The bald one stared at the queue and began taping his fingers, while the others stared at the pile of papers on their desks, at their pens, at the wall, at the queue. This lasted for five minutes.
"Uh, now he's biting his nails," said Yolandi. The bald clerk did this for another five minutes. He then turned his chair, opened the blinds with his finger, and stared out the window.
"He's looking at something," I said.
"Is it a chick?" Yolandi asked. The clerk muttered something and one of the other clerks made the same motion, turning his chair, fingering the blinds, staring out the window. He laughed and muttered something back.
"Yeah, it's a chick," Yolandi said.
We were getting annoyed with the inaction. The line would have gone much quicker if at least one or two of the sedentary clerks hopped up to the front desk and took papers.
"How do you say 'Are you retired?' in Turkish?" Yolandi asked. We both laughed, and I looked it up in my dictionary and wrote it down: Sen emekli misin? I pushed the paper over to Nilufen so she could tell me if the sentence was correct.
"Me?!" she asked.
"No, no," I whispered. "We're talking about one of the clerks." As I tried to clarify, the bald clerk came over and looked at the piece of paper with great interest. I pretended that I was asking Nilufen how to use adjectives in questions.
"And how do you say, 'Are you tired?'" I asked. Sen yorgun musun? she wrote. The clerk stared down at us for a few minutes, but said nothing. I felt myself turning red in the face and I waited for him to tell me off via Nilufen. He returned to his desk smiling, though, and began talking with Nilufen, nodding his head to me, raising his eyebrows mischievously, laughing at his own comments. She looked a little embarrassed, but I don't think he knew we were talking about him. She wouldn't translate, though.
After we left the room, Yolandi smacked my arm. "You bloody bloke!" she cried. "I can't believe he saw what you were writing. Do you want to get out of here with our papers or not?" We did get our papers, though, and had some fun in the process.
I flew in late Friday night and a driver brought me to this beautiful neighborhood of Ortakoy. It's right on the Bosporus, just south of the Bosporus Bridge, and a few miles north of the famous Taksim/Beyoglu neighborhoods. The old section of Ortakoy has narrow, stone streets running every which way, with little cafes, restaurants, and steet vendors. Along the water is an open kind of yard with benches, where a lot of young people sit all throughout the day and evening. I was told that a long time ago, the Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived together in Ortakoy. Even now, as you'll see in my next piece, there are several mosques and a Christian church. Across the main road, the new part of Ortakoy begins, which is basically comprised of hotels, shops and banks. It's nothing special, but it is very central; it reminds me a bit of Astoria. My hotel is in the new section, but it only takes me a minute to walk to the old section. My apartment, which I'll be moving into in a week or so, is another minute or two up the road, further into the newer part of Ortakoy.
Yesterday I went with two of my colleagues (two Aussie girls named Yolandi and Tracy) to the school where we're going to teach. I found out that I'm going to teach fourth grade. I was quite dissapointed, but I consider it a tradeoff. The school is bright, airy, and the teachers and staff are kind and caring. It's also really close to my apartment; I could even walk to the school. The middle/high school (grades 6-12) is very far away, up near the Black Sea. It would take at least an hour to get there by bus. Considering I have to be at the school from 8-5, I'd rather not be commuting two hours a day. Besides, last summer in Costa Rica I taught older students ranging in age from 13-21, but it was a veritable nightmare. I had major discipline problems and the living/commuting conditions were horrendous. Here, I won't be teaching the grades I want, but I'll have ample free time, decent wages, a curriculum (thank God!), and a studio in a beautiful neighborhood. I'm here to live, not to work. Work is just a means to the ends of a fulfilling experience.
I begin my orientation on August 6th, but the school year doesn't begin until the beginning of September. So these days have been a vacation. I haven't gotten out of my "Ortakoy bubble" too much yet. Took a tour the other day of the Golden Horn area and saw the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, a lecture on carpet making, which was more of a sales pitch than anything, and an old Christian church, which the Ottomans so kindly left us, but not before destroying many of the beautiful iconic paintings and mozaics of Christ, Mary and the Disciples.
Yesterday I got a taste of Turkish bureaucracy. Yolandi, Danielle and I went to the police station to get our six month residency papers. We visited all three floors at least twice, bringing one paper to one clerk, taking another paper to another clerk. Luckily we had a very nice Turkish girl doing most of the work for us. Her name is Nilufen and she is the pre-school director's personal assistant.
The whole six hour bureaucratic experience was entertaining, though, particularly when we began a running commentary on one of the bald clerks. He and three other fat men sat at their desks behind one much younger and skinnier clerk serving the entire line of people waiting for their papers. The four fat men sat hunched on their desks or slumped in their chairs, chatting aimlessly, staring and pointing at the air-conditioner in the window. They finally dispersed to their respective desks, but did no work. The bald one stared at the queue and began taping his fingers, while the others stared at the pile of papers on their desks, at their pens, at the wall, at the queue. This lasted for five minutes.
"Uh, now he's biting his nails," said Yolandi. The bald clerk did this for another five minutes. He then turned his chair, opened the blinds with his finger, and stared out the window.
"He's looking at something," I said.
"Is it a chick?" Yolandi asked. The clerk muttered something and one of the other clerks made the same motion, turning his chair, fingering the blinds, staring out the window. He laughed and muttered something back.
"Yeah, it's a chick," Yolandi said.
We were getting annoyed with the inaction. The line would have gone much quicker if at least one or two of the sedentary clerks hopped up to the front desk and took papers.
"How do you say 'Are you retired?' in Turkish?" Yolandi asked. We both laughed, and I looked it up in my dictionary and wrote it down: Sen emekli misin? I pushed the paper over to Nilufen so she could tell me if the sentence was correct.
"Me?!" she asked.
"No, no," I whispered. "We're talking about one of the clerks." As I tried to clarify, the bald clerk came over and looked at the piece of paper with great interest. I pretended that I was asking Nilufen how to use adjectives in questions.
"And how do you say, 'Are you tired?'" I asked. Sen yorgun musun? she wrote. The clerk stared down at us for a few minutes, but said nothing. I felt myself turning red in the face and I waited for him to tell me off via Nilufen. He returned to his desk smiling, though, and began talking with Nilufen, nodding his head to me, raising his eyebrows mischievously, laughing at his own comments. She looked a little embarrassed, but I don't think he knew we were talking about him. She wouldn't translate, though.
After we left the room, Yolandi smacked my arm. "You bloody bloke!" she cried. "I can't believe he saw what you were writing. Do you want to get out of here with our papers or not?" We did get our papers, though, and had some fun in the process.
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