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.

So What Does "Train" Mean to You?

Interesting linguistic story: I’d just arrived in Belgrade, on the second to last day of a fourteen day trip through the Balkans. It was 5:00am. I’d slept about three hours on the bus ride from Sarajevo. I was slightly—only slightly—nervous about being dumped off at a sketchy looking bus station in a city I was wholly unfamiliar with. And I have to say, after the unflattering stories I’d heard in Croatia and Bosnia about the Serbs—they were, according to one Croat, “primitive animals,”—and considering the permanent scars left on nearly every Sarajevan building by the heavy hand of the Army of Republika Srpska, I was expecting some sort of unprovoked altercation.

I'll tell you now that nothing dramatic happened. But for a linguist, I did discover something intriguing. I wandered back and forth in front of the bus station, map in hand, trying to get my bearings straight. I wanted to find the train station to get my ticket to Budapest that night, and I wasn’t about to ask. I typically don’t ask for directions, not out of pride, but rather out of the challenge afforded me by finding my way around a new city. But then again, even a minute of conversation about the whereabouts of the train station can reveal quite a lot about the local psyche. So I decided after a few to ask a friendly looking taxi driver washing his cab on the street corner.

I opened my Lonely Planet and looked under the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian section for the word for train. Vlak. Got it.

“Excuse me,” I said mustering as much geniality as was possible for five in the morning. “Do you know where the vlak is? Vlak station? Vlak?”

I always find it ridiculous when we try to communicate with those we assume don’t speak our language. We typically begin with a syntactically perfect sentence, and then, upon realizing we are not understood, we begin to speak as if our fellow interlocutor is either retarded or deaf. The funny thing is that we look more retarded to him than we think. Imagine someone coming up to you to say, “Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah train blah blah?” Train blahblah? Train?” It’s no wonder the world is at war.

The cabbie leaned forward slightly, as if inspecting a crumb on my lips or a scar on my cheek, and said in perfect English, “Excuse me. Do you speak Serbian?”

“No,” I said a little confused. “I speak English.”

The cabbie then turned his palms up, lifted his hands with a jerk, and shrugged his shoulders once. He cocked his head and pouted his lips slightly in a perfect expression of complete apathy. He turned around and continued to wash his taxi.

I stood for a moment, mystified. I wanted to say something insulting, but this was not my land, and nothing clever came to mind.

“Thanks buddy. Have a great day,” I mumbled as I turned and walked away.

A while later I was sitting in a café reading my Lonely Planet. I was still slightly disturbed at my mistreatment at the hands of this surly Serb. I flipped to the language section of the book, explaining all the useful idioms and phrases of the Balkans. I looked again under the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian section.

train
vlak (C)/voz (B&S) воз

That (C) stands for Croatian. The (B&S), Bosnian and Serbian. Reminder: this was the Balkans. A lesson I never thought I’d have to consider: you just can’t go around using words willy nilly as if they’re not going to conjure up things like, oh I don’t know, hatred, war, genocide, and massive forced expatriation.

Who would have thunk it!

A Conversation in Albania

After three days in Tirana, Albania, my two friends, Bader and Noelle, and I hired a cab and hopped the mountains for the town of Librahzd in the east. Librahzd has a population of about 12,000. It stretches out along a narrow, rushing river, ensconced among layers of mountains, the furthest of which are snow capped and often hidden among slowly passing clouds.
Bader had family in Librahzd, and within an hour of meeting several of his cousins, I had a considerable amount of friends of my own. The next day, I was invited to watch the friendly evening soccer match, and afterwards I joined three of the guys for coffee at the nearest café.
I fell into conversation with Ladi, a burly, thirty-something electronics shop owner. He was one of the town’s more successful businessmen and his brother was a senator for Albania’s most powerful political party. Ladi was full of ideas, especially relating to business, but our conversation eventually turned to politics and the inevitable question that I’d been answering since November.
“So what do you think of Obama?”
“I’m excited,” I replied. “I think he’s going to do a great job. A lot better than Bush.”
“Not a Bush fan, are you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “He messed a lot of things up.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, like with Iraq and the economy and all. I just don’t think he was a very good president. I’m really glad to see him go, actually.”
Ladi nodded his head and took a sip of coffee.
“So do you think Obama can fix it?” he asked.
“I hope so,” I said.
“He’s got a lot of pressure on him,” Ladi said. “I feel bad for the guy. I hope he can do all he says he’ll do. But it’ll be hard.”
“It will,” I said. “It will. But he’s honest about the expectations. He says outright that a lot of people will be disappointed because expectations are so high.”
“That’s what I like about him,” Ladi replied. “He’s honest about that stuff.”
Ladi took a moment to translate what we’d been talking about to one of his friends, a professional soccer player from the local team, who nodded in agreement as he sucked at his cigarette. Ladi turned back to me.
“But I think a lot of people criticize Bush too much,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” I said, only slightly surprised. Albanians, I’d learned, liked Bush very much.
“Yeah. Well, he had a hard time in office, you know. With 9/11 and Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“True,” I said. “It was a difficult time.”
“It wasn’t easy. He had to make some difficult decisions, and I think people forget that. I mean, I know he made a lot of mistakes with stuff going on in the United States.”
“Yeah,” I said, “quite a bit.”
“Sure, like Katrina, and the economy and all. But he had a lot of challenges in the world that he had to deal with.”
“Very true, very true,” I replied. “You know, this is what I keep hearing from Albanians. You guys don’t think Bush is too bad of a guy, huh?”
“Well did you see when he came to Albania, and all the Albanians hugging him?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did. They stole his watch!” I said with a smile.
Ladi suddenly looked away from me and at his friend sitting across from him. He slapped his palm to his forward and dragged his hand down his face as if trying to stretch it out. He held out his hand, palm up and fingers straight, like he was expecting something to be placed into it. He muttered something in Albanian, then turned back to me.
“They didn’t steal his watch,” he said exasperated. “I’ve seen so many videos about this, and they didn’t steal his watch. He took his watch off and gave it to a secret service agent. They didn’t steal it.”
Ladi had begun speaking with both of his hands, and he kept looking at his friend across from him, making comments in Albanian. I immediately realized that I’d committed a serious faux pas, that I had pinched an incredibly sensitive nerve, perhaps the most sensitive one he had.
The watch episode looked pretty believable to me. Bush was greeting a throng of adoring Albanians in Tirana, his sleeves rolled up, reaching into the crowd, grabbing hands and arms and shaking them vigorously. Albanians were grasping for him, hugging him, hanging onto his hands and not letting go. One second you saw the black band of a watch clasp around Bush’s wrist, his left arm disappearing momentarily into the crowd, and the next second, as he withdraws his arm in order to plunge it in again, you see that his wrist is bare. He never even notices.
“So it’s not real, huh?” I said. “It looks real, but I suppose you would know better than me.”
“No, it didn’t happen,” he said pointedly. “He took it off and gave it to his secret service guy. Have you seen any other videos of this?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t. Just that one.”
“Well, the video you saw makes it look like his watch was stolen because it only shows a short part. Believe me, I’ve looked at a lot of videos about this, and I know it’s not true. He takes his watch off and you can see as he begins to greet the crowd he never has his watch on in the first place. Even the U.S. State Department spoke about it later on, and said that Bush absolutely did not have his watch stolen. Even the U.S. State Department said it didn’t happen.”
“Well, you’re the Albanian, and I guess I have to believe you if you say it isn’t true.”
“You know who did this, don’t you?” he asked.
“No, who?”
“It was the Italians. Or the Greeks. They made it look like Bush got his watch stolen.”
“But why would they do that?” I asked.
“Because they’re jealous,” he said. “They’re jealous that Albania and Bush have such a good relationship, that Albanians love Bush and that Bush supports them so much. It’s a jealousy thing. You see how it is when Bush goes to Italy or Greece. People are yelling at him, throwing things at his car, giving him the middle-finger. You see how they protest. But in Albania it was totally different. Even Bush came out of his normal routine—you know, where he’s usually got his coat on, and shakes a few hands and then speaks. In Albania he took his jacket off and just got into the crowd to greet all those people. It was amazing. But he can’t do that in the rest of the world. And the Italians and Greeks, they were jealous.” “Well,” I said, “that makes sense. The rest of the world doesn’t like him very much. And according to that video, Albania really does. It’s too bad that people think he got his watch stolen. I only just saw the video a couple of days ago, you know, so I had no idea until then. But I can see why it makes you upset. I’d be upset too.”
“Who showed you this video?” he asked. “Was it an Albanian?”
“You know, I can’t even remember who showed it to me,” I lied. Bader had actually showed it to me.
“Well if it was an Albanian, if I knew who he was, I’d punch him right in the nose. If it wasn’t an Albanian, then I’d be upset but—if it was an Albanian I’d be really angry. I’m serious, I’d probably punch him right in the nose.”
“Sure, of course, I can see why it’s so upsetting. Albania was there, on the world stage and—“
“And the biggest news that comes out of the Bush visit was that he got his damn watch stolen. Excuse me, but really, this is bullshit. Here we are, the world watching, and the only thing people get out of it was that Bush had his watch stolen. And it wasn’t even true! Really, go online and look up some other videos about this, and you’ll see it isn’t true.”
Ladi clipped off a few more statements in Albanian to the other two guys sitting with us. He took several more sips of his coffee and asked me if I’d like another lemon tea. I said I would, and he ordered one for me. He was beginning to come down from his indignant high.
At about that time, Bader and Noelle entered the café. Happy greetings abounded and they sat down with all of us. The conversation turned to Bader’s business ideas for Librazhd, for which Ladi showed considerable enthusiasm. Ladi then turned his attention to Noelle, and finally back to me. We began speaking of something else, I can’t quite remember what, but Ladi mentioned something about the watch video. Noelle turned toward us with a smile.
“Hey we just saw that video the other day. It’s hilarious. I can’t believe he got his watch—“
“But it’s not true,” I said to Noelle, quickly grabbing her harm and squeezing it hard. “Before you came here Ladi told me it didn’t really happen.” Ladi was staring right at Noelle.
“Really? It looks pretty real to me,” Noelle said.
“No, no,” I said, “not true, it’s not true,” I said. I wanted the subject to change. I wanted Noelle to leave it alone.
“Have you seen the whole video?” Ladi asked Noelle.
“No,” she said, “I haven’t. Just that one part.” She was still smiling.
“Well, you should see the whole thing. If you did you’d see that it’s just not true. It never happened.” Ladi was vigorously spinning his cell phone between his thumb and forefinger.
“Oh,” Noelle replied. “Ok.”
“I get so angry that so many people believe this. Even your own State Department made a public statement saying it wasn’t true. It never happened.”
“Oh, I didn’t know it wasn’t real,” Noelle replied.
“But now we know,” I said. “It’s a good thing Ladi cleared it up for us. Anyway, why don’t we—“
“What are you guys talking about?” Bader said, taking his attention away from rolling his cigarette.
“Ah, nothing import—“
“The video of George Bush getting his watch stolen,” Noelle said.
“Ostensibly,” I said.
Ladi was now staring at Bader, waiting to hear his response. I looked down at my lemon tea, studying the smooth surface of the liquid.
“Oh, we just saw that,” Bader said with a laugh. “That was hilarious. I’m actually glad he got his watch stolen.”
“He didn’t get his watch stolen,” said Ladi flatly. “It’s not true.” He had one of those forced grins and was shaking his head slightly now, looking down at his coffee. I noticed that his right leg had begun to shake up and down like a piston.
“Really? It looks pretty real to me. He just stuck his arm in the crowd and—poof!—there goes his watch,” Bader laughed. “Right into the crowd!”
Ladi continued to stare at his coffee as if he’d resigned himself to some unpleasant fate. He then looked up at Bader, continued to shake his head and said,
“You think this is funny? You’re an American, but of Albanian decent. As an Albanian you think this is funny? You think this ok?”
Bader slowly rolled his cigarette, apparently wholly unaware of the sensitivity of the issue. I watched the cigarette, wondering how he rolled them so thin, and wishing he’d launch into some philosophical discourse on how he did so.
“You know what?” Bader said slowly, “I think if you promise a bunch of people money, then don’t give it to them, you at least owe some guy a nice watch.”
Ladi just sat there shaking his head, lips permanently molded into a disgusted grin of disbelief. He said nothing in response and we all left soon thereafter, making stock salutary phrases before we all went off for the evening.

On Observing the Gaza Conflict from a Jewish School

I was told recently that I work in the most secure location in all of Turkey.

“More secure than the American consulate?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” my department head replied.

Not only do we have no less than three Kevlar clad security guards outside our entrance throughout the day, as well as a large contingent of police that direct traffic past the school from morning to afternoon, but our in-house, 24 hour security guards check in and around the school grounds every single night for anything conspicuous or out of place. As a Jewish school in a predominantly Muslim country, one would expect high security. With the recent raid of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces, our school is now a bit more on edge.

There hasn’t been too much talk on campus about the Gaza conflict. Everyone feels downright awful over the death of the children, but I can’t help but feel like most at the school have resigned themselves to accepting the circumstances of the Gaza conflict as a necessary evil. This, of course, is pure conjecture. Have I taken a poll to find out how everyone truly feels? No. I’m merely reading into what is not being said, rather than what is being stated outright, which isn’t much. And I try not to push anyone into conversation about the matter. For one, I don’t trust myself enough to respond calmly to any countenance of the incredibly heavy handed Israeli response. And two, I’m afraid that my questioning will be interpreted as a push towards argument. Everyone knows how the English department feels. “I just want to hang an enormous Palestinian flag from the Bulgarian consulate next door,” one of my British colleagues announced to us earlier in the year.

It’s all a bit surreal, this going back and forth between two realities. There is the reality of the Jewish State, of Zionism, of an attitude that all is well in the world because, unfortunately, might still makes right. If outright support of Israel isn’t stated, then it is ambivalence that you’ll find. We can’t support the Palestinians, but we sure can feel badly for them. Nor do we dare speak out against the injustice committed by Israel. Of course, when I say unjust, I’m not saying that the crux of the matter, that is, responding to terrorist attacks by Hamas, is unjust. But I am saying that the nature of Israel’s response is so nefarious that it easily warrants sending her leaders to a war crimes tribunal.

Then there is the reality that exists outside my school. When I go home, images of massive explosions, strafing fire, and bloodied children are broadcast into my living room. Protests abound and every single news channel is openly supportive of the Palestinians. As I walked down Istiklal Street the other night, the “Times Square” of Istanbul, I couldn’t help noticing flyers in the colors of the Palestinian flag strewn about the street, stuck in shop windows, pasted to the sides of buildings. Ben Filistin’liyim, they read. I am Palestinian. I took one back to my home and it is hanging up in my hallway mirror. I even bought a white and black checkered Palestinian scarf. But I would never dare reveal these items to my Jewish colleagues at school.

Today, the Turkish Ministry of Education announced that all schools in Turkey would be required to observe a minute of silence at 11:00am, out of respect for the “Palestinian children who have been killed by the Israeli military.” Our school, understandably, did not take part. For one, never mind the principle of the matter, nor what is morally right. For a school director to require a bunch of Jewish kids, some of whom are zealous Zionists, to observe a moment of silence for their enemy, be them children or not, would be political suicide. It is awful, but it’s true. Secondly, this moment of silence was political in nature. Where were the moments of silence for the 650,000 Iraqi dead? For the wedding parties bombed in rural Afghanistan? For the victims of the Rwandan genocide of the 1990’s, or the ethnically cleansed in Darfur? If we are going to observe a moment of silence for the victims of war, we must account for all of the victims, not just those that align with us politically, socially or religiously.

Beneath a picture of Ataturk, the heads of department and admin placed a clock on the wall, turned it to 11:00am, and sat silently for one minute. This was the best they could do, and understandably so. But it is only a superficial act of the most minor proportions. It will not bring back the civilian dead—those who have been reduced to numbers in the context of “collateral damage,” a reprehensible, nauseating term. It will not heal. It will not do anything pragmatic. What it will accomplish will only exist in theory. Yes, we remember the Palestinians, the poor Palestinians. What has been done to them in Gaza is awful but…