My hot water is theoretically heated by a gas can-fueled contraption known as a şofben. This is as yet a theory because I have not yet been successful in getting the thing to work.
Yesterday, desperate for a proper shower as I was covered with paint and sweat, I tried to get the şofben running with a lighter. Ratcheted the gas on, then stuck my hand in the small opening to light the pilot. Instead of generating a nice flame at the back, the gas ignited and came out in a burst of blue firecloud. That wasn’t exactly what I was going for.
So even though I technically rented the apartment on December 11th, I’m still sleeping on the floor of a barely heated, partially painted flat that lacks hot water or appliances of any kind. It’s only fun when I dress up like Ivan Denisovich and play gulag, but otherwise, not so much.
Today I plan to paint the walls of the faux dining room and living room. I finally found the elusive neutral creme color, but the store only had five litres. So I’m conserving this color like it’s been made with actual diamond dust harvested from the wings of live fairies. Only two walls in the living room get the color, the remaining two will be “accent walls.” This means that I shall paint them a garish shade of orange mixed with whatever remains of the creme.
The bedroom, meanwhile, is pretty much unlivable. It is cold and pink. Even though I hate my apartment with the emotional impact usually reserved for pedophiliac dictators, I still think a little work is in order to make the bedroom habitable. I plan on painting a main wall white to tone down the horrifying pink.
Life these days isn’t just a string of hours filled with mismatched paint and cold. I’ve also been totally unsucessful at getting a residence permit. Without the permit, I cannot get internet or a phone line installed. So I’ll be working from my office in Starbucks for the next little while.
Istanbul has given me many lessons. It’s rarely been a pleasant tutelage -- living in this city is like getting into a PhD program as a legacy admit, but the subject is astrophysics or something really effing tough -- and I started out as an arrogant student, clinging to the belief that my previous sufferings taught me everything I needed to know. This was stupid, and it was an attitude that probably added more to my morning bouts of crippling weepy anxiety than anything else.
First off, the most important rule to learn here is that there are no rules. If you need something, there is a way to get it. The trick is figuring out which permutation of wheedling and tenacity will result in success.
For instance, say you’ve just rented an apartment. Perhaps you settled on an area, studied the internet listings for months, worked up the courage to deal with real estate brokers (the unfairly dreaded emlakci), and looked at nearly a hundred flats in various states of disrepair. You’re probably a wee bit tired at that point. Find some strong coffee, because the ride has just begun.
Apartments in Istanbul are not generally furnished. At minimum, this means that you’ll have to buy your own appliances in addition to the rest of your furniture. Or you may have to also provide your own heating system, cabinets, faucet hardware, and paint. I didn’t make out too badly in this respect. My lease even indicates that my place is furnished with heat and cabinetry. Just had to buy paint, shower head, a gas can to heat the hot water, and new locks.
The locks were important because everyone and no one seemed to have keys to my place. Workers had been by every day to repair the heater, put in a functional toilet, install door frames, and generally make a mess. Still, neither my landlord nor real estate agent nor local handyman seemed to have the keys. Every time I asked, it was always “tomorrow, come back tomorrow and we’ll figure something out.. so do you want some tea?”
Anyway, after some searching, I learned that the lady at the market across the street had one of the elusive keys. A friendly neighbor let me copy the key to the building, and I hired a locksmith to break open the remaining locks on my door. He then replaced the top and bottom locks, meeting with only fifty percent success. The self-cutting screw he used to install the top lock made an inauspicious hole, so a friend came by and re-set the lock.
This is basically where I was two weeks ago. At this point, Christmas day, I’m still painting the place and hoping that my extensive spackling job isn’t too amatuerish. My initial paint selections, hues named “Light Elephant Tooth” and “Champagne,” are kind of bright and jarring (think shades of Tang), so I’ve lugged home a new color known simply as “Vanilla Nut.”
Update: Vanilla Nut is pinky lavender, who knew. Rather than walk kilometers to return the stuff, I’ve made peace with living in a place that looks like someone’s grandmother ate pastel old-timey candies then barfed them up on the walls. I’m flexible like that.
Well well, so since that last boring post, I've done a few things here and there. The most noteworthy (and time-consuming) event in my recent life is the acquisition of a barely functioning Istanbul apartment. For the last month, I've done little else but worry about housing -- getting it, repairing it, learning how to live in it -- with the result that I'm now too pooped to know or learn about anything else.
So while I'd just love to blog on things bigger and better than my own daily existence, the fact is that I don't really have the time to do any due diligence on, you know, things that are actually important. This means that I'm switching gears and using this little piece of online real estate as a repository for my personal doings and whatnot. Mostly because I'm too lazy to write detailed emails. And also because I need an outlet for the snowballing nervous disorder that I'm cultivating out here. Lucky you!
Back in 1926, Halide Edip published her memoirs. Today I came across this paragraph, in which Edip describes what she saw on July 12, 1908, a couple of days after Abdülhamid II reinstated the constitution of 1876:
The next day I went down to see Istamboul. The scene on the bridge caught me at once. There was a sea of men and women all cockaded in red and white, flowing like a vast human tide from one side to the other. The tradition of centuries seemed to have lost its effect. There was no such thing as sex or personal feeling. Men and women in a common wave of enthusiasm moved on, radiating something extraordinary, laughing, weeping in such intense emotion that human deficiency and ugliness were for the time completely obliterated. Thousands swayed and moved on.
Neat that the same scene has been re-enacted in Cumhuriyet meetings across the country this year. Let's hope that the political sequelae this time around are happier.
After a whirlwind tour of southeastern Turkey, I’m back in Istanbul and getting reacquainted with my best friend, the internet.
As a nice homecoming present, Christopher Caldwell has come through with a beefy feature for the NYTimes magazine on marriage traditions among Turks in Germany. It’s a long article, so here are the essentials, parsed in obnoxious media speak:
The nut: Turks in Germany tend to import spouses, thus making assimilation difficult.
Corollary: Binational marriage feeds furor among Germans that Turks are gonna take over the country.
Framing device: public beating and subsequent activism of Seyran Ateş, Germano-Turk-Kurd women’s rights lawyer-cum-memoirist.
It’s generally a well-done piece, full of great writing, but there are some issues that are left unexplored. For instance, why do German-born Turks find it necessary to search for spouses in Turkey? Caldwell chalks it up to a form of tradition-bound cultural insularity. Okay, but why does such insularity arise in the first place? Immigrant communities do not exist in a vaccuum. Absent is discussion of what it’s like to be Turkish in a rapidly xenophobic German over-culture.
There’s also little exploration of the attractive side of Turkish culture. From reading the article, one would think that being a Turkish woman carries with it the implicit threat of forced marriage, followed by brutal beatings and eventually ‘honor killing.’ Not to say that these aren’t very real and dire problems (found the world over), but Turkish culture in Germany would hardly survive if half of the population was cowed into it through fear alone.
Caldwell fails to give coverage to the definite benefits of a culture that emphasizes importance of community. It’s the stuff of which a social contract is born: the good of the many, care for the disenfranchised, communal child care, etc. This kind of societal set-up differs fundamentally from the Enlightenment apotheosis of the individual, but it should in no way be conflated with a lesser or more primitive way of living.
Here’s something from Caldwell’s article that sums up what I’m trying to say here:
Even Seyran Ates sometimes sounds uncertain that German ideals are sufficient to protect women. ... “Socially, there has been a lot of support,” she says. But the way the incident itself occurred, particularly the way men looked on while she and her client were assaulted — that clearly still upsets her.
“It brought me to despair,” she said over tea. “It showed a lack of civic courage.”
But would it have been any different in Turkey if a man had begun to beat up a woman like that on a subway platform?
“Oh, yes,” she said calmly. “They’d have lynched him.”
"Epilators sound great, but I'm just scared of the pain."
"It's not like you're going to die."
"True."
"But maybe you are more sensitive. Describing pain is difficult."
"Yeah, pain is hard to talk about. So are smells."
"No. 'This smells like a dead body.' Not difficult."
The International Symposium on Mevlânâ Celâleddîn Rûmî has moved on to Konya, after two days in Istanbul. It opened here on Monday at the Atatürk Cultural Center in Taksim, where Erdoǧan was among the headline speakers, and wrapped up yesterday at the Marmara Hotel. In the interim, more than 130 academics presented research on everything from Sufi ethics to Mevlana metaphor. As you can imagine, a good time was had by all.
But I didn’t get to sit in on many of the most interesting talks, because I skipped the first day to concentrate on mastering saz scales. Bad decision. Upon arriving on the scene yesterday, I learned that the one person I wanted to see, Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, had already spoken at the opening ceremony and wasn’t slated to take the stage until the closing of the Konya leg of the conference. Maybe next time, right?
Ah well, I did manage to walk away from the Marmara with a better appreciation of the guy who laid the groundwork for Yunus Emre, everyone’s favorite pre-Ottoman folk poet. Rumi’s massive output, most of which was composed in Konya, basically set the stage for every Anatolian poet that came after. Rather than writing sterile stuff in high Persian style, he encased a deeply felt and very attractive metaphysics in accessible verses. Here’s how E.J.W. Gibb described the style back in 1900:
Unlike the contemporary lyric and romantic poets, [Rumi] and the other mystic teachers, both in [Konya] and elsewhere, wrote in a simple and straightforward style, eschewing the tricks and artifices wherewith the court poets bedecked their works. These men were too much in earnest to play with words; moreover, they were less artists in language, or even poets singing because they must, than masters who chose to teach in verse rather than in prose…”
Rumi was born on September 30, 1207 (so there’s still time to send an 800th birthday card), which is why UNESCO has declared 2007 to be International Rumi Year. His life is outlined pretty well all over the internet, but for the link averse, here’s a gloss (pretty much boiled down from Köprülü's book):
After tramping around eastern Anatolia, Iran, and Iraq, Rumi’s family finally settled in Konya. There, Rumi settled into the life of a religious teacher, traveled at least once to Syria, and generally served as an exponent of his father’s teachings. This all changed at the age of 37, when he met Shams of Tabrīz, an unconventional wandering mystic hailing from Persia. The two spent six months holed up in a room, deep in conversation, after which Rumi emerged a changed man. From that meeting on, with depressive breaks only when Shams disappeared periodically, Rumi spouted Sufi verses like some sort of mad poem fountain. But Rumi’s son didn’t get along very well with Shams, and the latter eventually ended up quitting the family’s compound for good.
Despite losing his inspirational friend, Rumi’s output was astounding. You can find good online translations of nearly everything he penned, including his huge prose poem, the Masnavi i Ma'navi, his discourses, and excerpts from the Divan-I Shams-I Tabriz. When reading through them, keep in mind that early Islamic mystical poetry is super metaphor heavy. Being drunk refers to the condition of ecstatic divine love, the Friend or Beloved is God, and poppyseeds are basically shorthand for worldly preoccupations. That is, Rumi wasn’t a drunk, co-dependent, poppyseed hater.
That said, my friend Dave has purportedly found a long-lost Rumi poem that discredits some of what I’ve just learned. I’m doubtful, though. Dave is known for composing ultra-literate limericks, and I just can’t find any evidence that Rumi knew the form:
I really like Shams-e-Tabrizi,
So much it makes some folks uneasy,
I call him "Beloved"
But don't make too much of it,
I'm not gay, just a little bit cheesy.
And here’s the real thing:
My back is broken by the conflict of my thoughts;
O Beloved, come and stroke my head in mercy!
The palm of your hand on my head gives me rest,
Your hand is a sign of bounteous providence.
Remove not your shadow from my head,
I am afflicted, afflicted, afflicted!
Sleep has deserted my eyes
Through my longing for you, the envy of cypresses!Take my life, you are the source of life!
For apart from you I am wearied of my life.
I am a lover well-versed in lovers' madness,
I am weary of learning and sense
Me too, Celâleddîn, me too.
It's a busy morning out here, and I'm really not sufficiently nescaffeinated to write anything coherent, so here's just a brief roundup to get the day started:
Nükhet Ruacan, famed jazz chanteuse and professor of music, died yesterday. Today's Zaman reports that her funeral is set for today. Meanwhile, fans are posting real-time condolences on Ruacan's Myspace page.
Over at Shiraz Socialist, blogger Alan Thomas tries to bridge some of the conceptual gaps left in the wake of mainstream reporting on Turkey's recent events:
What really annoys me about coverage of Turkish politics is the evident manifest ignorance of basic facts about that nation’s history, cultures and politics on the part of so many people (especially in terms of political groups) who cover it. People in Turkey don’t fit the slip-shod categories that so many people on the left employ in an attempt to easily explain politics in Anatolia and the Middle East. Rather than trying to make them fit “our” schemata, we should try to meet them on “their” terrain. We might even learn something.
Conference season is upon us here in Istanbul. Just my luck that I'll be out of town for the cool one. Of course, I could always make it up by hanging out with these people, or maybe over here. What a party.
The Silk Road is open for business. At least, that's what I took away from this Turkish Press news item:
"We are making preparations to export Turkish rakı to the People`s Republic of China," said Egemen Demirtas, CEO of Elda Drinks & Energy Services Corporation, on Monday.
Ach, what a mixed bag of a weekend. Although I'm a little ashamed at how much I'm eating up international news, I'll jot down the basics to set the stage for the week to come. Maybe then I can start posting about things that are a little more timeless, a little less social studies 101.
Late last week, on the tail of Turkey's constitutional court decision to annul the initial vote on Abdullah Gül's candidacy, Erdoğan called the ruling "a bullet fired into democracy." He argued that the decision would make future parliamentary votes on presidential matters "impossible." Rhetoric aside, he did say that the people's protests were being heard by the AKP, and that secularism was central to the party's concerns as well. If not convincing, he should get credit for maintaining the illusion of a dialogue with the public, at least.
By Friday, it was clear that the AKP was in trouble. Erdoğan announced measures to soothe the populace (and probably give his party a new foothold) by revising the constitution. He moved to change the electoral process over to a popular vote, lower the minimum age for candidates from forty to twenty-five years old, and to reduce the presidential term from seven to five years.
Good timing too. Sunday also brought news that the center right had merged as well. In this case, the True Path Party (DYP) and the Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) are uniting under the umbrella of what they've dubbed "the Democrat Party." But then came the weekend shocker: Gül withdrew from the election Sunday afternoon, right after parliament failed to legitimize his candidacy in a second vote. Heady times.
Which brings us to the biggest news of Sunday night: Sarkozy's win. It was a sad way to end the weekend. Ségolène Royal's graceful concession speech didn't manage to quell voters' dissatisfaction across France, which really can't be a good foreshadowing of times to come. On the domestic front, it is a bit gratifying to see Erdoğan's chilly reception of the news.
Other weekend highlights were purely personal: found a book I've always wanted, learned about a conference I'm planning on crashing, and finally got a grip on saz notation. We'll see what the rest of the week holds tomorrow.
Over at Slate, 's think piece does what the EU probably never will: bring France and Turkey together, at least on the page. It's a simple, if not exactly appetizing, recipe. Take one part Nicolas Sarkozy, one part Abdullah Gül, mix well, serve while hot. From the article:
In Istanbul last Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the nomination of Abdullah Gul as president of Turkey. In Paris next Sunday, Nicolas Sarkozy will very likely be elected president of France. These two events are geographically distant but closely connected in political terms. Together they explain a bald fact of life: Turkey is not going to join the European Union. And they also illustrate one more contradiction—and failure—of the neoconservative project.
