Going Continental!: August 2006 Archives

"It's the longest Sunday," June observed, after Deb commented on my whipping out the camera to record the spread at Lee and Ralph's last night: "You're still on vacation!"

Yes. :-)

Once again I had no idea how the day would unfold. Lee had offered that I could stay in Long Beach for a few days upon my return and I looked forward to a day or so of rest and adjustment from jetlag. Ambiguity was immediately introduced, however, as other company had arrived. I was chauffered to June's instead.

I hardly hesitated to make myself at home - how could I, when she'd already drawn a bath in the jacuzzi for me?!!! I slept deep and well, waking up early yesterday to begin in earnest the task of being back. I commandeered the dining room table for a few hours of work, then meandered through the day. Before leaving the house, I met June's turtles (among the rest of the menagerie, which includes a cat named Bob). Lee collected me and I resumed mediterranean mode, tagging along wherever, whenever: a tagsale (or was it a yardsale?), a jaunt on the boardwalk (15 minute massage for $10!), a visit to Deborah and Steven's which turned into lunch with Raki.

Next up? Shopping. Oooo, my favorite! (not) I was aimless for awhile. After a few hours though (!), what could one do but join in the spirit? "That was a frivolous day," said Lee, when we finally pulled out of the TJ Maxx parking lot, dispelling my perception that she lives this way all the time. ;-)

I have already learned many things this day: about hosting, giving gifts, taking care to be sure no one feels the least bit extraneous. I adjusted to shifts in conversation - from intensive, animated political discussion with Deb to general care and concern for issues and persons in each other's lives. In the past these would have caused me some angst but today was merely the way of the flow. All this was, it seems in retrospect, prelude to the deep and sweet stuff to come.

When I entered Deb's living room I felt almost assaulted by the large canvas leaned up against one wall. My reaction was gut, visceral; I had no words. As we drove away at the end of the evening, June told me about teasing Deborah about "a lot of red" and asking, "Where's the crime scene?"

Yes, my first reaction was to the implicit violence. I wondered about the insides of this woman: what sources inspire such production?

I almost cried in her studio, standing on the toilet (!), taking in the full visual presence of #40 after her description of its material, theoretical, and spiritual elements. I showed her my tattoo. "That's a lot like my work!" she exclaimed. :-) Yes, our canvasses differ, but the stuff of our work - genetics (dialectics) and dialogue (creation) run parallel.

From there we went to dinner, eventually dubbed my welcome home party. (I only grinned from ear-to-ear for most - not all - of the evening.) ;-) Lee brought out Sam's last bottle of wine. June finally found us and we toasted the spirit of Sam, the day, new and old friends, good food, and memories.

Ralph manipulated the musical environment masterfully as we chomped and chatted our way through several courses, including a dessert to die for - the best canoli and chocolate-covered blueberries!

Can you believe all that was followed by tiramisu? Stop already! (No, don't!) ;-) Not long thereafter I hit the wall. Deb and June noticed immediately - poof, within ten minutes we were on the road.

Chance moves on.

Goodbye for now.

Well, it was more like a few hours in Madrid (!) - a perfect interregnum between my month in Istanbul and the upcoming academic year in the States. It was hard to tear myself away from World House International but time pressure facilitated.

The first culture shock occurred immediately after Taoufik (driving for the hotel I booked on spot at the airport) collected me. Some congestion of busses and minivans prevented forward movement. Nothing happened. No honking. No swearing. No maneuvering onto the sidewalk to pass whatever fool had blocked the road. I'm not in Turkey anymore!

We sat in silence for a few minutes. Eventually we begin talking and I realize here is a man who has stepped outside of the (dialectical) trend of colonialism. He's from Morrocco, speaks Arabic and French, yet came to Spain.

After a sound sleep, a quick blogpost, a brief 'good morning' chat with Taou, and a delicious breakfast I set out for the Real Jardin Botanico. In reality, I have one to one and a half hours of quality "tourist time". My chosen destination is 30 or so minutes on the metro plus 15 minutes walk. A brief wait between #5 and #2 allows me time for a journal entry. I debark at Ventas and several sights greet me, including the Puerto de Alcala.

The bliss of this interlude of a day is the time it allows my mind to drift over recent memories and interactions, consider particular comments, and process the emotional mix of departure (so final-seeming) and impending arrival (with its own anxieties). Fatih had commented the other day on my writing about a lucky feather. At the time, I just said I like feathers....but today I wondered what makes a feather lucky? It seems to me that of all the things I will remember about Turkey, the most important one regards a marked improvement in my skill at reading signs.

So here I am, walking rather briskly but alertly down Calle de Alfonso XII, keeping my eyes more-or-less fixed on the architecture, including woodwork, grillwork, and urban views to my right, reserving the Parque del Retiro on my left for the return. I'm thinking about signs and codes - what is it that brings a particular sound or view into focus? I've already tipped a couple of musicians playing happy jazzy music in an underpass at the beginning of the walk. I chose to hear their tune as prelude. Beauty abounds and distant views entice. I'm resolute - I picked the botanical gardens because I imagined that there I will be able to hear birds.

The indeterminate future worries me somewhat, yet its unknown qualities no longer weigh me down. I am pleased with the evidence of self-healing. A tower catches my eye and I stop for a photo.

I notice the tree in front of it, then the tree layered next. Three layers, coming into consciousness from the top-down, most distant to closest. Hmm. I start to continue walking but ... perhaps I should note this location - what about these three layers? Start on again, but now I notice an intersection ahead, at an odd angle....it doesn't seem to conform to the map but why hasn't the Garden hove into view?

Ah. I need to turn here. Was the tower a sign? It visually interrupted my thinking. I had shifted into automatic pilot; it took three "signals" to break me out of it, to draw me back into the immediacy of the moment, here, now, where I am. How far might I have gone before realizing the error? Perhaps not so far, who knows? As it was, I lost a minute only instead of ten, and it was hardly a loss as it illustrated phenomenologically, in its unfolding, precisely the puzzle I was working in my mind. What causes one thing rather than another to be imbued with importance?

I believe it is a combination (for me) of timing, location, object, and thought. These things must converge in a pattern that has relevance for me, whose individual symbolisms can be perceived or interpreted in a cohesive whole. So the feathers are "lucky" - more precisely, significant symbolically - because, for instance, they come into view precisely when I am thinking of someone or something special. Another comment that has remained in mind was when Umit said he knew my age (but wouldn't guess, smile), adding something about "the game" I was playing with it. Maybe it's time to stop coming out about my advanced years? :-)

Anyway. It turned out I was right next to the Jardin but didn't know it. :-) I strolled down around the corner, seeking entry, and discovered the Feria de Libros where I located the current Economist, several postcards, and a used photobook of the city. FINALLY I found the entry to the Jardin. :-)

Time progressed; I headed for the Parque.

The central pond stirred a memory of my brother losing his glasses one summer day, right over the edge of a paddleboat in Denver. I remember lunging for them as they began to slide . . .

Details of this fountain are terrific: frogs alternate with turtles and children ride sea creatures (I imagine fanciful dolphins). :-)

I would dally but Taoufik "That's how I am" awaits. We go for a fantastic Spanish meal of morcilla and tabla de quesos washed down with clara, beer with lemon.

At one point Tauo said, "Wait." Can you imagine why? ;-)

Istanbul wasn't done with me yet! (pictures soon) I was going to just drift through the morning at Cemberlitas, return to the hostel for packing and a leisurely farewell before my mid-afternoon departure to the airport. Instead...

Yasar approached me on the street in Sultanahmet; he had noticed my Crossroads conference shoulder bag from Bilge University. He works at Istanbul University and asks if I'd like to see campus. I love these Turks who have such an ability to make spontaneous plans!

"It is the last day, the last minute! You must do good!"

Did we ever! He toured me through the cemetary of family members of the last two Sultans, Abdul Hamid and Mehmet IV (?), the Grand Bazaar, and the grounds of the University (which are closed to the public; Yasar did some fast talking to convince the guards to allow me entry). He explained to me that Nuri Osmaniye is the first mosque built in the baroque style (who knew that even the mosques have different architectural styles?), that of the three towers still standing in Istanbul the one on Istanbul University's campus, Turen Bayazi (sp?), was for public safety as a fire lookout. He showed me Ibrahim Pasha's famous cemetary with the five names and the best view of the Bosphorus from the back side of Suleymaniye. Most special, however, was a deeply hidden tea garden.

I will be back for sure. :-)

A wave of grief swelled up in me when Leylim asked me not to leave last night, “First night and last night!” Only an hour before Arzu had asked me how I feel about going back to the States. “Mixed.”

“Keep your heart with you,” encouraged Umit. :-) How can I not when life rewards me with such sweet meetings? Early yesterday morning, I’d told Fatih I wanted to spend my last night with old friends instead of new ones. I meant it when I said it, but life doesn’t always conform to expectation. Instead I had a perfect day and perfect night with five new people and seven old friends. Quality time with a dozen people in one day! Who would ever have imagined my capacity could expand so much?

Liminal Turkey (as I’ve subtitled my holiday here) has done its work in me. Warning: My sentimental streak is in high gear. Double warning: I won’t apologize for the excess I can’t contain! :-)

I got started late even though I woke up early. Instead of throwing a blanket on Erdem’s face to wake him this morning I tried shaking his feet. Three times. Finally the woman in the bunk above was also disturbed by his alarm (she thought it was mine), so I roused myself, getting out of bed to go to the head of his bunk and shake the dude. I was pleased to be awake and alert after our (unphotographed!) late night and immediately dove into work.

There were conversations to have with Gunseli, Nina, and Fatih. The morning stretched luxuriously into early afternoon. Yikes! I was supposed to be “doing things!” I bumped into Jillian as I readied myself to leave and it turned out her afternoon was free. “Have you been to Moda?” she asked me? Nope. And we were off. :-)

After much meandering – in conversation as well as path – we arrived at a cay bahcesi.

Since it was my last day, Jill offered me “the better view.” I accepted but then realized I didn’t want to see the city, I wanted more of the water as my visual horizon. “Perfect! I get the mosque,” she said. “Perfect!” I responded, “I get the open sea.”

Something in me chafed a few times….wasn’t I in a hurry to get somewhere? I noted this temporal residue: being in a constant rush, as if whatever I was engaged in was en route to somewhere else where there was (supposedly?) something “more.” I reminded myself that the only destination is now. Besides, I really did not have anything else that needed doing! A few phone calls to touch base and coordinate schedules offer some proof of the “Mediterranean attitude” I’ve absorbed. (Of course we’ll have to see how long it lasts once back in the gristmill of the academic calendar.)

The afternoon floated along like sailboats. Eventually, it was time to rendezvous with Arzu and Ahmet for dinner: delicious crab salad. The evening’s pre-planned schedule faded: more “things to do next time.” Instead, I viewed Ahmet’s first short film, The Trashcan, listened to some of his mixes, and burned Kabakoz photos for Arzu. We were starting to wind down when the phone rang. Ten minutes later Umit and Leylim arrived. I sucked down some coffee fast. :-) We enjoyed some dessert and stretched our wings in stimulating conversation. Meanwhile we perused Arzu’s artwork. We laughed often and deep.

I flew until my body stopped (hi, Claire). :-)

Returning to the hostel conjured the sense of coming home, a place of respite, affection and teasing after respective days full of who knows what. Old (!) friends – including Recep, Özcan, Erdem, and Olga – opened, closed, and touched the middle of the day. New friends filled it with light.

Kolay.

Life caught up with me quickly when I moved away from my friend’s place at Sabanci University some weeks (?) [!!!!] ago. It was a terrific refuge while I tried to find my bearings after my plan to travel to Iran was dashed. The effort of generating an alternative on the spot overwhelmed me, leaving me content to plant my butt and let weeds grow. It is a fantastic campus with a gorgeous library (whose friendly staff

facilitated my communication with an IT staffer (Osman should get a raise) who arranged wireless access for me as a temporary guest), outdoor sculptures, a water fountain (good for reading by), fantastic gym facilities, and good food. See me eat!

In addition to the tasty cafeteria meals there is a fast food joint that serves a delicious tavuk (and whose staff wanted to be famous).

Out of fairness then, I asked my daily coffee suppliers if they would like their picture taken as well. They did.

Meanwhile, all is not so open (shhhhhhh, tease forthcoming!) I was allowed access to secure (coded) housing but not to the mysterious, concealed biophysics lab. I was able to capture photos only from behind cover.

The arrival of new technological equipment escaped my camera. Careful, painstaking, and prolonged observation determined that the office of a certain accomplished biophysicist is behind these one-way windows.

I had spied the campus rocket upon arrival and saved it on purpose for the last day. I had determined that the steps to the top were open.

Imagine my emotions after climbing some 57 (or was it 84?) stairs! My emotions were also stirred by the spectacular student art exhibit, Nu Portreler 2.

I began my collection of hand images most deliberately here - I hope none of the artists are offended (and if they are, that they will let me know). I thought I included one recently but now can't find it; at any rate watch for more in future posts! (Unfortunately, glare is a problem with some: either from my flash or the natural light.)

Only one thing at Sabanci was left undone. ;-)

So I rented a bike to tour the island.

It was fun to race. See me draw neck-and-neck!

And leave those four-legged beasts in the dust!

OK, I need to practice my one-handed driving, reverse photo-shooting skills. :-)

Meanwhile, I won't embarass the friend who recommended friends to me here on the island who then recommended me a place to stay right on the corner where the carriages wait. Horse pee is not a pleasant odor. :-/ Simi (sp?), who I rented the bicycle from, suggested I check out the private Greek school, but it was after hours. They have quite the view, though.

I saw several (lucky?) feathers around, a butterfly of striking colors (red/orange on black), and a lizard (sorry for the limited zoom capacity).

They would not let me enter the Sanitorium. I was thinking I might be a suitable candidate. A third of the island is devoted to some naval purposes, and I couldn't help but notice the guards. One guy I hadn't seen in his tiny guardshack until he moved. Catching him out of the corner of my eye I actually backed up; he had leaned forward (apparently?) to watch my progress. I said, "That's an awful job!" thinking of how interminably bored one must be. He panicked, shaking his head frantically. Poor fellow. The next guy, when I didn't immediately look away, cracked and grinned. I grinned back but declined to engage him in conversation. Is this to be a new career? Taunting security personnel? Oy vey...

I had a fun conversation with Mustafa, Barik and their brother (the one with the best English, whose name I've forgotten, sigh) and their dad, Naim. Our communication was halting but they were so curious about me (american?!!) and eager to practice what they knew. This was at the nicest public beach, Cam Bay.

The forest on this island is amazing. In many places it evokes a sense of the Elves forest, hiding Rivendell. :-) (There is a monastery back there, I discovered after the fantasy.) Anyway, the island gave me a terrific dose of blue before returning to the fading greens and burgeoning fall colors of the northeast US.

Fatih caught up with me for a bira before dinner. We engaged in serious political debate. :-)

I got a bloody nose – but it’s unclear why, perhaps it was the residue of all those cops glaring threat at me when I was snapping their photos.

There was great art by Kaya Tanyeri on display in this cafe tucked on a side street down from Kadikoy’s quaint version of Istiklal (which I don’t know how to spell). Her work evoked many complex emotions for me, about family and being a woman.

Olga and Claire finally tore themselves away from Topkapi Palace so we could finally eat at the well-known Ciya restaurant, which serves food made in the style of Gaziantep, a village in the southeast of Turkey. and Olga wasted no time knifing the dinner bread. We shared a vinegary salad completely redeemed by finely chopped pistachio nuts, and tasted each other’s meals. My guvec was the spiciest hot (yah!), Fatih’s lahmacun the mildest roll-up pizza, Olga’s tandoori-flavored perfectly cooked chicken, and Claire’s superbly spiced kebap all complemented one another on the palate. At least, on my palate - Claire didn’t find the cheese dessert pleasing, leaving more for me! (Oh alright, I did share some of the extra.)

For me, it was a day of perfect symmetry. :-)

It took well over an hour for the thousands of protesters, from a hundred different groups and organizations, to pass by me in Kadikoy yesterday afternoon. I was immediately impressed by the wide age range (I bet the average would be late thirties/early forties), and the gender distribution (more men than women, it seemed). Conspicuous by their absence, however, were Muslims. Are they not against Israel’s military incursions into Lebanon? Do they not support a Palestinian state? Or is Istanbul less integrated than it seems? Perhaps there were many Muslim men and non-veiled women among the marchers but they were undistinctive. Finally, toward the end, one group of thirty veiled women appeared.

Later, someone explained that the groups in this march were all of the political left, and the religious right won’t mix with them in this kind of way: religious Muslims exercise their politics by different means. It reminded a bit of the debate at the hostel before I left, which included criticisms that there were too many different groups, with unclear agendas or simply gut-level reactions against what they don’t like with no thought to consequences or alternatives. This is always the problem of politics, of course, the challenge of building broad-based coalitions with clear and coherent strategies. What struck me most, however, was the fact of my friends’ concern for my physical safety.

I was encouraged not to let anyone know I’m American (the crowd might turn on me?), but then it became clear it was not the protestors that was the cause for concern. It is the police. Or maybe both. Some friends had witnessed a protest on Istiklak where shop windows had been broken and police had used tear gas. They also recounted stories of police suddenly lashing out and beating people for no reason. I argued that we must make the police accountable through visibility of abuses (media coverage etc), that we can’t let the threat of violence prevent peaceful protest.

At any rate, I probably would not have been so aware of the police if we had not had this conversation. As it was, I noticed them everywhere: on the dock when the ferry landed,

massed (in riot gear) behind the central stage area,

observing from rooftops (military I think, not police),

with back-ups lurking in nearby side streets.

The main road around the staged area was kept closed long after the march was over. Leaving the protest area was no problem, but I was struck by the fact that it was completely enclosed.

To enter, one had to be searched. The men were patted down. I was directed to a female officer who only peeked in my shoulder bag. I wasn’t searched as intensively, but the atmosphere was definitely designed to be intimidating: you had to really want to be “in” the protest, not so easy for people passing by to be drawn in spontaneously.

As far as I know, there were no incidents.

This one thinks, let me be the slender bow
of the violin. Another, the body of the instrument,
burnished, the color of amber.

One imagines life as a narrow boat
crossing water,
a light mist of salt on the prow.

And still another – planed down to planks,
then hammered into shelter
toices vibrating through the rafters.

We do not notice their pleasure,
the slight hum of the banister
beneath our palms,

The satisfaction of the desk
as we tap our pens, impatiently,
upon its weathered surface.

They have ferried us
across rough seas
to lands that smelled of cinnamon

housed our senators,
who pace the creaky floors, debating,
carried arrowheads to pierce our enemies.

We have boiled their pulp, pressed it
into thin, white sheets of paper
on which we describe all of the above in great detail.

And when we die
they hold our empty forms
in bare cedar

until the moment – and how they long for this,
when we meet again in the blackened soil
and they take us back

in their embrace, carry us
up the length of their bodies
into the glittery, trembling movement of the leaves.

Danusha Laméris
Atlanta Review: Istanbul and beyond…
Turkish Poetry (2006, p. 18-19)

We made friends almost immediately.

We located a hotel, met relatives of the owner, and landed ourselves on a boat. We pull out of the protected river area,

and next thing you know, we're cruising the coastline.

It changes constantly. After some twenty minutes of loud music, a short spurt of off-balance dancing, and hollered conversation, we arrive at an inlet.

Selin and I talk, while Irem tested the water with her toe. Ozcan lost no time diving in; can you tell which one is him racing back to the boat?

These craggy nooks reminded folks of Cappadocia - no, I didn't go there (yet). Maybe on the next trip. :-) Returning, pictures were taken all around, of the women:

and the (self-segrated?) men:

We parted ways at sunset.

It was just over a week ago that we began this trip. I don’t have the proper upwardly-curving “hat” in my symbol file to spell Agwa in the Turkish way, which indicates the soft (to my ears, silent) “g”. En route, Ozcan and I

stopped at the MobiDik restaurant with its view of the site of the original fortress of Herake

(now known for Turkish carpets) on one side and the Marmara on the other. Yes, we took the long way round, through Izmit, to the Black Sea coast. You know you’re in the Meditteranean when the windows lack any covering whatsover. We also saw an olive tree estimated at 400 years old.

Check out the trunk. The countryside is stunning.

We saw many findik groves (“the petrol of Turkey”) which yield one of my favorite nuts.

Here is a log with links back to the entries I wrote during and about the presentations I attended at the Association of Cultural Studies conference held in Istanbul, graciously hosted by Bilge University. The following list is in chronological order, from earliest to latest.

Crossroads Day 1 (posted July 21, 2006) regarding "European Identity in a Transnational World" (1.55), “The City as a Thinking Machine” (S1), and “Is a Cosmopolitan Multiculturalism Possible? The Australian Context" (1.13).

Crossroads Day 2 (posted July 22, 2006) regarding "Emotion Trouble, or the Affective Turn in Media and Cultural Studies II" (2.3).

Stop Masturbating in Public (posted July 22, 2006) regarding "Abstract Social Identities and Chaotic Everyday Practices" (3.01) and continued with Inside/Outside (posted July 23, 2006).

Multilingual Cosmopoliticians (Crossroads Day 3) (posted July 29, 2006) regarding the panel by this name.

Interpretation and Linguistic Inequality (Crossroads Day 2) (posted July 30, 2006) regarding the panel "EU: Europe Beyond Geography?" (2.51) which included my own presentation.

Crossroads (Day 4) (posted August 7, 2006) regarding “Time, Space and the Unfolding of Culture" (4.19)

Cutting into the Social Fabric (Crossroads Day 4) (posted August 18, 2006) regarding the Closing Plenary, "Where Should Cultural Studies Go?"

First, the hamam at Cemberlitas for a sweat and serious skin scrub. I felt so clean and refreshed afterwards. :-) Then, dinner at a restaurant called Cennet. YUM! Gunseli and I (in costume) shared an Antep Crepe and Adana Kebap (both named after villages elsewhere in Turkey). I had an ayten to drink (yogurt, rather saltified), and then we had dessert (yes, there is chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream under all the fruit!)

Along the way Olga, Lambrini, and Claire caught up with us. Everyone but Claire was enticed into dancing with the resident gypsy troupe.

Our waiter, Bayram, promised to sell me a property in the US at half-price once he passes his real estate test and joins his brother working for Century 21. His promises are a bit shaky, though, since he tipped my Turk kahvesi for a fortune-telling but then failed to produce a fortune teller. It seems my future is unreadable! Gunseli tried again,

this time seeing three journeys, a ship, [Claire contributed a shark], a seagull (perhaps bringing news?), a mermaid (!), and a sculptured head. No cohesive interpretation was forthcoming, although the wish I held in mind this time was foretold to occur quickly. (I don’t know if one is superstitiously supposed to keep the wish secret…?) [Not that there’s any superstition in the rest of the activity, ahem!]

It took almost forever to escape this joint, so we abandoned the ethnoelectroenergy music bar and found another restaurant (!) for Olga, Claire, and Lambrini to eat. (Why they didn’t order at Cennet….?) We discussed international relations for some time en route, three Greeks, a Turk, and me. A lyric by Morrissey was cited: “America is not the world.”

Nonetheless, I’ll be returning to the US soon; the official countdown has begun. After the angst of adjusting to the imposed change in plan (no trip to Iran, wah) with the accompanying anxiety of how I would manage to use my time here without too deep a descent into the lonelies…I’ve had the most extraordinary and fortunate holiday. I owe it all to the people I’ve met along the way. :-)

Where should cultural studies go?

Kuan-Hsing Chen posed this question as an open challenge. Physically, geographically, the Association of Cultural Studies will hold its next conference in Jamaica, but the real question, Chen argues, is not "where" but “how will we go there? In what manner?”

This morning I met Akhilesh. He’s studying disaster management at the Kyoto Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies in Japan, which is prone to every known natural disaster except drought. Istanbul just hosted a disaster management conference because it is also quite prone to earthquakes but its disaster preparedness is devastatingly low. Yesterday they commemorated the 1999 Izmit earthquake that killed approximately 7000 people and destroyed at least 300,000 homes, registered 7.4 and displaced a million people. Apparently, seismic activity occurs here – on average – every five years, but the level of individual awareness and preparation is so low authorities are concerned that individuals and families may not be able to sustain themselves for even a week if another large quake occurs.

I don't know about the emergency management preparedness of India (Akhilesh intends to return home to central India), but the cultural contrasts between Japan and India are incredible. Akhilesh described them well. :-) There are similarities between Turks and Indians in regards to law (watch for an upcoming post on Turkish driving). Akhilesh says Indians' attitude towards the law is essentially contrary. “If there is a sign that says “No Smoking,” I might light up a cigarette just for the thrill.” But in Japan, no one questions it. “There is no resistance. Not even an abberation! If the government says, "reinforce this building," they reinforce the building. In Turkey, they will pursue all the proper documentation and certifications to show their building is ok, but in actuality…”

This reminds me of my favorite retired ambassador explaining about the fantastic new highways that have been built on the Asian side, which are technologically perfect. But administratively? Several signs were posted incorrectly, causing drivers to follow misdirections for months! Even now, over a year later, one sign (at least) has still not been properly located. “It’s incredible! No one cares!”

Akhilesh’s scope is wide, considering how it is that Japan is among the upper echelon of developed countries while being faced with constant geological and climatological disasters. He notes that Japan is an island, therefore doesn’t have any border/immigration problems like India (with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc) or the US (Mexico). Japan has regional tensions with China but they are not as hostile as India’s with Pakistan. I wondered about the representations of social values in language use about preparedness and how being prepared is linked to development. (One must know Japanese to identify these cultural nuances.) Overall, Akhilesh is still puzzling on the degree of conformity. Obviously, given his characterization of Indian attitudes toward the law (not to mention its vast cultural variety (regional, linguistic, etc) what was been effective in Japan will require much modification.

If I were to go out on a thin limb of speculation, I’d muse that the high level of individual conformity and collective acquiescence is, in fact, directly correlated to the high level of risk of death and social instability. The more insecure the exterior environment, the more humans seem to require stability of the interior and social relationships . . . the narrower and more rigid (?) become the avenues for the semblance of control. The discipline of doing what one is told – hence, of acting on the basis of essential trust in the authority, intentions, and reasons of the ‘teller’ – performs positive psychological and sociological functions. As long as the authorities live up to this trust, a high degree of functional performance can result, strengthening the fabric of civil society.

This is a clear benefit of homogeneity. (A cost is the reduced range of expression for individual variation along a continuum of repression to oppression.) It does help one understand the driving impetus behind ideological nationalisms and religiosity. If one manages perceptual input through pre-established frames, and limits interaction to those who are similar, one can (hope to) establish a groundwork for maintaining sanity: one can (seek to) predetermine (to varying extents) the path of one’s life, to feel as if one is in control.

I order Turkish coffee before heading to the Arab-Israeli symphony last night.

I'm back at the World Istanbul Hostel, where people know my name. :-) Gunseli says she'll read my coffee grinds.

Of course I'm game! There are a few crucial steps, first, one must upend the cup into the saucer, and then wait. Eventually, the evidence is produced:

The sequence might matter. Gunseli read them before she showed them to me. (It felt so Harry Potter!) At any rate, she read me only positive signs:

- "there is a man with a beard...some thoughts" (am I in his? he in mine? unclear. I think first of Sam, then of The Man Who Would Be My Wife.)

- "there is a baby" which might indicate "something good . . . it's happiness"

- "there is a fairy, like a butterfly, it means luckiness"

- "there are big fishes; fishes mean money" (so far so good!)

- "there is a tree, branches, like a family, strict relationships" (hmmm . . .)

At this point Gunseli shows me the cup. I had just read an English translation of a Turkish poem, "I Thought I Could Be More", by Jennifer Highland:

I thought we were done but there was another step. I was told to keep a wish in my head while Gunseli poured off the excess liquid from the saucer:

(If only the reading is as blurry as the picture!) My wish will come true, she says, "it will be a little slow, but it will happen." One last examination and "a man with a mane like a lion," who is the same man as before (oops, definitely not TMWWBMW) will give me "a very big present or happiness."

I can't complain overmuch about my fortune, it brims with optimistism! Then Gunseli dashes the whole thing: "Only for fun!" she laughes, grinning.

Tonight the moon is a perfect pearl,
a seed floating in each eye as you gaze
up into earth’s softest sunbath,
photons fresh in from a lunar landing,
but weary of miles, ninety-two million out
to the iron-rich seas and glassy meadows
of a four-billion-year-old crater-pocked rock
and back to earth. Are you sleepy yet?

Tonight the moon is a snowfall,
light as particles drifting over your face,
your eyelids heavy, fine muscles letting go.
Can you feel the motes sifting down
through the stratosphere’s filmy clouds
and landing at last on your inner arms?
Tonight’s moon is a tarnished mirror,
a high whole note the coyotes call to,

their blind instinctual throatache unspooling.
It’s a waterfall tired of its rainbows,
turning everything earthly to smoke
and ashes, the day’s flock of angels
finding your body celestial enough to rest on.
Can you feel them alighting on long hairs
and fine ones like mist on grasses?
Breathe in, and each cell drinks

its drop of moondew, white fire gently
warming and cooling exactly as prayed for.
Tonight the moon is a birch leaf
afloat in the solar wind streaming past us
toward Pluto and thinning to nothing
like the song of joy (remember it?)
welling up in your limbs, as they sail out
into deep space now, buoyant with sleep.

~ Margaret Holley
Atlanta Review p. 1
Spring/Summer 2006

The applause after the first number, Leonore Overture, No. 3, Op. 72, was overwhelming. Beethoven is usually rousing, but there was a quality to the upsurge of gratitude and appreciation that seemed to exceed recognition of the quality of the performance. My own guess is that a significant component of the emotion was sheer relief - for now, at least, the Israeli/Hezbollah ceasefire plan in Lebanon appears to be working.

This orchestra is the 1999 brainchild of intellectual and public critic Edward Said (a Palestinian); and conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim (an Israeli). Its performances raise money to support young people from the Middle East and Israel to play classical music together. The Foundation, now based in Seville, Spain, issued a declaration in 2004, and

An ancient hall of Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Eirene Museum was sold out but we obtained standing room only tickets and wound up sitting (comfortably enough) in the rear stairwell (our view from below, first half; for the second half we made it to the uppermost stairs). Acoustically, I was amazed at the sound. It was stunning. I wondered about performances in this space over the millennia (!) and the constitution of audiences. What kinds of court intrigues and politics occurred during and regarding public performances? How public was “public”, then? (I was unaware at the time of the cancellation and reinstatement of the concert for political purposes.)

I haven’t attended a live orchestra performance for at least 20 years. Various impressions flitted through my mind mixed with vague memories of growing up. Have I heard these pieces before? It was an educated audience, no one applauded falsely between the many movements of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. After the third or forth movement the audience and musicians had cohered. The warmth of the summer evening and lack of ventilation heated up the air to the edge of discomfort: the discipline of sitting still and listening was released in a full group rustle of throat-clearing, rapid brochure-fanning, and general bodily rearrangement. Such was reenacted in each pause thereafter.

What a contrast with Depeche Mode and its audience’s constant, unrestrained movement and attention leapfrogging between the music, mobiles, location, beer…

I also thought about voice and modern-day, mass-mediated politics. I imagined mideast politics as a symphony. There’s the constant thrum of the violins, the basics of everyday life, ebbing and cresting in twitters, chirps, and plucks of melancholy, pleasure, contentment, discord. Occasionally deep swells converge in coordinated harmonies, complimenting or contesting other tides. The deeper strings, brass and woodwinds vacillate among drawing out the dark power of living and accentuating the surface manifestations of conflict and dissension. Percussion marks the points of decision. Commit or retreat but know that whichever is chosen is consequential, even if only circumstantially so.

I know my characterization is crude: I am not a musician. But I felt the music and this is what I thought: a strong voice was needed to pound the drums long and hard enough to force political forces to stop the surface burst of unbelievable human violence. Let’s say the voices of my friends raised in outrage were the cellos and horns, and I came in as a woodwind. Or perhaps I was a lone French Horn against the trumpets. My notes were heard (?) as a threat to the cohesion of the necessary cumulation of voice (sound, power). I would prefer to be positioned as a complementary voice playing an alternative melody, or striking my notes along a different yet compatible scale (but this may be out of my control). What matters to me is the overall “sound” – the co-generated orchestral production. What a good conductor does is balance the volume of each section (sometimes even each individual instrument) so that each thematic strand is auditorily consonant with every other; but the conductor cannot make this happen, the musicians must be responsive, they must trust the conductor’s ear, which hears that which they cannot.

I suppose I came up with this analogy because of a section in Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68. I am not sure which instrument it was, perhaps (?) the contrabassoon. Its sound was almost too deep, too soft to be discerned yet Barenboim coaxed it up, quieting the violins just enough for the lone voice to emerge with the distinctiveness of its own rhythm.

Of course, the difference in social relations and musical collaboration are that there are no conductors (or too many, smile) for social relations. There is also little precedent for such wholistic orchestration in societies or groups where, for instance, we are mostly strangers to each other. Hence, our attunements are more likely random and historical rather than deliberate and visionary.

At the end of the concert I wanted more. So did the vast majority of the audience, and I believe the musicians did too. No go. :-( Maybe Barenboim wasn’t feeling well; maybe he was affected by the absence of the double-bassist who had been called back to Berlin for some reason (leading to an alteration in the program). Who knows. The love was there. :-)

The audience’s appreciation did not dim after that first round of applause, making me wonder if it was “only” the music after all. Or perhaps the even more simple effect of the fundraiser wine we had to gulp before entering? :-) The music was extraordinary, of that there can be no doubt. The setting was magical, the timing historic, the company superb. (Erdem did make sure there was no confusion about our relationship.) ;-)

The title of the orchestra is from Goethe's poem of this name, West-Eastern Divan, "in which he brings the poetic culture culture of the Islamic and Western worlds together" (liner notes). Goethe is noted for beginning to learn Arabic after the age of 60 as well as for truthfully representing "the Eastern spirit of poetry." Imagine! Old dogs can learn new tricks!

I have been on a beach of the Karadeniz (Black Sea) yesterday and today, in the small town of Kabakoz...hope to add more pictures later. Came to Sile for an hour of InternetCafe (and spent another hour or so on a small local beach). This mornıng I was asked to share my thoughts regarding Turkish culture.

Here is a summary, of which my present "family" proclaimed, "What you say matches our experience." (Which I translate as 'not too bad for a foreigner.') We are quite enjoying ourselves. :-)

I imagine it is the climate – the heat – that most conditions Turkish culture. One moves slowly to conserve energy, otherwise it is wasted, sapped by the sun. The relaxed pace could give the impression of inertia, except for the bursts of assertiveness required to compel others to meet one’s needs. There is no widespread ethic of “service” in the institutional economy; it almost seems an imposition on workers to do their jobs. I cite an hour spent in a post office recently, in which three workers took an hour to arrange a small box to be sent to the US. This in stark contrast to street vendors whose constant labor is as palpable and pervasive as the minarets dotting every settled landscape. Turkey is a land of faith, not only in terms of Islam but also in terms of social relations: what must get done, will get done, eventually. Otherwise, it must not need to be done.

Nonetheless, the people contain and channel vast amounts of restless energy. Periodic emotional outbursts are a regular feature of social interaction. These are generally taken as a matter of course, although I observed two near fights – over adjusting an air-conditioning vent (mere fisticuffs), another over a parking space (with one man wielding a knife). Others intervened in both instances to prevent actual violence. Yet relations over all are friendly. More people return smiles than not, including fully-veiled Muslim women, whose eyes tend to crinkle upon contact (thought not always, some remain suspicious but this is in proportion to similar disinterest from others who find my smile inexplicable).

My ignorance of the Turkish language has only rarely been an impediment. The most common reaction when I initiate a request or reply to some overture or inquiry in English is a slight widening of the eyes and an immediate holler to a resident English speaker. Proficiency varies widely, but has always been sufficient. In those instances when there was no one who spoke English, we’ve still managed through gestures, drawing, pictures, and mime. Only once did I have to abandon an attempt to communicate with a cab driver. I was not equipped with the proper visual aid (a ferry schedule) to supplement my inadequate pronounciation of “Bakirkoy otobus” and forgetting of the apparently crucial term, ishkelesi.

A middle-range of service mentality is evident in private shops and restaurants. It comes and goes according to the rhythm and inclination of the owner or employee. Often enough, one has to assert desire in what seems an aggressive manner. Such hardly seems to ruffle feathers though, as many of the initial interactions I would label conflictual from a US point of view turned into amiable and sustained conversations and a significant amount of attention to satisfying needs both expressed and intuited.

I have met many people who could become friends, and some who have: moreso than I could possibly have imagined. Native Turks of religious and secular persuasıon, Turks who have come to Istanbul from other regions or countries, and foreigners like myself. Everyone extols the beauty and promise of the country.

There is more to write another time. Back to the beach!

"The Man Who Would Be My Wife" treated me to a day lounging on the Bosphorus, nested into a bay with dozens of other boats with their precious cargoes of families and friends.

The spoils of lunch were followed by a light dinner, delicious dessert,and regional fruit.

The juxtaposition of leisure and pleasure with radical politics (“the extreme side of communication”) has been on my mind. How does an individual justify the personal exercise of privilege while people are being killed? I know I need the space and time to be thoughtful instead of reactionary. The danger, I guess, is in being lulled into aesthetic perception as a permanent desire.

Said and Ali have a brief discussion about “a Chinese wall” between art and politics (69-70). As I understand their use of the metaphor (the reference being new to me), it refers to the institutionalization of a separation between aesthetics and politics, such that art is (supposedly) produced for art’s sake alone, with no political content or possibility (?) of social commentary. Said argues that literature-for-literature’s sake is also false and a recent construction: false because “culture…is hopelessly involved in politics” (103) and a development (in the West, particularly English culture) only of the mid-19th century.

Said declaims to Ali: “I agitate against myself!” (105). Not only against orthodoxies but also against settling into a predictable pattern “governed by things like my own past work” (105). Said’s intellectual restlessness leads him to proclaim the possibility of transgression as a social fact:

“…there’s always an opportunity, no matter how one feels oneself up against the wall with no alternative but to submit – which is usually what it’s all about in the end – there’s always an opportunity to do something else. There’s always an opportunity to formulate an alternative, and not either to remain silent or to capitulate” (108).

Yes, and . . . formulating alternatives requires change, requires the enactment of a difference between who I was yesterday and who I am today. Tendrils of the past cling tightly. Reluctantly, I strive to extract myself from the enticements of their grip.

“A voice belongs first to a body, then to a language” (52).

Negar told me about an Iranian saying, that learning another language adds a new person to your self. Yes, new capacities, new zones of expression and perception, yet what Berger says is also true, the voice – in its emotion-inducing physicality [my qualification] – remains the same. This use of the word “voice” is different than Blommaert’s conceptualization of “voice” as the operationalization of intersubjective, discursive power. The intersubjective part is the part between real individuals engaged in real time (face-to-face synchronic time or asynchronous technologically-mediated time – as in the turn-taking among myself, Yasser, Jeff, Amanda, and . . . you? wink! Why not?!!)

The discursive part is the larger framework of relationships in which each of us is embedded and all of us partake. Every time we speak (via our physically-embodied voice or through written text), each utterance spins forward along a dialectical trajectory as an outgrowth of previous exposure and knowledge. Simultaneously, each utterance opens onto a potential new vista, an unknown dark zone. “Dark” because not yet lived: unexperienced, and therefore unknown. (Thanks Negar; and original thanks to Chris Baxter, who played with calling me a "dark ally" during the 2005 Supporting Deaf People Online conference.)

I read Berger and translate his words into mine. “It is prudent to believe that the large is more real than the small. Yet it is false” (53). He is discussing the myth of scale, the myth that suggests that the macrosocial is more real (e.g., more powerful) than the microsocial. “If we are trapped, my heart, it is not within reality” (53). He writes to his love as I wish to write to mine. :-) The point, however, has wider application: let me attempt to articulate it precisely.

If we – for instance Muslims, Christians, Palestinians, Israelis – are trapped it is not exclusively because of impersonal institutional forces grinding out grim realities such as the devastation in Lebanon. We are “trapped” also within our own individual, personal and private (dialectical) trajectories. Our “hearts” (our loves, passions, dreams and visions) are constrained by “a vestige of the fear reflex to be found in all animals, in face of another creature larger than themselves” (53).

A major factor that feeds this fear is the loss of home. Berger ties the loss of home explicitly to emigration. More words about emigration are necessary, Berger claims, “to whisper for that which has been lost” (55). Emigration can be understood as the driving feature, the essential characteristic, of global transnationalism. Whether one chooses to move to another country temporarily or permanently, for purposes of education or work, or is forced to move for literal survival (to work or to seek asylum), what is threatened by this move is home. Edward Said discusses this too, in the extraordinary re-ordering of his conception of self that was required when he was sent to boarding school in the US.

“Originally,” Berger explains, “home meant the center of the world – not in a geographical, but in an ontological sense” (55). He continues, “To emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments” (57).

When the physical site of home is lost (left, taken away, inaccessible) one resorts to “the habit which protects” (64) and “the psychic level of turning in circles in order to preserve one’s identity” (63).

Özcan challenged me over the phone. “I like what you wrote, it is very good. But the story stopped. Maybe you will write more tomorrow? Keep it up. I like the comments too.”

There is always more! :-)

There was the list of movies I never saw: Hiroshima, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, more. Eventually you asked if I wasn’t much of a movie person. “I’m not much of a popular culture person,” I replied. “That’s too strong,” you exclaimed, “I give you something and you kill it!” I could only nod in resignation, settling that bit of knowledge (as you illustrated) into its place of permanent recognition in my head.

There was the story of your name, “can” meaning “spirit,” Özcan meaning “the real spirit.” (Which I quite like, grin.) A note about “nonalignment” – hmmm….I don’t remember what that was about? :-/ Something about people’s different subjectivities, I think?

There was a rather serious exchange about me having “closed all the doors and windows” to my own self, because I grew up “living in a lot of noise.” You were distraught that 25 years passed before I even started to find the latches and locks to burrow my way out: “That’s too long!” But it is what it was. :-)

The periodic bursts into song: “One enchanted evening, you may meet a stranger…” (I did make eye contact this afternoon, twice, with a beautiful woman who grinned back at me, both times.) There is that. I have had at least four conversations of “coming out” to date, all of them follow the same pattern. I say “she” in reference to a partner or lover or desired mate and my interlocuter replies “he.” You/they are sure you’ve misheard, or that I’ve confused the pronouns: it just couldn’t possibly be. And yet it is. This is one reason I could not convert to Islam. One, I am too US American with learned cultural and ethical attitudes about equality and integration; two, I am too lesbian.

Meanwhile, they would not let me take pictures at the museum today (inside, I got a few outside).

I got a hot tip that today was free. I made notes about some of the paintings I especially enjoyed. There was also an iron sculpture, abstract, called Composition, by Kuzgan Acar, that resembled (to my imagination) several birds in flight, or an American Indian dancer simulating a bird of prey. The architecture of the building is neat, with plexiglass shattered as if by bullets surrounding one flight of stairs and heavy link chain the next. There is a "False Ceiling" of paperback books, created by Richard Wentworth, of works from the East and West to show connections and distances and convert the physical space of the museum into an area of conceptual and aesthetic debate.

I loved the black and white photos by Francois-Marie Banier, arranged in an exhibit called “true stories.” Famous personages are interspersed with anonymous folks from the street. Some of the images have been embellished by the photographer’s handwriting. There was also a computer graphic of a tree in motion, Eye Catching, including the trunk, undulating in constant sinuous fashion, by Jennifer Steinkamp. I purchased a few mementos with the work of Fahrelnissa Zeid (Mother and Child, 1987, and Struggle Against the Abstract, 1947). She wrote a stunning poem about the art of painting: “I mean you, you…”

A voice addressed me in Turkish. “Sorry?” I looked up from the August edition of Time Out Istanbul. An older (than me, grin) man addressed me again, “May I share this table?” he asked, explaining, “It’s hard to find a place for one person.” “Certainly,” I replied, not wanting to hog the 4-person table I occupied. “I arrived early.” I’d already devoured half a pizza (pear, walnuts, cheese) and a great glass of fresh-brewed ice tea. I wasn’t ready to abandon the table; I hadn’t decided how to spend the rest of the evening. I had been weary all day – a reaction to the volume and intensity of recent days’ stimulation.

While he settled in I wondered about etiquette. I recalled my first trip to Germany, some 20 years ago, where people often shared tables and rarely spoke. Should I continue reading? We made eye contact. “Where are you from?” he asked. Twenty hours later (!) I returned to my room at the World House Café and Hostel.

Özcan is gregarious, curious, and happy to be alive. He writes. His first book is on Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national/rebel poet of Bangladesh.

Özcan loves his hometown, and had just completed a meeting with his publisher and several reviewers in which they approved the publication of his next book about its history. Bostanci has grown from a village of 1000 when Özcan was growing up, to a densely populated suburb of Istanbul. Eventually we ended up there, but not until after a second pizza (spinach, cheese), fresh walnuts (they taste different and have a softer texture than the dried variety we get in the States), a bottle of wine, music, flowers (we had to talk, wink), and some sightseeing.

First, the Rumi Mehmet Pasa Camii.

I can't recall if the famous architect Sinan (who built the Suleymaniye Mosque) built this one as well as the next mescit (small mosque) that we saw, nestled right on the shore of the Bosphorus.

It is impossible to convey the sounds and images of Sufi ritual through words. The most I can attempt is to describe my experience. I am a sucker for mysticism. :-) [Sucker: (2b) "One that is indiscriminately attracted to something specified."]

[Painting by Ayten Mungen Polat.]

The visit to Mevlevihanesi began with a gift. (Later, as I checked into my hotel for the evening, I received a compliment: “That is a beautiful scarf. Very Turkish.”) Beautiful tiling and religious inscription adorn the entry, a long hallway with four windows opening onto several richly-embellished coffins: the lineage of teachers at this particular temple (architecturally it is not a mosque). Adherents pause at each window to offer greetings and respect.

The hall opens onto a small courtyard with trees and the obligatory public water spigots. Among the various decorative tiling is a symbol I have not seen before.

We remove our shoes and pass through two rooms before entering the place of worship. The singers have already begun. I am gestured to sit with a few women at the far end of the space. I settle down and observe the surroundings. The walls are dense with script.

Immediately in front of where I sit is a large open space. The man who welcomed me with his eyes, indicating where I should sit, is spreading small fuzzy carpets around the edges of the wooden floor. The singers are clustered at the other end, squeezed into another room separated from the dance space by pillars and a low wall. They face the same direction as I do, so their backs are toward the dance space. They sing in unison, striking the same notes but at various pitches: a melodic blend of tenor, bass, and baritone.

The sound is low and quiet yet it fills the space. It is pleasing, rhythmic, soothing. I continue to look around and realize there are onlookers in the balcony, women and children. They have the best seats in the house. :-)

More people enter. I am distracted by two women who sit in front of me (their male companion sits with them at first, then is directed to the men’s section). They talk. Is it instructional? Perhaps, but it interferes with the singing. The woman doing most of the talking checks her cell phone. I am annoyed by the disrespect to the service and the auditory interference. But people move continually in to and out of the worship space. Late arrivals filter in throughout the service: some join the singers, others the audience. Some people depart at irregular intervals. The annoyance is only mine. I let it go.

Suddenly the dancers enter. After the first three I am surprised when the fourth steps into the room, then realize I’ve seen many depictions of five…yet they keep coming. I count nine. The dance space seems small to me now: how will they manage? They line up in front of the audience space; I can’t see much. The singers are in their third or fourth song now. A very few times a single voice has deviated from the chorus, usually in a sharp or punctuated manner: obviously deliberate. Upon occasion a soloist would sing a prayer. These seem to have been short and subtle because I had not noticed when they began: my consciousness would gradually register their presence as “having been there for awhile.” I was oddly alert while simultaneously being lulled.

The dancers, individually, bow. There is no rhyme to it, no pattern. If there is a cue as to who should bow when, I cannot discern it. Are they being visually directed? My view is obscured. Some time passes. When will they begin? How will they start? The singing provides me no clue: the chants seem to vary yet the overall sound remains more or less the same. A dancer moves into view to my right. Ah, there has been a leader, someone whom (I assume) the dancers have been facing.

Now the line of dancers bow in unison and remove their black robes. Except the first one in line does not remove his. I count again, ten plus the leader, eleven in all. Two in black, nine in white. They kneel, prostrating themselves in the typical Muslim prayer position. Suddenly they strike the floor forcefully with their hands, startling a young woman near me. The volume of the singing also rises simultaneously, an accentuated coordination of the singers and dancers.

In addition to the special exhibit, El/le, there were a couple of other exhibits on display.

An exhibit of "Portraits from the Empire" includes this classic, which is seen all over Istanbul:

And many others; I posted an excerpt of five hands from one already, and took this one of a pal.

There's an even older series of paintings, called "Mehmed The Hunter's Imperial Procession."

I bought some replicas of the Kütahya ceramics. These come from a particular province that became famous during the Ottoman period for ceramics, tiles, and faience.

One of my favorite parts relates to the Anatolian weights and measures. I just think this stuff is cool. :-) Many of the same tools are still in daily use.

Finally, there's a fancy little cafe inside the museum, which seems to double as a performance space. It contains the actual piano which inspired the movie, The Piano.

I really enjoyed Sudeep Dasgupta’s talk on “Space, Time and the Political: The EU Constitution and the Partition of History.” This was part of the panel (4.19) on “Time, Space and the Unfolding of Culture.” The hinge of his argument, as I understood it, is that Jacques Rancière provides a conception of the democratic that presupposes an equality that the law has already institutionalized. This is a radically different premise than arguments based on alterity, which have to rely on appeals to ethics regarding one’s relations with the Other. Rancière simply declines to engage at that level, as if “Others” are outside the law, trying to get in and be covered it. He argues that the law already has established principles of equality. Period. From this basis one can proceed in quite practical terms to reframe debates about justice – “the coordinates around which democracy is organized” – instead of about difference (which necessarily invokes non-knowledge, invisibility, and a kind of absolute alterity).

Dasgupta contrasts Rancière with Derrida, who he finds “useless in real life,” while still relying on some of Derrida’s conceptual notions, such as “the ‘secret’ history of Europe (Derrida 1994, 1995) and the temporalization of the spatial. The context is the recent (2005) rejection of the EU Constitution by the Dutch and the French. Anti-Turkey and anti-Islamic themes in public discourses were used to localize Europe: as it seeks to extend its space through enlargement it also heightens its borders (Fortress Europe).

Photo: Poster of a sextant from the Rahmi M. Koc Museum.

This concept scared me right away. Is the Turkish language like Mandarin (Chinese), which depends on tones? I am so bad with matching pitch. :-(

But no, it seems to do with pronunciation, with phonetics, but not tone. Whew/ (and if I’m wrong oy oy trouble on the way!) Turkish uses suffixes extensively, and has a flexible syntax, words are used in different positions resulting only in differences of style, not meaning. I’ll have to learn the difference between types of clauses better than I know them now. :-(

The author, Hikmet Sebüktekin, of the text I bought describes the content of words and utterances this way: “Turkish is tradition-bound. The mere mention of a single word referring to a cliché, a proverb, or an anecdote, of which there are thousands, often suffices to activate complex meanings stored in the mind of every Turkish speaker” (v).

This is one of the things Marie Gillespie discussed in her presentation at Crossroads 2006 on politics and translation, translating politics, although (I think) her examples were Arabic. It also reminds me very much of Lila Abu-Lughod's anthropological study of the Awlad ‘Ali, a Bedouin culture. Particularly the way women used language. She says the men do this as well but she had more access to the women and their ways of speaking.

Turkish is regular, its “forms are put together with almost mathematical precision and utmost economy” (v). Thank you Atatürk! At least, I’m guessing there is a relationship between the development of the orthographic system and the present-day phonetics – but perhaps I am mistaken. It could be that the language was already auditorily rhythmic and the writing developed (with nearly perfect correspondence, each sound having one specific letter) to match. I’ll require a native informant to straighten me out on this, ácaba?

Turkic languages have a wide distribution and minimal linguistic differences among dialects: 90 million speakers in the Balkans, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq…Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, Kirghizstan, Tadzhikstan, Turmenistan, Uzbekistan…Afghanistan, China, Iran, and Russia. This on top of the 60 million native Turks.

My education progresses.

I have been thinking about Allah’s commandment to read, and the particular power of the words in the Qur'an. I have also been thinking about the life of Muhammed. My substantive introduction to his life is through the eyes of Geraldine Brooks. The overall impression that remains with me is the sense of Muhammed using daily events as the template for Allah’s pronouncements. Imagine what it would be like to be a person who is aware that your words will carry forward?!? There is care in many of the commandments, while some seem uttered in haste. Muhammed is (was) after all, just a man, like the rest of us – subject to human desires and temptations. I imagine that questioning this (the basic fact of Muhammed’s humanness is as controversial for Muslims as arguing for Jesus’ humanity is for Christians (someday I should watch - or read! - The Last Temptation of Christ).

My second look at Muhammed’s life is through Anthony Quinn (playing Hamza) in The Message, a Hollywood movie released in 1976 and approved by three levels of Islamic scholars.

The first command Muhammed receives is: “Read.” Kindof a challenge for an illiterate, eh? It isn’t clear if Muhammed does learn to read himself, but what is clear is that he understands the power of the written word. This is also the advice I am consistently given when I ask questions about Islam. “Read!” I have read some excerpts of the Qur'an in English; those that I have read are similar to parts of the Old Testament (including some parts taken from the Jewish holy book, the Torah) and the New Testament (added by Christians), especially Revelation (about the end times). One confusion: is there a contest between judgment by Allah and judgment by men? "Only Allah can know your heart," says my friend. Yet the Qur'an is full of admonitions to punish and discipline “unbelievers.” How can it be both ways? It is so competitive.

It was competitive at the time Islam came to be. Muhammed was not well-received and his followers were severely persecuted. The idea of one god instead of many gods was threatening to the entire social and political order. “The real god is unseen, not made of clay.” Some of the beliefs stated in this movie (and thereby approved by high Islamic religious sources) are:

“Girls should not be forced into marriage but should be able to choose;” and “God made women to be the companion to man. She is equal.”

“Stop the burial of newborn girls.”

“All men are equal” referring to slaves and free.

“Jews have equal rights as Muslims.”

At one early stage, when the persecution is severe, Muhammed advises some of his followers to go to Abyssinia, where “there is a Christian king, no one is harmed in his country.” The followers who seek sanctuary there have to argue to gain the King’s protection. They convince him by such statements as, “You believe in one god like we do;” “God has said it all before, to Noah, Moses, Jesus, now he says it again, to Muhammed;” and, “At one time all religions were rebellions.” The Qur'an cites the story of Mary, telling it in essentially the same way as the Christian bible does.

The main group stays in Mecca with Muhammed, but eventually they are also forced to flee. I like the story of Muhammed being protected by a spider’s web and a bird’s nest. :-) Spiders are very important in many American Indian religions (scroll down at the link), and birds in some of them.

The “tala el bedru” is the happy call of the women when someone special arrives. I guess it is not only for Muhammed, but also when travelers from the village return home safely? A camel decides the location of Muhammed’s house, a choice that “can offend no one.” Hz. Bilal, a former slave, is the first to sing the call to prayer – the use of a human voice used to distinguish Islam from Christianity (which uses a bell) and against the militarism of a drum: Hamza, one of Muhammed’s uncles, is an important and powerful early convert. He says, “there is too much blood in a drum.” Would that such anti-violent sentiments had carried forth with more force!

I am with the story up until this point. I haven’t been offended, or disagreed with anything. Then Muhammed decides (is told by Allah) to go to war against Mecca. :-(

I have not yet seen the rest of the movie. In the interim, I have been reading John Berger and considering his discussion of time. My speculation is that Muhammed experienced life deeply, in such a way that he accumulated presence. He reinforced his own energy through his perception and insight of relatively mundane daily events. The words he then uttered were received powerfully because listeners felt their “truth” – they realized – and could not deny – the applicability of what was said to their own lives. They could not avoid the logic.

The force of this accumulation, its concentration, penetrates across/through time. It is re-concentrated by believers, who add to the accumulation, preventing dissolution, therefore keeping the power of the words recorded in the Quran alive. Herein lies a specific problem. The words uttered by Muhammed referred to his time, his era, his locality, his place. It is the same challenge Christians face with translating the bible into contemporary times. Literality is dead, it is frozen in time-space, a perennial monologue, an example (?) of the poetry Bakhtin critiques: Poetry "acknowledges only itself, its object (what it represents), and its own unitary and singular language (p. 670a); the word in poetry encounters only the problem of its relation to an object, not its relation to another's word. In other words, words used poetically refer to language itself, to idea of centralized/unitary poetic language, and perhaps to an object represented--but not to non-poetic language, to other languages in the culture."

The problem of literality, then, must be engaged constructively. How does one shift from a monologue to a dialogue? How does one nurture the recognition of two (or more!) logics and participate in a synthesis that leads to something new?

This was during my first serious tourist day here in Istanbul, and it has been my favorite exhibit to date. I already posted some of the work that dealt directly with the deaf and also interpretation (of the main exhibit's title, El/le). Of all the exhibits, this one, by Nebahat Cagil, is my favorite:

I was not where I’d planned to be yesterday. Instead of having coffee with a language and interpreting professor I trekked all over Istanbul visiting the tombs of Islamic teachers. At one point I was pinned between two men arguing their different interpretations of … Islam? Politics? It’s hard to say, except that the air thickened and thinned with waves of tension. I took many pictures… and tried to follow the lessons. I was distracted, somewhat, by observing all the people going about their daily lives (hyper-aware of my days being so out-of-the-ordinary), and wondering why I’m here, what will come of it, where will it take me?

The weight of lonliness grows. It is heightened, I think, by the certitude of faith as I hear the muzzein and watch people pray. I entered one mosque and two shrines today. Stupidly, I forgot my own scarf, even though I did remember to wear my one pair of long linen slacks. Luckily the shrines had spares handy, although the mosque did not and I did not think of it until we had already exited. We entered Üsküdar Valide-I Cedid Camii to see the evidence of a stolen mural. There was a huge plywood gash in the wall one faces when praying in the direction of Mecca. What effect does it have, I wonder, on those who pray under it regularly? I was entranced by the clocks marking the muzzein’s call schedule. Six in coordination, including one to wake up and then five to pray.

At the first shrine, to Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi (1541-1628), I declined to enter but a man saw me and offered me a scarf. So I put it on and stepped in. The room was full of women and men pleading for Aziz Mahmud to support their prayers and give them strength. Many of them held one or both hands cupped right up against their own torso as they murmured supplications. During his lifetime, Aziz Mahmud expressed the desire for his tomb to be a place where people could gather a sense of strength and security. As we were leaving, I was introduced to Ayse, who is here from California with members of her family. They were all aglow :-) with spiritual uplift.

We checked out another shrine, briefly, where I admired the grillwork and got quite close to a minaret. Cool. Then we went for one of the really big guys: Fatih Sultan Mehmed. He’s the one who finally defeated the Byzantines on behalf of the Ottomans. (He overran a lot of other places too, including Romania, 1462 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.) His entryway was splendid, and the ceiling quite dramatic.

None of this prepared me for Eyup, though. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it inside; they closed up while we wandered in the courtyard. I was stunned as we entered by the size of this tree, the beautiful tiling, and the crowd. It was a live place, not a tribute to the dead (as the others were, or at least, how they felt to me).

The day ended with the moon out my window.

The title of the exhibition, "El/le", has many layers of meaning in Turkish, and it is for this reason that we have preferred to retain this title without translating it into another language. The word "el" refers to both "hand" and "stranger", but the phrase "el/le", its mirror image, can be interpreted as "by hand", "to touch" or "with a stranger"

(Quoted from the Exhibition Brochure.)

"These things happen for a reason," said the rekhat to Meryt-Re (126).

My host said much the same, when I finally contacted him three hours late: "It is fate."

Many hands - most of them Muslim - took care of me along the way, continuing a trend that had already filled my day.

Not only one sign! MANY! In Turkish sign language! Recep works for Information Technology at Sabanci University. He works with a team on the web design of about 50 webpages for the university. We had breakfast together, then he took me to his office to show me pictures on top of pictures, plus weblinks to information about Turkey in general and the Deaf Turkish community in particular. :-) I need many more pictures in my blog. Wow. I was not able to show him very much, and (thinking with Deaf eyes) I realized how text-heavy my site is. :-(

As usual, he (the deaf person) made all the accommodations for me, the less-flexible non-deaf person. Recep (the letter "c" is supposed to have the mark at the bottom that indicates the "ch" sound) knows some American Sign Language. I am thinking Turkish Sign Language is a relative of British Sign Language (which has no relation at all to ASL) and also some English. We began with gestures, then combined gesturing with writing, and at his computer had the most fluid conversation combining photos, websites, gestures, some written notes, and his Moonstar Turkish-English dictionary. Unfortunately, Moonstar only runs on PCs, not on Apples. :-( Although there is a website I can access for English-Turkish at www.sozluk.web.tr translation; I don’t know if it is as sophisticated as Moonstar – I was impressed with it. Working a phrase at a time we could communicate very well, supplemented with facial expression, gestures, and some signs.

I was teasing myself yesterday when I posted about “a sign” – thinking I had already been given one: time to move on! Gizem had pointed Recep out to me but I hadn’t been able to catch him that first time; I knew this might be my only chance to connect with the Deaf community here. Who knew he would turn out to be so generous and friendly?! I guess perhaps I am as much a "novelty" to him as he is is to me. :-) We certainly share a love for teasing (!) and much curiousity about how other people experience the world.

As has been happening for some time now, I feel myself blessed.

Two of three visits to the gym I heard this song by DMX. Last night, as I walked over, I heard the muzzein calling the faithful to prayer. It was comforting. (I hope it is not considered blasphemous for an unbeliever to feel so.) I had completed reading Brooks' sympathetic treatment of Islam just a few hours earlier; some of its sentiments were still on my mind.

“I have learned to live by the rhythm of other people’s prayers,” she writes (225). Among other things, she has provided me with the clearest definition of democracy I’ve yet come across: a system that tolerates competing ideologies (190). Tracing the growing strength of fundamentalist Islamic movements through the 1980s and early 1990s, she charts the narrowing of acceptable public behavior – particularly for women, but also media in general. Brooks recounts the jailing of a newspaper editor “because his English-language newspaper runs a cartoon strip, ‘BC’, that the Saudi government deems heretical. The offending cartoon was a two-frame piece in which a Stone Age man stands on a hill and asks, ‘God, if you’re up there, give me a sign.’ In the second frame, the man is deluged with a sudden rain shower. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘ we know two things: He’s up there, and He’s got a sense of humor’” (227).

I’d say! No sooner have I gotten rested than its time to hit the road again. :-)

“’Behold the turtle,’ [says] a caption under a whimsical drawing of the creature [on a bulletin board at a newspaper in Jeddah]. ‘He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out’” (167).

“Like most Westerners, I always imagined the future as an inevitably brighter place, where a kind of moral geology will have eroded the cruel edges of past and present wrongs. But in Gaza and Saudi Arabia, what I saw gave me a different view” (166).

Geraldine Brooks’ survey of Islamic women’s lives in a range of countries, including Turkey and Sudan, Palestine, Egypt, Eritrea, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Iran, with references to India and the diaspora in England, was published in 1995. Reading it now, a decade later, brings much light to subjects about which I’ve known very little. Her writing is seamless, integrating personal anecdote with historical fact and religious analysis. She concludes hopefully, an achievement in and of itself after all she’s witnessed and explains. I was disappointed that the critique I found from a Muslim point-of-view only found faults, I can imagine that as a defensive reading. No doubt there are things in this text that demand redress, but what Brooks pushes against most forcefully is the fundamentalist refusal to permit doubt (289). The experiences, laws, and tendencies she documents must raise the specter of doubt for any rational being – which is not a necessary indictment of faith. Faith can only exist in the presence of doubt; otherwise it is not faith.

There is a mainstream and even an arguably “feminists” scholarship and tradition within Islam. I’m interested to know more about Fatima Mernissi, a Koranic scholar from Morocco who “has made a formidable case for Islam as a religion of equality and human dignity” (282).

This is hardly comprehensive, but I learned some distinctions that matter. If I misrepresent them I hope (as always) that someone will correct me.

The Koran is the text of the literal sayings of Muhammed and are “the direct instruction of God” (37, Nine Parts of Desire, Geraldine Brooks).

Hadith are “anecdotal traditions about the prophet’s life and sayings.” These are “Islam’s second source of religious instruction” and are debated (whereas the Koran is not debatable). The hadith were collected “by the early Muslims in a formidable research effort in the two centuries following Muhammed’s death” (37), and include all sorts of “apparently trivial” (to non-Muslims only?) accounts including “a genealogy that documents the source of the story and exactly how and through whom it was passed on” (38). It turns out that many of the hadith are accounts from Muhammed’s wives.

Haram means forbidden.

Wajib means obligatory.

Makruh are “in-between” haram and wajib, they are “discouraged and unbecoming.”

Sunnat are also in-between haram and wajib, they “are desirable but not obligatory” (38).

The benchmark for these things is the Koran and Muhammed’s personal behavior. It is sunnat to follow as closely as possible (could one say mimic?) Mohammed’s own choices and makruh to do that which Muhammed chose not to do.

Jihad is “holy struggle to spread the faith and defend the Muslim community. Jihad is obligatory on all Muslims but can take many forms…[such as] teaching the faith, or spreading the word through an exemplary life” (emphasis added, 109).

Fatwa is a religious ruling by “a high ranking clerical thinker” (25). It seems this applies only to the Shiite division, not the Sunnis. “While Sunni Muslims assume a direct relationship between believers and God, Shiites believe in the mediation of a highly trained clergy” (25).

Hijab “literally means ‘curtain,’ and it is used in the Koran as an instruction to believers of Muhammed’s day on how they should deal with the prophet’s wives” (20). Quite a novelty for me was to learn that the Ayatollah Khomeini (the one we Americans learned was So Awful when he overthrew the Shah) interpreted this statement literally, as applying only to “the prophet’s wives,” not to all women.” Another absolutely relevant point is that this instruction given by Muhammed was after he was extremely frustrated with visitors who refused to leave so he could “bed” a new wife. Indeed, there are hadith that recount how Muhammed’s wives (among others at the time) noticed a strange peculiarity regarding some of Muhammed’s pronouncements: they often seemed to relate directly to particular conflicts in his own household. I am torn with appreciation (respect) and empathy tinged with frustration. It occurs to me that Muhammed was aware how his words would be taken, and therefore deliberate in what he uttered. In many regards he was clearly ahead of his time (despite fundamentalist “evidence” to the contrary), but in other regards . . . one has to wish he had been able to transcend self-interest just a wee bit more.

Then, there is sigheh or muta, which I’d never heard of before, which is a temporary marriage “agreed between a man and a woman and sanctioned by a cleric, [which] can last as little as a few minutes or as long as ninety-nine years” (43).

Also talaq, in which a man can pronounce – with no grounds – three times, “I divorce you,” and be divorced (60), a procedure Brooks argues “only the most convoluted and misogynistic reading of the Koran can support” (60).

Aqd is the marriage contract signed by groom and the bride’s father. It is legal when signed, and typically “document[s] how much the groom pays the bride on marriage, and how much more he will have to pay her if he later decides on a divorce…a well-written aqd can counter some of the inequalities … [including] “the esma, giving her the right to a divorce if she asks for one” (56). I wonder to what extent this continues – has the practice increased or decreased over the past decade, and what additional items are included (beyond rights to work and further education) or if these gains have been eroded.

Islam - the Submission (75).

Why hijab? Is it simply its visibility that makes it such a target for critique or are people drawn to this debate because of what it symbolizes? Someone told me soon after I arrived how the clothing (here, in Turkey) served as a barrier between non-Muslim and Muslim women, making nonengagement the only option and leading to a kind of invisibility in which veiled women ceased to be seen by other women.

Brooks brings several views to bear on hijab, representing various strains of hadith, tradition, and scholarly thought. Ultimately, she argues that “the paradox between sexual license and repression” (42) is played out here:

“In Muslim societies men’s bodies just weren’t seen as posing the same kind of threat to social stability as women’s. Getting to the truth of hijab was a bit like wearing it: a matter of layers to be stripped away, a piece at a time. In the end, under all the concealing devices – the chador, jalabiya or abaya, the magneh, roosarie or shayla – was the body. And under all the talk about hijab freeing women from commercial or sexual exploitation, all the discussion of hijab’s potency as a political and revolutionary symbol of selfhood, was the body: the dangerous female body that somehow, in Muslim society, had been made to carry the heavy burden of male honor” (32).

As I tend to do, I noted all of the references to interpreting in Nine Parts of Desire.

“I wanted to ask her if she blamed the Iranian government for not showing her son some mercy, but Janet, who was translating, s hook her head slightly and didn’t put the question. Instead, I asked gently if she felt that all her sacrifices had been worth it” (100).

“Even Hamzah [King Hussein’s young son] wasn’t excluded. Although the boy’s command of English was perfect, he preferred to speak Arabic, and would force his father to act as translater” (136).

“One British doctor, on an eighteen-month posting to a Jeddah hospital, thought his interpreter had failed him during an ante-natal checkup on a twenty-eight year old Bedouin. ‘I asked her when she’d had her last period, and she said, “What’s a period?” It turned out she’d never had one. She’d been married at twelve, before her menarche, and had been pregnant or lactating ever since” (172).

“Official translators milled among the athletes, facilitating conversations. Each of them wore the usual Iranian attire – black hood and long tunic – but with a vivid, color-coded athletes’ warmup jacket pulled incongruously on top. Indigo and acid green meant the translator spoke English; pink and chrome yellow, Russian; lime and sky blue, Arabic. As conversations bounced from Farsi to Urdu to English, the hotel lobby filled with a pleasant, feminine buzz…But in one corner a group of men sat self-consciously, murmuring together in Russian, without the aid of the young women translators…” (208).

“When I decided to write a story about the controversy, Sahar looked at the floor and said nothing. ‘Do you want me to find someone else to translate?’ I asked. She nodded. She didn’t want to visit Cairo nightclubs or talk to dancers” (217).

I could add commentary to each of the preceding quotes, but today I will refrain. :-) Each reflects certain decisions that interpreters must make, constantly, during each and every interaction. These are all reminiscent of the examples Marie Gillespie shared in her talk on the politics of translation. Brooks characterizes

“the Arabic language [as being] as tribal as the desert culture which created it. Each word trails a host of relatives with the same three-letter cluster of consonants as its root. Use almost any word in Arabic, and a host of uninvited meanings barge into the conversation. I learned that one of the words for woman, hormah, comes from the same root as the words for both ‘holy, sacrosanct,’ and ‘sinful, forbidden.’ The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for ‘source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion.’ In the beginning was the word, and the word, in Arabic, was magnificently ambiguous” (10-11).