Saturday night on Istiklal

Wabbits

I've decided to let the rabbits handle all my major decisions in life.Sure you can have someone read your fortunes from tea leaves or coffee grounds, but I've decided to put my faith in another source of divination - rabbits.

Walk down Istiklal Caddesi and you will see a few old men here and there, tucked in niches that create eddies in the crowds, standing beside tiny tables bearing some sort of box with small scraps of paper sprouting from it and three rabbits. Yes, real, live fuzzy bunnies. My understanding is you pay the man and he lets the bunnies have a go at picking through the scraps of paper, which are similar to the ones found in Chinese fortune cookies, only hand-written. The bunnies pluck the papers and the man hands you your fortune. I believe they may also be used like a Magic 8 ball, to help answer pressing questions and resolve life's many dilemmas. I've included two photos here from the internet.



I will take photos of my advisory council when I stop in for a consult sometime soon. In the meantime know that I will refer all questions from here on out to my three colleagues: Floppsy, Moppsy, and Cottontail. One Turkish friend referred to them as "Turkish life coaches". I'm not sure what my two dear friends in the U.S. who are life coaches will think of this. I just hope they don't find themselves outsourced to the rabbits in this new global economy. But, who knows how much better a world we might have if our leaders consulted the bunnies before making major policy decisions.

Salaam.

Şeker screwup, Turkish sea life, and The Godfather

It's raining, really raining. Even better than the sound of the light, steady rain outside is the occasional roil of thunder. I even saw a white flash in the thick cloud cover as I made breakfast this morning. I hope this is a sign the rainy season in this parched country will actually be rainy this year. I made my first cultural faux pas yesterday.

Apparently in addition to marking the end of Ramadan, some people treat Şeker Bayrami like Halloween. Yesterday morning the bird call that is the doorbell sounded to indicate someone wanted to get in the building. A few minutes later I heard the voices of a man and children in the stairwell before the bird chirped again. There stood a very nice man and his four children. He smiled, but looked unsure what to do next when I stammered out my greeting in Turkish. He asked and gestured if anyone else, hopefully Turkish-speaking, was home. I assumed he was asking for one of my roommates and I said no and thinking he knew one of introduced myself and invited them in, which seemed to confuse both he and the kids. He wished me a good Bayram and, still smiling, gathered the kids and headed down the stairs. A while later it dawned on me that what they were probably doing was Bayram trick-or-treating, which left me feeling like those annoying people on your block as a kid who either didn't have candy, but left their porch light on, or the equally annoying box raisins or apple distributors. I knew the tradition dictates you give children sweets on the day, I just didn't realize they came looking for them. I'm sure the kids got their sugar fix elsewhere. I have no one here to ask about this today, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

So, I am finishing breakfast and studying my Turkish by watching a little Sponge Bob Square Pants in Turkish . Sadly, the powers that be did not bother to dub the theme song in Turkish. I have to admit hearing Patrick the dopey starfish use my favorite Turkish word - Saçmalama (Stop this crazy talk!) - made me giggle.

Other than Turkish-speaking sea life, the oddest thing I've noticed is the how often I've been hearing the theme from the film The Godfather in the last few days. A few nights ago a car on our tiny street blasted their horn, which actually played the iconic first few bars of the theme. My inner-child, who still thinks El Caminos and musical horns are cool, was impressed. Actually, I remember hearing a horn that played Dixie in Damascus, so, I guess it's not that strange. Then yesterday while walking İstiklal Caddesi I passed a man selling wind-up toys. One of them, a bird, actually twittered the same famous opening notes, which seemed like an odd choice for a child's toy, but then again, I don't have children.

Salaam.

İyi Bayramlar

A few photos posted over at Flickr....

The city was far from deserted today with the holiday. However, I was able to stroll leisurely across the six tight lanes of Cumhurriyet Avenue outside of the crosswalk, which is rather remarkable.

I stopped in to the New Mosque at about the time for the Friday service and decided to stay. I got annoyed at having to sit behind a screen, especially because I ended up next to a woman who decided to give me a full lesson on proper prayer technique a la Turk. Since we quickly figured out that my broken Turkish wouldn't do, she simply took to yanking my various parts into the proper position. At one point I really longed to know the phrase, "Give it a rest, Bob Fosse," in Turkish. She left before I could thank her. I must say that Yeni Cami smelled distinctly more like feet this time around, but it could have simply been the presence of thousands of them around me.

I paid my first visit to the Rüstem Paşa Mosque, layered in blue Iznik tiles. It's upstairs from the street filled with vendors, which means the traffic is far less than at other mosques, which is nice. The cool blue and white of the tiles and the cozy size, not to mention a very friendly caretaker, make it one of my favorites.

I wandered up the hill to the Süleymaniye Mosque, which is lovely, with deeply colored jewel-like windows and beautiful circular tile works with Arabic script flanking the mihrab. The main dome is either being painted or restored with a jewel motif covering most of it. I tried to walk in with my shoes in hand, as is usually done, only to have the guard at the entrance try to tell me otherwise in broken English. He was a bit embarrassed when I responded to him in Turkish, told him not to worry and that I live here. We shared a smile and he shrugged, as if to indicate he'd had a long day of directing first-time mosque visitors. I wished him a good Bayram when I left and he wished me the same.

Karaköy was empty, save the cats. As I stood photographing a doorway to a church, listening to Max Roach on my headphones, I completely missed the young security guard that had walked out of his building to see what I was up to. Seeing him in my peripheral vision made me laugh as I jerked a bit. We had a perfunctory, but pleasant, conversation before I headed towards the ferry docks.

Salaam.

Thoughts on the Armenian Resolution

My roommate and I watched the House committee vote on the Armenian resolution live on Turkish television last night at about midnight. The non-binding resolution passed 27-21 and is supposed to go to the full House next and then on to the Senate.

I've seen the photos, the maps outlining deportations and camps and they are horrific and certainly seem to illustrate killing on such a scale as could not take place without some official system. I can certainly understand how any of the remaining survivors would want, finally, the Turkish government and the rest of the world to say "This happened to you."

If this was happening today, I would hope all governments could find effective means to stop it. Certainly, 92 years ago every government failed the Armenians. Ambassadors and others on hand and who may have had sway with their governments knew what was happening, reported it, yet no one stopped it. But, what does it mean for the government of the modern Turkish state to admit to a genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire?

And while many of my Turkish friends agree that the issue needs to be brought into the open and discussed, they see the issue as one for Turkey and Armenia to deal with and not foreign governments to demand. In some ways I agree, not quite understanding how these resolutions will change things for the better. Indeed, it seems forcing change on this issue only gives power to the very ultra-nationalists who want to keep it hidden in the dark of the past. One could also look at some of the countries, mine included, demanding that Turkey pull the issue into the light of examination. France has only recently begun to deal with the horrors wrought upon Algeria during the colonial era and the bloody war for its independence. In the U.S. the story of one of the world's greatest mass killings, that of the native peoples of the Americas, still usually only gets a brief mention in most schools. Academics and theorists who raise the issue of the US genocide against native peoples as the root from which the violent cycles of US culture and history grew from are often called unpatriotic or quacks, at best.

Not being Turkish, not being any sort of nationalist, perhaps I'll never understand. One confusing aspect for me is that this happened during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, not under the auspices of Ataturk or the modern Turkish nation. Why not use this episode to show how far the nation has come? I've read part of the difficulty is in the notion of a unified Turkishness - there are no Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, only Turks. This is the same issue plaguing the Kurdish issue. Differences are seen by many as weaknesses, cracks in the foundation. There are people here who call for a change, for the country to begin to celebrate its many cultures, to see variety as a strength. Of course, the same issue is being argued in reverse by many in my home country. After years of celebrating our many cultures, our own ultra-nationalists are pushing for people to see the "others" in the US as threats to security, economy, personal safety, and "American culture", whatever that phrase means.

Things like this cannot, should not, stay buried. Yet even for some of those here who take the risk of calling it genocide, this is an issue to be decided by the two countries involved. Most notable and tragic of those being Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered early this year in front of the offices of his newspaper after calling the killings a genocide. He firmly believed it was genocide, did not agree with the interventions by foreign governments in the issue. In the days after his murder over 100,000 people marched in the streets here chanting "We are all Armenians." However, the Turkish government recently shut down YouTube after music videos appeared in which a Turkish singer insinuated that Dink got what he deserved and bearing images of his body on the ground shortly after his murder. The trial of the young man charged in the case begins soon.

Then there is the stifling Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes it illegal to "insult Turkishness", that is now well known for snaring Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk and author Elif Safak, who both faced significant jail time. Safak was charged under the code for simply having a character in her novel call the Armenian murders a genocide. Pamuk was only acquitted on a technicality, had to be provided a security detail after Dink's murder, and, rumor has it, has relocated to New York City for good. Europe is calling for the code to be repealed as part of Turkey's talks for joining the EU.

As with the current situation in Sudan, my stomach churns with all this discussion and debate over a word while people are starved, raped, and butchered. Mass killing, genocide, crime against humanity...Whatever you want to call it, people are dying, have died, and will die. Instead of spending time debating whether these horrors fit the criteria, I wish those in power would spend more time developing effective responses to end the violence and help the victims.

Supposedly the Nazis highlighted the fact that the world forgot about the Armenian victims when discussing their plans against Europe's Jews. There point was that no one would act against them, nothing would be done, because no one had stood for the Armenians in 1915. Sadly, they were right, and, in the beginning, few people in power stood for the Jews. That seems to be the sad constant with genocides across history and into today - it can be identified and classified like a specimen, but no one knows quite what to do with it. Some call the Armenian victims "The Forgotten Genocide". Sadly, it seems, too many victims of similar horrors are forgotten in the end.

Salaam.

PS: If you want to read an excellent and enraging work on a modern genocide, I suggest We Regret to Inform You, But Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, by Philip Gourevitch.

Bayram and Turkey in the News

It's been a week of anticipation in Turkey, not all of it good.

Şeker Bayrami, translated as the sweet festival, is scheduled for Friday and will mark the ended of the holy month of Ramadan. There are plenty of people not fasting, but everybody fasted for Kadir Gecesi, or The Night of Power, earlier this week. That day commemorates the initial Quranic revelation to Muhammad. I was in training at the language school I'll be working for and the trainer was fasting for the first time and we weren't quite sure she'd make it. As far as we know, she did. I shared iftar, literally break fast, with my roommates at the apartment. One of them has gone home to the Black Sea coast for the holiday weekend. A lot of people will be in-transit over the next few days, heading home to visit their families, with bus lines and airlines sold out. I've heard a few complaints that because Bayram falls on Friday the holiday is much shorter than last year's.

Every night the major stations broadcast special programing as sunset and iftar approaches, on boats, at mosques, usually surrounded by crowds of worshipers waiting to share one of the communal iftars held throughout the city. The programs usually include music and lovely Quranic recitations before everyone digs in and the lights adorning the minarets are switched on.

Unfortunately, the week hasn't been all about gearing up for Bayram. The two major news stories here have been the deaths of 15 Turkish soldiers in attacks by the militants factions of the PKK (Kurdish Worker Party) and the possible passage by the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee of a non-binding resolution calling the deportations and of countless Armenians (600,000 to 1.5 million), in what was then the Ottoman Empire in the years prior to World War I, a genocide.

Bush&Co have put on a show against the resolution, calling for US House to stay out of it and allow the Turkish and Armenian governments to sort this out themselves. The topic is extremely taboo here. Novelist Elif Şafak was charged under the infamous article 301 of the Turkish penal code ("insulting Turkishness") simply for having a character in a novel call the murders a genocide.

The deaths of the 15 soldiers have helped renew the call by some for military action across the Iraqi border into Iraqi Kurdistan, where the PKK militants are said to be taking refuge. As I've mentioned in the past, people here don't want a war, but they are angry at what they feel is the unfair treatment of Turkey by the U.S. government, who seems to have put the issue of foreign fighters in Kurdistan on the back burner during most of the Iraq war. As one Turkish friend pointed out to me, "So, the US can take care of their problems, but we can't take care of ours?"

The renewed call for military action into Iraq and the dispute over the resolution seem to be a bad combination for the US government. There are rumors that Incirlik airbase near Adana, which is of major importance for supplying US forces in Iraq, would be closed to the US.

In response to the killings this week, Turkey has begun bombing suspected PKK positions. And tonight there was word of a grenade attack on a police vehicle in Diyarbakir that killed a child. Not such a sweet holiday season after all.

Salaam.

Blogging the CELTA (or at least trying to)

In addition to other things, I'll be trying to blog about my CELTA course. The main reason is you can't find many first-hand accounts out there. I would have found it helpful, thus I am assuming others will.

The first thing about a CELTA course you should know is it's not cheap. That's not to say it's overpriced, in fact I feel the price asked was fair. If you want cheap sign up at Billy Bob's House of Kebabs and English for an online TEFL certificate. Do you need to take a CELTA course? I don't know, that's really up to you in the end. Can you get a job without the CELTA? Certainly. There are plenty of outfits the world over offering immediate work for people who had the dumb luck to be born in an English-speaking country. I refuse to call native English speaking a skill. Learning the language and learning how to actually teach it in a meaningful and truly educational way is, however, a skill. In fact some of these "schools", and I use the term loosely, don't even bother requiring things like professionalism, maturity, etc. Wander through the various TEFL/TESL discussion boards and you'll read plenty.

I have signed on with one of the "schools" simply looking for "native English speakers" in order to make some income during my course. Istanbul is, sadly, not a place most of us can linger without income. I completed the three day training cycle in this school's "method" yesterday. When I arrived the for my first day of training I was handed a stack of DVDs, yet not informed that there were supposed to be multiple days of training. In my determination and/or stubbornness I spent all of Wednesday in a hot, grey computer lab lit solely by fluorescent plugging diligently through videos of what look to be the most uninspiring lessons ever given. This is training, not educating or teaching. There is no expectation that you write your own lesson plans, that's taken care of in the materials, you only have to fill out the appropriate form properly. The online training is about as challenging as biting my nails and if anybody ever actually managed to fail the subsequent testing I am amazed they could even handle getting out of bed on their own. The live training followed the the lines of the DVD training and we were asked to practice teach mini lessons from the books each day for the trainer. Last night I was asked to observe two high level classes. That was fine, but being warned by a seemingly happy teacher, "Don't hesitate to look for something else." She gave me a knowing look and added, "There are better schools and employment here is a bit uncertain." Then she smiled, winked, and wished me well.

Last Friday was the second day of my course, which will be held every Tuesday and Friday from now until December 14. This is an extended course, as opposed to the one-month accelerated course. The first portion of day one had us squarely in the role of student. We began with the classic ball toss ice-breaker activity to help everyone learn names. However, our trainers also pointed out these activities go beyond helping with names and setting a welcoming classroom environment and can serve as useful diagnostics to assess students' grasp of the language. We ran through a few others, including "two truths and a lie", where you write out three statements about yourself and then have other students try to guess the lie. A bit of time had to be spent on simple administrative tasks, such as passing out textbooks, paperwork, and reviewing scheduling.

The most striking session from the first day was led my Elna who welcomed us back from a short break in a language none of us understood. Elna led us into "My name is," and other short question and responses, all in a language that seemed vaguely German or Dutch, but obviously neither. We all managed, through her review and a series of games, to learn several phrases and how to answer a few questions in only 30 minutes. Elna finally revealed she was teaching us Afrikaans and put us into groups to discuss the lesson from the view of the student and the teacher. It was an interesting role reversal that might be helpful to return to from time to time in one's teaching career in order to regain perspective.

We will be student teaching two groups with about ten students in a group. One group will be teaching at the intermediate level and my group will be teaching the elementary group. We began looking at the subject of lesson planning in the afternoon. During our first teaching practice session each of us in my 5-person group taught a portion of a lesson in 20 minutes. Subsequently, three of us will teach 40 minutes each on Tuesday and the remaining two will teach their 40 minutes on Friday. I found teaching the 20 minutes far more difficult than actually teaching. Not to mention your nervous being observed for the first time and on your first day with your students you've yet to get to know them or assess their skills. Assessment is really the goal of this first lesson and, indeed, by the end of it we knew their names and the two or three who were higher and lower than the average.

We were given our first assignment Friday. Most of the writing assignments will be essay form and must be 750-1000 words. This first assignment, and I don't know how much the assignments or their order changes course to course, is about lesson planning for a reading or listening activity. We discussed receptive and productive skills related to both activities and observed one of our trainers taught us a sample reading lesson, which we later discussed. This time we had to select an appropriate text or listening activity from the Headway book we are using for our students or a related book available from our school, write a lesson plan, and then write an essay discussing what we chose, why, if we altered it and how, and the receptive and productive skills associated with the lesson. Everything is due on Tuesday the 16th, after our week off due to the Bayram holiday. At some point in the course, we will teach these lessons to our teaching practice students.

Salaam.

Alive and well in Istanbul

Just a quick note to let people know I'm still breathing. I seem to be having a very hard time opening the new posts link for Blogger on my laptop. Hopefully, I'll find a way around that...

My CELTA class started yesterday. I really don't see how somebody does that every day, like in the intensive course. I'm quite happy to be taking the more leisurely 10-week course. We'll have quite a bit of work, including a few 1000-word essays, but nothing that sounds horrible.

I managed to find a room to rent. I'm sharing an apartment with a young Turkish couple in Harbiye, across Cumhurriyet Avenue from the Military Museum, about a ten-minute walk from bustling Taksim Square . The room is small, but perfect for now, and my roommates are great.

I'll be teaching part-time for a language center during my course and it will be interesting to see how that goes. It's a well-known name, even if you don't teach English, and I'll leave it at that for now. I hope to find something more formal after that. I've also started making some interesting friends and continue to terrorize average Turks with my basic, broken Turkish. Interestingly, until I open my mouth, everybody seems to believe I am Turkish.

I'll write more, when I am not in a training session for work...

Salaam.

Good night and good luck, America.

It's about midnight here in Atlanta. I need to get some sleep, but I always find it hard to sleep the night before a departure. I'm tired, yet wide awake. Everything that can be packed is packed. I have an ambitious stash of reading materials to take on board. I'm due to arrive in Istanbul Sunday night.
For now, I need to turn out the lights and at least shut my eyes and pretend to get a good night's sleep.

Salaam.

PS: Happy to report Nelson Mandela is STILL alive.

National Day of Action for the Jena 6

While the media is all over the new O.J. Simpson case, the Jena 6 case continues to outrage and is only gaining traction in the mainstream media after several months. Today was a nation-wide day of action in support of the 6 young men charged in the case. Anyone who tells you the U.S. is a post-racial country is blind or lying.

Salaam.

Updates on Israeli airstrike on Syria

Josh Landis over at Syria Comment has a series of posts updating the swirl of information, conjecture, rumors, and speculation over last Thursday's Israeli air strike on Syria. Be sure to check out his Recent Post column for the evolution of the story over the last few days. Turkey is none too pleased about this, either.

Salaam?

Leaving on a jet plane, soon.

Just watched: 2 Days in Paris, written, directed by and staring Julie Delpy. I LOVED this film!
Just discovered: The band Over the Rhine, who play literate and hard to define music, and the bibliophile blog 50 Books where Doppelganger reviews all her great reads and lusts after remarkable bookshelves (proving I'm not the only one with a bookshelf fetish).
Reading: My Nikon D80 manual, causing me to cast longing glances at my 30+ year-old Pentax K1000. I'm like an Amish kid on Rumspringa with digital right now.

Saturday will begin my last week in the States. Here are the plans. I leave on the 22nd for Istanbul. I fly via Chicago and Dublin and arrive at about 9pm on the night of the 23rd, which is far preferable to those 2am arrivals into Damascus. You're generally a quiet audience, but if anybody has any advice for an 8 hour layover in Dublin, please let me know.

The refugee women I teach on Saturdays threw me a party last week. Lots of laughing and lots of food from Afghanistan (chicken and pilaf - amazing) and Liberia (sweet potatoes, greens, chicken, and "broken rice"-delicious). I brought the music of Usted Farida Mahwash for one of my Afghan students and she danced and sang along all afternoon, making sure to point out to me which instrument I was hearing or something important about the structure of a song. Om-Taromeet is visiting Saturday for my last class. I will really miss these women.

Packing is a difficult balance. Clothes are relatively easy. Books are the hard part for me. I remember how expensive books in English are over there (not to mention a $25 New Yorker), which makes my diet an expensive one. There are the "I must takes": a few books on Turkish and Arabic, Kelby's book on Photoshop for CS2; the "I need to read"s: Said's Orientalism (I swear I'll finish it this time) and Covering Islam, a biography of Badshah Khan, Art & Fear, Reading Like a Writer, and Freely's Istanbul; and the "I want to read"s: The Mystical Poems of Rumi, Sontag's Styles of Radical Will, Maalouf's The Gardens of Light, Montaigne's Essays, Homer's The Iliad & The Odyssey, McCarthy's The Road. I'll be handing them off as I finish them, hopefully in trade. Of course I am still hunting for Munif's Cities of Salt and have my eye on Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries and Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul. But, you have to say yeter at some point.

Om-Taromeet will visit from Florida tomorrow through Sunday. She told a class of 5th graders at her school I was moving to Turkey. They laughed, hard pressed to believe there is some place out there named after the bird they eat on Thanksgiving.

Ramadan karim and L'shanah tovah to my friends celebrating today.
Salaam.

Internet Censorship in Syria

Charlie don't surf* and, apparently neither do Syrians these days. Somebody please reply to Golaniya's question about solving the comments issue, especially in light of the Syrian government criminalizing anonymous comments. Like Turkey, the Syrian government seems to be going with the "it's to protect against defamation" claim. I wonder exactly what the forthcoming new media law will entail?

Salaam.


*I'm assuming you've seen Apocalypse Now, yes?

"Kicking a$$" in Iraq, the musical.

President Bush used a colorful phrase this week to describe his opinion of the progress of U.S. Forces in Iraq. His remark provided me a perfect opportunity to share video of one of my favorite songs. For once, and I suspect only once, thanks Shrub. May I present our new national anthem:


Fear not, good people of Turkey, I'm not like these fellas. Though, in the interest of disclosure, I do have relatives who bear a resemblance to the one in the overalls.

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are two of my absolute favorite Brits. Everybody should get the DVDs of A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

Salaam.

Happy Birthday, Marie!

My friend Marie Elizabeth Wiegenstein O'Connor is turning 99 on September 10th. Yes, ninety nine. It's not just the accomplishment of grazing the century mark. Marie is one of the kindest, funniest, and downright pleasant people I've had the pleasure of knowing. She is a rare bird, a genuinely good soul. She's had quite a life. She and her husband lived in France as part of the reconstruction following WWII and traveled Europe extensively in a time when most Americans still spent most of their lives in hometowns. She raised three sons, is a proud grandmother, and never misses Mass. When she tells stories of the years she spent living out west or growing up on her family's farm, the margins of her stories are peppered with modest references to history that launched many a Google search.

Looking back at history, the world we know today has grown up with her:
1918: WWI ends; the Spanish influenza pandemic; the execution of Czar Nicholas II and his family; first documented interracial jazz recording made;
1928: Fleming discovers Penicillin; Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan; first regularly scheduled television programming aired; Mickey Mouse makes debuts in Plane Crazy.
1938: The Anschluss; Kristallnacht; Oil discovered in Saudi Arabia; Atatürk dies; the ballpoint pen patented; Orson Welles causes chaos with War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
1948: Mahatma Gandhi murdered; establishment of the State of Israel; World Health Organization founded; Italian film The Bicycle Thieves released.
1958: Treaty of Rome signed establishing the European Economic Community (later the EU); 5,000 U.S. Marines land in Beirut; Radio Rebelde begins broadcasting from the Sierra Maestra in Cuba; Hitchcock's Vertigo.
1968: Dr. Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert Kennedy assassinated; Baathist take power in Iraq; Tet Offensive; Nixon elected President; Cash's Folsom Prison Blues and The Beatles White Album.
1978: First IVF baby born; Cardinal Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II; Camp David Accords signed; Steve Martin premieres song King Tut on SNL.
1988: Soviet Union begins withdrawing troops from Afghanistan; Halabja; Iran-Iraq War ends; Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Congratulations and much love, Marie. Here's to your 100th candle next year.

Salaam.