İmla Hataları

My never ending quest to find good espresso in Istanbul led me to Bebek to check out Cafe Lucca (because it popped up here amongst the winners of last year's SCAE competition). I didn't find the espresso, but I did find an impressive contemporary art exhibition from Turkish visual artist Aslı Biçer, entitled İmla Hataları (Spelling Errors). I particularly liked her use of collaged newspaper scraps. Check out some of Aslı's other works here.

Neighbors

Ev alma, komşu al.

I learned this Turkish phrase last night, and I really like it. It means something like "Don't buy a house, buy your neighbors." In other words, the quality of your relationship with your neighbors is more important than the quality of the house you live in.

This saying really resonates with my desire to be part of a community, to live in right relationship with those in my neighborhood.

But in reality, being a good neighbor is not very glamorous. In fact it's often quite mundane or even boring. Here in Istanbul it means sitting down and drinking a glass of çay, even if your mind is thinking about bills to be paid and English lessons to be written. In many ways, being a good neighbor in Turkey means letting go of American pragmatism and being prepared to do... well... ostensibly nothing. Presence is more important than productivity here.

Being a neighbor also means knowing the whole neighborhood is watching you and talking about you, but that's a blog post for another day.

"Hoşçakal" by Emre Aydın

A lot of people here in Turkey really like this song. I may be one of them... not sure yet.

The Museum of Innocence

Currently I am reading Orhan Pamuk's latest novel The Museum of Innocence. The following exert is a brilliant example of the poignancy of Pamuk's turn of phrase- even in translation.

"At times like this what matters is not our words but our demeanor, not the magnitude or elegance of our grief but the degree to which we can express fellowship with those around us. I sometimes think that our love of cigarettes owes nothing to the nicotine, and everything to their ability to fill the meaningless void and offer an easy way of feeling as if we are doing something purposeful. My father, my brother, and I each took a cigarettes from the packets of Maltepes offered to us by the elder son of the deceased, and once they were all lit with the same burning match that the teenager artfully offered us, there followed a strange moment when all three of us crossed out legs and set about puffing in unison, as if enacting a ritual of transcendental importance."

Kadıköy Dance Party

Kadıköy Dance Party from Michael Butterworth on Vimeo.

One of the many reasons I love Istanbul: you never know when you are going to stumble on a massive dance party by the Bosporus.

Çay

Sociologists claim almost every culture on earth has a traditional hot drink. However in Turkey, çay (pronounced like "chai", though it bears no similarity to the sweet American coffee house drink- sans the minimal tea content in the latter) is more than just a drink, it is a way of life. It follows every meal, accompanies many cigarettes, and not offering a cup to a visitor would be anathema. It's not uncommon to have upwards of 8 glasses a day... depending on how many friends one sees. Even businesses usually offer a glass customers while they wait, be it a small neighborhood store or multi-billion dollar cooperations like Türk Telecom, who gave me a glass when I was signing up for phone/internet service this last week.

Turkish çay, like Turkish coffee, is a potent, concentrated beverage. It's over-steeped, served boiling hot, and- thankfully for western palettes- sweetened to taste. The occasional aficionado with take it sade (unsweet), but most people will put 1-2 sugar cubes in. The sugar/caffeine combination gives a pretty good buzz... but that doesn't stop Turks from drinking it late into the night.

Drinking a lot of çay is a prerequisite to cultural assimilation... and a really good excuse for just hanging out. Heck. Throw-in a tavla board and a nargile, and you've got the rest of your evening planned.

Orhan Pamuk

"Four years after I first left Istanbul, while traveling through the endless steppes, snow-covered mountains and melancholy cities of Persia, carrying letters and collecting taxes, I admitted to myself that I was slowly forgetting the face of the childhood love I'd left behind. With growing panic, I tried desperately to remember her, only to realize that despite love, a face long not seen finally fades."

Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, 6.

Right now I am captivated by the works of Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk is a professor of literature at Columbia University and the only Turk to receive a Nobel Prize. Right now I am reading My Name is Red which is a murder mystery that takes place during the Ottoman Empire. Each chapter is written from a different perspective, often very unlikely ones at that. So far, it's been great. Once I finish this book I am moving on to his more recent work, Snow.