well, i've already managed to screw up nablopomooooo.... i totally forgot it was november. a little hard to understand how that could happen since even here i hear "election! election! election! vote! vote! vote!" many times a day.
a couple friends and i decided on saturday morning that the best way to get over being out dancing late on halloween night was to go for a long walk through part of the city. i walked from my flat in cukurcuma to the galata bridge where i stood and watched men and boys fishing. the top deck is for car traffic and the light rail train and has wide sidewalks almost continuously inhabited by men fishing in the bosphorus. the lower deck is filled with fish restaurants and bars that offer narghile (aka water pipes or hookahs) with a wide range of flavored tobaccos. even though you can see the fishing lines hanging down in front of you while sitting at any of the restaurants, somehow, no one ever seems to get caught by an errant fishing hook swaying in the breeze before finally hitting the water with a little inaudible plop.
once over the bridge, we headed east towards the greek patriarchate (where the head of the greek orthodox church is). we passed masses of traffic, a heaving bus station and then through waterside parks where people and stray dogs were lying and sitting on the grass enjoying the amazing november day.
after a great lunch in balaat of spicy kebabs wrapped in lavash (these are pretty much the same thing tortillas), we headed up the hill toward fatih.
this is known as being one of the most conservative neighborhoods in istanbul and most of the women were covered. some wore headscarves and long coats but the vast majority were covered from head to toe in black hijabs. seeing one or two at a time tends to have little effect on me. however, seeing group after group of women all dressed this way is sort of eery. it felt like i'd suddenly been transported somewhere quiet alien and foreign. i found msyelf wondering what the women thought of me. i'm clearly a foreigner so they don't expect me to be covered but i still wonder if they are offended by my jeans and t-shirt. disgusted? envious of my freedom of movement? do they even care?
from fatih, we worked our way over to a neighborhood called sulukule. this is claimed to be the oldest romani (roma, rroma, gypsy) community in the world. several years ago, the turkish government began informing the residents that they needed to leave. the government has decided to have the area completely "renewed" with brand-new ottoman-style buildings. that means making all the residents move and knocking down their homes and apartment buildings.
i have never been to sulukule before and didn't know quite what to expect. we turned a corner, walked a few metres and suddenly, i realized i was looking at a building that had been partially destroyed by bulldozers and wrecking balls. again, i felt momentarily displaced, as if i had been suddenly swept away to one of many towns in bosnia that still bear the scars of bombing. i actually didn't comprehend what i was looking at as i walked down the quiet, dusty street.
then it dawned on me. the five or six-storey building in front of me had, until just a few months ago, been the home to dozens of families. we walked a little further and turned down another street that was almost entirely rubble on either side of the roadway. we stopped and stood there looking around, trying to process what we were seeing. as we stood there, a little boy of about 3 or 4 came up to us and sort of yelled something at us. it wasn't in turkish and we definitely didn't understand. however, that didn't stop him - he just kept yelling it at us, even as he flirted and played and rammed into us with all his little boy energy.
as we stood there playing with him, we could see across the street that there was a family living amongst the piles of brick, cement and steel. the little boy was pretty dirty from playing outside and his sister, who is probably about 8, was even more so, covered with great big smudges of henna on her hands, face and feet. her hair even looked a little orange from all the henna she had on her.
we finally started walking again and came across a man who gave us directions to the neighborhood community center. he warned us that continuing in the direction we were headed probably wasn't a good idea. he said there were prostitutes and junkies who go into the partially destroyed buildings at night.it's always hard to tell when getting advice like that if it's true and helpful advice or simply a projection of someone else's fears and prejudices - cloaked in helpfulness.
we soon found ourselves in the part of sulukule that hasn't been destroyed - at least not yet. it was dusk as we walked down the street and there were lots of people out. cars occasionally rolled past on the narrow road leaving a small wake of dirt floating in the air. children were out playing and shouting. people were shopping before they headed home for the evening while men sat on chairs outside stores and people leaned out their apartment buildings, leaning on their arms on pillows set in the window frames as they rested their bodies half in and half out to watch the evening unfold and talk to their neighbors.
tomorrow - mr. punduk, the sulukule orkestrasi and an unbelievable situation.
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