Just a small-town boy

When you tell people that you are going to Istanbul for a year abroad, the responses vary:

            Stephan: “Brutal Turks. Good luck.”

            Jinhee: “Really? Fuck dude, I hope things improve over there.”

            Jondreau: “Man have fun but keep in mind it’s a weird fucking place and one minute you might be having the time of your life but turn your eye from your drink for one second and the next thing you know you’re getting ! up the ! by a donkey.”

*quotes have been approximated.

So, with this rock-solid advice under my belt, I was prepared for anything.

1. The first, mafia-involving and potentially expat-fun-ending mistake:

                I was warned. I should have known. There were so many signs!

                It was the night of the party at the British Consulate. That is, the once helpful, passport-distributing, amnesty-offering consulate and present-day house of the British Community Council, a glorified Party Planning Committee here in Istanbul. I went there to meet with a friend of mine who was already inside. I was stopped at the gate and surrendered my passport to a man with a list.

- There’s a list?

- Yes, list. Name?

- Thorne. I’m not on the list.

- Yes, list. I am not see your name.

- I’m not on the list.

- Are you sure you are on list?

- I’ll call my friend.

                Three rings, he answers and emerges minutes later from the black gate. He is blitzed and splutters at the guard:

- My friend’s not on the list because we thought he might come but we didn’t know if he could he just came in this morning I’m sure you understand he’s a friend of myself and so-and-so…

- Yes sir, but I talked to person and person says he cannot come in so he cannot come in.

                My friend reels, smiles.

- Sorry, mate.  I’ll call you in an hour.

                I kill an hour with dinner, beer. He doesn’t called because he is blitzed. I know this because I got a text the next day:

- Sorry we didn’t meet up Saturday. We ended up getting thrashed at the consulate. Everyone threw up!

                In the meantime, I am sitting in Taksim square and taking in the scenery. I stand to leave and someone asks for a light in Turkish. I look confused and he asks again in English, good English. He is young, tells me he’s on vacation from Izmir and that he works there as an exporter of marble and porcelain. Porcelain is the bigger business, he explains. He asks if I want to get a drink, and assuming that he means at one of the outdoor bars nearby, I agree.

                Fast forward five minutes and I’ve been taken into a strip club, but nobody’s stripping yet so that’s not immediately obvious. He orders a bottle of raki. He says he wants to get girls. My dumb ass is telling myself that although I know I can’t pay for anything (apartment deposit wiped my account clean that morning), I should stick around because he seems like an okay guy who just wants to have a good time. I think I’m humoring him.

                I stop thinking that when a Bulgarian girl sits down next to me and a Russian plops down on the bench opposite. Mr. Izmir looks satisfied.

- These are beautiful girls, yeah?

                They are not, but I haven’t the heart to say anything.

- I think they work here, dude.

- I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They are beautiful girls!

                I turn to my sad, bucktoothed, Bulgarian escort.

- So. What’s your job?

                She blushes and sits up straight.

- You sit down and have dinner with people in clubs? Cool job. You see that guy over there? I don’t know him. We just met and I think he’s about to stick me with a very expensive bill. I’ve read about these scams and I know that he works with the club. I’m fucked, aren’t I?

                Her English is quite good, and she kindly beckons to her friend to leave before Mr. Izmir can buy them drinks. I smile and finish my glass of raki, taking up some melon that has been put before me.

- I can’t pay for this. I have no money, you know? Hich param yok, yeah?

                The digested version: Mr. Izmir gets pissed, makes me show him my wallet, which contains twenty-five lira; the bill for two-hundred lira comes and the waiter takes my card, which is denied because I HAVE NO MONEY; I am taken to the back of the restaurant, resigning myself to a beating. I check the exits and am about to bolt when someone in the corner says something, which is then translated:

- You can go, boss says you can go.

- You’re letting him go? Mr. Izmir argues.

                I think I smile, and at least inwardly I have one of those doves-flying-as-the-church-organs-sound moments. I turn and half-run towards the front door without hearing a word more. As I leap up the stairs two at a time, a strippers fake, tasseled breasts shimmy out my exit.

The second, less life-threatening mistake:

                This one’s a little more simple, and it ends with me losing my wallet. I’ll skip straight to the moral: When a malcontent Brit asks you to go get drinks at 4:30pm on a Thursday at a bar reserved for watching the results of horse races, say that you’ve got other plans.

These experiences, once related to a teaching colleague, bring out a new piece of advice.

                 Bev:  “You go around thinking that people are people and that you can trust them, but you can’t trust anybody, especially the people who want you to trust them. The trustworthy ones are the ones that never ask you to trust them and don’t want you to because they know what a bad idea it is. But you have to trust somebody because you’re a person, and people trust each other.”

We’re back to square one on the issue, but we’re wiser, and even when we get duped into joining an importer/exporter in a house of ill repute, we can still find time to drink a glass of raki and laugh in the face of the blushing, bucktoothed, Bulgarian escort who is trying to take the money we don’t have. We promise to be wiser, and we promise not to make the same mistakes twice. We promise not to post any more stories like this which have probably given the Moms a heart attack and others a reason to watch their backs around Turks. Most of all, we promise not to use the royal “we” in sum-ups of our blog posts.

Bitter Lemons

                Some time has passed since my last post and quite a lot has happened. I started work and am currently teaching a cool twelve hours of English to the 5^th grade at a private school here. The children generally speak at a high level and are as well behaved as they can be at the cusp of puberty. It has been a gentle introduction to teaching, as I only have to give three different lessons per week to four different classes. I have been told that the hours will go up, but for now I’m sitting pretty.

                Now for the good stuff, and my trip to Cyprus. First was the Kyrenia Castle, which was inhabited by your man Richard the Lionheart and the Knights Templar. That factoid was enough to get me to pay the entrance fee.

                As I started to explore the subterranean works of the castle, I stumbled upon a few unsettling models of the castle’s medieval heritage. This experience was only made worse by the energy-efficient system of lighting, which didn’t allow you to see the room until you were well inside. You can imagine my surprise (and girlish squeal) upon finding this:

                The real reason I went to the island had more to do with sun and sand than flayed and bearded wax statues, so I’ll give you a taste of my days spent at the beach and on the boat.

                The water was gorgeous, and it was a real shame to see plastic bags, water bottles, and cans filling up parts of the beach and the coastline. I don’t know if it’s Turkish culture, lack of infrastructure or what, but respect for nature was totally absent.

                My favorite part of the trip was the morning I spent at Bellapais Abbey, made famous by Lawrence Durrell’s “Bitter Lemons,” a novel about the Greco-Turkish conflict that today is manifested in the green line, which separates northern (Turkish) Cyprus from the south. I stood under Durrell’s “Tree of Idleness” while waiting… and waiting… and waiting for a cab:

               

                Here’s the abbey itself:

                I was made aware of the unintended side-effects of my Jesuit education when I entered the chapel and was able to recognize most of the icons by sight. There was good ol’ Georgie:

                Pauly D? (that's what the tour guide said, but I'm used to the younger, Mr. Tumnus-looking Paul):

                Mike ("The Situation"):

                And of course the big three:

                This was my first solo vacation, and I have to say it’s a much different experience. At first I felt awkward as a loner surrounded by tour groups, but by the third day it felt perfectly normal. Had it been a vacation from school, it probably would have been more welcome, but as it was I went from being isolated in Istanbul to alone in Cyprus. On the up side, going out on your own makes you realize the importance and the startling rarity of good friends.

Organic goodness, a job, and nostalgia.

                After weighing the pros and cons of a few different offers, I finally signed a contract with a primary school here. The decision broke my promise to avoid children, but I decided to suck it up and deal with the sniveling eager needs of the little germ-sacks. The pay is good, they give me housing, and I start in a little over a week. They assure me that all the work has been done, with worksheets and course materials planned out, but I have problems trusting Turkish organization. Don’t ask why. I’ve already discovered the principal drawback of working at a primary school: clubs. They think that my skills will be invaluable to the formation of a Spanish club, a snowboarding club, and a ceramics class. At least I didn’t tell them that I worked in a restaurant, or I’d be teaching pre-pubescent turks how to make tomatillo sauce and steamed tamales.

                I just have to interject and say that I’m watching a guy clean his car with a series of water bottles, just dumping them over the windshield. I’ll start collecting material for a post on Turkey’s brutally indiscriminant use of natural resources. As an American, that might be a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but what the hell.

                I found an organic market today and made some defuckinglicious (stole that from Joe Nugent, who lamented yesterday that Boston was “97 defuckinggrees”) pasta sauce from overripe heirloom tomatoes, one of which I split open to find a worm squirming around. Believe it or not, it made me feel good to have proof that no pesticides were used. Also, Brigid purchased yogurt and eggs from some farmer who treks into town twice a week to sell his produce. I know it seems masturbatory to say that I ate the platonic ideal of an egg last Wednesday, but I did, so deal. The best part (besides the piquant, deeply gold and beat to airy thinness egg that ran like a fugitive over the painted plate – Oh!) was the man who came to deliver the goods. I heard a bell ringing and I looked out the window to see someone walking down the middle of the street with a carved wooden bar with a bucket of eggs on one end and yogurt on the other. He looked like he was escaping the stockade. I suppose I could just show you…

And here are the eggs, along with my pathetic attempt to compose an interesting photograph:

The last picture I have to show you is a shameless inside joke for the BC grads that I know follow my life (sad, lonely and unemployed – them, not me!). I learned that “yeni” means “new” in Turkish, and on the same day I was walking to Taksim when I passed this restaurant:

 The translated “New Hong Kong” was the go-to late night Chinese restaurant at school, and I fondly (read: fuzzily) remembered ordering from their impatient cashier after a long night of getting blitzed off of Jim Fields’s “Tsing Tao” six-packs. They always included cokes, although we never ordered them, and the experience was (probably, I really don’t remember and I might be making this up) followed up by hookah in the dorm rooms with a grocery bag tied around the smoke alarm. Sadly, it was the most homesick I’ve been. Anyway, I’m off to the plex… er… gym to go work off the gozleme that I ate earlier. It’s good but not too fancy. It’s a crepe without the delicacy of a crepe. It’s the crepe that bullied the other crepes in crepe school, a hood crepe.  One last thing, I splurged on a ticket and I’m going to North Cyprus for Bayram, staying at a place that Brigid recommends called “Nostalgia Hotel” in Kyrenia. It looks gorgeous and I cannot wait.