On setting up shop

We have had a long, sometimes frustrating, sometimes thrilling, sometimes depressing, sometimes hilarous time of finding and settling into our new Istanbul apartment. We spent one night, for example, almost homeless, saved by the love and kindness of a friend's family, who showered us with affections, incredible home-cooking, and freshly made beds. For the first week after finally moving in here we slept on the floor on makeshift beds of bunched up clothing and two rugs generously gifted to us by our old landlord, whose room we rented for three weeks. He has a nack for finding superb goodies amidst other people's trash and, because of his talents we now have, amongst other found accessories, a big, cushy couch in our salon. By the grace of used appliance stores, the kindness of incredibly generous friends and coworkers, and the sweet deals at a place called "Maxi" (my new favorite hangout), we have been able to scrap together a fully functioning kitchen. When we finally bought a mattress (during an epic journey to Ikea - miles away in an oversized shoppingmall/parking lot akin to my ignorant mental-image of Texas) we carried it home, rolled up and vacuum-packed, on our shoulders from the downtown bus stop, to the hilarity of onlookers. That was only topped by the night I found two remarkably clean overstuffed armchairs by a dumpster a few blocks away. We walked them home, one each, slung upside-down over our heads like gigantic white, square hats. With Sarah walking in front of me, a box with little legs, I couldn't stop laughing. It's remarkable how often people going in the opposite direction offer help when they see you carrying extremely awkward-looking things (one man, seeing us by the dumpster deliberating the best way to carry the chairs home stopped and asked, "Can I help you move your trash?"). One teenager on a bicycle followed us for a block, earnestly trying to get us to let him help. We, being the two stubbornest people in all of Kadikoy (especially when together), of course would not concede.

Things are slowly, slowly coming together for us. Eventually, we'll upholster our furniture so it matches and will swap real curtains for the sarongs hanging in the window. We're sleeping in remarkably comfortable beds (with pillows, down comforters, and all), eating yummy and healthy home-cooked foods (I just made tabouli for us tonight, actually...and picked up fresh mint and peaches from the Tuesday market in our neighborhood. Goodbye, 2YTL durum sandwich from a street vendor!), and there's a hammock on loan from a friend swinging in our living room. Our next challenge, though, will be succeeding in turning on the natural gas so we can finally stop taking cold showers. Brrr.

On being understood.

Istanbul is, like Boston, a city in which people seldom pronounce the "r"s at the ends of their words. Being only a beginning student of Turkish, it has taken time and many instances of sounding like an idiot to recognize verb conjugations where I thought there were nouns, to begin discovering the accents and linguistic nuances of Istanbul. Most of the time, I feel confused and the understanding is always delayed (like a badly dubbed movie), if it comes along at all. In every interaction I have moments in which I just want to, like the two-year-old grunters at our preschool, point towards something and make whiny noises. I think that my Turkish is improving, though - the other day I was surprised to find myself infinately more confident and capable in talking with a friend who I hadn't seen for the past three weeks (although I can't belive I have been here long enough to not have seen a friend for three weeks!). He speaks perfect English but, out of what I have identified as anti-imperialist resistance, only will speak to me in Turkish. Which I will most likely be thanking him for later. Our conversation moved with ease, from work to home to films to military requirements to when I need to pay my rent to needing a vacation... It was so refreshing and rejuvinating to feel that I could both understand and be fluidly understood. Moments like that have been few and far-between since I came to Turkey. I'll have to pay him back with English practice someday. He also wants me to teach him Spanish, though, which I have been trying to explain was once in itself an imperial language. But maybe I will do a better job of explaining in another three weeks...

pop icons from afar

thoughts from 20 August 2008 (copied from my little blue journal):

I finally saw the new Batman film last night, which was, in a nutshell, well worth the wait and exciting to watch. Sarah, my new partner in all crimes, and I saw in the theater like giddy six-year-olds, chit-chatting and giggling while the all-Turkish audience around us sat, all business, around us, not saying a word.
As a loud critic of American policy and facets of "American culture" (a problematic concept in itself -- fodder for another blog post probably, so I'll leave it alone for now), I'm always shocked by my occasional upwellings of emotional response to uber-American things - to pop-culture references from the US, or a sense of solidarity with other American foreigners, excitement at hearing SOFT-SPOKEN English in the street, etc... The Dark Knight, I guess, is just one of those references that strikes a chord - Batman being a symbol of my childhood, of the specifically American comic legacy, the creativity of American productive capabilities, the freakishness of the American collective unconscious...
The film as a work in and of itself, I should add, was very well-done - acting well-thought out (for the most part anyway- I did inevitably feel a few cheese-factor moments), shots artistically configured, moral dilemmas presented - the twisted mind of the joker, the struggle of good over evil and the easy slippages between the two all complexly converged. I had to scoff a little bit at the moment on the ferry boat when the "upstanding citizens" decided to take things to a vote - as if the simple, uncomplicated, and severely flawed American fall-back of "one person, one vote" could fix even the most complicated of moral dilemmas.