Wednesday, September 24, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
settling in...
so, having decided (somewhat whimsically) to stay in istanbul after finding a job teaching (bilingual international) preschool, sar and i have set up shop, found an apartment (entirely sarah's doing), wandered the neighborhood (we even have "our vegetable man" who sells us wonderfully cheap and delicious cucumbers and tomatoes, always throwing in a little extra sweet pepper or parsley - or both!), and things are slowly, slowly falling into place.
it still feels sometimes as if this all is a hallucination - especially when moving across bridges over the bosphorous, taking the ferry to the european side, wandering during late nights in taksim, walking (and watching) up bahariye street on the way home from work, reflecting on the call to prayer...
it still feels sometimes as if this all is a hallucination - especially when moving across bridges over the bosphorous, taking the ferry to the european side, wandering during late nights in taksim, walking (and watching) up bahariye street on the way home from work, reflecting on the call to prayer...
little things.
inspired by the sight of bubbles flying around outside the window of my apartment... couldn't find their source, but enjoyed their flight. i suppose it's more mysterious that way.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
istanbuldayim...
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
bootlegs!
It seems that the thing to do here is buy crappy bootleg movies from teenage boys in the souq. Unfortunately, sometimes they're just in French, not English. This is especially the case with the newest ones (we were disappointed on popping in Kung-fu Panda, The Happening, and Saw IV...although I'm not sure that we missed out on much...) - bad French dub-jobs that are literally filmed on home video recorders in the theater (you can hear people laughing and breathing in the audience!). They keep the cameras miraculously still, though - still not sure how it's done. Superbad (which is really funny, it turns out) was even in Russian, but we figured out how to get the English version to play. That was well worth the 10dh ($1.40).
Ignoring the advice of a friend, I jumped the gun on the Dark Knight, the new batman movie, and now I have a copy with stupid French dubbing. No original versions out in the medina yet, unfortunately. I was told that I should wait to get the theater effect; I guess I got what was coming to me for being impatient.
Ignoring the advice of a friend, I jumped the gun on the Dark Knight, the new batman movie, and now I have a copy with stupid French dubbing. No original versions out in the medina yet, unfortunately. I was told that I should wait to get the theater effect; I guess I got what was coming to me for being impatient.
harassment or not? being a single woman...
One thing that people from home always ask me is how I feel as a single woman traveling around here. It's a question I'd rather not have to field, and often times feel like, if people are going to ask me what it's like in Turkey, Lebanon, or Morocco, they should ask me what its been like in DC too. BUT, it is an interesting question... so I suppose I'll try, in a very round-about way, to field it.
Tonight I hopped on the 30 bus downtown, headed to the train station to go to Casablanca, which didn't actually happen because I missed the two trains I could have possibly gotten on because I got sidetracked writing, writing, writing. So I figured I would wander around the medina (the very busy, crowded "old city") and downtown and eventually try to meet up with some other friends who were heading to a west African music club.
Walking towards the medina and along the wall: constant smooching noises, men saying "Bon soire," "hola," "hey baby," saying things in Moroccan Arabic that I couldn't understand. It was like a swarm. And I, in the middle of the annoyances, just kept walking, face forward, not looking at anyone, not turning to acknowledge it, just keep on moving, as I tend to do. I have found in the past that turning to acknowledge the attention just makes it worse. Usually I can deal with the unwanted attention - I figure out a way to diffuse it, to avoid it... it's usually not that bad, actually (and never bad when I'm walking with a male friend), but that night, I was just NOT in the mood. I was annoyed. And then I was angry.
The most annoying thing is if you end up changing your path to avoid someone, having to take a different route than the one you anticipated. The funniest thing is when a guy comes right up next to you, walks beside you, and starts making conversation. There's always the few minutes of figuring out which language to try, establishing which languages I speak, which I'm native in (that is, if I acknowledge at all). Much of the time I completely ignore the guy (I'm rather good at that, actually - I probably should feel worse about completely and utterly ignoring people, but I don't. Not when I'm treated like meat.). The funny part is that, if you choose to ignore him, he starts getting hurt, like "Why won't you answer my question?" feeling bad that you aren't speaking back at him, getting personally offended, like suddenly its your fault that you are the undesiring victim who just wants to be left alone and not talk back. His voice begins to blame you, to make you feel guilty for not responding, to feel bad for being rude. But the thing is, from what I have observed, most Moroccan women don't get this treatment. And if I were walking with a man I would never, ever, get this treatment. Nope, when I walk with guy friends, no one bothers me, unless they're trying to sell me something or ask for money, and even then they generally ask the guy and not me.
Tonight I was in one of those moods where I didn't want to get bothered, I just wanted to be left alone, to walk around anonymously, to just hang out, wander, watch, and not have to talk to anyone. Usually I'm better at dealing with the annoyances, I can figure out what to say to make the guy just leave me alone. Sometimes the whole game is counter-intuitive. Sometimes if you're really nice and respond, just respectfully, proving yourself as a respectable woman, you can easily wiggle out of the conversation. Sometimes its impossible to wiggle out - you just get sucked back in, and then you have to be a little more forceful.
An American friend who has spent a long time living in Morocco and I had a long talk about whether or not this kind of interaction is actually "harassment." His point was that the word (in the American conception) places more weight on the actions than in a Moroccan context, that it's not so bad as to merit being called harassment. I think it's an unwanted bother, that, yes it's not as if people are coming up to me and grabbing me (although tonight a guy selling roses stuck his roses in front of my face as I walked by and grabbed onto my arm. I had to shake his hand off and give him a "back off you worthless scum, you should be ashamed of yourself" death glare.), but their actions are certainly not desired or enticed, that they bother me without me approaching them, that their actions are based entirely on my gender, on the way I look, that they make me feel uncomfortable in situations where I otherwise would be fine, they sometimes restrict my movement and impact my choices, cause me to miss out on some things (because I want to avoid them), and they make me so angry that sometimes I just want them go to hell (pardon the crudeness). I think it's pretty clearly harassment.
I have even been approached standing right next to a family, right next to a group of old ladies wearing hijab (head scarves), right next to a bunch of little kids in the park. It's such a sneaky, sleazy encounter, too - sometimes guys whisper in creepy voices, sometimes they just holler out as they walk by, sometimes they're standing and make kissing sounds as you walk by. I don't know what they're expecting. I'm sure their tactics don't impress anyone.
In al-Jadida (a beach town down the coast from Casablanca) there was this man who spent about 20 or 30 minutes staring at us intently from across the sidewalk - literally staring at us from ten feet away with a piercing gaze while people walked through, while Adrienne and I just stood there waiting for some Moroccan friends. Neither of us looked at the guy, because every time we nearly caught his eye, he would start gesturing slightly to us. I have no idea what he was hoping would happen. The whole thing got very uncomfortable. And then he started pacing around, circling around the sidewalk in front of us. And mind you the whole sidewalk was lined with people standing alongside it, we were by no means the only ones there. Finally the guy walked away. We were relieved that he didn't stay to follow us. Is this not harassment?
What if I wore a hijab? Or a djelaba (a loose-fitting robe that women sometimes wear over their clothes on the street)? What if I covered myself up more, tried to blend in more? I'm not sure that it would even matter, I think I'd be annoyed just the same. I think single women just get attention. Single men and groups of men can walk around, but women get called out. The hypocrisy is frustrating. It makes me militant. It puts me in man-hating mode (sorry, guys). It makes me unnecessarily unhappy.
Tonight I hopped on the 30 bus downtown, headed to the train station to go to Casablanca, which didn't actually happen because I missed the two trains I could have possibly gotten on because I got sidetracked writing, writing, writing. So I figured I would wander around the medina (the very busy, crowded "old city") and downtown and eventually try to meet up with some other friends who were heading to a west African music club.
Walking towards the medina and along the wall: constant smooching noises, men saying "Bon soire," "hola," "hey baby," saying things in Moroccan Arabic that I couldn't understand. It was like a swarm. And I, in the middle of the annoyances, just kept walking, face forward, not looking at anyone, not turning to acknowledge it, just keep on moving, as I tend to do. I have found in the past that turning to acknowledge the attention just makes it worse. Usually I can deal with the unwanted attention - I figure out a way to diffuse it, to avoid it... it's usually not that bad, actually (and never bad when I'm walking with a male friend), but that night, I was just NOT in the mood. I was annoyed. And then I was angry.
The most annoying thing is if you end up changing your path to avoid someone, having to take a different route than the one you anticipated. The funniest thing is when a guy comes right up next to you, walks beside you, and starts making conversation. There's always the few minutes of figuring out which language to try, establishing which languages I speak, which I'm native in (that is, if I acknowledge at all). Much of the time I completely ignore the guy (I'm rather good at that, actually - I probably should feel worse about completely and utterly ignoring people, but I don't. Not when I'm treated like meat.). The funny part is that, if you choose to ignore him, he starts getting hurt, like "Why won't you answer my question?" feeling bad that you aren't speaking back at him, getting personally offended, like suddenly its your fault that you are the undesiring victim who just wants to be left alone and not talk back. His voice begins to blame you, to make you feel guilty for not responding, to feel bad for being rude. But the thing is, from what I have observed, most Moroccan women don't get this treatment. And if I were walking with a man I would never, ever, get this treatment. Nope, when I walk with guy friends, no one bothers me, unless they're trying to sell me something or ask for money, and even then they generally ask the guy and not me.
Tonight I was in one of those moods where I didn't want to get bothered, I just wanted to be left alone, to walk around anonymously, to just hang out, wander, watch, and not have to talk to anyone. Usually I'm better at dealing with the annoyances, I can figure out what to say to make the guy just leave me alone. Sometimes the whole game is counter-intuitive. Sometimes if you're really nice and respond, just respectfully, proving yourself as a respectable woman, you can easily wiggle out of the conversation. Sometimes its impossible to wiggle out - you just get sucked back in, and then you have to be a little more forceful.
An American friend who has spent a long time living in Morocco and I had a long talk about whether or not this kind of interaction is actually "harassment." His point was that the word (in the American conception) places more weight on the actions than in a Moroccan context, that it's not so bad as to merit being called harassment. I think it's an unwanted bother, that, yes it's not as if people are coming up to me and grabbing me (although tonight a guy selling roses stuck his roses in front of my face as I walked by and grabbed onto my arm. I had to shake his hand off and give him a "back off you worthless scum, you should be ashamed of yourself" death glare.), but their actions are certainly not desired or enticed, that they bother me without me approaching them, that their actions are based entirely on my gender, on the way I look, that they make me feel uncomfortable in situations where I otherwise would be fine, they sometimes restrict my movement and impact my choices, cause me to miss out on some things (because I want to avoid them), and they make me so angry that sometimes I just want them go to hell (pardon the crudeness). I think it's pretty clearly harassment.
I have even been approached standing right next to a family, right next to a group of old ladies wearing hijab (head scarves), right next to a bunch of little kids in the park. It's such a sneaky, sleazy encounter, too - sometimes guys whisper in creepy voices, sometimes they just holler out as they walk by, sometimes they're standing and make kissing sounds as you walk by. I don't know what they're expecting. I'm sure their tactics don't impress anyone.
In al-Jadida (a beach town down the coast from Casablanca) there was this man who spent about 20 or 30 minutes staring at us intently from across the sidewalk - literally staring at us from ten feet away with a piercing gaze while people walked through, while Adrienne and I just stood there waiting for some Moroccan friends. Neither of us looked at the guy, because every time we nearly caught his eye, he would start gesturing slightly to us. I have no idea what he was hoping would happen. The whole thing got very uncomfortable. And then he started pacing around, circling around the sidewalk in front of us. And mind you the whole sidewalk was lined with people standing alongside it, we were by no means the only ones there. Finally the guy walked away. We were relieved that he didn't stay to follow us. Is this not harassment?
What if I wore a hijab? Or a djelaba (a loose-fitting robe that women sometimes wear over their clothes on the street)? What if I covered myself up more, tried to blend in more? I'm not sure that it would even matter, I think I'd be annoyed just the same. I think single women just get attention. Single men and groups of men can walk around, but women get called out. The hypocrisy is frustrating. It makes me militant. It puts me in man-hating mode (sorry, guys). It makes me unnecessarily unhappy.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
allo, rabat
I have been in Rabat for exactly a week now, although I feel somewhat bewildered as I write that; it feels like I have been here for much, much longer. I haven't been scant on the posting for lack of things to say, that's for sure, but for lack of constant internet access. To be honest, I wasn't so keen on this city when I first arrived, having heard so many negative things about it from excitement-seeking friends, but now that I have seen more of Rabat, I'm getting to love it.
As I write this, I'm sitting on the living room floor of my friend's apartment in Hay al-Fath (which, as one Moroccan friend aptly noted, "That's not really Rabat!"), just a 20 minute bus ride outside the city center, listening to evening call to prayer in the background of the nightly futbol game going on in the cement pitch next to the apartment building. Since Austan just moved here, we spent much of the past week figuring out how to get back and forth from the place - I can now say with confidence that I'm a master of the bus system to and from Hay al-Fath. At 4dh each way (a little more than 50 cents), the bus ride beats a taxi (32dh!) full stop. The bus is much more fun than the taxi, too. And not so crowded. Although the seats must have been installed by someone with very short thighs, since its sometimes a squeeze to sit down and often my knees get banged up in the process.
It took me all week to find a cafe here with wireless internet (which makes getting work done + the job search much easier!), which was an occasion that I rejoiced heartily with a steamy cafe creme and the New York Times online. The cafe is in the Agdal neighborhood, called Bert's (in case anyone reading this ever needs wireless in Rabat!), and has really delicious coffee drinks and pretty decent paninis (although it's a little steep - but in exchange for sitting around for way longer than any coffee shop in the states would tolerate, I don't mind). Although it's a little disconcerting sitting next to 13-year-old boys smoking cigarettes like chimneys. Well, I guess that's not unique to cafes with wireless..
On Thursday I leave for Turkey, to spend much of the month of August in Istanbul. When I booked my flight, I was certain that I had my fill of Morocco, that I was ready to move on. Now, having a place to come back to every day, a bit more of a schedule, and interesting people to hang out with, I'm not so sure. I'll be ready to move on to Istanbul when the time comes (Istanbul cok ozliyorum, canim!) - I think I'll always be down for a jaunt to Istanbul - but there's definitely much more to see in this incredibly diverse country! And I certainly don't have Moroccan Arabic down pat. Not even a little bit. In fact, over the past five weeks I think my French might have improved more than my Moroccan darrija has...
As I write this, I'm sitting on the living room floor of my friend's apartment in Hay al-Fath (which, as one Moroccan friend aptly noted, "That's not really Rabat!"), just a 20 minute bus ride outside the city center, listening to evening call to prayer in the background of the nightly futbol game going on in the cement pitch next to the apartment building. Since Austan just moved here, we spent much of the past week figuring out how to get back and forth from the place - I can now say with confidence that I'm a master of the bus system to and from Hay al-Fath. At 4dh each way (a little more than 50 cents), the bus ride beats a taxi (32dh!) full stop. The bus is much more fun than the taxi, too. And not so crowded. Although the seats must have been installed by someone with very short thighs, since its sometimes a squeeze to sit down and often my knees get banged up in the process.
It took me all week to find a cafe here with wireless internet (which makes getting work done + the job search much easier!), which was an occasion that I rejoiced heartily with a steamy cafe creme and the New York Times online. The cafe is in the Agdal neighborhood, called Bert's (in case anyone reading this ever needs wireless in Rabat!), and has really delicious coffee drinks and pretty decent paninis (although it's a little steep - but in exchange for sitting around for way longer than any coffee shop in the states would tolerate, I don't mind). Although it's a little disconcerting sitting next to 13-year-old boys smoking cigarettes like chimneys. Well, I guess that's not unique to cafes with wireless..
On Thursday I leave for Turkey, to spend much of the month of August in Istanbul. When I booked my flight, I was certain that I had my fill of Morocco, that I was ready to move on. Now, having a place to come back to every day, a bit more of a schedule, and interesting people to hang out with, I'm not so sure. I'll be ready to move on to Istanbul when the time comes (Istanbul cok ozliyorum, canim!) - I think I'll always be down for a jaunt to Istanbul - but there's definitely much more to see in this incredibly diverse country! And I certainly don't have Moroccan Arabic down pat. Not even a little bit. In fact, over the past five weeks I think my French might have improved more than my Moroccan darrija has...
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