yemek?

look! mehmet and co were away in istanbul but he phoned back and had his cooks bring me some food. little turkish hamburgers with chips. not pictured here is the big pot of soup they also brought. AND desert. more of that semolina pudding of which i've grown so fond.

<< i know where i can find you >>

mehmet has business in istanbul. uğur is going with him. ruçhan has left to go back home. i am staying behind to look after the dog and the cat. i will go to istanbul in a week. while mo is gone i am going to book a hostel room and find a cheap bus ticket.

i am at the house, alone with my thoughts for the first time in a long time.

it is quiet in this house. i hear air moving through the stove, but beyond that there is no noise -- no furnace, no water heaters, no electrical buzz to speak of.

i have put on music. i notice when it gets too quiet.

burning man tickets are on sale. it is already february, august plus six months. the year has started to move out. in istanbul i will find costumes and finery for the desert, blue and copper and gold. and i will burn so bright.

i miss you.

<< back in the rain >>

today is a grey day in turkey and i am eating figs and drinking tea, and thinking ahead to trips into the big city.

<< let every man stand true to his gun / for the lord knows who must die >>

today mehmet stuck his head into my room and said, "let's go wrestle some camels."

we drove about fifteen minutes to get into Burhaniye, driving along straight little streets past uniform pink and teal walk-up apartments. the smell of coal was much stronger here than where i'm staying, down near the water with the ceaseless wind.
a camel ambled down the road. it was huge, much bigger than the human who walked beside. it was draped with pink and lime blankets embroidered with gold, a rolled-up carpet slung over its neck like a sleeping pad, big iron ribs for armour, its hindquarters shorn. big, and thick, a powerful beast, wearing a bridle and drawn along on a rope. we pulled around it, continued on, parked the car when it seemed hopeless to get a parking spot further up.

"don't leave any valuables," said mehmet, and we started to walk up.

the best time of the year to wrestle camels is this time, before the spring mating season. they wrestle the males, one against the other. none of the judges at the Olive Festival would have anything to do with it. "barbarisme," said nicholas cartier of paris. A professor's wife said it was appaling to import camels to turkey just so they could fight one another; but no, said the professor, the camels are indiginous. they had a place not long ago in agriculture and construction, though there are not many left now. they are bigger and slower than desert camels.

mehmet told me the defeated camels are killed, but neither of us really believed it.

we walked towards the sound of a voice through a loudspeaker. men came past us in jeans, closely fitted leather jackets and gloves. from the apartments to either side of us i heard the sound of barking dogs. boys played soccer in a patchy overgrown lot. a covered-up woman peered through a hole in the cement wall we were walking along. further up the wall got thicker and taller. from the other side you could hear the beating of drums and the fervent announcer. the cement wall broke, revealing the camels waiting to go in, chained to iron spikes pounded into the ground, some of them kneeling, waiting. another moment and we had reached the entrance to the arena, a high entrance under an arch of brick and mortar. there was a crowd of people outide. security guards in blue stood at the entrance. white smoke hung in the air from a sizzling grill draped with sausages on either side. "last year's losers," said mehmet. the crowd drew apart. mehmet pulled me in front of him, in behind ruçhan, and pushed me forward. we ducked through the arch, past the guards, and we were in.

inside the wall the sights and smells jumped into relief. salt and spices hung in the air from countless sausage carts. near the walls, where there was no wind, the smoke hung heavy like grease. most of the crowd was back along the walls, sitting in the backs of trucks, or up on trailers. some people sat on crates. in front of us a man sold honey cakes on paper plates. a man played a bass drum slung from his neck passed in front of us, striking it with a wooden drumstick, making a clipped, staccato sound that stood out over the noise of the spectators and the vendors. i could hear about six drums like this one, moving clockwise, walking along the dirt track that circled within the square arena. inside that circle were people who'd moved in close for a better view of the action, sometimes running up to be closer to it, sometimes standing back to see more.

in the centre, a dozen men tugged at ropes to lead four camels into and out of the fray. a half dozen more men wore bright orange vests and kept further away. the camels breathed out big clouds of vapour through gobs of white froth that dripped thick from their lips, like marshmallows. two camels were on the near side of the arena, two on the far side. each wore different colours of blankets. the animals strained and scuffed their feet. their handlers tugged them towards each other, and they'd swat their wooly necks: then they'd be drawn back apart.

"oh man," said mo, "don't get separated."

i followed him past a man selling cd's and dvd's with pictures of camels on the front. many of the men wore orange kerchiefs wrapped around their heads and shoulders. people sold pink and white wafers, cotton candy, cans of beer. men walked with violins under their arms. some tapped on smaller drums. one man carried a clarinet made of brass. a man peeled an onion, letting the skin fall.

shortly mehmet saw friends from istanbul who were sitting up in a plywood trailer. they cleared a space for me next to a woman from paris who spoke english and french.

"it's not really about the camels," she said. "it's a chance for people to come out and be together."

a man handed me a plastic cup of milky white rakis and we drank.

"i imagined biting," i said, "and hooves: and mehmet told me that they kill the losing camels."

"oh NON," said the women. "these camels are much too valuable to let any harm come to them. to keep a camel you have to pay to house it all year long, you have to pay someone to look after it, you have to pay its food, then transportation... having a camel is for status. they'd never let any harm come to one."

in the centre one camel chased after another and the crowd cheered. someone in our trailer stood up and clapped.

"burek?" asked the woman. she motioned to a non-stick pan. on the card table in front of her was a sliced tomato resting on newspaper. she passed me a flakey pastry with soft cheese inside.

mehmet and ruçhan left to get a closer look at the camels, leaving me to talk with the woman.

"it's very non-violent," she said. "that's the thing. everybody all goes out, they drink rakis comme un trou but there's never any violence."

two camels walked up to each other, pressed up chin to chin, and drew back. they stared at each other from a distance, each one shifting its weight back onto widely spread legs with knees that bent backwards. then their handlers tugged them towards each other.

one camel got its head up and over the other one, pushed it down, vanquished. the camels left the ring and two more stepped up.

next week i will step out of mehmet's town to go see the big city. it is time.


on the way home we bought some camel sausages -- round like baseballs -- and stopped for some coca-cola, to take the edge off the grease. we cooked the sausages on a grill -- very fatty, almost squishy, and heavily spiced. it would make no sense to eat the losers, anyways. you'd want the courage of the winners.

looking out for number one

the power came back late in the afternoon in time for dinner, which was glitzey and prepared by our panel of judges, many of whom spoke english and french. i chewed pistaccios with a journalist from Food & Wine who through red lipstick gushed about burnt milk yoghourt -- you put milk in a pottery jug, heat up a stone in a fire, put the stone in the milk, and mix the milk down til you just get the aroma, like the when a custard goes just golden on top. there was the dean of culinary studies at an istanbul university, professors, an artist. i met mehmet's mother. someone produced a pumpkin. nicholas cartier who spoke the french of paris brought a side of beef and carved thick steaks out of it. a chef who represents the nation in competitions abroad roasted eggplant on the gas burner, noodles and olives and cream sauce. a professor made salad with pomegranites and a crisp dressing. more of the cold tapas appeared such as we had before, bright vegetables, beans with mussels. a spinach dish -- i don't like it, too salty, said one of the judges who got to talking about macramé and his two cats, and who sang to himself over dinner. everyone brought wine. mehmet brought several bottles made with his own grapes from the island of Bozcaada, north and west of here.

and as for the baklava? i saw it on the dinner table. i could almost taste it. we dined. they refilled and refilled my glass. i bided my time.

alas: i got to talking to a girl ("you can call me Zee, everybody does") who kept looking up at me from under the dark lid of her eyeshadow, but who also took a message on her blackberry beneath the table at dinner. she is from istanbul, talks english with a new england accent, never been to canada, doesn't know the word tuque, finds the sheer amount of antiquity in turkey to be distracting. wore black nail polish near perfectly applied and i told her so. it wasn't til i got home that i realized i'd forgotten to look out for number one. i'd forgotten the baklava.

as they say in french, désolé: to learn to look out for number one was half my reason for coming here. i redeemed myself at poker. i _destroyed my opponents. the final hands of the game: i was nearly out. mehmet and ruçhan were going head to head. mehmet's deal. he dealt two cards to each of us, looked at his two, and bet everything he had. ruçhan looked his opponent in the eye, and pushed all his chips in to match. i played everything i had left. mehmet dealt out the rest of the hand. we turned over our cards. mehmet was bluffing. ruçhan was bluffing. i held the high card: a six. i took it all. i would have traded it for some baklava.

<< you'll never know the _hurt i suffered, nor the _pain i rise above >>

IN WHICH your correspondent witnesses the fourth annual Burhaniye Festival of Olives and Olive Oil, and lives to tell the tale.


we had not a moment's rest after the tour bus drove off down the highway.

"alright," said mehmet and clapped his hands. "let's reassemble."

no sooner had we gotten things back in order did people start arriving for the day's main event: local and national cooks preparing traditional turkish recipes, twenty-five contestents, three to be selected as winners -- a hard battle.

mehmet and i spent yesterday preparing. we figured sixty to seventy-five spectators. but in the end nearly double that number arrived and we ended up having to move tables out and more chairs in, first wooden ones, then folding metal ones, then plastic deck chairs still dusty from storage. even then people stood at the back of the room and around the sides, and milled outside, cigarette smoke coming through the doors as people came in and out.

at the front, the from-before horseshoe arrangement of tables had been draped with white linen and decorated with gerberas; plastic placards with the names of each judge in block blue lettering, european style, last name in capital letters.



the competition was to start at 1:00 but people started arriving before noon. a group of women arrived first, in long plain coats and scarves around their heads. a man arrived next and brought the first dish for entry, three whole preserved fish each cut into thirds. he showed us: he had decorated his platters with a parsley coral reef and carrots carved into goldfish. people moved in tight groups through the space. lots of woolen pants on the women, short to show leather boots. earrings on one out of every two. four pairs of jeans in total. one woman in a drab pullover with a drab wool neck, with "US Army" on the left sleeve, and wool cuffs. suits on the men, often with sweaters beneath, and woolen hats. more and more dishes arrived, each one covered in tin foil. mehmet carried a clipboard, recording each entry and numbering it. people sat and drank tea. cell phones rang. soon the whole restaurant filled up. i sat at the back, watching and taking notes (since i could not really talk to the locals). two women came and sat at my table when there were no other seats. one of them pointed to my handwriting. "Inglishe?" she asked. "Or Arabique?"



meanwhile ruçhan photographed each dish as it arrived, ferrying each one, a napkin under his fingers, from the table where the competitors put each dish as they came in, to the photography table that he'd spent the morning setting up and lighting. from there an attendent took it up to the judging table. i smelled baklava.



the judges arrived, eight of them, and mehmet ushered them in through glass doors at the front of the room. the mayor, too, entered by the front, sat in a space saved for him in the front row. a camera crew, four men carrying backs of gear, pushed in from the back. the judges sat in their given places, the dishes numbered and laid out in front, and the contest began.



the MC wore a suit and boomed into the microphone. the judges sat still as they were being introduced. the contestants presented their dishes to the judges, some politely, some congenially, some seriously. silverware clinked from the kitchen: between each dish servers brought fresh knives and forks and refilled water glasses.

staff served lunch on styrofoam plates to the overflowing crowd: chickpeas made in a huge pot, bread, yoghourt drinks. the power went out, then came back, then went out again. mehmet jumped the first time to fix it; the second time he kept eating. i learned later it was a brownout. the power stayed down for most of the day. we ran off the farm's diesel generator.

i struggled with the truth of the scene before me. mehmet's uncle told me, c'est une journée, une chance à manger quelquechose. it's a day out, a chance to go out for a meal. mehmet worked at his speech.

the panel of judges retired upstairs to deliberate. men stepped outside to smoke. women sat in circles and talked, their children hovering. people spoke, listened, sought acceptance. people observed norms, pushed at them. people did what they could to differentiate this day from the last, drank the tea that was brought to them in little glass cups. a man played music over the PA -- again the sound of the flatted seventh. but then that song ended and the man changed the disc and put techno on, too loud. techno used to seem pan-national, devoid of dogma. this stuff had eastern sounding synths in it but mostly it was bland, standard stuff with standard EQ effects sweeping up and down, and a standard structure.

it was a goodhearted event.

the judges returned. people came back in. the man faded the music out. the MC took the mic. i heard mehmet's name. he spoke for a minute. the mayor's name, he spoke too, all smiles, and bowed his head. each contestent got a carnation and a certificate. the winners got gold pins.



the judges left, headed upstairs for the Q&A panel, and people pressed forward to sample what was left of the dishes. i looked for the baklava. gone! but i learned mehmet had put it off to the side, safe. the dish i liked was made with a textured noodle in a light red sauce, peppered meat, and a cream sauce overtop with paprika. c'est celui-ci que j'aurais choisis, i said to mehmet's uncle, this is the one i'd have chosen. j'ai vu, he said, i saw -- i'd gone back for more.

de quoi est-ce qu'on parle en haut? i asked him, what are they talking about upstairs?

de l'huile d'olive, he said, olive oil, on en parle toujours. always.

breaking news

this picture is a tiny representation of the experience with the bus load of tourists. a shelf of small bottles, massage oil, olive oil with tea tree extract, small bottles of cooking oil. all neatly arranged in rows this morning: that order now laid to waste.

for an hour it was truly busy. the credit card machine decided to stop working. they offered american money. in spite of this mehmet did a brisk trade. they bled him of bubble wrap.

i came along to help, thinking tourists would speak some english, but none did -- though there was a girl who sat to the side with a pen, writing -- anyways i couldn't do much: when the phone rang i brought it to the woman with auburn hair who wears the long leather boots with square toes. but that was about it until things calmed down.

it is quieter now and i found myself a task: straightening the stack of flyers for today's event. the stack is now perfect. outside, the wooden decks get a final polish.

your correspondent has been given a new task and must vamoose. we will stay with this breaking story as it unfolds.

get psyched

ın bed early last nıght after a long day spent workıng under spotlights prepping for today's Festival of Olives and Olive Oil (more to follow as events unfold). slept under fragrance of lavender, a scented bag of it a gift from one of the event organizers. it is a scent i keep coming across, again and again, in lemonade, in soaps, now in my very bedroom.

Festival of Olives and Olive Oil today, camel wrestling tomorrow, more to follow.

<< from the eye up on the pyramid >>

around me people are preparing for the olive oil festival, but with mehmet off attending to guests and his uncle not arrived yet, i am really at a loss to communicate and it is hard to offer to help, harder still to understand what they are saying back. so i am hidden in mehmet's office. i am starting to understand a bit more and yesterday i had written out for me the verbs to be and to have, to come and to go, to give and to take, to find and to want.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

on the restaurant wall is a painting done on tile. everywhere here there is art done with tile -- checkerboard patterns in the floors here, patterned tile woven into more intricate designs, bands of colour divinding the room. this art though is too intricate to be done with a pattern. it is painted by hand in mintey greens and burgundy reds, and blue. it is a representation of an olive tree, five tiles across by twelve high. the tree starts as a single trunk, blue flowers at its base and red blossoms. moving upwards it quickly breaks into four branches trailing. the branches wrap around each other and up giving the impression of a figure eight. one of the branches terminates low. others fork again, wrapping down as well as up. the feeling of circularity. there are leaves and fruits along each branch, olives done in purpley burgundy. mehmet tells me the difference between green and black olives is their ripeness. that makes these the ripest.

at the top of the picture the branches have forked, finished and reforked to give seven shoots, seven sprigs of leaves. red motifs fill the space up to the top of the topmost tile.

a bus of tourists has just arrived; the staff here carry around trays of glass cups of tea on saucers with sugar cubes. the smell of roasting meat for this afternoon, the indistinct sound of conversation in two languages, neither of them english, and sighting american money.

<< locusts and honey, lord, wild honey >>

today mehmet was receiving guests -- the wife of the about-equivalent of the lieutenant governor came for a tour of the facility, with two dozen attendents as well as a driver. after the tour was lunch.

two of the staff were sick so mehmet and i spent the morning helping to set up the restaurant.



the tables started laid out in a horseshoe with seats on its inner and outer edges. this arrangement though meant that guests would have to sit back to back. so mehmet helped to carry down extra tables from the classroom upstairs, and we lengthened the horseshoe with them, moving all the placements to the outside edge so that everyone faced each other and there were four seats of honour in the arrangement that everyone could see. then we fastened the tables together with clamps so they would not get out of alignment.

per every four guests there were plates of olives, green and black, and olive oil poured over, as well as oils and spices for bread, salt and pepper, and toothpicks. someone brought red carnations in black bottles.



between the store and the table was set up a display of samples of products, aromatic oils and soaps, decorated with branches of olive trees. you could see the cut ends of the branches still moist. off to the side, tea, coffee, water, lemonade: later at that table too, cordoba, which are like shortbread, but less sweet, and with nuts.

i saw the chef starting to prepare for this meal yesterday, though i did not realize what was the occasion -- hand-rolling perhaps a hundred of dolmas, which are rice wrapped in vine leaves. when we arrived today he was frying eggplant in a light oil that bubbled with small quick bubbles around the edges of the cooking food. by the time food preparation was done there were potatoes and onions, broccoli with carrots, artichoke hearts with lima beans each one cut the long way, as well as shredded cabbage and carrot to go with lettuce for salad. burek, too, which are flakey pastry, ground meat with spices inside.

then each dish was done up with olive oil and garnished. on the burek, parsley; on the dolmas, a half lemon sliced and the slices twisted into two half circles, and the other half of the lemon turned into a lemon rose; likewise with the artichoke hearts; on the potatos a spiral-cut tomato; on the brussels sprouts finely chopped onion.

there is a woodfire oven that makes flat, heavy loaves of bread. when mehmet and i had some for lunch it was warm still. whıle we ate we watched tanks being moved south on flatbed trucks, down the highway that is the main road of Burhaniye.

for desert, semolina pudding -- like rice pudding -- in a cheesecake tray like they must have had back in the days of the empire, with nutmeg and cinnamon.

i did not realize that all this food is served cold, but it is. the olive oil draws out the flavours.

the chef wears white cotton with red piping and red buttons and a white cotton hat. mehmet claps his men on the shoulder and laughs with them. when he receives guests he walks with his hands clasped behind his back.

his uncle says of him, il travail très fort, mehmet, il travail très fort. il sait tout ce qui se passe. he works very hard, very hard. he knows everything that goes on here. not one moment ago my host brought me tea in my room, and he has had me teach him to say, in french, je vous en prie -- i insist.

the guests did not make a dent in the amount of food prepared. perhaps a fifth? anyways we packed up as much of it as we pleased and had it for dinner with full-fat yoghourt. very savoury, but let's not forget the sweet. for desert mehmet produced a bucket of wild honeycombs. the honey was dark, the colour of violets. you eat the whole thing, comb and all, and it's very delicate to crunch through. drippingly sweet -- "almost too much," said mehmet. i had a glass of russian kefir with my honeycomb. i felt like a bear.

rain in Turkey

this morning woke up to mehmet telling me he had to go in early for work.

he left me a phone and his phone number and after a few minutes of movement downstairs the house went still, i fell back asleep to crazy dreams of pushing paper in the house i grew up in, and bathing in the back of a pickup truck, and awoke an hour or so later to cloudy skies and a quiet house.

thoughtfully breakfast had been left out for me -- bread toasting on the stove, water heating, and in the kitchen soft cream cheese -- really good, very creamy -- and honey to go on the bread. the stove was only just smouldering when i went into the sitting room with coffee. the room was cool but comfortable and i had padded down in my warm clothes.

however.

there was not a lot of kindling wood, just two big logs other than a bundle of aromatic wood tied with red thread that i figured i shouldn't tear into. i went to the wood box outside -- unexpectedly wet underneath my wool socks on the white tile of the porch. no suitable wood there. however there was a lot of newspaper and cardboard leftover from ikea furniture assembly, and a new box of reclaimed olive pits. so i piled up the cardboard and the newspaper and put in one log. everything caught at once. i tried to lower the stove top. the log was too big for the lid to close and furthermore was not burning well. it had however caught around its edges making it impossible to lift out. the cardboard burned with carcinogenic green flame. i poured on some olive pits. the fire choked. smoke billowed.

so i have had to open up the doors and windows to let the air clear. it is hazy in here now and smells of smoke and wet dog (happy to be in from the rain). cold air is coming in, fresh smelling but cold. the room is nor warmer nor cooler, but it is smokier. my socks are damp from the wet outside. how is this all a metaphor for my search for self and the true deal with airline peanuts? let me count the ways.

Lilly called another bet

so it turns out i am better than i thought at poker.

the girl who stole girls from boys in my one-time scene: she played poker. she played poker with many boys i knew. she made sure all of them wanted her. i kept clear. how do you win at a game like that? something about self-confidence, and that _i wanted that girl, myself. the guy who kept her for a while made certain we knew she was not his only girlfriend. How Do You Win At A Game Like That. his avatar has since been the jack of hearts.

rainey wet evening. i was upstairs. the TV was on downstairs where the other four were. i have moved an oil lamp into my room to give softer light than the fluorescent. i was reading. uğur came up and asked me if I knew how to play texas hold 'em. i said kinda.

pistachio shells and backgammon pieces for currency. icecream and walnuts for desert partway through -- vanilla icecream but it had a licorice flavour.

i did not lose. i won an early hand. i folded when appropriate. we stopped when uğur ran out of shells. ruçhan won comfortably. arif was nearly out then. mehmet and i were close.

the house is quiet now. i hear the noise of the wind and rain. the oil lamp burns low.

i did not have to bluff in turkish. that mighta made it easier, i don't know. i bluff pretty well when i think about it.

Türkce dili

today again at the factory.

awoke to find two more people have joined us at mehmet's. one speaks some english, one does not. from downstairs now i hear Turkish and a boiling kettle and i smell dumplings.

i do not have a problem communicating with the puppy, who has enormous paws, nor with the cat. but otherwise i have trying to convey, mostly, please and thank-you.

it helps that turkish uses the alphabet i know, though the letter sounds are all different here, a different timbre of sound. vowels are cleaner than they are in north american english. down with dipthongs! every vowel makes exactly one sound. U seems to be a french-sounding U. A is always a short A. E is a long A. I is long. meanwhile consonants are more clipped. T is always T, never D; F never slips to V. C makes Tse. an accent over an S or a C works like an H -- from S to Sh, from C to Ch. an accent over a G sound drops it in the mouth til it no longer is recognizably a G. so, mehmet's girlfriend's name, phonetically oor, is in fact spelled uğur -- that is, 'uyur,' but reduce the Y sound until it is nearly gone. H's have a little bit of breathiness in them but hardly any. the R sound is not like an english R, not like a french R, nor is it a rolled R. more like an R crossed with an H, just a touch of haspiration.

vowels can have umlauts over them -- not sure how they work yet. some consonants also can have little tails, works like an H -- from S to Sh and C to Ch.

grammar-wise, turkish has a structure like apostrophe-S in english (the genitive case -- gets me hot baby to hear you say those words again after all this time). but this is not just to indicate possession. so, when pointing to canada on a map you'd say "kanada", but to say "i am of canada", you would have to change it from "kanada" to "kanadadan." you'd say, kanadadan geliyorum.

to say hello to someone is Selamin Aleyküm, and when someone says that to you, you say back Aleyküm Selamin, same thing only backwards.

i spent part of today talking with mehmet's uncle, over coffee (kava) and lunch (öğle yemegi), as mehmet saw to business. the uncle speaks french -- so today i spoke almost as much french as english, and, amazingly, my list of turkish words to learn is not an english-turkish list but a french-turkish list. today's words are:

- good morning : günaydin
- good day : iyi günler
- good evening : iyi akşamlar
- good night : iyi geceler
- yes, no, maybe : evet, hayir, belki
- where, when : nerete, nezaman
- my name is : ismim NOTE now i can say a rough approximation of "call me ishmael," it'd be "ismim ishmael"
- me, you, he/she : ben, sen, o. plurals biz, siz, onlar
- please, thank-you : lütfen, mersi (same as french)
- to right, to left : sağ, sol
- hot, cold, neutral : sicak, soğuk, ilik

coffee is kava. tea is čay (think "chai") -- those two are easy. sugar is šigir -- that one's easy too -- cream is krema. and to count to ten from zero is : sifir, bir, iki, üč, dört, bez, alti, yedi, sekiz, dokuz, on.

mehmet tells me i need to work on my vowel sounds -- though, frankly, he says it "wowel."

interesting to be so much out of my element. english is so damn easy and furthermore there is always something to say -- at this very moment outside my room they are doing something with the plumbing, hammering into the concrete, i merely quote bob dylan -- last night across the alley there was a poundin' on the wall: musta been your don pasquale makin' a 2:00 A.M booty call. dig? i have talked in the past about clear and honest communication. it is different here, kinda. what if mehmet and his uncle were gone and no one spoke my language? things would matter more then.

today's pictures are of the classroom above the Laleli store. note how the chairs are all arranged in perfect rows and columns even when the room is empty. at the back, under the windows, are greyblue pots of herbs.



back at mo's house we have taken the chimney apart and are installing a heat exchanger, to squeeze the last drips of juice out of the stove. night before last it was so hot it was making me dizzy and mo was sweating in just an undershirt. we have been experimenting trying to find a way to use processed olive pits for fuel. we burned through a whole box of them. the stove got so hot so fast it started to shudder. the cat fled. it was great.

Nazar

this morning i woke myself up which is a step in the right direction. last night seriously not tired when i should have been tired and stayed up late reading and drinking tea. Bob Dylan's Chronicles are a story and a half. the man has presence. this morning went downstairs for breakfast and told Mo (Mehmet) how my life was better for having tasted full fat yoghourt.

"that is only the beginning," he said, pouring me coffee and putting in cream so thick it globs into your cup. for breakfast we fried cheese til it squeaks between your teeth, ate it on toast.

then in to the factory again where I am writing this now and also going to steal away to the class room for some quiet book time. lunch was soup made with chickpeas, potato, and bulgar wheat, with a whole onion torn in half and served to us on a glass plate.

at the base of the hill where the olive trees grow there is a storefront for the factory. the classroom and kitchen are in this building. we stopped here for mo to talk to staff and exchange some papers. again the call to prayer, the voice lifting and holding and dropping, resting its weight on the flatted seventh of the scale, one step beneath the melody's tonal centre, a sound as recognizable and rich and as different as the taste of nutmeg.

walking across the tiles of the courtyard in front I saw a dozen blue glass eyes pressed into the mortar, looking up at me. the courtyard is very well tended -- not a single stick for me to throw for the dog to retrieve. not many birds here. i have seen perhaps three. i have seen more cats than birds. i am trying to remember to listen.

a tour of the factory

sleep cycle is very confused from travel and having burned the candle at both ends for a week before departing. last night in bed at 8 after going shopping to stock the new empty fridge, and afterwards eating dinner with Mehmet. DID YOU KNOW THERE IS SUCH A THING AS FULL FAT YOGHOURT. to repeat : all the fat. i think that is part of what made me sleepy.

in Turkey they drink not only milk but a kind of yoghourt milk called Kefir, a Russian drink, very good and appeals to me muchly.

awoke this morning at noon, after a night of strange and vivid dreams about keychains, to Mehmet telling me i could either sleep in or come with him to the office. so i got up. from my bedroom window i can see citrus trees fruiting in the front yard of the house across the street. it is bright during the day though the sun sets early. it is the setting sun that comes into my bedroom. the walls are powder blue.

heard Mehmet vacuuming as i brushed my teeth, then when i went downstairs he told me he'd discovered something new about his vacuum -- that you can run it in reverse -- so i watched as he gleefully shut the stove's vents and blew air up through the bottom, making the coals glow whiter-than-orange and pushing clouds of ash up into the air all over the floor and the cat sleeping nearby.

this stove is going to be great fun. "once you start working with it," said mo, "it's addicting. to burn things. like that whiskas bag?" he indicated an empty bag of cat food in the corner. "so many usable calories."

last night we piled the stove full of wood and oak cones thinking they would burn with less heat than coal. they did not. we had to change into t-shirts because of the heat and eventually we fled to the porch, then to the grocery store. strange to recognize american brands brought over into turkey and to be able to recognize typefaces and colours even when the names are different. a visible ad campaign for becel -- this in the cradle of civilization as understood through olive oil -- becel claiming to be a healthy alternative. and of course Coca-Cola : Coke is positioning itself as the perfect way to break your Ramadan fast.

i do not feel too out of place here -- i dress in clothes similar to Mehmet's -- but at the supermarket a father came up to me and asked me to talk to his thin shy daughter in English.

today Mehmet showed me around his olive production operation. we drove here in the Alfa Romeo. the factory is a five minute drive from his house, across from a mosque. Mehmet's uncle was there who speaks French with a European accent. heard a call to prayer while we ate lunch and drank lemonade with lavender while attendents hovered.



a tour of the factory : we walked up past three women who were stripping thyme leaves from the stalks, making the fragrance to leap into the air. olives everywhere, in huge crates, under tarpaulins, in woven baskets such as donkeys would carry, underfoot. organic products all set off to one side and labelled in green. nearby a small workshop for producing aromatic olive oil -- today's flavour was orange. a worker chopped oranges into quarters and added them to the olive feed as they went into the processor. Mehmet cut through the peal of one with a cleaver and handed it to me, juicy and fresh. nearby plastic bins of tangerines for the next batch. then it was in to see the soap shop, hundreds of bars of soap all stamped with the name Laleli which is Mehmet's family name. the workshop is heated by a huge stove beneath. the stove burns olive pits. Mehmet showed me how cleanly they burn -- pure white ash. then he sealed the furnace, pressed some buttons on a digital control, and stood back. then like Hephaestus he opened the door. flame poured out and licked up the sides. Mehmet's eyes widened. from the soap shop up the hillside to see the dark side of olive oil production, the black water and waste solids. but also olive trees, herbs and magnolia trees, and one white fig tree.



then the vinegar workshop which i recognized immediately by the sting in your nose, and in the same workshop a personal batch of wine being fermented, perfume, and two vats of kosher vinegar wrapped in cloth and sealed with tape like police tape only it bears the letter K. through to a larger olive processing area where someone was experimenting coating lemons in mineral wax to preserve them in storage. lastly to the bottling compound where the floor is white tile and if you merely shift your weight your feet slowly start to move under you since the on floor there is oil everywhere. Mehmet got two little glasses like sherry glasses and had me taste olive oil right from a spigot that would go into the bottle.

"Doesn't get much fresher than this," he said. can't say i've ever drank olive oil before. unexpectedly spicey.



at present sitting in Mehmet's office above the bottling area, while my host attends to some business. noise of heavy machinery in the background and the smell of olives like they can grind up the smell itself to better saturate your nose with it.

i understand now a bit more how things will work. the kitchen i was told about is in fact the cafeteria for the farm workers. soon Mehmet will turn it into a restaurent, once they sort out the menu. in the meantime we can use it for cooking projects that are too grand for the little kitchen in his house. above the kitchen is the classroom area which is like a meeting area and also used for training his staff. so, if i want to, i can use this space to run some english lessons and earn my keep a bit while i am here.

on the wall of Mehmet's office the awards his olive oil has won: the Gold Medal at the Concours de Paris, Primo Classificato at Biol 2006 at Andria, silver and bronze at the L.A County Fair.

i am looking for today's "aha" moment before i make this post -- but who knows. i have just been brought a cup of coffee but it is instant coffee. the sun is setting now over the hillside. the walls, floors, tiles, everything is white here, with dark wood furniture, makes the whole room to softly glow.

figs and cream, coffee, beechwood

it is late at night in Burhaniye Turkey and i am beat.

near full points for getting out of London this morning on British Airways -- one bureaucratic snafu that they made out to be much more than it actually was and that made me sweat for a moment. but going through passport control in turkey was less involved than ordering a happy meal -- seriously, sixty seconds end to end, no forms, no questions, not even one word out of the passport guard who stamped my passport, then looked at its information, then handed it back. and now i am in turkey staying in a house that is heated with coal.

like, actually heated by burning coal in a stove, not heated by a powerplant that uses coal to turn turbines and generate electricity and power electric heaters.

mehmet has just moved in himself and is still setting things up. his girlfriend Oor is here as well.

i have not seen much of the town since it was night when we drove in and i was groggy besides. we had dinner in Izmir with the mayor of Burhaniye who was there with mehmet when he picked me up. i had my first olive within fifteen minutes of landing -- purpley, salty. we stopped for dinner in Izmir at a fancy restaurant such as the mayor of the town would eat at.

"what would you like to drink?" asked Mehmet.

"coffee," i said, since i always drink coffee. then i realized. "unless, unless you have coffee after the meal here."

Mehmet said something to the waiter in turkish. i understood the word for coffee and the word american : negative. and a word that must have meant filtered. also negative.

Mehmet looked at me. "it doesn't work that way here."

"then i'll have what you are having," i said, so we shared some wine.

then our waiters brought around a big tray of appetizers in little ceramic dishes and mehmet told me, choose. so i chose one. but in fact for appetizers you choose like six and even if i'd known that, do you just grab the dishes yourself (you do not, they pass them to you), and besides, what is what? so the others at the table chose as well. we had palm hearts, fava bean spread, couscous, artichoke spread, a salad made from the tops of a vegetable like a raddish, and bread.

normally i eat quite quickly. but people eat like they make love and did not come all this way not to learn a few things. i tried the bread first, a soft brown round loaf. i tore into it, no butter at the table. even under my fingers its texture was different. i tasted some. lots of flavour, salty. i was like, ok, this is your new life, don't gulp. then i was like, this is just the bread. then i was like, exactly: this is just the bread.

it was good. dinner was good especially the giant roasted green bean, also brussels sprouts, broccoli, and tomato.

desert was figs stuffed with walnuts and rich cream and sprinkled with pistachios, those were delicious and we finished with coffee in tiny cups and turkish cigarillos with beechwood tips.

then into the car where i slept the whole rest of the way in spite of myself -- i am tired -- though i did see a truck packed full with bunches of leeks, eyes painted on the back bumper. then in to Mehmet's house past the warehouse/factory where the olivemagic happens. another building on that site houses a kitchen suitable for preparing weekly feasts. much bigger than the kitchen in mo's house. it is equipped with all sorts of restaurant equipment and gas ranges and the pantry is well-stocked with everything fresh and local. evidently they feast often in turkey and soon i will too. above the kitchen is an empty loft space with hardwood floors where mehmet tells me i will teach yoga, though he did not specify to whom. i am also told i will be teaching english and french.

a cat lives in this house that looks like my Marianne but is considerably fatter. there are grape vines strung to shade the backyard. the porch looks onto a street and if you cross the street and walk down you are at the aegean sea, and you can swim to the greek island of Lesbos (says mehmet -- it is too dark for me to see for myself). the walls are brick and concrete and the floor is tile. my room is small.

bedtime now -- i have made it. the cat is purring in a fattish way.

<< you're asking me will my love grow -- i don't know >>

here is a picture of Abbey Road Studios in London, which is where the Beatles recorded -- the white building in the centre.

in the foreground is the famous intersection whose photograph, on the cover of the album Abbey Road, started the rumour that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident at five o'clock the morning of Wednesday, November 9, 1966, replaced by an actor to allow the band's legend to continue. indeed, if you play the White Album backwards a voice does clearly say, between tracks ten and eleven on disc one, Paul is dead, man, miss him, _miss _him, MISS HIM. we are to believe that this is by chance.

i am staying in London just one night and i have a plane to catch early tomorrow so i cannot do too much here, but i did want to go see this studio, sign my name on the wall in orange sharpie, and do my bit to keep the intersection of Abbey and Acacia Roads at the top of the list of the world's Most-Photographed Intersections.

the Beatles named their twelfth album after this street, Abbey Road. it was to be their last album and they knew it. but the heartbreak space is often also the crystal clear sparkling space, and you can make a compelling case that Abbey Road is the Beatles' finest album, and it is no coincidence that it features the song that is called the finest love song of all time, Something.

the Beatles knew what they were creating. the album's working title was Everest.

for its cover picture, the band -- a band the likes of which the world still has not seen -- were going to fly to the Himalayas to have their picture taken in front of the world's tallest mountain. but when the songs were done and recorded none of them had that kind of energy. instead they had their picture taken right outside. they would have come out the front door which you can see here, walked the twenty feet to the street crossing, and done it right there. it would have taken ten minutes. they took three pictures : Paul took off his sandles for the third. and instead of calling the album Everest, they called it Abbey Road.

in life there is greatness not only on mountain tops but also at ground level, not only halfway around the globe but also just across the street. tomorrow i leave for Turkey.

i walked back to Picadilley Square down Lissom Grove, moving through wet and headlit streets. London is colder than i imagined. i bought some hot chestnuts from a vendor who was roasting them right there on the sidewalk and they helped to warm my fingers. they were chewy and soft, not crunchy. why did i expect them to be crunchy? and, by extension, who am i, why do i believe what i believe, and what is the deal with airline peanuts. tomorrow i will land in Turkey to stay with my friend Mehmet. it is one short flight away. it feels like it is just across the street.

singing just for you

<< bird on the horizon,
sittin' on a fence,

singin' a song for me
at his own expense --

i am _just _like _that _bird >>