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.