one hundred words and eight about a turkish wedding

the wedding was at the campground where was the goat roast. the ceremony happened under a new geodesic dome that ruchan helped build, covered in new white vinyl so taut that you could flick it with your finger and have it ring like a drum.

turkish food made in huge steel pots; rice and couscous stirred with rough wood spoons like spades.

musicians, live musicians, good at what they did: when the dancing crowd started clapping hands and singing along (traditional songs) the bass drum player would drop right out of the way to let people hear themselves together, just playing with his thin and trebley pine switch on the one side of the drum. the voices lifted and fell with the brass clarinet and people turned up their faces to reach for the top of the phrase. then as the verse ended the drummer moved right back in with the hardwood mallet he used to hammer out the heavy rhythms on the drum's other side, and hands went up and feet lifted and people moved clockwise and stepped back, clockwise and back.


got a belly dance lesson and made lovely smalltalk.

and how out of the whole secular ceremony i understood just one word, "evet" -- "yes."