thoughts on ankara

i have held off putting together my thoughts about ankara because it's a philosophical problem too.

everyone told me ankara is an ugly city, and in a lot of ways it was. there was so much pollution that you couldn't see the sprawled-out edge of the city on account of the smog. and not a lot there that gripped me.

the basic question is : did i see ankara for myself at all, or just see what other people told me to see?

i did try to force myself out for walks to see the downtown and to wander around, but by day two i was tired of being lost, and the street signs are all tiny and hidden so i had no hope, and if they're not going to make their city more visitor-friendly then fine, i will take my existential crises elsewhere.

and none of the pet stores sold cat toys suitable to mail back home.

there was a little park with swans, but also tape to keep people off the grass. water dripped from the birds' beaks. what keeps them from flying away? can swans fly?

we went for pizza at a college pizza joint that had been redone, swank now. that was one night. and the other i tried iskander which is rice, croutons, yoghourt, and donair meat, with extra butter, and served extra hot because once it cools it gets filmy. we ate at a restaurant called Aspava -- an acronym for allah saglik para afiyet versin amir, may allah grant you health, affluence, and good appetite. there were four restaurants in a row all the same, all with the same name, all serving more or less the same menu, so when we pulled up in the car parking attendents all clamoured to get us to park in front of their restaurant and jumped to open the doors for us. we chose the leftmost restaurant. inside one person had a canadian flag on her backpack. bottles of turnip juice on the table and when it was time to go they brought us towelettes and offered perfume water.

later that night to an old college haunt where they played blues, where mo knew the owner who wore black and hadn't shaved and drank whisky from a short glass with ice. life, women, music, we talked about. there was a bottle of wine on each empty table along with the table settings, and a group of people our age talking, and a woman at the bar, and another couple. we stayed until they dimmed the lights.

at home watching the news they brought the anchorman tea on camera.

but the real truth of ankara was time spent in mo's office doing homework and hearing montreal call me louder and louder, beautiful sophisticated montreal, and thinking in general and also specific terms about summer plans, and of riding my bike again. my time in turkey is half over.

<< and who shall i say is calling? >>

mo and i used the flight back from ankara to make a first high-level blueprint of our stove fuel cell. this design calls for olive pits, parrafin-soaked olive pits, and coal, all of which we have experience working with.



next week, design and prototyping.

<< well don't _brag about it >>

i went to see a mosque today but wasn't in the right frame of mind to get it. sam spade saying, you _are a liar.

last night who did i let down?

and there i was standing in the Tocakepe mosque which is ankara's finest but mostly made out of white concrete, and wondering what i should feel under the expansive dome --

-- before realizing of course that there is nothing i _should feel, i feel what i feel but i didn't feel much, that clenchiness in throat.

i went up to the second level. you can walk up the steps to the first walkway that runs around the edge of the open central space, and from the first up to the second, where the ceiling over your head is arched. the wide open space is palpably close and the smallest domes start overhead and just beyond the marble railing which was cold to touch.

from up here you can see people praying. many of them pray facing the large supporting columns. one man checked his watch before starting. and across the space, at eye level from me, girls, thin girls, but i mostly imagined them to be thin, they were a long ways off, and i also imagined their prayerfulness, they took pictures of each other with their cell phones too.

i had to make myself notice the closer little details. like the tiny imperfections in the boundless painting, the woven patterns of vines and bulbs that covered the mosque's entire inside surface, and for the glory of g-d. it looked almost like tempra on the grainy concrete, blue, red and turquoise, with thin black lines to delineate. sometimes the colour did not touch the line. sometimes the line strayed too close and the colour showed on its other side. painting done by people like me. i know how these patterns work.

i rested there. it was nice, quiet, and for once you did not hear cars honking. stepping outside the afternoon sun reflected full off the white of the steps, made me flinchflinchflich. spotlights aimed to light up the minarets by night.

the power of pink

i have a pink cell phone which i like to use because motorola's marketing department doubtless says my demographic's colour is gun-metal grey, not bubblegum pink, which makes me very subversive.



they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
for trying to change the system from within

but my phone's SIM card has self-destructed. cell phones here have to be registered at the central agency and mine was not so it turned itself off, and i had to go and put my name on the list.

we had to go all the way to the turkcell central office to do this. mo's driver took me. he was buffing the car when i went down.

thirty minutes out on an eight lane expressway.

the turkcell head office has a big steel gate crowned with razor wire, and a metal barricade in front also wrapped with wire. we drew up to the bar and stopped. two guards in black uniforms, sunglasses and crewcuts came out. the driver spoke to one. the other took down our license plate number and wrote it on a clipboard. the driver and one guard talked while the other guard ran a sniffer wand around the undercarriage of the car, listening to its output through headphones. a third swabbed the door handles with a cotton ball which he took into guard's booth while we waited. the car radio played turkish pop.

after an interminable wait the guards waved us through. two of them lifted the barricade out of the way.

we drove into a huge and mostly empty parking lot that cameras panned. we parked close and got out. then up the four steps, down a long cement walkway past two huge statues of men done in bronze, and under long banners that said turkcell.

in through the heavy metal and glass front doors, into the grey concrete structure with almost no windows.

inside it was dim. fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. i followed the driver's lead, placing my wallet, passport case and phone in a plastic tray to go through the x-ray machine. i removed my shoes and sent them through as well, and stepped through the metal detector. on the other side two guards in body armour and submachine guns stood stiffly. one held the leash of a dog that sat at his feet. the x-ray technician was a woman with her hair in a bun. my plastic tray came out the other side. the two guards looked disapprovingly at my pink cell phone, hands on their weapons. it looked more pink than ever.

i reached for my wallet and phone. the guard stopped my hand.

"dur," he said, and i knew what he meant: stop.

then he indicated the viewfinder on my phone and said: "kamera?"

i looked at him.

"ka-me-ra?" he repeated, one syllable at a time.

i nodded.

he said, heavily: "kamera yok." camera, no way.

the driver spoke to him. the one guard talked to the other who held the dog. the dog did not move. the first guard, my little pink phone in his huge fist, picked up a phone, pressed a button on his radio, and said two short sentences. then a moment's wait, a response, and two more curt words. then he said to us:

"ok."

they sent us over to the glassed-in reception desk where the driver explained what we were there for. the woman behind it talked through an intercom with an impassive voice. we signed for visitor badges. a man came and escorted us up, through the electronically locked turnstiles.

they took us into an office with crystal trophies etched with cyrillic lettering, a portrait of mustafa kemal, and an orange hardhat with a headlight on top of a plain grey filling cabinet. a plodding clerk in a turtleneck took my information down, crosschecked my passport and typed everything into a ToughBook like they use in afghanistan. she printed some forms. i signed, initialed, signed again. she explained the terms of service to the driver. finally we were done. she handed me my phone which gleamed metallic pink under the lights.

back down the stairs under escort, cell phone in hand and pink. past the reception desk where we gave back our badges. past the two guards who this time were expressionless. the dog growled and made for me, but the one guard yanked him back remorselessly. the black dog eyed me and did not look away.

the driver led me out and back to the car, stealing two drags from a cigarette on the way. he tossed it mostly untouched onto the brown grass. then back out through the fortress walls. again they lifted away the metal barricade and crossed our license number off their clipboard. then onto the expressway. grey sooty cedar plants in the median.

we were so far out of the city that the driver took me along for two of his deliveries, one to a hospital, one to a non-descript warehouse. from there back into the city centre through the tunnel so hazy you can't see the end of it.

luckily i had the foresight to save my cell phone welcome message to the phone, not the SIM card, so that when i powered it up again after being dropped off at my destination i was reminded: that marianne loves you. it was after one by the time my day got going. all i wanted was to be out in the sun and the cool air. turkcell pretty much sums up my experience in ankara.

<< why weep ye by the tide, ladie, why weep ye by the tide? >>

tonight i played guitar for the first time in ages.

i think of you often! you are crazy.

i am learning for you an air. it is in the green key of D. it has a quick trill in the opening phrase that you have to practice 10,000 times because if you drop it, the song flops instantly. the ornament is done with the little finger of the left hand, the furthest one. so you practice and practice and practice, and any good karma that practising brings can be yours to reap. because you are worth it. stay beautiful : )

"no-honk zone." "honk honk."

presently waiting for desert. i am at mo's office on a skittish internet connection. lunch included balkan-style feta. servers bring us tea and take away the dishes. a jar of preserves has just come. custard is to arrive shortly. then i am going to go for a walk and some ipod.

there is not a lot to do in ankara. it is a clear day so you can see the thick smog hang over the city. this is a busy office and the phones ring perpetually.

women and grief

this morning i awoke under a down comforter to an empty house. in ankara we are staying at mo's parents'. i have been left a too-big cushy white robe. there is lots of hot water here and norah jones playing, as mo left it when he went out this morning.

now the fall is here again
you can't begin to give in
it's all over --
when the snows come rolling through
you're rolling too
with some new lover --
will you think of times you told me
that you knew the reason
why we had to each be lonely,
was it just the season?

yesterday i spent the afternoon poking around the anatolian civilization museum. mo's driver took me. he wore a grey suit jacket, black pants and a red tie. we went in a sedan with tinted black windows, and worry beads around the gear shift. the driver dropped me off at the door, up at the top of the ankara castle.

some of the oldest artifacts from human history are here. indeed, they predate history. one of the early displays is a collection of clay stamps in geometric patterns that were used to identify tools and clothing before people had script to write their names.

the earliest items were stone tools, crude at first, then more refined, smaller and sharper. there is a stone and rawhide axe, and some fish hooks. yellowed typewritten panels tell you what you are looking at.

around the corner you step into the era where people started to live in settlements and suddenly there are all sorts of early works of art and culture.

very interesting. the development of culture must have been like the evolution of colour vision or the thumb -- no idea how you were born with it, useful to have now that you have it.

but vision is hardwired, and your thumb knows how to reach for a pebble or a fruit -- you don't need to train it. what do you do when you watch someone die and you are suddenly overcome with grief? many of the figurines of that early period were representations of women. there were young women with their hair long. there were pregnant women with round bellies and hips, women reclining, ankles folded. there were women in skirts, tunics, and one who was naked except for two gold bands that crossed over her front and covered her breasts. there was a woman with her legs drawn up, a woman lying on her stomach. there was a sculpture of a woman facing and embracing a man, then the same woman flipped and on the other side cradling a child. the statues were tiny, the size and shape of a girl's hand.

out of clay there was a woman giving birth on a throne carried by two cats, and statues of animals with wounds inflicted by arrowheads.

necklaces in stone, sometimes gold, and pieces of black obsidian polished into mirrors. a little seashell to put pigment in and a tiny spoon to apply it. blue, red and black pebbles on strings. bracelets of rock or precious metal. earrings with beads. the earliest human impulses. they buried their dead with jewels and hunting implements, and before putting them in the earth they left the bodies out for the vultures to find them.

carved out of rock and painted was a representation of two leopards: you could tell by their spots. one was larger and one was more delicate. they were lying face to face and touching lips.

the driver waited for me all day and took me back to meet mo at his work. it is a wonder driving in ankara is still even viable. people walked past and through the gridlocked traffic. in the little car it was hot and the driver and i were silent.