last day in istanbul (4) : finally!

<< baby i been waiting,
i been waiting night and day.
i didn't see the time,
now i waited half my life away --
there were lots of invitations,
i know you sent me some --


but i was waiting for the miracle to come >>

last day in istanbul (3) : street vendors

for the last two days astrid and i have been eating by grazing on all the different kinds of food that people sell in carts in the streets in the city here. here is just a sampling. can you taste it? can you hear the sizzle? can you feel the heat from the donair roasters?

(we did not eat the sneakers.)

bigcity movement

the ten o'clock clatter as every shop opens its metal rollup shutters at once. the music in this hostel that unfortunately gets louder and louder.

the flesh of oranges and grapefruits being torn in juice presses, vendors misting cucumbers in streetside carts.

fat dripping down rotating donair skewers, the meat cut in a downward wedge to let the fat drip down, the meat rotating on big swords and cut by men with bulging muscles.

buses that drive with the doors open.

the sizzle of fish grills by the waterfront.

midday sun aligning with the obelisk.

people that move through the sidewalks and streets like water flows over stones, tracing a course that will let them move past those who move slowly.

vendors tearing the husks from cobs of corn to be roasted in red carts like theatre popcorn machines.

restaurant greeters who will do what it takes to put a menu in your hands. "yes please! table here! just drinks! maybe tomorrow!"

late afternoon twitching fish in yoghourt buckets at the feet of fishermen on the bridge leading into old istanbul.


by night the circling birds lit up from underneath, the yellow lights that shine up the minarets, and the rustle of cats hunting in plastic garbage bags.

a feaste

very nice.

mulberries at ephesus

wild mulberries right off a tree that shaded one of the paths through the ruins at ephesus.

shots of the restaurant

mo has got some new lenses for his camera and ruchan has been using them to take promo shots for the restaurant.

a boy, five girls and a would-be goat

astrid kerr arrives in five days and i am still learning how to be myself around women, of which there were five, and carnivorous, at the goat roast.

the roast was wednesday. tuesday night we rolled into mehmetalan, four of us, ruchan, ugur, mo and me, and our bags, and cassius (dog) in the back of the pickup.

"but unfortunately," said mo, "it is not going to be a goat roast, we are going to roast a ram."

"isn't a ram a goat?" i asked, having much to learn about a great many things.

"no, a ram is a sheep," said mo.

it's true. a ram is a male sheep. and it _was a little unfortunate: i was hoping for a nice tender baby girl goat so i could at last take in some of that divine feminine energy i tend to go on about. but no: a big smelly male sheep. by the end of the event, when most of the ram was gone, mo would say: "we certainly smell like a sheep."

mehmetalan is a turkman village without a mosque and therefore without a prayer call. there are two sharp turns you need to negotiate going down the mountain road leading to. as you go into the town, you pass the antique olive oil factory, then you pass the house of a man named emir and his wife sabile, where we'd stopped once or twice before to say hello. later we would take one more sharp turn and head down to the campground where we would be staying that night. for now, the party was at emir's and we arrived with a square four litre tin of mo's wine.

emir doesn't speak english but he told me through an intermediary that when i learn turkish we are going to drink raki together. then he said "ah!" and remembered something, and drew me by the arm through the bead curtain leading to their kitchen and kind of tossed me in, where three girls sat at the table eating first-course salad and rolling cigarettes, and a fourth was shuffling pizzas in and out of the wood stove, and a fifth sat behind.

"ingilize," he said -- the girls spoke english.

"hello," i said and they said hello back.

this is where my mind starts to spin, always starts to spin. "where are you from?" i said and two of them said, "turkey?" and the other three nodded.

shortly i was to discover that the house bookshelf was all in turkish. luckily mo arrived with a bag full of prawns that needed cleaning and called me over. we stood side to side in the cramped kitchen with a full dish rack to the right and to the left a wall unit with little bowls of spices and a bottle of aromatic bitters, bundles of herbs, and also little bottle of apple rum seemed to have been forgotten. mo tore the shells off the prawns and had me slice down the convex side to remove the nerve-and-gut tubule. from there into a pan of hot olive oil where they cooked from grey to white to pink.

outside we had hot the prawns on hot bread and there was a fire and wine and lots of smoking and the air was cold. the girls were inside and every now and then one of them would come out often with a full wineglass and pick up the camera and take a few shots, or sit and say a few words while smoking. everyone seemed to know each other from sundance -- they could tell that mo's dog was a sundance dog, with a half-length tail, and also they knew the temper of the dog that bit me. to one girl (mo prodding me with his foot and whispering "she spins fire") i got to show off my scar. but that was all. i was prodded a slight bit more and i wanted to be more outgoing but also i did not. and so i was not feeling myself the whole night. i liked the wine, though. and when i walked out having forgot my backpack, i made to go back and get it and mo called after me, "ah yes, go, get her number."

(like this: "hi. would one of you five girls like to leave with me tonight?")

so i picked up my bag and left again and down we went to the campsite which was past the cemetary and over the running water. there we had a fire and tea and i put a new string on the campground guitar and played for a bit. cassius kept bounding around and aggravating the campground dog, who was greying and fat but snarled and bared her teeth. cassius is a puppy but he is a huge puppy and at six months as already the same size as this other dog, and they wrestled as mo went to his cabin to get a jacket.

"cassius!" i said. "know when to say enough."

they continued to grapple. the puppy was not letting up.

"cassius!"

"look at him," said mo when he came back. "he is a _warrior!"

then without further thoughts of his puppy having problems defending himself or for that matter causing trouble, he went in to sit by the fire, leaving the dogs to be.

then everyone went to bed except for me who stayed up a little longer to think and drink two glasses of water (too few) from the pitcher on the table. and knowing that i couldn't have hit on those girls but still somehow thinking i should have, and wondering what it means to be a warrior or to try and teach people to be one, i went to bed myself, and slept and slept.

man does not live by bread alone.

from the Dharma Bums:

<< I wondered why Han Shan was Japhy's hero. "Because," said he, "he was a poet, a mountain man, a Buddhist dedicated to the principle of meditation on the essence of all things, a vegetarian too by the way though I haven't got on that kick from figuring maybe in this modern world to be a vegetarian is to split hairs a little since all sentient beings eat what they can [...] [...with some onions, garlic, a little pepper and salt...] [...]." >>


1. last night moving over the grill to mo's house for lamb chops and kebabs.



2. tonight, again tripes. actually, to be precise these are not tripes, which are the outsides of the small intestines; these are the insides of the small intestines. they get wound up like a rope on a skewer and pressed together into, like, a sausage. mince and cook til crispy.





3. working on a shortlist for this week's goat roast.

"i am that mustafa."

getting to pammukale did not quite pan out. i was going to catch a ride to izmir with mo, spend the day there, and head on from there -- izmir is halfway. however, on the way to izmir out plans fell through and we ended up turning back to find a strawberry stand, which was not open yet, and from there we headed back to bergama to look for mustafa, dealer of pine nuts.

we set out in search of mustafa's shop from the town square overlooked by the white marble ruins of the temple of athena, high at the top of the hill behind the town. mo had looked for the store many times and failed every time but once. we did not find it on our first attempt. we asked a nearby taxi driver, tried again. found the store -- closed. we inquired at the nearby bakery: does any one know where is mustafa who owns the pine nut shop next door? the baker did. he told us: you will find mustafa in the tea shop with the simit wagon in front (simit is a kind of pretzel). down we went to look for the simit wagon. no simit wagon. about to give up, but deepdown determined, we asked at a restaurant. does anyone know where is mustafa who owns the pine nut shop up the way? a man stood up. i, he said, i am that mustafa.

he walked with us back up to his shop and opened the sheet metal doors. inside was a courtyard and an unlocked building where he had us to wait.

we were in a plain tile lobby with industrial power fixtures and fixture-less fluorescent lights. to the left, wholesale canvas bags of pine nuts, processed and unprocessed. to the right, an arrangement of green plants. at our feet, a balance with weights, 5g, 10g, 20g, up to 100, then as well weights up to five kilos. the door to mustafa's office was across the empty lobby. most of the lobby space sat unused.

"the machinery is in the back," said mo, picking up an unhusked pine nut, tarry and brown. he manipulated it. "the trick is to crack the shell without cracking the nut inside."

there was one bag of unprocessed nuts, and several bags of finished product. then mustafa returned, sent for tea, and ushered us into his office.

he and mo talked and talked -- about pine nuts. easily they talked for thirty minutes. on the table in front of his desk was an arrangement of pine cones, one of them placed on three to make a pyramid. there hummed a water cooler.

from there back out to the car for the ride home.

with toastywarm bread from the bakery we made pine nut buns. the pine nuts were tender. there are definitely good pine nuts and bad. i did not know this all was such serious business. i was wrong.

meanwhile, rick james....

today mo and i stole away for a picnic while inspecting olive trees.

an authentic olive picker's lunch of sausage, tomatoes, peppers, bread, cheese, cooked on a pine needle and twig fire, sausages fried on hot rocks, tomato paste spread on with young white olive branches. nearby the dog slept. it has been cold, nights. it was nice to have a fire and a moment.

the harvest (2) : lemonade

remove petals from poppy flowers. finely grind in granulated sugar.



prepare juice of four lemons. add lemon juice to petals and sugar, and mash. allow to stand.



prepare mixture of water and sugar.



strain lemon and petal mixture and add to sugar water. chill.



garnish and serve.

Act Two, Scene Four : Back in Burhaniye

from istanbul it was a half-day's drive in to burhaniye, though we had car trouble, as we are wont to do. the rev counter in the little alfa's engine gave out just as we were about to hit 200 on a straightaway. so we had to be towed, limping, into nearby balikesir, and from there picked up and brought home.

spring is kissing even cool burhaniye. today they winds blew and blew, tearing leaves from the trees, but it was warm in the sun. the flowers are in. the olive trees are reaching, not shrinking. wheat growing in the front yard of the restaurant, red poppies pushing up from surprising places, silvery lavendar in the herb gardens. behind the restaurant you can hear the scratchy meowing of two kittens beneath the woodpile, tucked into a corner beside the cement woodfire stove. the stove is made of cement that heats up every morning for baking bread. smart cat, that mama cat. the kittens are tiny. i gave them cream in a little saucer. they are too small to know what to do with it.

tonight we are at mehmet's restaurant listening to chamber music by mozart and dining on tripes. the tinkling harpsichord plays off the silkysmooth minced texture on the tongue, and raw baby garlic. it is good to be back.