Archive for 'Another World – 1995-1997'
The 637th annual Kirkpinar
Posted on 15. Jul, 1998 by admin.
We just returned from Edirne, a town bordering both Greece and Bulgaria, where we attended the 637th-annual Kirkpinar – the olive-oil-wrestling competition. People aged 5 to 50 had oil poured all over themselves in the 95-degree heat and wrestled with each other in a small stadium, two at a time, single-elimination, until one was left [...]
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The ghosts call you back
Posted on 17. Jul, 1997 by admin.
Elif and I went to visit her father Kadri, her stepmother Isik (who is twenty years younger than Kadri and looks startlingly like Elif), and her 6-year-old half-sister Eylul. They’re in the last few weeks of staying at their summer house in Tuzla. It’s one of a few small houses congregated around a common pool, [...]
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Getting engaged
Posted on 25. Jul, 1995 by admin.
In the morning of our second-to-last day in Istanbul, we take the boat in the morning and walk to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. An 8-year-old is marching in a white hat and white cape and white shoes, surrounded by his adoring family. I discover that he is going to get circumcised. Men and boys are [...]
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Asia minor
Posted on 23. Jul, 1995 by admin.
Although I’d driven a manual transmission across America, Elif’s family was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of operating a stick shift in Turkey. Our plan was to drive south with Elif’s mother in Elif’s uncle’s car, a very old model which always stalled going into first gear. They decided to [...]
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What the Coffee Grounds Said
Posted on 21. Jul, 1995 by admin.
Outside of Elif’s grandmother’s apartment, we run into a woman named Firdevs, who looks like she is 140 years old but is really only about 95. She wants to make us Turkish coffee, and to read our coffee grounds and tell our futures. Elif’s grandmother makes fun of her, calling her “Falci Firdevs” (“Fortuneteller Firdevs”), [...]
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Istanbul
Posted on 20. Jul, 1995 by admin.
Breakfast is cheese and jams and fresh bread and eggs and pastirma – pepperoni so spicy, its stink comes out in your sweat. We board a government boat to take the half-hour trip to the European side of the city. I am among cleanshaven men, unshaven men with sunglasses, ponytailed women, women in headscarves, villagers [...]
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First arrival
Posted on 16. Jul, 1995 by admin.
July 16, 1995 It seems like an entire village has come out to greet us. I assume these people are relatives of my girlfriend, but as they’re hugging me before even acknowledging her, I figure I must have won a contest or something. After a couple of words in English – hello, welcome – everything [...]
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