—

On the way to the bus station this morning, the city was unspeakably smoggy– worse than I’ve ever seen it. Gaziantep is a polluted place, unquestionably; when the weather was warmer, I’d find myself getting pollution headaches after anything more than a few hours downtown, and a low pall of dirty smoke hangs over the city at all times. But this was considerably more intense: from the top of the ridge of the Cumhuriyet neighborhood, I could look down sidestreets towards the center and see the whole city obscured, its outlines made uncertain by a grey haze. Downtown, it was difficult to even make out the edges of the castle clearly. Apparently yesterday a factory on the outskirts of the city caught fire, and now the aftermath is drifting through.

—

At the otogar, I got snapped up immediately by one of the where-are-you-going guys– the three or four people from the bus companies who hang out at the entrance to the station and try to gather up anyone incoming for one of the nearer destinations. It’s actually usually the best way for me to get a ticket; still buying directly from the bus companies, and usually for the soonest departure. My where-are-you-going guy today asked if I was German– usually the first question– but, to my surprise, followed it up by telling me (in German) that he’d lived in Köln for two years. Despite my assurances that no, I am not German, and yes, I understand (some) Turkish, the rest of our business was conducted in German. It was kind of sweet, actually; I got the impression he wanted to practice.¹ As he was walking me to the bus, ticket in hand, someone called out a joke to him in Turkish; I asked if he was a friend. “Yes,” he said, in Turkish this time, “all friends. But no German friends. And no German wife.” He grinned, and gestured expansively, jokingly. “Neden? Neden?” For what reason, what reason? Then, a little more quietly, without the gestures, neden again.

—

My initial impression of Urfa was dominated by pigeons.

From the otogar, a dolmuş took me into the center of old town through a city center which reminded me of Antep (but with the substitution of palm trees) and a short string of winding back streets, the kind that make you wonder whether the bus driver actually meant to turn this way, or is just enjoying trying to smooth down some of the nearby masonry. I hopped out when we reached the old bazaar (not really being eager to continue participating in the backstreet driving experiment), and, after a minute’s walk, found myself in the courtyard of the mosque built on the site of Abraham’s birth.

Which, as I said before, was full of pigeons. I realize this is a trite observation to be making about a terribly holy place– but it was the first thing that struck me, in any case. Huge clouds of pigeons, settling on the domes, the balconies of the minarets, the ornate architecture of the courtyard’s corners. In the center, a constantly-moving, constantly-disturbed crowd of pigeons cooing on the yellow stones with alternate contentment and indignation, as children threw handfuls of feed and raced through the knots of birds. At the very middle, where the children and pigeons were attending to their respective business, was a short stream set into a channel in the stone: water from the Balikligöl, the lake of sacred fish that supposedly sprang up to protect Abraham from fiery death– which eventually brought my attention back to the ostensible holiness, and away from the pigeons fluttering all around.

—

More writing incoming when it’s not so late after a long day of travel; pictures incoming when I have the correct camera cable again. Tomorrow: grading grading grading, seeing a movie (Yahşi Batı) with a friend and her class, possible dinner plans, personal academic projects. Busy life.

1: For me, hearing German is both lovely and a little strange. I can no longer consciously produce much German without great difficulty, but I understand a respectable amount when it’s spoken at me. What’s much more odd, though, is that there’s no translating going on in my head; what German I can remember just intrinsically means what it does, the same as English. The advantages of learning a language early, I guess.

Surprisingly not uncommon: horsecarts.

The Tuesday bazaar in the university neighborhood is a repeated source of entertainment for me. Markets are human life in distilled and concentrated form: talking, shouting, haggling, eating, buying, joking with friends, jostling, scooping up children, persuading, gossiping, teasing, finding necessities, selling necessities, what-have-you. The building blocks of communities– families, food, daily chores, connections with your neighbors– all happen at the market. And they’re full of bright colors and interesting smells to boot. What’s not to like? So last week I finally stocked my kitchen with a little more equipment (enough that it’s not a daily frustration anymore– that is, I bought a saucepan and some miscellany) and loaded myself up with as much incredibly fresh produce, cheese, and honey as I could carry with aching arms on two different trips. Maybe most satisfyingly of all, I managed to get through my transactions in comprehensible Turkish with pretty minimal sign language. Incredibly rudimentary Turkish, yes, but being able to buy something without making a complete idiot of myself is an important language milestone all the same. This week, since I won’t be trying to stock up so much, I’m hoping to get pictures. I’ll probably wind up making two trips all over again.

Between settling into my apartment (as per Twitter, I’m now settled in enough that I tend to get up from my chair to grab a book from the shelf– and then realize there is no shelf and the book’s in a box in Portland), getting to know Antep a little more, and teaching-teaching-teaching, I haven’t gotten out of the city in the last two weeks. This weekend, though, I’m planning to go to Hatay with a friend who’s from the area. I guarantee writing of some sort will follow.

Speaking of which, I have about three partially-written-out notes I’m going to try to get onto the internet this week. To try to hold myself to it, here they are:

• a navel-gazey post on why I’m not applying to grad school this fall
• a post on the Turkish engagement ceremony I went to now-a-few-weeks-ago, plus some other cultural notes
• and a very-delayed post on Fulbright orientation in Ankara, what it meant to me, and some of the ideas I see as central to my role here.

And that’s the general gist of what I’ve been doing lately. More soon, as promised.

1: As I’m writing this, I can hear raucous shouting and car-horn-honking in the street outside. I’m guessing Fenerbahçe beat Galatasaray.

1) Yesterday Narin took me into the city proper for the first time, which was excellent. (She was joking about having no practice being a tour guide in Antep, but she was really helpful.) I now have the beginnings of an understanding of how the bus system works in this city, and a rudimentary knowledge of how to get around downtown. I’m looking forward to exploring next weekend. We also saw the city archaeological museum, which has the spectacular mosaics from Zeugma (as well as some other truly excellent finds, although the English signage is extremely limited)– I’m looking forward to going back when not feeling nauseous from poor sleep and adjusting to the sun.

2) Today, Narin had a… lunch party, I guess? Several friends of hers– colleagues from the university– came over for food and spent the afternoon half-watching tv and half-talking and making fun of each other. Like everyone I’ve met here, they were extremely friendly, although the vast majority of the conversation was in Turkish that flew by too fast for me to understand anything but a word or two (not that I do much better with slow Turkish). Two of the women live in the same apartment building very close to the university, and said there’s a vacancy on their floor. It looks like I might have a place within a few days of getting back from the meeting in Ankara.

3) Still not totally clear on what I’m supposed to be teaching tomorrow, although at least I’ve finally gotten a look at the textbook. I guess it’s a good thing the classes aren’t until 5:30pm.

4) I’m optimistic that someone at Fulbright orientation will be able to help me figure out what on earth is going on with my computer. If not, I will be frustrated, and begin hunting for computer nerds in Antep.

5) You all thought my caffeine consumption was bad. Well, the standard for this afternoon’s party was a cup of Turkish coffee (Türk kahve) with attendant fortune-telling, followed by multiple (2-4 each) glasses of strong Turkish tea, followed by a glass of cola. Aaaah. Also, per-guest dessert was an enormous slice of heavily-iced/chocolated/pistachio’d fluffy cake, plus 8-10 cookies. (At least nobody else finished all of theirs either, although I was by far the weakest contender.) I cannot keep up with the middle east, guys.

Explanatory Turkish Phrasebook, Episode Bir

ayip olmasa: “If it’s not rude–” As Narin put it, Turks are too curious not to ask, but at least they’re going to be polite about it. Apparently I should expect to hear this frequently from my students.