from SATURDAY diary (1)

NILUFER, CATS, NEIGHBORHOOD, AGGRESSIVE DRIVING, SUPERMARKETS, BURSA'S SLOPES...

apartment in Nilufer.. in my cave wedged in between the apartments -- when Eda drives away at night I'm left standing with the dark buildings looming over me with the golden lights in the windows, eyes looking down at my lonely bones silently sad giants waiting for me to walk inside and nurse me alongside all the other inhabitants, parasites in their compartments and wait for morning. inside I hear the cats. the cats cast out in the night with twisted crying and supernatural screams -- counterparts of the coyotes in Kentucky who come under my bedroom window and laugh at me in child-like wailing and screeching.

I look out my window and sometimes I might see the neighbor looking at me from her window directly across from me before she quickly pulls the curtain over. if I poke my head out I see the mosque rising prominently from the blocks of apartments. the refreshing round dome accompanied by the minaret like a warrior laying down with his shield and spear with one last attack against the sky. maybe saving the people from it's fall. if i turn my head the other way i can see Eda driving up and hear the bad dance music from the fitness center. other than that it's a maze of apartment blocks - like one of the original first-person shooter games -- Wolfenstein or something -- there ore pockets of interesting sites -- the parking lot/driving education courses turned bazaar on Saturdays. the barren filed turned carnival in the Fall. and the dangerous roads come morning when perpetually impatient Turkish drivers bulldoze through each other to get to work. drivers cut through school children, school bus-drivers run over teachers, public buses pound through everyone. other than that it's one different franchise of super market after another -- it's a war of supermarkets, hitting the mattresses, as many as political parties in the government vying for a larger constituency. blocks and domes and blocks and --

i need to take the train that saws Bursa in half from west to east leaving two sectors, one on the plain, the other rising up the slopes of the mountain Bursa hugs. The train leaves the blocks of efficient new developments and hurtles intermittently at various stops into the heart of Bursa. here, the streets zig-zag up and down -- splitting forking spiralling through the shopping districts of Ataturk St., Altiparmak St into Cekirge -- hotels and kebabs up the hill where you can climb from one tea garden to another, like Shoots and Ladders, up to the clock tower and the old walled part of the city near the tombs of Orhan and Osman. On the other side of town, on the opposite side of my home in Nilufer is Cumalikizik, an attractive village that gives you charm and breakfast. below the metro line sprawls the endless roads of auto-part shops and crunched up neighborhoods -- women headscarved, grizzled men and boys and girls that for now, let their hair go free.