from SATURDAY diary (2)

NIGHTLIFE, DESSERT, WOMEN, VIDEO STORES, CHECK-OUT LADIES, TOOTHY SMILES....

in Nilufer on weekday nights when we don't want to cook we struggle to find a place to get food and beer. we found two places. Kirimizi -- which does everything it can to live up to its name, Red. there's some other place that doesn't matter. some bars here and there -- but the conservatism doesn't embrace a bar scene, yet everyone needs a vice and in Bursa it's cigarettes and dessert. I like cheesecake and coffee -- divine opposites in compliment. I think Turks like that too -- and souffle, Nescafe followed up by a sweet puff of a marlboro. then there are always trays and tray of bahlava -- rectangular deserts with syrup. and always tea, tea, tea which we recently realized prevents iron from being absorbed into the body, tiring alot of women who already have enough to worry about. it's not easy for a woman in Turkey, especially in Bursa. the best chances a woman who yearns for independence has is to move to Istanbul for work, leaving the family in another hometown. the rest of the girls, before they are married, have to deal with stricter rules, can't live alone and be home by 11, for example.

but i strayed off course. the course was to dissect the Bursa sprawl. other areas of interest in Nilufer, my suburban home, are the video stores --one after another all with a handful selection yet aspiring and open for business. strange for me because i'm used to the movie mega-stores. i'm spoiled. my favourite owners are the guy who doesn't charge me for late fees and the two awkward smiling brothers in ill-fitting suits, supporting sincere heads and souls. one guy has dandruff sitting on his shoulder without exception. they're always eager to push dumb action movies on me, shrugging off classics or more thoughtful films for the former they often deem "perfect." but they're cool dudes and they have a translator program on their computer so I can write messages for them, but they pretty much know what i'm saying anyway.

the supermarket check-out ladies have finally begun to warm up to me after 5 months or so, even giving me smiles when they see me. it's harder for women to show these kind of feelings to strangers even though the men, like the deli man, shake my hand and always ask how I'm doing. and always with a big toothy smile.

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.

Through the Eyes of the French

This is what 5 months in Turkey will do to you if you happen to be my French friends.

Barkamsiniz! Pardon! I'll have what they're having.

Photo courtesy of Pilou

Better Know a Turkish Smoker (Part 2): The Narghile

"Hos Geldiniz."

Open the door and walk into the haze. Hear the clicking of OK, the CRACK! POP! of players brutally slapping down the backgammon pieces. Sit down, and join the big hall of card tables. An old man offers a tea from his tray of red glass bulbs. Take one, let him mark it on your bill, and order a narghile. I recommend apple. Let him set down the blue glass bottom and here comes another man with a hot tin of coals. He selects a few embers with his tongs, then sets it on the foil. Give it a few strong sucks and voila! a fire-breathing narghile smoker. Breathe in, not down the lungs and release. Feel the stimulating blast and the brain will levitate in the skull. The mouth may get dry, so I recommend an Ihlamur tea with a little sugar and lemon.

Bubbling at the floor, sits the glass base of shisha, the hookah, the water-pipe, or here in Turkey -- the narghile. A word descending from Persian "nargil," meaning coconut, which comprised the original narghile. From the base stems a tube the water passes through from the tobacco on top. Snaking out of the side is the smoking tube with a mouthpiece and a disposable reed. Putting it between the lips, draw air through the coals into the bowl, heating the tobacco. The air passes down the tube into the base, which is cooled by the water before slipping up the smoking tube into your mouth.

From there many people believe the effects are less damaging than cigarettes due to the water-filtering process. Most studies conclude that although this is partially true of some toxins, it isn't true for a significant amount of carbon monoxide (from the charcoal), carcinogens, heavy metals and nicotine. Most people don't smoke narghile as often as cigarette addicts and therefore, studies are limited. The few suggest, due to the large amounts of smoke inhaled, a 60-minute narghile session can be the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes.

A limited message on these hazards certainly hasn't helped to quell a rising trend of narghile bars and cafes sprouting up in masses around the Eastern Mediterranean countries. The trend also extends to its growing popularity around college campuses in the US. The water cools the tobacco making it less harsh than cigarettes, therefore more tolerable and even relaxing --though -- no doubt as relaxing as hashish, which was the common smoking substance until the import of tobacco hundreds of years ago from the Americas. The wide variety of flavored tobacco add to the appeal, from fruit to bubblegum to cappuccino.

Most narghile bars are spacious areas with card-tables and chairs, or bean bags and low-level tables with patrons sipping teas, orange juice, apple cider, or the usual unidentified concoction. Like most restaurants in Bursa, alcohol usually isn't served. Although, I doubt it's a gateway to becoming an addict for me, a defiant non-smoker here in Turkey, I can quite easily be persuaded to sit down with the narghile and some friends once a month or so. If I can pull that off living in Turkey for a year, then that ain't so bad.

That is until you consider the 100+ hand narghile smoke.

Chimbo: The Wonder Years (3)

Eda and I Meet God at a Bar in San Francisco

The first bar of the night, light shifting hazily between shadowy waterfalls and colorful jungles. At the tropical bar top I swung my brother's shoulder around and said, "You gotta meet Eda." A soft touch on her shoulder, and her hair turned around.

"This.. is Eda."
"Nice to meet you," he said. And so, between the three of us, began a 3 month party.

For the time being everyone dispersed and rejoined at the next bar -- the one way down on Post and Leavenworth. The Cafe Royal with the unlevel pool table dark jazzy home to many beers, many nights, conversations with the people of the world about the world and nothing. This night they struck up one of the three no-nos. When Eda walked up I was holding my mike, which was my beer, in the midst of an oft-repeated monologue:

"So why can't people just be comforble not knowin? Why they feel like they haf to splain it all, subscribe to some institution for meaning in life. They gotta lunge for some higher-design to tell them how to respect, how to love, why to love, why to respect, somethin that eases the thought that maybe in the end, when we die, there's nothing. People cant stand not knowin. But you know what? I have no problem not knowin. I don't need any being to tell me how or why we should respect and love each other."

"Yeah," she said. "And if there is God, what if God is one of us, like in that song, one of us around here? And maybe he's here just playing with us."

"You mean like amusing himself?"
"Yeah, he's saying weird things to people, just to get them all excited and do funny things."

"Like some sort of divine Ali G?"

"Yeah. And he's like laughing off his ass."

"You mean laughing his ass off?"

"Whatever."
"Hmmm. So who in this bar is God?"
"Maybe that man," she reveals a grey man .at the bar looking forward, minding his own business, drinking his beer .

"You should ask him."
She turns to the man. "Are you God?"
His face lights up. "Of course!"
"Wow! Really?" we all say.
"Yes," he assures us. "Everybody has God inside all of us. You, me, him, her over there. That guy over there..."

He went on until we all realized none of us had spoken for awhile. Then we started wishing he'd stop talking. That's what you get for starting up a conversation like that in SF. We escaped him eventually. But after some more Boddingtons at one point God, a little tipsy, approached Eda.

"You left me."
"...Uh...um...thank you," she replied. He gave her a funny look and walked away. She laughed.
"I don't think 'thank you' was the right response after ditching God," I said.

Just then her boyfriend pulled up in his red convertable Mercedes. I watched her walk out and zoom away. I sighed.

"Could I get another Boddingtons?"

Chimbo: The Early Years (2)

Some Song about Cats in Dutch by WINTERJONG