Like the rest of the world, my eyes are glued to the scenes and images of upheaval and desperation coming out of Cairo. Several years and a hundred lifetimes ago, I traded in an Istanbul August for the scorching heat of the Egyptian desert in order to spend a (surprise) weekend with some precious photo school friends who were on assignment there. The burning buildings, overturned police vehicles and throngs of angry protesters we're seeing this week stand out in stark contrast to the happy (to this tourist, anyway) world of felucca rides on the Nile, sawdust-carpeted kosheri restaurants, and pictures of smiling friends "kissing the sphink-us." My interactions with Egyptians were set mostly against the backdrop of the "Magic Streets" - a tangled maze of creatively painted walls, impromptu neighbourhood dance parties and gap-toothed street urchins - one big photo waiting to be captured. I couldn't say anything beyond "Hello," "Thank you" and, "Can I take your picture?," but as with any other Muslim nation, a smile was enough to win a few moments on the inside of a family or a group of giggling schoolgirls. Three days, some good falafel and many glasses of mango juice were enough to earn Egypt a spot in my heart.
I don't have any brilliant journalistic comments or political statements to make here. I just wanted to share these photos in honour of the people of Egypt, the hopelessness of its otherwise colourful world and the lives being lived and lost on its streets.
I am the queen of procrastination. Not only that, I am a horrible succumber to the tyranny of the urgent, leaving those projects that I am truly passionate about until I "have time," which, of course, never happens.
A few months back, I read about a photo contest open only to foreigners. The subject was Istanbul. I thought, "Istanbul and photography - two of my most beloved things. This is for me!" I have thousands and thousands of photos of the city (and am always on a quest for more), so I thought surely I could come up with five photos to enter, and at least one would have a shot at winning. But, as happens, fall was crazy busy, and I kept putting it off.
On the first of November, I was up in Istanbul getting ready to see my mom off after her month here. I was going to have a few spare days in the city after that, and I thought, "Okay, I'll devote some time to this then, and I'll deliver my entry in plenty of time for the November 15th cutoff." That night, I just "happened" to look on the website for the contest, and I realized that all along I'd had the wrong deadline date in my head, and the contest, in fact, finished on November 1st - that day! It was, at this point, after 10 PM - too late to run down to the contest headquarters which was, ironically, just a 10 minute walk from where we were staying. I was kicking myself for being so careless and for procrastinating on something I'd been so excited about.
Still, I thought, if the contest were to close at midnight that night, maybe I could head over there first thing in the morning, CD in hand, smile sweetly and say in perfect Turkish, "It's still October 31st in my home time zone...." I'm pretty adept at talking myself in and out of things in Turkey, so it was worth a shot. So I scrounged my hard drive for five shots I was proud of, burnt them onto a CD (always carry extra blank CDs!) and set my alarm clock.
The next morning, I got up early, got the hotel reception guy to let me print off the entry form, deposited Mom at Starbucks (where we later played a killer last game of Speed Scrabble) and took off running down the road to the contest office. Googlemaps proved to be less helpful than I'd hoped, and it took me lots of wrong turns and parking attendants' shrugged shoulders before I finally located the building tucked away on a little back alley. Breathless, I ran up the stairs....only to find the office locked up tight. Blast.
I decided I'd come this far, I wasn't giving up now. I scribbled a polite note on the CD envelope asking them to please, pretty please forgive me for being "a few hours late" and accept my entry, wedged it under the door and hoped for the best.
For the next couple of weeks, I kept checking back on the site to see if they'd posted the winners, and then eventually just forgot about it. I figured that if I'd won, they would've emailed me. Sigh. But then, just after Christmas, I checked back again, and they'd posted the winning three shots! I was disappointed to see that none of mine were among them, but I figured that's what I get for not entering on time. But then, as I scrolled down a bit, I saw that they had chosen a number of runners up and were going to display their photos in an exhibition....and there was my name on the list! (That's mercy, I'm telling ya!)
I've yet to be able to learn which photos were chosen, but I do know that two of my five are going to be in an exhibition in the Taksim Metro Station (perhaps the busiest transport hub of the city) from March 1-20. I am so excited!!! I'm going to be up there for the opening on the 1st. If you're around, come check it out!
Here are my five entries:
Pigeon Chasers - Yeni Camii, Eminonu
Golden Train Station - Haydarpasa, Kadikoy
Next Door Neighbours - Kuzguncuk
Laundry Day - Beyoglu
Corner House - Balat
Check out the winners here.
Starbucks Turkey has recently made an addition to its repertoire that makes living in this country even tastier. Stroopwafels - delectable Dutch caramel waffle cookies, perfect when left to soften on the rim of your coffee cup before being dunked into your steaming drink. No more special orders to friends passing through the Amsterdam Airport - we've got access right downtown!
On Friday as I was out doing errands, I stopped in at a Starbucks other than my "usual" one to pick up a stack of the cookies for a gathering at our house that night. Tired from running around the city all afternoon, I sat down and paused for a cup of tea. (I'd already exceeded my limit for coffee for the day, but I'm always up for an excuse to sit down at Starbucks!) As I observed the other patrons, I had a "we're not in Kansas anymore" moment. The fact that I was in a more upper-class part of town was evidenced by the complete lack of headscarves and the abundance of tight pants, aviators, and miniature, sweater-clad dogs tied to chair legs. The scene looked like something straight out of a New York cafe - the model/mafia/movie star/millionaire set, dressed to the nines, flirting and negotiating over their lattes and iPhones. Feeling rather underdressed myself, I laughed as I realized that those imaginary people I see on the Istanbul soap operas aren't so exaggerated after all - in fact, they are real, and me and my Earl Grey were surrounded by them!
Leaving the jumble of BMWs and Mercedes in the parking lot, I crossed the street and caught my bus home. As the kilometres clicked by, condos gave way to farm land, and miniskirts to village pants. When I got home, I headed straight up to the terrace with a book - a habit I am trying to create room for at the end of each day. But just as I was settling in, voices out in the olive grove behind our complex caught my attention. Squinting through the trees, I spotted a couple of crouching ladies and the flicker of a fire. Right about that time, the delicious smell of woodsmoke reached my nose and made my stomach growl. I grabbed my camera and headed out back to check out the action, thinking that this could be the opportunity for both interesting photos and an excuse not to have to make dinner.
Turns out I was right on both counts. I was greeted by the sight of four of my neighbour ladies, our gardener, and a crackling fire. The women formed an efficient assembly line, three of them mixing and kneading dough while the fourth cooked the flatbread over the fire. These particular women are the jokers of the complex, and they quickly had me laughing as they recounted their day of bread making. I was more interested in getting photos before the light faded, and they were more interested in feeding me. In the end, they won out and had me running into the house for more eggs and oil for them to make me some gozleme - flatbread filled with potatoes or cheese. When it got too dark to shoot, I took on the duty of keeping everyone's tea glasses filled while they loaded me up a plate full of gozleme to take home.
As I looked around at these ladies I love - ladies I live happily among, ladies I share my everyday life with - I tried to imagine them in the middle of the Starbucks crew of two hours prior. These two social groups likely originated from the very same Anatolian hometowns, but the juxtaposition of village pants and leather jackets was too much for even my imagination. They live an hour's drive and a world apart.
And me, in my jeans and a hoodie - I can sip a Caramel Macchiato at three o'clock and a cup of tea cooked over the fire at four. I not from either crowd, but I move - albeit awkwardly - amongst them both. I'm from a bus stop somewhere in between.
Really interesting article on the custom of "berdel," common in southeastern Turkey. Precise rules and conditions govern over a bride-swap between two families. (re-poseted from bnet.com)
It is a bright Sunday in the tiny Arab village of Lower Arbit in southeastern Turkey. Cheerful melodies issue from a cassette player powered by a tractor battery. I watch as Nuri and Turkan, brother and sister, join the snaking line of the halay dance in front of their house, over which flies a Turkish flag. Meanwhile, a few miles away, in the village of Mengalan, a similar scene must be unfolding for Mehmet and Feride, who are also brother and sister. All four are to be wed today: Nuri to Feride, and Mehmet to Turkan. ... Read more....
I once watched a murder mystery where this guy would set up his camera on a tripod outside his shop every morning and take a picture of the small town's main street at precisely nine o'clock. He also took a picture every evening of what he was having for dinner - a slightly redundant habit, given that he ate the exact same thing every single day. (I suppose the plate changed....) Anyhow, in the end, they were able to solve the murder based on clues in the daily street shots, based on whose car was and wasn't parked where, I think.
I don't have any grand crime solving ambitions, but I've decided to take up a similar habit, at least for this year. I'm going to take a picture every day and post it as that day's photo, both on Facebook and in a continually progressing Shutterfly photo book that I'll be able to print at the end of the year. Being both a passionate chronicler and a firm believer in the fact that the grand beauty of our lives is made up of the million mundane moments of each day, this project is right up my alley. Plus, as a photographer, I think it will be a really good discipline cuz it will force me to carry my camera more often, to really see what's going on around me, and to be more intentional about planning shots. (Otherwise we'll end up with a whole lot of photos taken in my bedroom at 11 PM when I realize I haven't shot anything that day, and that could get old really fast!)
"They" always say that, when travelling or moving somewhere new, you should take lots of pictures in the first few days, otherwise you get used to your surroundings and things don't jump out at you as unique or interesting after awhile. What was originally fascinating becomes commonplace. I can definitely testify to this - I live in a city oozing with history, a destination tourists flock to in droves, and yet the Roman walls, the waters of the Mediterranean and the colourful bazaars have, in many ways, all blended into one image I flippantly call "home." My hope is that this project will force me to really notice what's around me and see it with fresh eyes.
I'm ashamed to say, I've already done the "11:00 in my bedroom" thing twice already, and it's only the end of the first week of the year! But today, knowing I needed something more interesting to show for this 24 hours than another shot of my desk, I shook off my need to never look like a tourist, reminded myself that I am a photographer, and took my camera with me to the pazar when I went to get my fruits and veggies. It reminded me how alive I feel when I'm shooting and interacting with those on the other side of the camera. Here's a couple of shots from the morning.
Here's to 2011 - 365 ordinary snapshots that will no doubt make up one unforgettable year.
A few days ago, we got wind that a close friend was sick. Enter the custom of the "geçmiş olsun" visit. This phrase literally means, "May it pass quickly," and is said to someone who is ill. (I have ALWAYS wanted to say it to someone with a kidney stone! Though they probably wouldn't find it as funny as I would.)
Shutting off our North American instinct that tells us a person just wants to rest when they're sick, we grabbed a bunch of lemons from off our tree (her favourite, and perfect for mint-lemon-thyme tea - the classic Turkish cold-treatment) and headed over to the house. When we arrived, the sick friend in question was at the hospital getting a shot, but her husband, two of her kids, her aunt and uncle, her next-door neighbour and her two kids were all there waiting for her to get back, so we cozied up by the woodstove and joined in on the wait. After awhile, our friend arrived, accompanied by her two oldest kids and her grandson. That makes - count 'em - fourteen people in the living room. She promptly curled up on the couch, covered her head with a blanket, and tried to go to sleep. We all then proceeded to eat fruit and drink tea and have a grand old time, while she lay there in the midst of the noisy crowd feeling crummy.
This is one part of this culture I don't think I'll ever get used to. They say that when someone is sick, they mustn't be alone - they need other people around to be cheerful for them. Man, when I'm sick, all I want is my pillow, a cup of tea, a stack of movies and some peace and quiet. Leave your lemons at the door and be cheerful via email, please! Unless of course you come bearing chicken soup and Dr. Seuss. Then I might make an exception. :)
Ever stop to think about what Noah fed his family once they disembarked from the ark? It's not as though he'd had a chance to plant and harvest crops, and his kitchen cupboards weren't exactly stocked, or even standing. As the legend goes, for their first dry-land meal, they gathered up all the leftover nuts, grains and bits of fruit still in the galley pantry and cooked them up into a sort of pudding, and that's how they kept from starving.
Here in the land of Ararat, every year in the month following the Sacrifice Festival, it's traditional for each family to make up a big pot of aşure ("Noah's Pudding") and then take bowls of it around to share with friends and neighbours. Every housewife has her own recipe that she swears by - a varying combination of grains, wheat, beans, nuts, dried fruit and sugar.
Once "aşure making week" rolls around, the pots start boiling and the doorbell starts ringing, and soon an entire shelf in the fridge is full of bowls of the stuff. Each bowl has its own personality - as distinct as the cooks themselves. Emine's is soupy - mostly wheat and chickpeas, while Aydan Abla's has lots of crunchy bits, and yummy pomegranate seeds sprinkled generously on top. I've never made my own, but if I did, it would probably involve less wheat and more chocolate chips, not keeping very close to the story of "what they had on the ark." :)
I suppose if one wanted to amuse oneself, one could set up a booth in the complex parking lot and do taste tests to see whose is the most well-loved...but that might not be the best thing for neighbourhood relations, being that these recipes are well-honed masterpieces of great pride. There are strong opinions about these things, you know.
All in all, aşure is yummy...to a point....but it's also pretty....texture-y. I can only handle one bowlful per year, and I'm done. Thankfully my roommate likes to warm it up and eat it for breakfast, sorta like a porridge. It's a good thing, too, cuz just when the bowls were empty and she thought she'd finished her aşure-duty for the year, yesterday the doorbell rang....
The last glowy bits of pink in the western sky are somewhat muted by the smoke rising from hundreds of soba chimneys, and the scent of coal and burning wood fills the air and mingles with the call to prayer, marking the onset of twilight. I'm outside on our terrace, bundled up in my coat and those little gloves with the finger holes, which I am sure were invented precisely for people like me who are determined to sit outside and squeeze every last drop out of a good sunset.
Today was a sunny treasure of a day, most welcome after the uncharacteristically freezing week we've just been through. Sunshine means hot water, straight from the tap - no bucket showers or boiling pots on the stove for dishes. And it means laundry that actually has a shot at drying the same day it is hung! I celebrated the appearance of Mr. Sun by cleaning the terrace, barefoot in a t-shirt (!), squeegie-ing away the remnants of a week of storms. It seems every tree in the neighbourhood had seen fit to generously deposita shower of gifts on the tile, and that, coupled with a thick layer of that red dirt that tends to fly around in the air here, made for quite the mucky mess. It took me and my trusty squeegie twice as long as usual to make that balcony shine, but the hope of an afternoon read under the open sky was more than enough motivation for the job. Days like this are not to be squandered.
Stormy days here usually mean a succession of power outages, and this week was no exception. I must say, I am grateful to live in a country that, at least in this half of it, has pretty reliable electricity most of the time. I am far better off than many friends who plan their days around the hours their part of the city has power. When we first moved here, there was road work being done, sewer lines being laid, water pipes being put in, and for the better part of a year, hardly a day went by without a water or a power cut. Back then it was closer to an annoyance than an adventure, but now, especially if it is accompanied by some satisfying thunder and lightning, I am usually more than game for a good spell in the dark. Unless, of course, I have online orders to place or something half-cooked in the oven.
So, like I said, no complaining here, but I thought it'd be fun to give you a snapshot of a day without power, and the creative improvising that springs forth as a result.
This past Thursday, the power was off for much of the afternoon, so when it came back on, knowing we were in for a doozy of a storm that night, I made my preparations for Round 2. I had a whole slew of baking to do for various Christmas and birthday parties on the weekend, so I got the oven going right away, praying that the power would last long enough to bake two cheesecakes. (Which it did - with a half hour to spare!) I charged up my laptop battery (thankful for my 8 hour Mac!) and had every possible recipe I would need for the next two days open in multiple allrecipes.com tabs so that even if the lights were out, I'd still be able to mix up ingredients and make the things that could be made on the gas stove. (These tabs would prove to be the modern day equivalent of a cookbook by candlelight!)
I took a break from my baking frenzy to have some supper, and I turned on the TV for some company. (My roommate was away for the week.) And just about the time when Fatmagul was reading Kerim's letter after he left for the airport, theoretically exiting her life forever, the cable started to go out. "Drat!" I thought. "I'll have to catch those scenes online later." (It's important to keep up with these things, you know. :) ) This, and the wind that was beginning to howl outside, were my cue to go turn on my (electric) heater in hopes of heating my room up before bed. Shoulda thought of that sooner - I only got in about five minutes of hot air blasting and then, just like that, pitch blackness. And no more heat.
I lit enough candles to keep me from bumping into things and then layered myself in long johns, extra socks, and a ski hat to keep from freezing to death in my bed. (This is the Mediterranean - these houses are NOT made for cold winters!) Then, the question of how to spend the rest of my suddenly darkened evening. Finishing the cookies was out. Skyping anyone was out. I amused myself by seeing which neighbours had candles burning in their windows, journaled a little by candlelight (feeling very Jane Austenesque) and then decided that, rather than hanging out with the Gilmore Girls for a few hours, I should take this rare opportunity to abandon all sense of a need to finish "just one more project" and get some extra sleep. Trouble is, while I love a good storm, this one was the closest thing you can get to a hurricane without actually being one, and I was suddenly not so thrilled to be home alone in the dark. The wind was whipping the rain against my windows so hard, I expected one to shatter, and actually contemplated moving my bed to the middle of the room, just in case. The thunder was the kind that reverberates in your sternum, and I could see every lightning flash even through my tightly closed eyelids. Telling myself it was impossible for a three-storey cement house to be lifted off the ground by fierce winds in the night, I settled into my Heavenly Father's arms, comforted myself with the sound of His booming voice, and eventually fell asleep.
Awakening to a still-standing house, a lack of shattered glass on my bedroom floor, and, alas, still no elecricity, I boiled my way to a cup of coffee (thank goodness we have a French press instead of a coffee maker!) and set to work on getting the house clean for the gathering we were having later in the day. Vacuumless, I tamed the floor with a broom, and then boiled water to do the dishes. That's the tricksy thing about our hot water system. It's solar-powered, so when there's sun but no power, you can still get hot water once the sun's been up for a few hours. When there's nothing but clouds, you go for plan B, which is (if you have lots of time) to flip the switch that will heat up the tank in an hour or so, or (if you are in a hurry) you boil water in the kettle we keep in the bathroom for such events, and you take a bucket shower. But when you're lucky enough to have a no-sun, no-power day, you go for Plan C, which is to boil water on the (gas) stove, Little House on the Prairie style.
Bucket shower successfully executed, and with Christmas carols singing from the battery-operated iPod speakers, I set out to finish the last of the baking that needed to happen before the guests arrived. Cookies now being officially off the docket, I made what turned out to be a deliciously wise choice and made some stovetop mint fudge instead. You gotta know how rare and valuable this fudge was. Every ingredient was from the "stash cupboard" - the one where we keep all the imported ingredients that we've hauled over from Walmart and only permit those who pass the Appreciation Test to partake of. Mint chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, mint extract, snowflake sprinkles. Seriously amazing.
Right around lunchtime, I heard the beep of the phone and the whir of the heater coming to life, and I knew that we were back in business. Glad as I was to get back to emails and photo product orders and "business as usual," I do kinda enjoy the "pioneer aspect" of having to make do without electricity. After all, it wasn't SO long ago that people got along with woodstoves and lanterns and iceboxes just fine. Then again, they weren't trying to buy all of their Christmas presents online.... :)
There is a strict rule in our house about when the commencement of the celebration of Christmas is officially permitted. My roommate’s birthday is December 1st, and there shall be no listening to carols, decorating of trees or making of gingerbread men until the 2nd. Normally I am chomping at the bit, ready to unleash a torrent of merriment as soon as it’s legally allowed. But this year, December 2nd has come and gone, and I’m finding myself screaming, “Stop the calendar! I’m not ready!”
It’s not even so much a thing of having been too overwhelmingly busy to think about writing Christmas cards (though that is definitely the case) or even the fact that Christmas isn’t celebrated here, and the halls of the malls are far from decked. I think it’s more that I didn’t feel like I got to savour autumn long enough, and I’m just plain not ready for winter. The calendar may not be on my side, but the weather sure is. It’s still, for the most part, t-shirt friendly during the day, and the leaves are still fluttering from the trees in cascades of red and yellow. The last few months have been so incredibly packed with work and activity, and silly sentimental me feels like I need to slow down and enjoy just a little more pumpkin soup and leaf crunching before I’m ready to switch into wassail sipping and snowflake snipping.
A few weeks ago, some friends asked me to do a photo shoot for their family Christmas cards. They went with the theme of “Merry Mediterranean Christmas” and we built ourselves an adorable little “sandman” on the beach, complete with a scarf and a toque, a carrot nose, and seashells for eyes. Bundled up in their Christmas sweaters, they got quite the amused glances from the bikini-clad passers by who stopped to watch them posing for pictures. Our little sandman was proof that what Christmas “feels like” is a result of where we grew up. For me, having lived much of my life in Canada, the classic Christmas scene is a cozy house with candles in the windows, a wreath on the door, lights on the roof and a snowman in the yard. But if I’d grown up in, say, Australia, it might look more like a row of picnic blankets on the beach. And now, living in Turkey, it’s up to us to merge the two and make Christmas happen for ourselves, cuz it certainly isn’t happening around us. And while last year, by this time, I had a tree up in my room and was decorating cookies and playing elf and making presents, this year my heart just feels like it got stuck in November.
I have this calendar that I keep as sort of a scrapbook, and every day I write something or stick a little memento in that day’s square. And last night, as I attempted to find my floor under the piles of (clean) laundry and various project stacks, I realized that I’d been so busy, I hadn’t even switched my calendar over December yet, and it was already the 8th. It was high time to flip that page and decorate the top part with something Christmasy....and yet something inside me resisted. It was like by admitting it was December, I was being disloyal to fall. And not only that, it meant I needed to get out the decorations and put on the carols and enjoy as much of “Christmas” as I could, cuz like it or not, it was coming. And I know that once I get into the Christmas spirit, I’ll want to stay in it for a good while, and I can’t very well keep the house full of holly and snowflakes and “O Come All Ye Faithful” through the end of January, cuz I might drive certain other people in the house crazy.
So, in the end, I reluctantly put on the year’s first Christmas music and got out my Christmas scrapbook paper and I sipped my peppermint hot chocolate and made myself a happy December calendar page. And with that, coupled with the bag of Christmas blend I’d picked up at Starbucks in the morning, I declared the beginning of the Christmas season in my heart. On the weekend, I’ll put on Bing Crosby and break out the decorations and kick the baking into high gear. But in the meantime, I think I might go collect just a few more autumn leaves.....
Istanbul's ferries are God's gift to commuters - an interlude of magic in the midst of an otherwise hectic day. You may have just rushed out of the house, held your footing through traffic on an impossibly crowded bus, run for the ferry only to miss it by five seconds (as I just did)....and you know that waiting for you across the water are exhaust fumes and errands and thousands of people with thousands of elbows all about to wrestle their way onto the same train as you...
But for those blessed twenty minutes as you cross from Asia to Europe, there is nothing to do but sip your tulip-glass of tea and drink deeply of the city. The Bosphorus Bridge snuggles deeper into its blanket of mist, begging for "just five more minutes." The seagulls above and the jellyfish below glide silently in tandem, putting on a show for the watching passengers. The city's grand mosques stretch their arms to the sky and the Maiden's Tower gives a dainty yawn.
I love starting my day with Istanbul.
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