The Intestinal Adventurer

When I was young I was enamored with adventure stories. From Indiana Jones films to Phantom comics, I dreamed about hacking my way through the jungle, canoeing up the Amazon, walking through forgotten temples, and finding ancient treasures, all the while dodging pirates and assorted angry natives armed with bows and arrows. Which, of course, was the reason I had to carry a .45 in my fantasies. And maybe an AK 47, too. (I was never sure about that one - it seemed heavy and awkward even in my imagination.)

Of course, the irony was that a stone's throw outside my house was literally a real jungle, with real waterfalls and real tribes of natives armed with bows and arrows, but I preferred sitting inside my house, in a comfy armchair, and dreaming of the deserts and jungles I would someday traipse through. I suppose this was my first clue that deep down I have an aversion to sweat and mosquitoes, dirt under my fingernails and blisters and leeches on my feet which outweighs the vague "love of adventure."

The last three weeks I have lived in one of the most exotic and historical cities in the world. The alleys abound with photo opportunities, the bazaars and side-shops overflow with old brass antiques, and every neighborhood has tangible links to the past. A few days ago as my wife and I were walking toward the coast, I looked up at the old retaining wall we were winding our way around, and realized that this wall was the end of the hippodrome, the old race track, the colliseum of Constantinople. You would never know it now, as it has a cafe located at the bottom which stores unused umbrellas and ice-cream freezers in its arches, and the top has been filled in, and a school built on top of it. You would never know it, but there it was. I knew this was it, because I had seen it on TV two days before.

Ever since we had moved here, I have spent the days glued to the sofa, avidly watching hour after hour of National Geographic and the history channel. (Oh, and the Olympics, too.) And in those three weeks I have seen a number of documentaries on Istanbul. They feature the historical remains of the city, and tell the stories behind them. And I sit, enthralled, on my sofa, and watch, amazed, and stuff fried peanuts into my mouth, thinking, "Wow. How cool it would be to be there."

So, occasionally, after a few days of doing nothing, (usually at Cynthia's instigation,) we will venture outside to do something, like visit a fish market, or the archaeological museum. And every time I make it 20 yards outside the house, I am struck with an influx of energy, and a sense of the boundless opportunities a city like this presents, and an amazing sense of my own good fortune to live in such a beautiful place. Bustling and crowded and noisy and beautiful Istanbul.

The waiters of the restaurants stand outside, and greet you and beg you to "come inside, look at the menu? Excuse me, sir, can I give you my card? Maybe for later?"

The shoe-shine men carry their shoe-shine stands over their shoulders, and as they walk in front of you, they swing the stand just right so that the brush, hanging on the back, falls off at your feet. Then they walk on, oblivious. And you, if you are wise, smile, and also walk on.

The men in the bazaar invite you into their shops - "buy a pretty lamp, how about a carpet, best quality!" "We have soaps, to wash your body! My sponges are so good you will feel my fingers cleaning you, sir!" "The best Turkish delight, and sweets!"

Then there are the men who stand in the middle of the passageways with nothing more than a box and a board, or a cloth upon the ground. On it may be plastic toys from China, or simply socks. Or small flashlights. These sellers do not address individuals, or try to sell the features of their goods. Instead, in an ear-splitting, piercing voice, they constantly yell "Bir Lira, bir Lira, bir Lira!!!" ("One Lira, one Lira . . . ") on the assumption that where quality may lack, low price may yet compensate.

But of all the sellers, I prefer the vegetable markets. The sellers are a little more sedate, and spend most of their time helping customers. And the vegetables, oh, the vegetables and fruits, are stacked, arranged, and presented in a way I never witnessed in Poland. In Spain they might do it similarly, but not nearly so well. They create small works of art out of some of their stands. There are tomatoes in pyramids, and spices piled up in cones. There are pistachios, and figs, walnuts and grapes, (and you can taste them - don't ask, just reach out, and take one, pop it into your mouth, and look like you are thinking of buying. Then try another.) There are peaches piled high and avocadoes in rows. The fish sellers arrange their glistening wares on ice, and the olive sellers float theirs in glistening brine. The cheese sellers sell hard, aged cheeses, and fresh, crumbly white cheeses. My favorite is the salty string cheese, which I could munch on forever, but I know that obesity lies down that path.

And then there are all the countless bakeries, selling golden baklava, weighted down with dripping honey, layers upon layers of fine pastry and ground nuts, and glistening green pistachios crumbled across the top. Kofte shops sell small patties of a spiced red meat, halfway between a patty and a meatball, which you can buy and take home, or they will put into a large piece of bread, (half a loaf, in fact,) with tomatoes and lettuce, and off you go, munching away. The corn sellers also cry out the price, "One Lira, one lira!" for sweet corn, boiled or roasted, your choice, heavily salted, for just one Lira.

Cynthia recently solved the mystery of the orange balls for me. After seeing carts go by, loaded with small orange balls reminiscent of Cartman's cheesy poofs, I asked her if she had any insight into what it might be. She guessed peanuts. I guessed cheesy poofs. Later she bought some and we found they were indeed peanuts, coated in some breading, and fried into an obscene orange color. Mystery solved.

But the greatest mystery is posed by the small meat stands, which bring a literal meaning to the term "mystery meat." The most common is the Kebab, with a long, upright metal spit turning an enormous cone of sizzling meat in front of a stack of gas heaters. The chicken kebab is easy to recognize. The other may be beef, but is probably lamb. In one heated cabinet Cynthia noticed a pile of fried potatoes and small chunks of . . . lamb? We asked and a small boy told us, yes, it was lamb. Being a great fan of frying in general, and potatoes and meat in any form, we bought a sandwich of it, and I proceeded to consume half before realizing that politeness might dictate offering a small portion to the person who had brought it to my attention and suggested we buy it. She took her bite, and after some time I asked her if she would like another. No, thanks, she said. In her bite she had encountered a piece of liver. I considered this a one-off, and continued eating. After another bite or two, I felt an unmistakeable bitter greasiness on my tongue, and a taste in the back of my throat like bile, and I knew she was right. Suddenly all my taste buds were on edge, probing, exploring each bite. What had been a very pleasant sandwich became a slow exploration of a minefield. I felt like Homer Simpson, unable to enjoy his sandwich, and unable to put it down. As I neared the end of the sandwich I began feeling queasy, then downright nauseous.

I knew no bacteria could work that fast - anything that can make you sick 10 minutes after you ingest it must be a really potent one, so I chalked it up to either psychology, or my stomach just doesn't appreciate liver. We walked on for twenty minutes or so, with my stomach churning and my skin sweating and odd burps emerging, before as suddenly as it had come, it passed.

Which just goes to show - I may not have discovered ancient deserted temples, and I don't particularly like the jungle, buy I may have a small sense of adventure left in me, at least as far as meat products are concerned. And Istanbul is full of small culinary adventures just waiting for my intrepid intestines.

One particular adventure that still remains are the many small, wheeled carts I see, coals in the bottom, and a horizontal spit, on which what looks like one hundred slices of mini-bologna. They seem popular along beaches and in alleys and not so much in the shops. We are told these small slices are gut and organ material, and are best avoided. But the question remains whether we are going to take advice, or try it for ourselves.

I bet sooner or later we buy one.

The Bear is back!

My father got his Masters in leadership studies. I recall reading one of his projects which stated that one of the tasks of a leader was to "scan the horizon." The idea was that while the peons and grunts kept their nose to the grindstones, someone had to keep their head up, scanning around to see if grindstones were going out of fashion. Another writer, Stephen Covey, used the metaphor of the jungle - you can expend a lot of energy hacking your way through the jungle - you can display great teamwork, dedication and sacrifice. You can even make great progress. But if nobody climbs a tree to look around, you might be expending all that energy heading the wrong direction.

It would appear that while the Bush administration has been heavily haemorrhaging American blood, money, (to the tune of between 2 and 3 billion dollars a week,) and international goodwill into the sands of Iraq, a real enemy, a superpower villain, has been repositioning itself for another attempt to take over the world. The scenario lends itself so easily to comic book analogy: beaten beyond all point of being a threat, the villain lays gasping in the gutter. His evil army has been broken and scattered, and the villain's demise is imminent. Our superhero turns to the innocent, wide-eyed bystander and says something heroic, in a deep voice. When he turns back, where the villain lay is only a wet smear of blood, leading into the sewer grate. He has escaped! He lives to fight another day! Who knows when and where this dastardly villain will again emerge to threaten the lives and freedom of the citizens of our fair city?

Who is this frightful villain, you ask? Well, who was America's arch-nemesis?
"I know!" you say - "Osama Bin Laden!"
But no, unfortunately, Mr. Bin is just the latest in a series of villains who pop up for an issue or two and then disappear. Who was REALLY the arch-nemesis, for a long time?

I'll give you a hint: When the "leader of the free world," Bush Jr. met their current leader, Bush said "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." Colin Powell later changed the quote, and responded, "I look into his eyes, and I see the KGB." (Incidentally, John McCain is now using Powell's uncredited line on the campaign trail.)

So after 50 years of fighting the cold war, when America stood as the sole remaining superpower, surveying the vast world, and wondering where and how to exert its vast power to do good, what was Russia doing? Well, they began by electing a drunk, and selling off all the large state business concerns to cronies. The cronies got right to work stealing all the aid money the west pumped into their investment infrastructure, and made off with it. Billions and billions of dollars and euros, gone! Gone? No, not gone! Invested in . . . the armed wing of their businesses. Suddenly "Russian Mafia" entered our vocabulary. Tough as nails, more motivated, more organized, and better armed than the amateurish family-run affair they have in Italy, the Russian mafia managed to get their fingers into everything in Russia.

As the state continued to sell off infrastructure to oligarchs, and the crime-bosses continued to grow in power and influence, the small businesses, so vital for the creation of a middle class, which is in turn so vital to a functioning democracy, were attacked on one side by a tax-code of byzantine complexity left over from communist times, which taxes at a rate of 120%, and by mob bosses demanding protection money on the other. Left with no money and two broken kneecaps, small Russian business decided to roll over and play dead. As their economy imploded, young people were left without jobs, and old people saw their already paltry pensions reduced further as the ruble lost value. What hurt even more, however, was the loss of international prestige, the loss of empire.

The old folks in question, you see, had seen a lot. They had lived through very dark times, when there was a constant external threat, willing to bomb your cities to rubble, and a constant internal threat, willing to torture you and condemn you to the gulag for expressing an opinion. Meanwhile, quotidian life consisted of standing in line for hours and hours to receive a paltry amount of shoddy quality goods, if you were lucky.

The reason for all this internal threat and external threat and poor quality goods was that, well, we are at war. In attempting to create conditions for equality for all and a workers paradise around the world, some resistance from the imperialist capitalist pigs could be expected. The ruling classes would never give up their exploitative stranglehold on the workers without a fight. Therefore, since we are at war, sacrifices must be made. That is why we don't have butter. That is why internal dissent cannot be allowed. Temporary sacrifices made, in the name of future victory. And in the meantime, just look at what an empire we already have massed at our side.

And that was the one consoling thought with which the worn-down Russian could console himself as he dropped off to sleep at night. We may be poor and harassed, but we are an empire. We are important. We may be forced to sacrifice, but the West thinks of us constantly, takes us into account, ponders our movements. We matter. When our ambassador clears his throat in the UN, every eastern bloc ambassador turns his head, and Germany begins to sweat.

Then, suddenly, that was gone. Overnight, the empire you gave so much for, sacrificed children and relatives to, suffered on behalf of, was gone, slipped away, in the course of a few months. The rot that underlay the whole system was suddenly exposed for all to see. They were left with nothing except the brief, ephemeral promise of prosperity and democracy like in the west. But instead the poverty and the bureaucracy continued, but now without order, and instead of one force who terrorized the population, multiple forces competed for the privilege.

A few people prospered, wildly. Most, left with nothing, their name a byword among the nations for a failed state, began to look for who to blame. In the end, they blamed the west, and began to invoke a mythical spirit of Slavic, Russian nationalism which was under attack. They counted democracy as a foreign scam perpetrated on them by the malignant powers of the west. An alien import, designed to sap the native strength of the Russian people, and make them soft and corrupt like the west.

The West! Their enemy before, their enemy now. One nationalist politician commented that Russia had opened a window on the west, and gone to sleep. When it woke up, it wondered why all the family was sick. It was time to close the windows of the Russian house. And article after article, from The Economist to TIME, documentary after documentary, and a continual stream of news stories say the same thing - Russia is suffering, Russia is angry, and Russia blames the west.

Enter Putin. A strong ruler for a strong Russia. A former KGB officer only in the sense that the KGB has ceased to exist under that designation. But once KGB, always KGB. He places KGB officers at every level of Russian government, and gives ex-KGB businessmen preferential treatment until Russia is once again a de facto KGB state, with the same paranoid outlook on the world, but with a new, more functional economic system. Internal dissent is actively put down. Non-sympathetic businessmen are railroaded, and jailed.

Meanwhile, the West has no reason to even think of Russia, occupied as it is with lines in the sands of the middle east. Russia sends a column into Serbia in the middle of the night, captures the airport, and demands a slice of Serbia to "monitor," and the west says nothing. Russia undertakes a war in Chechnya which it can ill afford, with disastrous humanitarian consequences for both the civilian population and the Russian recruits sent to fight it. In numerous cases, Chechen women end up giving Russian troops food out of compassion, since their corrupt commanders have sold their supplies on the black market for a profit. Journalists who report on the widescale tragedy attract the ire of the state, and Russia actively represses freedom of the media, with many journalists who spoke out about the state dying of random criminal attacks, and the west says nothing.

Russian state-sponsored agents enter the UK with radioactive materials, and poison a British, (albeit former Russian) citizen on British soil. In response the west makes large squawking sounds, and makes windy noises. In response, Russia closes down British council language schools and cultural centers. They don't need English language libraries anyway, thanks.

Russia plants a flag under the North Pole, and claims it, (and the oil that may be there) for the Russian state - and the west glances briefly at it, having been attracted by the word "oil." (Incidentally, it now turns out the Russians may have placed the flag in the wrong spot. But if no one is paying attention anyway, it hardly matters.)

Russia begins to take umbrage to its former dominions chumming up with the west. Ukraine and Georgia reject politicians sponsored by Russia, who act as sock-puppets for the Kremlin, and elect pro-western governments in an act as dangerous as any violent revolution. Russia literally attempts to poison the Ukrainian pro-western contender, and the west says nothing. Russia encourages separatist sentiment in breakaway regions in the nations around it, and the west says nothing. It is when these countries apply for NATO membership that the gloves come off.

When Georgia squirmed its way out from under the Russian thumb, two regions tried to test the limits of their new-found freedom, and in a chain of reasoning that works only in the logical vortex of the Balkans, figured that the smaller their eventual state, the more free everyone would be. Russia immediately took up the cause of the breakaway regions, and insisted that Russian "peacekeepers" enter South Ossetia, (North Ossetia remains in Russia proper,) to prevent further civil war. (Odd how civil war is so distasteful to the Russians if it occurs anywhere that doesn't further their interests.) Once there, they proceeded to install Russian politicians in high-level positions, issue Russian passports to all South Ossetians who wanted one, (just in case,) and kindly allowed the breakaway province to use the Russian ruble as its currency, (just for now.) The sum effect of these actions was to suddenly create thousands of newly-minted Russian citizens in South Ossetia, so that when Georgia made a move to retake the province in question, Russia had to protect its "citizens."

Swedish Foreign minister Carl Bildt stated: "And we have reason to remember how Hitler used this very doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine and attack substantial parts of central Europe." Which invites us to another comparison between the rise of a nationalist Germany, and the rise of Russian nationalism today. When Hitler demanded Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland and Poland, the west followed a consistent doctrine of energetic hand-wringing followed by formally granting him what he had de facto taken, lest we be led into confrontation. The doctrine of appeasement, as it came to be known, led us into World War II. Many historians believe, (in accordance with the doctrine of "a stitch in time saves nine") that an early confrontation with Hitler would have been the far less costly option.

Many pundits like to say that "On 9-11, the world changed." It didn't. We finally looked up from our plates to see what had changed long ago. And while the US is now absorbed in its latest short-sighted view of the world, the new global conflict is taking shape. We tried appeasing Hitler. We tried ignoring Bin Laden. A combination of these two tried-and-true doctrines with Russia would be nothing less than lethal.

Between Church and State

Yesterday while sitting in a shaded second-story cafe overlooking a busy intersection and drinking a cold, oddly watery beer, I noticed the headquarters of the "ak" party across the way. Since the small village of Sariyer wasn't offering up anything more entertaining, I looked up what the "A" and the "K" stood for - Adalet ve Kalkinma - Justice and Development. The ak party was created from the remnants of a banned Islamic party, and after reforming and redefining, nevertheless finds itself (or has positioned itself) squarely in the middle of the debate over religion vs. secularism in the state, and consequently is now again defending itself against legal action seeking to ban the party.

Aaah, Church and State. Like "Nature vs. Nurture," these three words immediately sum up a world of polemical charge and counter-charge, of opinion laced lightly with fact, and a debate on values delivered with vitriol. And like terrorism, it takes only the slightest act to prompt a whirlwind media frenzy; a student wishes to wear a headscarf in a school in France, a stewardess wishes to wear a small crucifix while she works. The latest? A schoolgirl in Britain wished to wear a simple metal bracelet, one of the five signs of being a Sikh. Millions of pounds sterling later, the courts have overruled the school, stating she is entitled to display a symbol of her religion, even if jewelery is forbidden to all the other children. Equality, it would seem, has to take a back seat once religion enters the room.

In the past few years I have moved from one Catholic country to another, and am now living in a state which is desperately trying to find the balance between secularism and accommodation for its religious population. Turkey's population is overwhelmingly Muslim. Yet secularism is enshrined in their constitution and laws as one of their foundational precepts. When Ataturk, (Father of the Turks,) founded the modern state of Turkey, he attempted to westernize everything in reach. The alphabet was thrown out, and a new, slightly adapted western alphabet was brought in. Traditional men's headgear (the fez,) was outlawed. And as for a woman wearing a head-covering in school or a govt. building, forget it.

Today, this is the central debate being fought in the newspapers and cafes across the country. The ruling party, elected in transparent and fair elections, is a Muslim party, under whose rule, by all accounts, the economy has prospered greatly, yet because of its religious views, may see itself banned. What is it about religion that is considered so insidious, so frightful, that otherwise well-respected political parties find themselves fighting for their life in court, or intimidated by generals who publicly contemplate a coup? What is so frightening about a piece of cloth over the head, or a bangle on the arm of a girl, that we would put her in the same category as one who brings a gun to school, and deprive her of the right to receive an education?

The answer may lie in a word mentioned previously - equality. All democracies aspire to equality before the law for all members of their society. Though in practice rarely achieved, (since the economically empowered enjoy an advantage the lower classes can almost never attain, from education to employment opportunities to the ability to hire professional specialists to extract you from the consequences of your misdeeds,) the simple aspiration, by sheer nobility of concept, and the guiding light it provides for our societies, can never be deserted, no matter how short we may fall in application. Like the UN, though it may fall so egregiously short in practicality as to invite ridicule, the abandonment of the concept represents such a renunciation of something we hold so precious, and the acknowledgement of the inevitability of the triumph of the darker side of man, that futilely clutching the inadequate life-preserver we have is currently judged wiser than letting go and sliding into the darkened depths beneath our still kicking legs.

Equality is enshrined in the American declaration of independence, and on every coin in the French Republic. Without it a democracy loses its "demo," and becomes simply a "cracy," from which our world already suffers an excess. In short, it loses its raison d'etre. So what is the problem with religion?

Religion is inherently unequal. By virtue of its claim to reveal absolute truth, it relegates other beliefs to a secondary, or lesser, status. It says, "I know truth - you do not." Equality, therefore, is mutually exclusive with a religion of absolutes. You are among those who are enlightened, or redeemed, or chosen, or you are not. You are ultimately working for the long-term betterment of the world in accordance with divine principles, or you are, to a greater or lesser degree impeding said work, or at the very least cluttering up the way. Hardly the stuff of equality.

The solution, no doubt, lies in a balance. On the one hand, people must be given the freedom to observe their beliefs, as much in the public as in the private sphere. On the other, we cannot allow for one group, by govt. funds distributed, or laws enacted, to enjoy a privileged status over other groups. Nor, paradoxically, can we afford to observe a ridiculous over-equality, with a baby Krishna and baby Mohammed occupying the manger next the baby Christ in a nativity scene. Such preposterousness is more offensive to most than the original offense could ever be. Nor should we retreat from all public signs of any religious tradition or observance, by removing all Christmas trees from airports, or prohibiting all jewelery lest someone wear a symbol.

By and large, on an individual level, people need to get over themselves. Not every symbol worn by an individual heralds the downfall of society. And no doubt each decision handed down by the courts will displease many on a given side - ideally, a just decision will displease many on both sides. Like most difficult paths, each decision must be taken with due consideration and patience, for as we all know, nothing worthwhile is easy. Between Church and State may be between the Devil and the deep blue sea - but it has to be navigated, all the same.

Moving Pains

Moving is a time of turmoil - to say as much is to understate the obvious. There are dates and deadlines to work around - when you get the electricity shut off, when the phone stops working, when the landlord will inspect the apartment, or (show up and tell you he doesn't have time to inspect the apartment, so you can't get your deposit back. Sorry.) Then there are the boxes to pack, and ship, (and how will we get the boxes from the house to the post office? Will they fit in a taxi? Shall we call a truck? How does one do that in a language you don't speak?)

Moving from one country to another only adds to the factors that could go wrong. What language should the forms be filled out in? (Kind of a moot point since I don't speak either.) How much taxes and customs duty are they going to charge me for simply bringing in my possessions? If I write down everything that is in the package, will this tempt someone to help themselves? If I don't write everything down, can I get in trouble for undeclared items? What about insurance - how specific do I need to be? (fortunately the space provided is 3 lines long, allowing for about 6 words maximum, so once again - a bit of a moot point.) But where / how will we live till our blankets and bowls arrive?

Once you have turned the key, and boarded the bus for the airport, the move briefly takes on the appearance of a regular jaunt out of the country. Bags and books and carry-ons. Bus to hostel to bed to breakfast to train to bus to airport to check in to security to sit to wait to read to bus to airplane. This is probably the most relaxing time of the whole move, since it is the only time in which all your mistakes have already been made, and now you have nothing to do except suffer the consequences. For the first time in about 2 months, there are no pressing decisions to make which will most likely deprive you of hundreds of dollars if you pick the wrong option. Unless, of course, your airline goes on strike. Which ours did. But nevermind.

When you arrive at your destination, and go airplane to bus to immigration to baggage (side-trip to duty-free) to customs to taxi to friend's apartment to unpack the bags and books and carry-ons, to sit silently on the couch and stare at the darkened television screen and think - it is almost over. Almost over. Almost over. Soon, soon, the boxes will come, there will be some hassle, yes, the boxes will come, and then there will be some hassle about moving them, but then, then I will be done, and then I will have a home again, and then it will all seem worth it, and then I will have succeeded, I will have finished what I started 6, 7, months ago. Then it will be finished. And you drink your drink and you think your think and you crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of the just.

But you shouldn't. Because what you don't know, and for 3 more blessed days won't know, is that all your precious boxes, each of them bigger than you, and loaded with the detritus of a materialistic life lived on the run, loaded with accumulated crap of varying utility, expense, and sentimental value, each and every one of those boxes that you labored over and packed to within grams of the maximum weight allowed, and then covered in postal regulation brown paper, and taped firmly and fixed a curse on the lid of each one, promising to those who would trespass here such affliction that would make Tutankhamen's tomb look like an invitation to Disneyland, each and every one of your boxes is now winging its way to the wrong address, destined to be delivered (or not,) to an abandoned building down the road.

This morning the call to prayer went out from the minarets in Istanbul, and woke me briefly. As I rolled over, before sinking back into a rum-soaked sleep, my only thought was, "We have done it. We have finally arrived in Istanbul."

Yesterday morning it was the din of the Krakow bus station which woke me, and the first thing I saw, hanging across the room, was a foto of the great wall of China, sinously wending its way over umpteen sepia hills into the sepia distance, and a saying attributed to Lao Tzu - "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

My father once had a sermon entitled "How do you eat an elephant?" Lest I keep you in suspense too long, the answer was "Bite by bite." I didn't find it very funny at the time, but I suppose son's rarely find their father's sermons very scintillating. I am of course, grateful that he has become more interesting as I have aged.

The message which underlies both of these sayings is that large things are composed of so many small things in combination. Do the small things, and in time you will have done much.

Moving to Istanbul was in every way an elephant, and in order to eat the bitterest parts first, we began at the tail, since every one knows that the finest steaks on an elephant are found in the trunk. (I suppose it has to do with all the work that the trunk has to do - that and the fact that it is round and can be cut into plate-sized steaks which have two holes in them is just too cool - my favorite thing to do is to put it on my face so I can see through the two holes and then use my best whispery-anguished Haley Joel Osment voice to say "I see elephant boogers.") But I digress.

I mentally divided our "move to Istanbul" project into 3 phases.

1. Find jobs.

2a. Get paperwork (work visa for Turkey, etc.) and
2b. pack/ship our belongings, and
2c. leave the European Union.

3. Live cheaply in Istanbul for 3 weeks till our university-provided apartment opens up.

There were a lot of factors that influencing each step which had to be juggled and balanced. For example, we had to move out of our apt. in Poland before August 1st, so our boxes had to be sent prior to that. The boxes will take 1-2 weeks to arrive. We cannot move into our apt. until Aug. 20th, and we cannot send boxes to the university until we are there to pick them up - sooooo, we had to find a apt. to stay at for 3 weeks, where we could receive a ton of boxes.

Another example is our work visas. Before we could apply for our work visas, we had to recieve a letter from the Turkish ministry of education. This in itself was a surprise, as we were not informed of this step till me had already made plans to leave the country, and close our accounts. Thus we were to be left without employment, and without internet, while we waited in our apartment, (which we were lucky to be able to keep,) for this letter to arrive. We would then take this precious gem of bureacratic excreta to the embassy of the country in which we are legal residents. We were told that this letter would take a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks after a couple of weeks, we noticed that our window of legal residency in Poland was quickly drawing to a close, which would, legally, make the letter in question pointless once we had recieved it, as we would no longer be allowed to apply to this embassy. These, among other similar situations, produced a low-level of constant apprehension, tension, which caused us to chew the insides of our cheeks at night, and snap at each other over nothing. How to resolve a million small problems at once, and in time.

At every step, at every stage, we found ourselves surrounded with more questions, to which only the petty gods of beauracracy could answer for us. Unfortunately the small gods of beauracracy will frequently let their phones ring for 10 minutes straight before telling you to call their "call center," and 15 calls later you will find out that really, no one knows anything. Yes, definitely, someone should know something, but really, that someone wouldn't be us.

The main problem with this scenario, of course, is that when you arrive at the embassy, the prim authoritarian fortuitiously located behind thick plate glass will indeed believe she knows something, and it might in no way resemble what you would wish her to know. Nor will she come out from behind the glass so you might instruct her in the ways of righteousness, and shooting her is right out, since the glass is probably bullet-proof, and furthermore you had to pass through a metal detector and open all your bags in a tiny room, observed by a man through another thick plate-glass window, (and he wasn't coming out, either,) before you were even allowed into this room. The one weapon you are left with is your smile. Well, and your whiney-voice, if you think it will help. Oh, and oodles of cash. Except we don't have oodles, we have piddles. And we really need to keep our piddles.

In the end, however, the smiles and bowing and a small offering of $78 left upon the alter propitiated the small gods, and after 7 hours of waiting, they blessed us with 2 small sheets of green paper, glued into our little blue books. A week later I was lying in a bed in a hostel in Krakow, across the street from the bus station, listening to the chimes before the announcements which no longer meant anything to me. I would never ride those busses again.

The week inbetween had been yet another slow-motion panic. A near daily mailing of boxes, cleaning, calling, making appointments, and finding papers. Our boxes were weighed and our suitcases were weighed and re-weighed, and judged ok, then later simply estimated to be too heavy, then on the day of judgement found to be lighter than necessary. Our bank accounts were closed, our Zloty converted to Euros, our Euros converted to Lira, our dollars held like limp green fish in our hands while we pondered how long we could hold this worthless currency, on hopes it might regain some value. Papers were signed, our landlord endured for one last time as he told us he didn't have time to inspect the cleaned (and subtly re-painted in places) apartment, despite our meeting him at the time he requested. Last suppers were had with friends, and on the day of our departure, the last meeting with our employer.

Where we were informed that the past month she had been avoiding us because she was hurt, angry even, so we may have noticed that this month she was a bit "distant." I declined to point out that since in the normal course of events she did not speak to us for months at a time, her increased distance during this frenetic time in our lives had, somehow, boggle-the-mind-though-it-may, passed unnoticed by us.

The cause was a poster, posted on a restaurant door. A friend of ours, hearing that we were to be without income over the month of July, had put up a poster advertising our services. The idea had not been ours, nor the placing of the poster, nor the wording. We had been informed of it, and had not objected, had even thanked her, as it was a great kindness on her part, and furthermore, I have long been of the opinion that if someone has the energy to take the initiative in something, the world should shut up and get out of the way.

In the event, as August is a vacation month, we receieved but a few calls from it, none of which resulted in a single class. The offense, however, was in the wording. And the offense, it seems, was not lessened by the fact that we had not initiated nor contributed to said poster. It was a question of loyalty, and we had been found wanting.

As I sat there, listening to my employers sighs of crushing disappointment, I thought back over the trips to the post office, the calls handled in a language I don't speak, trying to get a taxi big enough for the boxes, the amount of time spent packing, the rolls and rolls of tape and brown paper (postal regulations!) we had bought, the hours spent on the bus and train, the night in Warsaw, the standing, supplicating, of the gods of the embassy, the endless calls to the embassy in Warsaw, and in D.C., the visits to the doctor's office, the giving away of the things that were still useful, the throwing away of so much that was not, the selling of a few items, the endless running and running and tension and lists of it all, and then I thought of the bus ride still ahead of me, the plane trip, the showing of the doctor's report to the border guard, and the consequent explanation, all of which would happen today and tomorrow before I could relax again.

I didn't interrupt her. I sat there, thinking my thoughts, pretending to listen. I kept my eyes focused on her, my head nodding slowly, dutifully, as I softly shifted my weight on the sofa, and silently farted.

The things you gave your life to broken . . .

"If you can bear to see the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
and stoop, and build 'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss . . . "

Rudyard Kipling must have known a thing or two about life. Though not the greatest writer to ever tread the earth, I sometimes suspect the literary world sells him short - perhaps it is because I, like he, grew up between two cultures, linked to both and identified with neither, that I see in his writings things which I suspect go unnoticed by many readers.

Or, maybe I am just biased in his favor because of this poem. Aside from The Jungle Book, "If" may be Kipling's best-known piece of writing. Although I like it now, my first impulse, years ago, was simple rejection. My 7th grade English teacher handed it out and told us all that we were going to memorize it. As I was, at that time, beginning to define the limits of my own personal sovereignty by delineating what I would and would not do, and as I had a particular aversion to dwarfish, red-haired teachers, I decided that this was one thing I would not be doing. After all, it was difficult, probably nearly impossible, and furthermore, stupid.

I must have thought of something cleverly biting to say about the poem, as I can think of no other reason that informing my father that I was not going to do it should have seemed like a smart idea. He asked for it, and then read it over. I remember him sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed, head bowed over the piece of paper as he read it. He stayed there for a long time. Far longer than I thought necessary.

When he looked up he fixed me with a gimlet eye that only a chicken could approximate for cold, rapacious intensity. It was the look which usually indicated that simply by standing there I was treading a piano-wires thickness away from a death that would surely involve a periodic slow strangulation with my own intestines as a warm-up to actual dismemberment. I guessed the stupidity of the poem had not met his expectation.

My father told me 1. I was going to do it, and 2. He was going to to memorize it with me. He also said that someday I might like it. I doubted this greatly, but was simply grateful that the conversation was brief, and made no mention of the various uses of forks and pliers. My father worked with me, and eventually I did memorize it. And then I forgot it.

Fast forward 20 years and I am working in a greeting card factory over the Xmas break. My job was to load paper into one side of the printing press, then walk around the other side, wait a few minutes, and unload the printed cards back into the box from which they came, and repeat. I was so bored I wished to shoot myself. Many of my university acquaintances had family to go see, a lot of them had enough money that the little bastards didn't have to work, and it is no exaggeration to say that I pitied myself a fair bit.

The clankety-clank-clankety-clank-hiss-clankety-clank-clankety-clank-hiss of the printing press went on for long enough that I found myself in my boredom chanting nonsense to myself, and out of the repetitive chanting the poem, long forgotten, started emerging in bits and snatches. For a few days I worked on reassembling the poem, remembering every day more and more. And slowly, I began to see my current position in a much different light. It didn't matter that some kids got to be lazy and have everything handed to them. It didn't matter that some people had somewhere to go for the holidays. What mattered is how I acted in what I did, and there was a nobility to be found in this experience, if it was approached correctly.

Fast forward 7 years, and I had a private student in Valencia, Spain. He and his family had come to Spain from Argentina, because the economy in Argentina had crashed enough times, and wiped out their savings enough times that they had decided to start a new life. He left his job as a lawyer in Argentina, and was now working occasional work as a night security guard, trying to support his family at the age of 50, struggling to make ends meet, living in a tiny dark apartment, but still managing to take English lessons because they were important to him. I watched Julio and Marta's struggle for months, saw in the unspoken lines around his stories the scrimping that was going on - how he and his wife worked to hide from their daughter the truth of the situation. At around the same time I told them Cyn and I were leaving Spain, he announced to me that they were, too. The savings would soon be tapped out, and they had to go back. I felt so bad for them, to have tried so bravely, and in a sense, failed.

The last time I saw him he gave me a present. It was a piece of paper, of nice stock, longer than normal, rolled up with a ribbon around it. When I unrolled it, it was a pretty script in Spanish. It took me a while to realize that he had given me the poem IF. He said this poem was a beautiful poem, which meant a lot to him.

I can understand why. It speaks of winning and losing and struggle, and how nobility lies not in these things, but in HOW you win and lose and struggle. What I hadn't realized, all those years ago when my father was reading the poem, was that he and my mother had just come through the most difficult struggle of their lives. They had exerted so much effort, on so many fronts, trying to do the correct thing against the odds, and in return, had been told they were failures. They were unfit. What I didn't understand in those days, when I watched my father come home from his job as a carpenter, and sit at the empty table in his workboots and flannel shirt, and night after night silently contemplate his own cracked and skinned hands, was that he was, in his heart, a failure. He had tried, and was trying, but had ended up, after so much effort, in limbo - in a place he didn't want to be, in a job he didn't want to do, watching the years slide by, not knowing where to go.

When Cynthia and I came to Poland, it was for one reason - to get graduate degrees. The money we were making was small, the amount deducted every month for the degree was high. The amount left was barely enough to live on. When we heard that the director of the program was going to be in our town for Thanksgiving, Cynthia volunteered our kitchen and dining room to host the dinner. I stayed dressed in my best, in order to make a good impression when he arrived. It must have succeeded, because a full day and a half later, as he left, he tentatively offered to let us manage the site, in return for one free tuition.

Eventually our responsibilities expanded. In addition to managing all the logistical concerns for the particular site, I took over the admissions process, screening the candidates who wanted to join our program. Cynthia began to do all the liaising with the college in the states. Although our compensation was increased commensurate with our responsibilities, at a certain point we stopped doing it for the financial compensation, and began to do it because we cared. We believed in the vision of this program. The idea that we could serve others, people like us, who had made their lives abroad, and wanted to advance in their careers, yet couldn't afford to uproot their lives and go back to the states to pay for a graduate degree there.

Because we saw ourselves as serving a larger goal, of providing good opportunities for people, we really devoted ourselves to the task. We put in long hours. When we stopped to figure it up, the financial compensation, much appreciated and very needed in our budget, came to no more than minimum wage due to the sheer number of hours we put into the projects. We tried to strengthen the organization, developing best practices and good policies to insure long-term success. We tried to both minimize our financial risk, and introduce a new level of transparency and honesty with the students. We wanted them to know they were important, and that we cared about them.

In return, some said thank you. One class bought us a bottle of vodka. Other's offered to pay us if we split the organization up, and stole it out from under the director. Other's created small tornadoes of intrigue by suggesting that someone was greedily profiting off the students, who were being taken advantage of. The ingratitude and mob-like mentality of any group always amazes me, and has taught me that I should be one who goes out of his way to express gratitude to others, and that I should never expect a group to conform to the rules of reasonable and appropriate behavior we would expect of individuals.

I don't mean to whine here. Some of the students I will remember forever for their decency and kindness - their sheer solid character. I have met some gems, whom I will treasure appropriately. But largely, much of the education I received in this program has been from the schemers and complainers. To them I owe a larger debt of thanks. They have taught me that working overtime for a pittance on someone's behalf is no reason to expect they won't expect more. Temper tantrums on the part of others must be excused. A single sardonic response on my part should never be allowed. As an appointed leader, I must always bring to the table the highest standards of behavior and personal responsibility.

As I said, my wife and I truly bought into the vision of this organization. We gave of ourselves to it. We did everything we could for it, and last Sunday, agreed to let it die.

The program has had difficulty for some time in attracting a sufficient amount of students. We always considered this a marketing matter, and so tried to explore new avenues of making ourselves more visible. These obviously cost more money, which moved us into a precarious situation. We tried starting up a second program, and due to an unfortunate combination of a late start in marketing and a few people pulling out late in the game, ended up under-attended. When a few people who attended later reneged on paying, our position went from precarious to a shade of red. Eventually we recognized the inevitable.

We tried, and hard. We loved it, and it has done something good for a number of students. Every student who graduated while we were working for this organization we count as a success story to our credit. Yet in the end, if not enough people apply, if the balance sheet tips closer and closer to the red, if in the end people do not value what they have received enough to pay for it, if after all the hours and hours of work, it is no closer to being sustainable than before, then perhaps you are not helping people as much as you once thought. If so, you must let it go.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

The tears of children

The measure of a great teacher is not in the test grades of his students, or the supposed "learning" which accumulates like so much cotton-wool between the synapses of their brains, or even in the future achievements or happiness of your students. The measure of a great teacher is in how many students cry on the last day.

Or cry in general, really. I am not going to be so picky as to just limit it to the last day. I try to begin prepping my students to cry early on in the year, letting them know that far from being unacceptable to cry in class, it gives me great joy when they do so, and sometimes is the only proper response to my behaviour as a teacher. I ask them periodically if they would like to cry, and if the response is negative I will sometimes go further and ask what I might be able to do to change that. Furthermore, I tell them, that the tears of children are precious. So if they are going to cry, please let me know right before, and I will give them a glass jar to catch the tears in. Voodoo doesn't just require dolls, you know. And virgin's tears go for extra!

Unfortunately, I feel as though I have failed in one of my classes, and egregiously so. Throughout the whole year they have manifested a stubborn and rebellious cheeriness that just rankles me to no end. Despite the fact that I refer to them alternately as "children" and "evil children" they refuse to acknowledge being insulted. Though I use their names in the example sentences, and place them in the most embarrassing of "hypothetical situations" involving Michael Jackson and his monkey, I have not had a single complaint registered with the head of the school. I have even stooped to shooting them with a rubber dart pistol in hopes of inducing feelings of victimhood, and still have not generated the necessary angst and broken hopelessness one would expect from a group of teenagers subjected to a relentless barrage of withering criticism and absurdly petty demands from an arbitrary dictator of a teacher.

In their defense, though, it would appear that my methods were, perhaps, ill-advised. The reactions to being shot with the rubber suction-cup darts, for example, was often to smile sweetly, and place the dart in their pocket. Such passive-aggressivity should have indicated to me earlier that a change of method was called for. Not that all the responses were passive-aggressive. One student stole the pistol and in a fair feat of marksmanship, shot me in the back of the head while I was writing at the board. I have also been on the receiving end of at least one thrown pencil, (why do they think things thrown at them in rage need to be thrown back?) which left a mark on my shirt, and, I need not say, a spurt of dark joy in my heart.

If this violence had been the rule, I think I would have been able to successfully adapt my methods and break their wills sooner. But the outbursts of violence were rare, and the intervening period would see gifts of, for example, chocolate, or a box of cookies on teacher's day. Sometimes when a student went to the ice cream shop before class, they would pick up an extra goody for me. All of this had the end result of confusing my strategy, as it made it difficult to judge the effect my teaching was having on them. Contrary to exhibiting signs of weakness and depression, they seemed to draw strength from the class.

It is not as though I didn't try to change my methods - I did. Partway through the second semester, I realized that other teachers had already calloused these students by taking ostensibly useful and interesting information and presenting it in the most mind-numbingly boring and useless ways, ruthlesssly stamping out any possible spark of interest or applicability to their lives by focusing in on the most pointless and trifling detail while ignoring the larger conceptual picture. These teachers had really outdone themselves by utilizing the most outdated, soul-crushing and joyless methods of teaching. Moreover, the students were independently boosting their endurance by subjecting themselves to long hours of study at home, independently, as well as arising early in the morning, taking extra classes of language, dance, or subject specific tutoring on the side, and staying up late at night to do their homework.

Once I realised this, I knew that if I were going to leave a dent on these children's souls, I would have to make it past the good-humored armor, the patience and endurance they had developed over the years. I would need to get them to let down their guard, and then, when they were unsuspecting, I could savagely destroy whatever personal confidence or joy was left cowering in some obscure, darkened corner of their frail little hearts.

The idea was actually suggested to my by suggestopedia, and one of my student's journals. If you have never read about the language learning method known as suggestopedia, and would like to take a nostalgic trip down the weirdness that was the 60's and 70's, I cannot recommend highly enough doing some research on suggestopedia. Any language-learning method whose founder begins his webpage with "Suggestopedia is a science for developing . . . non-hypnotic methods for teaching / learning languages" ranks pretty high in my book. Furthermore, if you are going to be a lingual-psycho-learning guru, Lozanov is a GREAT name to go with this hairstyle. (Note picture.)

The student's (obviously selfishly-motivated) suggestion was that the only way this class could be improved was to bring cookies to the class, and give them to the students. As suggestopedia, (a NON-hypnotic method of teaching, it should be noted,) recommends creating a pleasant atmosphere for the students, by utilizing art, music, (this I had been doing since much earlier in the year,) soft colors and generally a warm and fuzzy demeanor in the classroom in order to lower their affective barriers, I recognized that my best hope for getting these children to break down crying by the end of the year was to soften them with treats, thus lowering their barriers, and then hit them with the abuse.

Thus began the campaign of random cookies. It had to occur at random intervals, because tests on chickens have revealed that positive reinforcement at random intervals had a greater effect on behavior than a consistent, predictable reinforcement. As I try to conduct my classes with an eye toward scientific method, I randomized not only the days on which cookie-reinforcement would be used, but also the stage in the class at which the cookies would be produced. Furthermore, the role the cookies played would also be varied. Sometimes the cookies were freely distributed to all. Other times they were given to students whose answers were particularly good. Once, when the students had not done their homework, I simply stood in front of them and ate "their" cookies for them. On an unrelated topic, it should be noted that the students showed a preference for jelly-filled cookies over simple butter ones. Chocolate, sadly, cannot be accounted for as a factor, since it was present to a greater or lesser degree in all the cookies.

As a corollary to my strategy of random cookies, I would also periodically buy a small cup of hot-chocolate for a student who appeared to be depressed. The hope was that buy buoying their spirits at their most vulnerable moments, they might be less prepared for the neglect and cold-hearted criticism that would ensue, and thus I could more easily bring them to tears when I turned on them.

Yet somehow, as the end of the year looms over us, all my careful preparations have been for naught. It would seem that the treats and the music have been effective in lowering their barriers, but have also instilled the children with a persistent belief that, contrary to all evidence and my outright assurances to the contrary, that I am fond of them. Of course, being the shallow little bastards that they are, this somehow translates into greater feelings of self-worth (ie- the "teacher likes me, ergo, I am likeable" fallacy, which totally disregards the supremely reasonable and rather self-evident possibility that A. that it is all a malicious plot to cause you pain and suffering in the end, or, B that IF the teacher did like you, the teacher's judgment is quite likely unsound to begin with.)

And thus it is that once again, yet another year draws to its conclusion, and a nagging sense of failure tugs at my heart as I bid goodbye to a still resilient, cheerful, hard-working and intelligent bunch of students. I will not forget them ever, even if every time I think of them it is with some regret over tears left un-shed.