RSS« Also - Iraq, an article | Iraq - yet more Chalabi manipulation »
December 01, 2003
Istanbul - Personal thoughts
Istanbul - Personal thoughts
Well, Istanbul was a far more productive trip than I thought, although events are rather running ahead of where I had thought they were. Regretably I am going to have to make a number of items posted in the past private or better delete them; I am being called to rap with the people in US Justice Department. A good thing morally, but complicating my life. Well, nice and all that, hope it goes in the right direction. The IFIC needs to be slapped down like the cheap bitch he is.
In other observations: I visited the bombing sites, it was something like a pilgrimage. I noted there were crowds, I think disapproving but the sites were in Taqsim, Galata area where one expects this. Saddening, but if a bomb comes, you are gone. No use thinking about that very much. Only a matter of time before it occurs here.
On a lighter note, I was mildly entertained to note that I kept being mistaken for Turk on this, my longest time spent in the city. I note I felt rather odd, I was reflecting on how I have come to expect to understand more or less all that goes on around me, that is it felt strange being in a country where I have no grasp of the language. I’ve been to Turkey before but never spent such a large and continuous block of time in Turcophone surroundings. Feels odd, it occurred to me, for all that blending was not an issue. Frustrating, I need to learn Turkish, above all if the new demarche comes through. Wheels moving and all that.
I should also note it was an immense pleasure to be in Istanbul again. A city with life, a city with cosmopolitanism that runs deep – not like the nouveau cosmopolitanism of Dubai, which has no depth nor roots in local reality. No, Istanbul feels its imperial roots, and its ancient mix to its bones. My kind of city, being a rootless cosmopolitan (as I was amusingly called in some retort to my comments at a place called tacitus.org – I suppose it all comes down to being hard to place.) and all that. But Istanbul is a place for rootless cosmopolitans. I can see why my dear grandpa rather liked the place, although he managed to kick off in Izmir by accident. Well, cerebral meningitis does get one.
I should say that should I have a choice in life, I would rather like to finish it by dividing my time between three places, or maybe four, Dar al-Beidah, al-Jeza’ir al-‘asimah, Istanbul and Amsterdam. Yes, I wrote a few memos in the old gardens of the Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent and I found it very relaxing. The grounds keeper even played some nice Sufi music for me. I look forward to doing this again. Pity the did not serve Efes in the gardens, although that might have been a bit much, being next to the Sulieman Great Mosque, but the coffee was excellent – indeed I will note for the eaters among us, Turkey along with Morocco are fine destinations where it is hard not to have a tasty (if perhaps later ‘dangerous’) meal.
Another observation, I watched an extremely engaging and indeed illuminating tele-documentary on Arte, the Franco-German satellite channel, on the Sephardic Jews from Spain. It was very well done, covered an enormous amount of territory and struck me as balanced in a sophisticated manner. Yet, and I do not blame the interlocutor, a really very interesting Bosniac Jew and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) speaker, there were odd silences. One in particular I would like to reflect on is how they handled the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 – and how they did not speak to the simultaneous expulsion of the Muslims. Now, given the focus was rightly on the Sephardim and this fellow’s story – quite amazing – one should not complain over much, yet I saw a symbolic absence, all the more strange given the Bosniac interlocutor speaking to Bosnia and the multicultural environment of old Sarajevo, Le Seraile, was moving in his view of all three or four religions.
However, in regards to Spain it struck me the editors went for a bit of what I might call a certain degree of modern political correctness, in forgetting the Muslim side of the expulsions and the Muslim side of the “Judeo-Christian” culture – that sad phrase that forgets one of the three major inputs to the mix, and indeed delegitimizes one of the inputs, excluding it. I also believe that it cuts one off from understanding the context in which the Muslim states, which at the time meant the Ottoman Empire and Morocco, welcomed not only the Muslim but the Jewish refugees from Xian purity of the day – in the days when Judeo-Islamic culture was Kosher/Halal and the Sublime Porte in Istanbul welcomed Jewish refugees in the name of humanity and Judeo-Christian culture was a sad joke.
Rootless cosmopolitans. We should unite. What do we have to lose but our caviar? Kha.
Posted by The Lounsbury at December 1, 2003 09:19 AM
Filed Under:
Jan-Dec 2003
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.aqoul.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/1618
