Turks, Tea, and Tickle-Me-Blue (mosque...)

So, those of you who follow my status compulsively on facebook will already know that my hostel (and the hostel that my friend and I are moving to tomorrow) is approximately a three-minute walk from the gloroius Blue Mosque. The Blue Mosque (I suggest you wikipedia the thing) is beautiful. And entry is free. Which might be the most beautiful thing about it. Well -- maybe not. But across the street is something I like to call The Red Mosque. It's the Aya *Hagia* Sophia and its OLD. It was originally built as a Church and was turned into a mosque only later. Which makes the mix of Byzantian gold-leaf-tile-Jesus-and-John-the-Baptist art and the huge scrawlings of Allah in calligraphy a bizarre but beautiful combination. Its beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it feels like a cathedral that has - literally - "Gone Turk".

So we moved from these huge mosques down the hill (Istanbul arranges its tourist attractions very convineintly) to the Topkapi Palace. This was the sultan's (Abdlhamid, I believe) stomping grounds and comes complete with - yes - a harem, which is the main attraction, yet took us about an hour and a half to find (a tip to other travelers, its not actually INSIDE the palace...). So we saw some interesting stuff - like a new exhibit on Iran where the claim was that they were displaying Iran and Turkey's common heritage, when, in fact, it seemed to us to be more of a show of Turkish superiority (like, for example, items from the period when the Seljuk Turks conquored much of then-Persia). We saw the treasury, with lots of gifts from the (pardon the anacronims) Kremlin - mostly gaudy brooches in some permutation of snowflakeshape. And some other very pretty things from differnet areas and ages. But the most interesting (aside from the harem, which I will get to in a moment) was the religious artifacts exhibit.

Turns out that the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul is home to:
the "Saucepan of Abraham"
the "Turban of Joseph"
the "Rod of Moses" (that was my fav)
the "Sword of David" (and Mohammad and Ali and Abu Bakr and Uthman)
the "Arm and Skull of John the Baptist" (John the Baptist's arm is TINY! My friend says that it makes sense since he spent years being malnourished in the desert eating just wild locusts and honey. I believe her. She's Christian.)

the "tooth, hair, and beard of Mohammad"
the "door of the Kaba'a"
and other items which are too numerous to name here. The description of Biblical history - for those of you interested - was taken from the Quran. It had Joseph buried in Syria, Ishmael sacrificed instead of Isaac, and Hajar (!) as Abraham's wife instead of Sarah.

The Harem was awesome. You have to pay a second time to get in, but - like everyone told us - its worth it. First, its huge. Second, its detailed more like an English country garden than anything you might find in, say, Morocco. Turkish style tends to be more flowery, and their tiles more vegtetable than geometrical. And harem took all of that and just did it -- well. I am aware that any description I give will be essentially useless and fail so I will stop now. It was beautiful. Done.

My friend and I spent the evening listening to Turkish Sephardi music at a concert that we were graciously invited to by my fantastic freind Mandy. The music was great (I recorded the Ein Kelokeinu which was - yesssss - in Ladino! I hope my singing along didn't make it into the tape.....) And then afterwards we went to the "coffee/cocktail hour" (which was spelled - get this - on the program as "Kokteyl"...kind of looks like a Yiddish transliteration, eh?) and I ate dinner. A dinner of free wine and fingerfood. DElish.

I then took Kathryn (previously referred to as "my friend") to dinner at a hipster-French-Jazz-chillout cafe. I had tea. Five cups. Two bags. Really really good tea. The waiter was, to quote Kathyn, "enchanted" by me. He slipped me a note as we left that said "I like you : )" and had his phone number. He looked to be about 15 and 1/2. Cute.

Did I mention that it was pouring rain? Well it was pouring rain. But we made it home nonetheless. Even managing to meet perhaps the dozeneth person I've now met in Istanbul from Seattle. There are SO MANY of them. I met 3 students from Bainbridge Island, a bunch from Tacoma and then this woman from Whidby. I think its something about our extroverted natures.

Well this has been a lovely post. Its the morning now. I'm off to get on a boat and TOUR THE BOSPHORUS STRAIT, a place I found out about in 8th grade when I studied geography but never thought I'd actually get to see. It may be drizzling, but Halleluja its a beautiful day.

...Yokomoestro Salvador...

One of the downsides to Istanbul being such a modern city (which really really is, the tram system is great, the Turkish bathrooms everyone sqeams about are totally avoidable, and the Turkish culture is marketed much like it is in Marrakesh, only with more class) is that it means two things:

1) ALL hostels have motion sensor lights. This is a fact which makes doing things like walking to the bathroom and brushing your teeth impossible on Shabbat. So I found a hostel that was bit more expensive but had a single room that wasn't upstairs, and was instead on the ground floor where I would encounter no automated lighting but where I would trade that unfortunate appliance for an earful (and eyeful) of people eating at the restaurant adjacent to my window. As in, right outside. But it was OK- I left on the bathroom light. I stole Turkish Airlines silverware and bought nuts and bread and vegis and -- get read -- Happy Cow cheese!!!!! -- from the Egyptian market to my traditional Friday night sandwhich after which I executed my traditional Friday night read-alone-in-the-bathroom-because-that's-where-there's-light.

2) The Jews have seriously high-tech secuiry. I had to fax my passport to the cheif rabbi's office, along with my address and phone number, only to have the secretary call me and ask me "What you want". I told her that I wanted to go to synagogue. She directed me to one -- poorly, but I got there. I've learned to allow myself to get lost at least once whenever trying to get somewhere new for the first time. I made it just in time for Kabbalat Shabbat with my passport in my pocket.

About the passport: What a disaster. I had to leave it at the shul because, like Moroccan Jews, Turkish Jews are, well, er, more linient when it comes to things like electricity and eruv (which they don't have) on Shabbat. So they didn't care that I might have an issue with that - but I worked it out. I left it there. I left it with one of the men who seemed to be a gabbai-sort of guy who called himself, as he took my passport, "Bank Leumi" (the national bank of Israel). He is going to meet me tomorrow at a concert of maqamim that will take place at a differnet synagogue that I was already planning on attending. I know that, given my record with passports, this sounds dumb (yes, mother). But for better or worse, I trust my man, Bank Leumi.

So they don't have an eruv. But they DO say Mizmor Shir l'Shabbat with the tunes I know from home and sing Ein Kelokeinu in LADINO! I was so excited. They also do weird things like blow a kiss off somewhere when they say Barchu after Aleinu, rub their bellies when the mishebeirachs mention the word "refuah" (healing) and wave the air like they're sending off a spirit when they say something else (I forget -- it was weird). They were very nice, and as usual, some spoke English and some spoke odd broken Hebrew, but they invited me to their "seuda" on Shabbat day - so I went. Everyone got a plate of bourekas, two types of cheese, and a piece of cake. And lots of Turkish tea. Much better than the stuff on the street.

That "seuda" turned out to be the only food I ate all day since I spent the rest of the day across the Bosphorus reading in an expat coffeeshop reading with my boots off, meeting interesting people, and listening to a poetry reading by an Istanbulian from Maine that sounded (to my untrained ear) more like the ramblings of a sophomore-year fratboy rap with subjects like "butter" and "fruit salad" most of the time contianing not-so-subtle sexual innuendos.

So that was my Shabbat in Istanbul. Looks like my friend who was supposed to come in today had her flight delayed from Ireland -- so I'm solo tonight again and back in my cheapo hostel. We'll see what sort of trouble I can get into in a night on my own.

Can't Go Back to Constantinople

its ISTANBUL!!
And I'm back on the road, baby! Here we go again - ready for the unknown, the unmapped, and the unclear. I got on a Nesher taxi to Ben Gurion airport this morning at 6:45 am after a wonderful, much-needed two-week stay in Israel (many many thanks to my friends and family for hosting and caring for me! Shoutouts go to first, Shira M-H who opened her home, then, of course, to Livia, and finally to Leah, my fabulous cousin).

And now I'm a 3 minute walk from the Blue Mosque in a hostel called "Agora" that has free internet...AND computers, for those of us who have had ours stolen.

MORNING
I got to the airport and of course ran into someone I knew, had too much time to kill at the mall - I mean gate - and boarded one of the more sumptuous and international flights I have ever been on. Turkish airlines knows how to feed its customers. I think there are something like 20 options for your meal -- which you get, along with free alcohol, even on the 2 1/2 hour flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. I ordered the raw vegetarian meal. It is my expereince that Kosher meals are always - and without exception - a) bad, and b) meat-filled. So there we go. And it was nice -- lots of vegtetables, as you might imagine, but tastefully arranged. And with lemon to "dress". Which made all the difference, let me tell you.

AFTERNOON
When I said that the flight was international, I meant the following: Imagine the following is a diagram of people on the plane -- the white space is the isle:

ARABIC INDIAN-ENGLISH ARABIC
HEBREW me HINDI
ARABIC ARABIC HEBREW

It was cool to understand the majority of what was going on there.

Anyway, when I got to Istanbul I got money, a SIM card for my cellphone, a friend who gave me a t-shirt, got on a metro car with Moroccans (they were speaking Darija), transfered to a tram, walked past some of the coolest arcitecture I've ever beheld, and made it to my hostel safe and sound.

EVENING
Istanbul deserves a moment of reflection. Its astonding. Bizarre. And totally eclectic. And it seems to me that the Turkish language is the same way. It sounds almost Russian (its influenced by more Germanic languages in actuality, I think), it is in no way Semtitic but involves the use of all sort of Arabic-sounding words, some of which are direct transpositions from Arabic (the way you say hello, the way you say thank you)

I went to a cozy, homey place overlooking a hipstery street for dinner with this woman I've somehow managed to contact who is doing doctoral research here on Sephardi music. Lets call her Mandy. So I had another raw salad with lemon with Mandy -- and my first taste of Turkish tea. More like the Lipton of Egypt than the Na'ana of Morocco. But served in tiny, shapely glasses with single-wrapped sugar cubes. Afterwards Mandy and I headed over to a sort of posh underground cave-like restaurant where she smoothly talked (in Turkish!) our way in even though there is a set menu. I ordered us banana in honey. Yes, that was on the menu. The banana came in pieces drizzled with honey and walnuts. It had a lively taste. Just like our conversation, the music, and all of the Turks sitting around us singing along with the music. Every time they began to play new song I would start and sit up and listen -- thinking, dumbly, that it was some song the Seattle Sephardim sing, always to realize how its really just the mode of music I associate with SBH back home and not the songs themsevles of which there are thousands. It was beautiful.

NIGHT
On the way home I bought chestnuts. They had been roasting over a (sort of) open fire. Or probably the closest thing you can get to that. And I've never had a chestnut. They're more like figs than like nuts, it seems to me. Who knew? Then Mandy bought me orange-pomegranate juice. So good. And then I got back to the hostel and here I am, at 1am, wriiting to you, dear reader. Just to you. Since everyone as left this rooftop lounge in favor of their beds. I join them now and bid you adieu. Chok Sow for your attention (that's Turkish slang for "thanks"). And again - since there's no music this time I suggest imagining the Sephardi maqam of your choice (that one's for you, Mo!).

E(at/in), P(ray/rat), L(ove/o Lovshim Na'alayim)

At Ein Prat they both show clips of Elizabeth Gilbert (author of "Eat, Pray, Love", a book I purchased second hand today since I've now completed "Brief Interviews") and walk around at night over the gravely ground of their caravan compound without shoes.

Yes, MOST of them don't wear shoes. At all. But I decided. I'm going to go anyway. I may not fit in. Mostly because I'll probably opt for shoes.

I got there when it was dark. I actually arrived in the middle of dinner -- and discovered, almost immediately, that I knew two people there. This was convinient because I a) was feeling self-concious about my Hebrew that was all coming out Arabicized, and b) needed a caravaan (trailer) to sleep in. I attended a chug, night seder and, in the morning, daf yomi and seder boker. As I find myself struggling to classify the "feel" of the place and these experiences, I think the only thing that I can say with surety is that I know that at Ein Prat I will not only face linguistic and academic challenges (in both the horizontal and vertical directions), but also emotional and physical ones. For example, there's no place to do laundry. Ugh. But they do have horses...and camels. Priorities, I see, are in order.

Kfar Adumim (~300 families) and Allon (~150 families, plus the Midrasha) are settlements located just to the northeast of Jerusalem. They will probably be included in Israeli proper in any sort of settlment deal that Israelis and Palestinians may (inchallah?) come up with. But for now, it is still a part of the "occupied West Bank". But it is also located no where near any Arab villages. There are Druze who, err, nomad (if you'll pardon the use of the word as verb) a few kilometers away, but for the most part, the area is much safer than the settlement bloc south of Jerusalem where I spent my first extended stay in Israel. It's also a very differnet type of settlement - these are not religious Zionist settlements, per say. They were built by the labor movement, most notably by Yigal Allon, one of Israel's most famous generals. Hence the name of the settlement in which I will be living (Allon). Anyway, I'll spare you the political history and just say this: I am excited to attend this institution.

Ich Bin Ein

And that's right folks, you guessed it: I was in Berlin.
It was incredible. I think I was making up for lost karma. My plane had been late, but not too late, out of Paris. It was about 11:30 when I walked out of the airport weilding just my carry-on and headed for the TXL bus to downtown Berlin. I had 7 hours to be in Berlin and I was going to make the most of it.
My bus driver was great. He was a sort of Santa Claus(e) Figure (building on our right, I gave him the chocolate St. Nick I had stuffed in my jacket pocket after being handed it by the friendly-but-heavily-accented Air Berlin flight crew (a crew that consisted of three very gay, gracious men two of whom seemed very pissy at each other...wonder what that was about).

My bus stop stops something like 300 meters from the Brandenburg Gate, and as I'm walking I am realizing just how cold it is in Berlin. My feet are starting to frost. And then I see it: Starbucks. And I think to myself: "It has been too long, dear friend, too long" (to clarify my antecedents, the "dear friend" is Starbucks) SO -- I waltz up to the friendly building and look inside: Cozy would be the word to describe this place. Lots of tourists sipping Tall Hot Apple Cider With Cinnammon and Whipped Cream and Vente Chai Tea Lattes wtih Soy Milk and Extra Foam in 30% (or howevermuch) recycled cups, while American Christmas music seranades us all. The line was so long however, that I was almost detered. I actualyl picked up my bag to leave, but then turned back around after the door opened and I felt a gush of Berlin on my face. I had a Grande (!) Non-Fat Gingerbread Latte to honor the spirit of not-being-in-a-Muslim-country (read: The Holiday) and slowly began to venture outside when I was down to about 1/3 of my Holiday Special...

And then I heard it - or rather, I did a sort of double take with my ears as I thought I hadn't heard right he first time. "Free Walking Tour of Berlin, English, Spanish, German!" No way. Turns out I had stumbled upon the meeting point of a tour that was to begin in a quarter of an hour and last 3 1/2 hours. Pay what you want. So I did -- and I had a great time. I made friends, saw Berlin, and though my socks were soaked through by the end, and my toes were more or less ice blocks, I had a fantastic day. I got to see (in no particular order): the old W. Berlin Opera House, and the Book Burning Memorial across from the University, both East and West Berliner arcitecture, as well as the remenents of the wall, an open air market (quite clean...the contrast to Morocco was, well, absurd), multiple "Einstein Kaffe"s - a seemingly popular chain of Cafes in Berlin - Checkpoint Charlie, some Bansky graffiti, Headquarters of the Luttwaffe, Hitler's Bunker and the controversial 27-million dollar holocast memorial in the middle of E. Berlin across the way from the Reichstag (Parliament) building which, incidentally, has a dome on top of it so that "the Volk" who are allowed entry to watch the proceedings will remind the autocratically-tending German ranksters who is actually in charge. Oh and I almost forgot: there's also a place called "Museum The Kennedys" next to the Starbucks from which we departed. I found the name tickling.

That's all for now - I went to Ein Prat today, the place where I (and yes, I have absolutely decided) that I will be spending my next semester. I slept over last night. More later - running out now

A Brief Interview with the Latin Quarter

My plane was supposed to leave at 6:45. I got to the airport at 4:30. Lisa came with me (so nice!). We had had a hectic morning printing stuff, returning stuff, buying stuff (a carryon bag for me!) but it was a glorious day and my bags weren't too heavy now that I'd lost all my stuff. (ha.) And then my plane was late. It was now scheduled to leave at at 9:20. I sat down and ate some nuts. I got up and perused the duty free. I went to Zara and bought a skirt for a bat mitzvah that I'm going to the first weekend in February. I peoplewatched. I had no book. No music. No computer. I was bored. And then they changed the gate number. And a mass of moroccans moved from one gate to the next. I followed, slowly. Then they changed it again. And again. And finally - at 8:45pm - they opened the doors.

It was early in the AM when I arrived at my hotel, conviniently named "Campanlie Roissy le Mesnil Amelot", a name foreigners like me are bound to forget as soon as they read it. I arrived at 3am only to find that someone else had been checked into my room. My life is a barrel of laughs.

This morning I got on a shuttle to the airport from the hotel, met a guy from the upper west side (!) goes to Vassar, had been studying abroad in Paris, and had had his flight cancelled. Then I got on a subway to Paris. I got off in the Latin Quarter and spent the morning searching for a book. The first English language bookstore I went to was closed :.. ( so I went to a second. It's famous. Its called Shakespeare & Company, and I found a book. A book I'm excited to read. By David Foster Wallace. It is, I think, his most famous. "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is now my sole form of entertainment after my internet time runs its course in exactly 7 minutes.

Anyway, on my way to the internet café, I walked into a little grocery store (think makolet/hanut type) only to hear a radio broadcast in Arabic. So, of course, I started chatting with the patroness in Arabic. Oh it was nice to be understood again. And gave me directions in arabic to this place which, wonder of wonders, contains computers with English keyboards! Alhumdililah wa rabi yichalik!

Again, no music. Sorry - you have to suffer the loss of my itunes along with me. Sigh.

B'slama

My life is a strange thing. Actually its not really my life. Its my circumstances. My experiences. My changing state of being.

I've had this weird sense lately that stuff I've been wishing for has been coming true. I wished that my baggage would be lighter so I wouldn't have to pay so many overcharge fees when I get on my planes in a few days (it is totally uneconomical for me to ship stuff to either Israel or America). And then some shab (plural: shebab) stole my incredibly functional REI 65 L petite size...with all my heavy stuff inside of it. No matter that that heavy stuff consisted mostly of my macbook, its charger, and my sweatpants. Now I don't have to pay the 7lbs or so overcharge1 I also lost my ipod, its charger, my calendar, journal (you can't get that back), and...MY PASSPORT. But my bags are now lighter. And I hope that when this young shab opens my bag he will scratch his little mean head and think about how much of a favor he did me. And then he'll scratch it some more: A good deal of what was in there was in Hebrew.

And then - after I had alternated between the stages of grief and full-blown fury at myself for letting this happen (I had been asleep during the fateful event, covered my my Ouarzazate camel-hair blanket no less) - I wanted a shower. But I had no time for a shower. I spent the remaining hours to Marrakesh yelling at myself, talking (relatively) calmly to the ticket-taker-policeman on the train, and walking the length of it to make sure the bag actually wasn't there (it wasn't). And then I turned around, got back on the train (which I got to take for free...yaaayyy?), and went to Mohammadia, where I made some great friends. The Station Chief (prides himself on knowing all the important people) and the Chief of Train Police (who's role models are American boxers) became my saviors. We spent 4 hours together at the Mohammadia Police Station - a bathtub of a place where the slow flies that land on the single, albeit warm, computer scatter whenever anyone sits down or stands up. I paced some. The flies didn't like that. I don't think the Deputy Chief of Police did either. But he wasn't going to say anything, sitting there in his Mikey Mouse coat and double chin, pecking away at the keyboard with one hand in Arabic, only to print out four copies of a police report that I needed to sign, four times. And then he refused to give me one. I had to come back the next day to get a piece of paper with a stamp at a different office. There's bureaucracy and then there's Arabeaucracy. I think this was the latter.

So anyway, I had wanted a shower. I hadn't had a minute since Sat. night when I packed up my stuff to get it ready for my departure, and then left at 5am on Sunday morning to see Marrakesh (and some friends) for one last bash. And when I got back on Sunday night I was just too distraught to even consider it, getting up Monday morning and leaving for another Mohammadia/Casa run to get the stuff I needed to leave the next day. Anyway - they also stole my deodorant so life was greasy and smelly. And then it rained. No, no. It poured. I got to Casablanca after obtaining my Declaration of Loss from Chief Mickey Mouse after a good, long delay-of-train and a good deal more stress-of-Sheva (the Consulate opens magically at 1:30pm and then closes magically at 3pm...and it was 2pm)...it was bucketing. I got out of the train and ran to an overhang. And then ran to a taxi. I asked him to take me to Moulay Ismail (the street that the consulate is on) and he said no -- over there. I went over there. The taxis over there refused. They said - here. I went here. The taxi driver said: Across the street. There were no taxis across the street and by this time I was wet to the bone. Some cabbie had pity on me and stopped, but not before I had stepped in every puddle in Casablanca in order to get to his cab. Short Fessi leather jacket, long flowy (now dirty) skirt, non-water proof cheap-Paris boots. I was not prepared for this kind of shower.

Anyway, I made it to the Consulate, they were very nice (to me...a real American...not so much to the Moroccans who were standing outside in line, in the rain) and I got myself a passport that will last me a year.

Things I now regret:
Not drinking coffee at 5:30 before I got no the train.
Not putting my passport in my purse (duh).
Caring so much about my Mac. She was beautiful. But she's just stuff, like everything else.
Not writing my last Morocco post - which was going to be about growth, things I'd learned, how i changed, etc. etc. Mushy stuff. Maybe I'll write it some day. But for now...its still raining in Rabat.
Lots of other things but I can't go into them now because I have to go get myself some things from the medina before I leave this country (E.g. a carry on bag that will fit my heavy books and gifts, and, of course, deodorant).

No song today, folks, its just one of those days. And I have no itunes. B'slama.