Diyarbakir, Deportation

I was in Diyarbakir for just 5 days, enjoyed speaking Turkish for a change with almost everyone and understanding snippets of Kurdish, and spent my last day and a half with Burhan and his family, returned from mourning in the village. His two boys are now 11 and 8 (or maybe 9) and it seems like their personalities were fully formed last time I saw them at ages 5 and 2 respectively. Yusuf, the elder, is quiet and sensitive and embarrassed and Hüseyn is insubordinate and bold. I remember 2-year-old Hüseyn was the one to hit and bite and 5yo Yusuf the one to complain to his grandparents back then, and now it seems even their eight-month-old sister Şehrizad (an unusually Persian name that Hüseyn picked from a picture book) has learned that it is particularly satisfying to smack and scratch at Yusuf for the reaction it elicits. To Burhan's chagrin the boys understand Kurdish but always speak Turkish except with their grandma who doesn't understand  it.

The evening I spent with them we ate particularly good chunks of garlicky lamb prepared by Gülistan, Burhan's wife who was endlessly curious about how romances and weddings work in the US without a hint of the usual judgment that I'm used to whether Turks/Kurds are asking Americans or the other was around. Then they took me to Ceylon Karavil Park, which advertises itself as "The Largest Shopping Center in the East" and according to Gülistan is owned by a rich Kurdish family in the Netherlands. It opened only about 6 months ago, one of several huge Dubai-style shopping centers that has sprung up amid the towering middle class housing developments on the freshly-paved outskirts of the city. Posters promised an aquarium opening soon.

Do they have these in the US? A series of little primers with cartoons on big topics like the Enlightenment and Logic, most explaining intellectual histories chronologically and it seemed designed for the intellectually curious rather than for those cramming for exams or looking for a how-to guide like those Idiot's/Dummy's series. A nice idea they must have them in the US but I can't think of a time I've seen books like this, particularly displayed prominent on a rack at the front of the store.

Back in Istanbul last night Kaveh, an Iranian who has been living here for several years and whose couch I'm currently sleeping on, got a phone call from a Spanish journalist friend. A Colombian colleague of hers had been arrested the previous day and she was worried that he was about to get deported. Nobody at the station spoke English and neither of the journalists spoke Turkish. So we walked to the nearby police station to meet them. I wore a white tracksuit because its polyester was the only thing dry, clean and full length I had after doing laundry two days ago. Why don't they believe in dryers in this country?
The Colombian was sitting in an anteroom at the station. The story was that he had previously been deported from Turkey for illegally crossing into Syria for a story. Since then he had gotten a new visa through the Turkish embassy in Bogota and been assured that the deportation order had expired and returned here. However when two days ago he went to renew his visa, he had been arrested and told that there was a deportation order in his name. Someone had forgotten to update his paperwork.
In the station there was also a very upset French woman who had been robbed and a very friendly and relaxed--considering she was in a police station--Uzbek prostitute in sweater and fur-lined coat who walked right into our conversation circle despite not knowing English and explained to me in broken Turkish she was there because some boys had stolen her bag (but the Spanish journalist had chatted with her the previous day and laughed when I relayed this story). The Spanish journalist had brought a diet coke and a tube of snack biscuits for her friend but he refused, saying stoically that he would eat when he was released or when the Turkish police offered him food, which they hadn't despite him being detained for 30 hours now. The Uzbek lady happily took the biscuits and coke off the Spaniards hand, along with two cigarettes with a cheeky grin when the Spaniard offered her one. I wonder if they would take a volunteer translator: it is ridiculous for them not to have 24 hour English translators in one of the most touristy districts in the country and the experience would provide amazing material for a book or film I think.
The police allowed us outside for the others to take a smoke and Kaveh told the story of his first cigarette: during the 1997 student protests in Tehran he was arrested and amid beatings and bouts of boredom (one of the nastiest things they did in the always-lit prison was to give you food not according to any schedule but whenever you asked for it which made you completely lose track of time) an interrogator had brought him to the bathroom, stuck his head in the toilet and then handcuffed him to the stall and left him. After hours standing there a soldier had come in and discovered Kaveh and asked if he wanted a cigarette. If he had asked me if I wanted to be fucking in the ass I probably would have said yes, Kaveh told us. Any kind of entertainment.
Eventually word came that the Colombian had to report to the foreigner affairs bureau of the police for final processing but that he could expect to be released. Kaveh went with him in the back of a police van and I went for a beer with the Spanish journalist. She was worried that they would make the Colombian sign a false confession in Turkish that he had broken the law before they released him that they could later use to prosecute him. She had been in similar situations of detention in Turkey and China. She had worked in China for 10 years and complained to me that foreign journalists here--her friend included--tended to be much less professional and have both a cavalier attitude and very little idea of how to navigate local problems. The Colombian hadn't even had a phone number for his consulate or thought to contact them; instead he had called her when arrested because she is known as  competent. She complained that she can't get her own work done because helpless journalists are constantly calling her to help them sort their problems, everything from legal cases to paying utility bills. And she's only been here less than 2 years and doesn't speak the language.
In China there was a professional organization of foreign journalists with standardized criteria for membership that held regular meetings and produced documents for newcomers to reference about getting visas, what to do if detained, how to protect fixers and sources, data protection, etc. Here when foreign press club members meet, she said, it is mostly to get drunk and slap one another on the back for bravery in going into Syria etc.
Kaveh got back home at about 2:30. They had sat around and watched TV and befriended one of the cops and thank god the Colombian hadn't had to stay in one of the squalid cells willed with prostitutes much rougher than the nice Uzbek and drug dealers and other toughs awaiting deportation. The statement they finally had the Colombian sign had no confession of wrongdoing and he was released. He told us through red eyes last night that he's fed up with this country and will leave no matter whether he is deported or not, but we'll see.

death in the family

I've been in Diyarbakir since Friday. Burhan, a veterinarian who was incredibly kind and helpful a few years ago in introducing me to his tribe for a photography project, had offered to host me. But when I texted him saying I would arrive in a few hours he responded that his father's brother's daughter had committed suicide and he had to go to their village. Last night he came back to Diyarbakir and picked me up from his hotel in a little van smelling strongly of cow and told me no hotel tonight we'd go to his new home. He recently bought a huge apartment with all brand new appliances and not one but two şark odaları--literally eastern room meaning a carpeted guest salon with cushions or low couches instead of chairs. Over tea and walnuts and a kind of not-too-sweet green grape fruit roll-up that I'd never had before and whose name I've forgotten we caught up after all the years and talk politics and family. On hearing about the suicide I had reflexively wondered if it was something sex/honor related but from Burhan's account it was completely unexplained. She hadn't seemed depressed, nothing traumatic had happened, she'd just taken her father's pistol and shot herself in the head. She was in the hospital for four days before dying. 17 years old. We had to get up early the next morning because her older brother was arriving from out of town at Diyarbakir bus station. They hadn't told him that she was dead, just that he should come back from university because she was sick. Burhan seemed surprised when I told him that where I come from we immediately tell people over the phone; the thinking here is that it's better they hear about it when together with loved ones than all alone and that telephone isn't an appropriate medium for the communication of such important information. There had actually been some debate as to whether to tell him at all or let him find out when he came home for vacation. But he was coming and Burhan wasn't sure whether he should tell the brother right away or let closer relatives do it when they got to the village, an hour away. Burhan overslept in the morning and he was waiting in the cold when we pulled up to the bus terminal. Burhan said a few words of greeting in Kurdish as he got into the back and I said hello and after a few minutes of driving Burhan said I was from America and the brother said welcome and then more silence. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me before seeing his face that if this is the usual way siblings are informed he probably already had figured it out. They dropped me off near my hotel and Burhan and I made plans to meet again when he's back from the village with his wife and kids, who stayed there with much of the extended family in mourning while Burhan came to Diyarbakir.

Book Fair

I went to a huge book fair on the generic outskirts of town. I tend toforget how gigantic the city is and how all the housing developments and malls along the outskirts look completely interchangeable until I get on the commuter bus and pass them by for an hour or two.
The venue was a massive set of interconnected warehouses and the visitors (at least the most visible ones) were mostly horrible children on school field trips. The variety of book stands was dizzying; literally: I got a headache and completely lost. Across from a children books stand with a bare-breasted woman on the cover of a graphic novel next to a Che Guevara poster was the Ministry of Religion's section and Muslim self-help books. Laz, Georgian, Kurdish minorities had their stands (a teach yourself Kurdish book was the only thing I ended up buying) and organizations with names with every permutation of Ataturk History Culture Organization had their biographies and icons. One kiosk had a giant sign "We are Ataturk's Soldiers." Their neighbors sold a Gallipoli battle board game. There was even a Falun Dafa kiosk and a Turkish woman in a bright yellow doing slow-motion meditation exercises. As I passed a couple random schoolgirls ran up to tickle her sides.
In two of the warehouses was an art fair with far fewer visitors. I have to admit the thing I remember best was a Campbell's Soup can labelled Ottoman's Condensed Kelle Paça (sheep's head soup).

I'm going to Diyarbakir tomorrow. It's been a few years and I am trying to refresh my memory about the city layout from Google Maps but what's left of the map in my head has landmarks of the breakfast and meatball places I liked, the adidas outlet and the cool little network of chambers I found in the ancient city walls with little sense of distances.

Acı Soslu Demokrasi

I was still at least a kilometer from Taksim Square when my nostrils began to tingle, then my eyes. Is there a protest up ahead? I almost asked a couple coming from there but decided that was a stupid obvious question. A few people I passed in the drizzle of rain were squeezing at their noses and a couple headscarved women had covered their mouths and noses, but other than the street kids who coughed deeply and rubbed at their eyes as they held out tissue packets toward me once I got to the square nobody seemed to acknowledge or mind. The cafes along Cumhuriyet Caddesi had packing outside and empty inside seating and the Syrian refugee families who now line the north side of Gezi Park--home to a string of restaurants and bus companies before redevelopment but now just concrete--sat as usual on the sidewalk with their children scampering about them. There was no protest in Taksim, no police presence even. And the gas didn't seem to get any stronger as I got closer to the square, as if they had bombed the city with so much that it had gone up into the atmosphere and was now drizzling down evenly and lightly across the whole area. As I passed the square toward Cihangir a stooped man in a gold hassled green Ottoman getup stepped out from one of the Turkish Delight shops and asked me Where are they squeezing? or Where are they fucking? Tarlabaşı? (sıkıyor or sikiyor I didn't hear--same meaning in this case) I said I didn't know. Maybe the protest was in Tarlabaşı and the wind blew the tear gas through Taksim down Cumhuriyet--I should check the news.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as hair removal poster boy

I saw this ad on the top right for hair removal products and recognized the photo from 2001 and took a screen shot. The caption says "those hairs won't fall out from just waiting". It has since made the news:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/04/turkish_hair_removal_ad_uses_al_qaida_s_khalid_sheikh_mohammed_photo.html
I wonder if the US government could sue for copyright infringement--if I remember correctly this was the official photo the DoD or whoever released when he was captured.

Santralistanbul

I went to Bilgi University's Santral Istanbul campus today to meet with a professor. I'd been there once before, for a music festival a few years ago, and it is one of the coolest looking campuses anywhere. It was the Ottoman Empire's first power plant--the control station is now a museum--and has a steam punk industrial look to it.
Here's the main building is in better weather than today:

And here's my new roommate:

I'm in a fancy place in Cihangir because a friend of a friend is renting the room and willing to do so by the week. This is good for me because I may go to Diyarbakir in the next few weeks. But increasingly I think I'll just stay in Istanbul this trip because it has taken me the past month and a half just to make real progress in getting the right connections with journalists and fixers and many of the foreigners at least will have left by the time I return next spring and so I will have to start from scratch in some ways. The new (human) housemate is super nice but I may look for cheaper accommodations outside of the Foreigner Village as Cihangir is unaffectionately known, somewhere I can buy a newspaper and speak Turkish.

Protest, Gloom, Geopolitics

I happened upon a little demonstration in front of Galatasarayı High School on İstiklal Caddesi a few days ago, I think just before news started coming in that the Islamic State’s advance into Kobani had floundered. There were maybe a hundred people gathered around a core group that sat on the ground wearing Human Rights Organization vests and passed around a bullhorn to speakers. ON one side were about 50 police with a crowd control armored vehicle mounted with a water cannon—a common sight in that spot. What I found more remarkable that what the speakers, including a CHP parliamentarian, were saying was the presence of clumpy line of youngish men in leather jackets, many with beards, who gathered across the street and glowered at the demonstrators. I didn’t see any weapons but a couple did have walkie-talkies. This reminded my a bit of Iran 2009: if you have regular police there what do you need plainclothes thugs for plausible deniability when they attack? I stood to one side (I was waiting for a friend to finish up and the gym so had a bit of time to kill) and nothing happened; the demonstrators dispersed quietly after a while and then the thugs followed suit.

The friend I met that night, an Iranian polyglot who first fled to Turkey in 2009 for political reasons, and another friend, an American who has lived here since 2004, both seem thoroughly sick of living here. I’ve always though of Istanbul as a place I could live long-term but these friends are among the most integrated of expats I’ve met here–both married Turkish women and speak the language well and work outside the expat bubble—are both are constantly complaining about the constant struggle with bureaucracy and even more so with petty cheating and short-term thinking—e.g. the greengrocer one buys from regularly always trying to slip him one rotten tomato to add extra weight to the package even if it means: it’s like prison, rape or be raped, the American told me half-seriously. His landlord is constantly trying to screw them over, raise rent, etc. instead of being happy that he found a good quiet couple in a not-so-good neighborhood. In Jenny White’s new book she mentions surveys including this one from OECD that Turks have extremely low levels of interpersonal trust. As far as bureaucracy, the Iranian friend has had enormous trouble with things like getting a bank account and credit card and residency despite working in IT for a big Turkish company and marrying a citizen.

Both friends are planning to move out of Turkey ASAP.

Despite all the editorials from the US and UK blasting Erdoğan for passively watching as Kobani was attacked, I’m fairly sympathetic to them not wanting to actually invade across the Syrian border. It was never really clear what they were expected to do once they had cleared the Islamic State out of the area and I think it certainly makes sense for Turkey to keep a trump card in reserve. IS could definitely start launching suicide attacks in Istanbul and ruin the country’s tourist economy—I suspect they have been hesitant to do anything beyond recruiting in Turkey because Turkey appears to still be on the fence and IS doesn’t want to provoke them further. I’m also sympathetic to the Turks’ demand that the US devote more resources to overthrowing Assad or at least preventing him from concentrating his forces on bombing other Syrian rebelgroups now that the US focus on IS has freed up resources for him. The CIA itself reports that the US has a miserable track when it comes to achieving its goals by arming rebels and it is unclear what, beside a continuation of the profitable (I don’t agree with a lot that Scahill says in that linked interview, but certainly IS is very good business for Lockhead et al) Forever War, the US sees as an actual end goal in Syria. After a glimmer with the ouster of Maliki in Iraq that the US would back those who governed inclusively rather than just anyone who helps them find and kill enemies, it seems like the US is just going back to the same old failed policies that helped the Taliban rise from the dead in Afghanistan by helping a still-brutally-sectartian government in Iraq. As long as the Free Syrian Army kills those it claims are IS, I suspect the US will turn a blind eye to whatever other nastiness it does. My point is, by insisting on tying the overthrow of Assad to anti-IS policy, it seems to me like Turkey is at least thinking more than one step ahead, unlike the US.

That said, I think that all the little stories about the Turkish military intentionally but inconsistently inhibiting the transit of Kurdish fighters across their border, letting some YPG and PYD fighters die waiting to cross, preventing PKK fighters from crossing into Syria while sending some non-combatants back there, show stupidity in sticking to old failed ways on Turkey’s part. Not at least stepping back to allow Kurds to go in and defend Kobani hurt the peace process with the PKK (which of course many in Turkey’s military and state are happy to see undermined) and led the bloody protests in the region. And anyway, why not let the PKK go into Syria with their weapons and die fighting IS instead of attacking Turkish gendarmerie posts? Turkey got very lucky that, despite gloomy predictions from everyone I talked to as recently as a week ago, Kobani did not fall, that US airstrikes seem to be enough help for them to push back IS. Kurds in Turkey would certainly have blamed and retaliated against the state if the city had fallen.

errr

Most of the journalists I had ridiculous dinner with last night thought the Islamic State fuss is overblown. Kobane is just an excuse for the Kurds to bail on the peace process and go back to their violent ways, they said. Americans criticizing Turkey for not saving Kobane don't understand that it's in a different country where Turkey has no business--that was interesting I don't think there's any confusion about Kobane being on the Syrian side of the border but that was their claim. Another was that whenever there's a revolution there's a radical phase when lots of people are killed violently but the Islamic State isn't really that different from Saddam or especially Khomeini--things will settle down. This of course ignores that they are anti-nationalist with inherently irredentist territorial claims and are doing their very best, e.g. by blowing up and bulldozing ancient ruins, to completely erase any non-Islamic forms of identity for their subjects, quite unlike Saddam or the Islamic Republic of Iran. One made a silly argument that the US had come up with the label ISIL to scare the region because Levant suggests that they are expansionist when really the project is limited just the a chunk of Iraq and Syria (Sham is probably indeed better translated as Syria than Levant but the Islamic State has since dropped the IL/2nd IS from its name in a pretty clear signal that it claims the whole Muslim world). I don't think I got my points across as the two main talkers were incredibly arrogant and much more interested in talking then listening. Whatever I said the one whose English was worse (I spoke mostly English both to better express myself and because red wine was crippling my Turkish) kept doing a masturbation motion with his hand and saying Oh yeah baby sure -- that was his response to several people on a wide range of topics and I wasn't sure if he actually understood what I was saying (fair enough, I'm in his country speaking my language, but the constant jerking off motion was a bit weird and distracting).
There were other conversations/arguments too, mostly about progressive politics and rich people deserving their money and I don't think I convinced anybody of anything. Anyway I woke up annoyed this morning.

Jesus fuck I just spent more than $100 on a bullshit foo foo dinner with a group of Doğan Media journalists. These are not your classic frumpy working class ambulance chasers.
Although the American filmmaker I had a few teas with before the dinner was telling me that film people here always invited him to the fanciest Nişantaşı cafes for $12 cappuccinos but after a while he realized they were mostly living hand to mouth but still spending big money to maintain the appearance of success e.g. when pitching a foreign filmmaker on a project. I don't think this is going on though as I don't really have anything these journalists was such they they need to impress me. This seems just to be their lifestyle.
I need sleep this is second time I've been drunk here on this trip. First time last week was much more comfortable not red wine but moonshine "boğma" ("strangulation") fig and grape moonshine that a photographer's friend had brought from Antakya.

Kurban Bayramı

The feast of sacrifice/Eid al-Adha begins tomorrow, so everyone will be off with family and businesses closed. A good time to sit down and write my dissertation proposal I suppose. 

I’ve been reading Jenny White’s book “Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks” and was thinking how her portrayal of incredibly polarized identity markers and claims about Others and “enemies within” the country that paper over actual variety in ways of being Turkish and Muslim is a bit alarmist. It’s not unusual to see mixed groups, especially of young people, with “conflicting” identity markers—headscarves, bleached blonde hair, che guevara shirts, etc.—walking laughing arm in arm. Then I fell into a first political conversation with my landlady and she was checking off boxes on White’s list of ridiculous claims and taxonomies sentence by sentence. Claim that the AKP pays girls to wear headscarves, check. Claim that the US are actually behind the AKP, check (she was a Gezi park protester so Erdogan has implied the same about her and her ilk [there was an amazing headline in a nationalist tabloid the other day proclaiming Ivan Something, a CNN reporter, was “messing with Hong Kong too”; suspicious no, how American journalists are always there when “local” protests are being stirred up? Like how there are always firemen hanging around fires—put two and two together, people!]). Likening the AKP to the Islamic Republic of Iran, check. We actually got to talking about politics because I had mentioned noticing a lot of Iranian tourists around and she said Yes they have been coming a lot in the last few years, paused for a second, and then launched into a diatribe about the AKP without any segue. I guess the obvious connection is that the Islamist AKP invited Islamist Iranians to Turkey as part of their plot—never mind that the Iranians who come to Turkey tend to be middle class and secular-minded or that their version of Islam has very little to do with the AKPs. There were others but I’ve forgotten—I should ask if she thinks the AKP are crypto-Jews. UPDATE: Another one: she prefers to speak English with me but during this conversation she was having difficulty and I was translating words for her and sometimes repeating myself in Turkish. Ugh, she grimaced, I can't do this. Speaking part English and part Turkish is wrong. It doesn't feel good, she said. Abhorrence of hybrid cultural forms (she has no problem with English when it is purely foreign, only when it is polluting Turkish), check.

I’ve been sitting in a fancy cafe in a cafe neighborhood writing this and three fancy women were the only other customers here on the upper floor. A cat (the waiters seem to know her, though she may well be feral) came over and pooped on a shelf right next to them at face level. The ladies squawked and the waiter simply moved them to another table and clean the poo and sprayed a little Lysol. The cat went on climbing around and making mischief with impunity. I really really like the way the ferals and pets here.
UPDATE: Today 10/4 sitting reading on a bench near fisherman at the edge of the Bosphorus, I saw a cat dart forward and grabbed a fish about a third its own size from one the the fishermen's buckets. They all just laughed as it escaped and one threw a sardine to another cat that had watched the abduction jealously.

sundry updates

Very dreary rainy weather the past 3 days

There seem to be lost Syrians wandering all over the city. So far I've been asked directions on 3 different occasions by a total of 5 young men speaking Arabic and not a word of Turkish, English, or French. Only my interaction with the most recent pair was long enough to glean that they were in fact Syrian.

SKIP, TOO BORING:
I'm reduced to punching my text messages in using the number pad on the flip phone my landlady lent me. I had figured it would be no problem using the unlocked GSM smartphone I brought but apparently the Turkish government didn't like people buying cell phones cheap abroad to avoid the high value added tax on electronic here and so makes you register any foreign phones or else it shuts them down after 3 weeks of use with a Turkish SIM card. For that registration you have to visit a police station, another govt office to get a personal tax number, and the cell phone company office and pay about $80, which is approximately what my beat up but useful smartphone is worth in the first place (I got one with a cracked screen and slapped on some duct tape to hold it together, figuring that in Afghanistan the crappier it looked the better to avoid unwanted attention). I could have used my phone for another few weeks but it also had the strange problem of not receiving texts from some numbers--perhaps by design to encourage me to register my phone sooner rather than later. In retrospect I should have just stuck with my iphone using local Vodafone service at an exorbitant rate. The SIM card itself was after all expensive: about $20 compared to about $3 in Afghanistan (down from $100+ in the mid-2000s, the Afghan cell phone guy told me).

In Istanbul

Research wasn't going well in Afghanistan and I decided to cut my losses and come to Turkey. On a more basic level I decided I just didn't want to be there, always feeling under siege even if nothing big and scary was happening. I flew out of Afghanistan via Dubai and spent a few hours between flights liking the place for the first time. People of different genders and colors and languages all walking around (I got luckier this than last time in my random choice of neighborhoods to walk around--I ended up in Al Karama, an area with lots of pedestrians and Indian restaurants and not enough money to make me feel awkward) not bothering each other, clean streets, guns and body armor not ubiquitious...it was a nice change. I played Gears of War on an electronics store Xbox while a little boy watched and then tried to unsubtly suggest it was his turn by leaning against my leg and then standing between me and the TV. Then I went to a South Indian restaurant and followed my dosa with their specially fulooda to meet the credit card minimum.

I think I am done with a certain danger-seeking part of my life. Sorry Afghanistan, I tried but just don't love you don't want to live in you.

Anyway I am in Istanbul and it is wonderful and clean and friendly with well-cared-for street animals. I went to a jiu jitsu class last night and got my ass kicked. Maybe the nicest thing was that I wasn't treated as either novelty or special needs student in the class--Oh, you're from the US? cool. You understood the instructions, right? cool. And then they could get on with kicking my ass. The purple belt I first paired with submitted me at least 8 times in a row in a 5 minute perio with the ankle lock that is--if I have one--my own signature move.

Herat

Yesterday I spent the morning being a tourist and then the afternoon talking with journalists. A sociology professor here has been serving as my unpaid fixer and the previous night we had driven past the first radio station where journalists agreed to talk with me and seen lots of police about. The professor thought they must have a high-ranking guest but it turned out that somebody had tossed a stun grenade over their wall. When I visited they were talking about how the police chief had accused them of doing it themselves in order to build a case for political asylum for themselves. They said this was a way for him to play down the security threat but acknowledged that other journalists had done such things.

Everyone except the hotel manager who insisted that lots of tourists foreign and domestic are still coming to Herat (I saw only two other guests--Afghans--during my two days staying here) told me that security has gone downhill in the city in the past year. People stay home much more and order delivery; once-crowded restaurants are now empty.

Today I gave a talk about a paper I wrote (looking up that link just now I realized I gave the class the wrong URL) in Persian and it went fairly well in the end. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to print out the script I'd written for myself because when we arrived at the department it turned out the internet wasn't working so I couldn't download the document I'd emailed myself. We waited around for about 25 minutes with no change and then I asked what time the class started and the professor said Oh, 20 minutes ago. He sent an assistant to teach what was left of the class (advanced theory) and we went to the main administrative building where internet was working.
The sociology department is only a few years old and the faculty all have masters degrees and teach 3-4 classes each semester in addition to doing all the admin work. One thing they have is job security--the professor was surprised when I told him that increasingly US universities rely on adjuncts and lecturers without job security. Once you get a teaching job at a public university here, he told me, you can pretty much keep it as long as you want. It's almost unheard of for anyone to get fired. I wonder if it's different at the private universities that have been springing up in all the big cities of Afghanistan.

The class was about half male and half female, the women all in enveloping patterned chadors and the men mostly in a mix of suits and buttoned-down shirts. Men sat on the (stage) left and women on the right. Again I was the only one in a shalwar kameez, which always amuses.
Walking to the department I was one male student in a teeshirt that read,
F CK
all i need is u

The bike and motorcycle parking lot of the university:

The castle Arg (that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail must have an extra inside joke for Afghans):

in Herat

Last night's Iranian-like chelo kabab. They give you more rice than 2 humans could possibly eat even in one sitting.

I've agreed to give a little lecture in Persian to a sociology class at the university tomorrow, which I'm absolutely dreading. I'm torn between preparing for that and sightseeing.

A fascinating article

On cross dressing in Afghanistan in global historical perspective: Underground Girls of Kabul

Vefa Kilisesi revisited

Here's what I hope is close to the final form of the video about the 1st of the month church in Istnbul from last year (see July 2013 posts):

Bibi Mahru Hill

                                

I walked up Bibi Mahru Hill today to see up close the giant Afghan flag, a gift from India, that they raised yesterday. The wind was misbehaving so no shots of it waving gloriously but you get an idea of the scale and of the dust cloud that hangs over the city from the photo on the right.

 A large mustachioed soldier yelled at me for walking on the grass. I heard shouting behind me and then realized everyone was staring at me. I turned around, ""Oh, should I not take photos?" (everyone else was) He ignored the question. "Do you rent your house or do you own it?" He asked. I stared at him blankly. "It's a question," he said "Do you rent your house or do you own it?" "I rent it." Ha, he guffawed to the other soldiers. "This boy is a renter. It's obvious you're a renter because otherwise you would know that when you own something you shouldn't mess it up." He gestured to the grass patch I had walked through and I finally got it, then realized I had walked back onto the grass as I approached trying to figure out what he was going on about. I stepped back and apologized profusely. Few people seem to care about such things here but those who care really care. A friend of a friend was driving me home the other night and refused to run red lights. He was the only one and everyone else honked. "I'm the only one in this country who cares about the rules. Even the police tell me 'Go, go.' I'm not going. I'm going to teach them all."

The caption reads:
The National Army
The National Power
I don't know what ad agency or ministry came up with that design, but it looks to me a bit like the little girl is begging for her life. Nice butterflies though.

I didn't take a picture of the empty Soviet-built olympic-sized swimming pool with its series of ever-higher diving boards that were apparently popular for executions during the civil war. This one I found on the internet (credit Elliot Woods):



It may qualify as a Thomasson unless its function is in preserving national memory.

Happy Massoud Day

It is the 13th anniversary of anti-Soviet anti-Taliban Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud's assassination by Al Qaeda (not coincidentally 2 days before 9/11/01) and the streets are full of police checkpoints and men driving around in packed cars with huge Massoud portraits covering their windows and the black-white-green tricolor of the pre-Taliban Afghanistan state and Northern Alliance flying. Apparently they are firing off guns in celebration in some places, but I never know what is distant gunfire and what are construction sounds. Apparently this happens every year and isn't to do with the still stalemated presidential election (although according to the twitterverse some Massoud supporters have been chanting pro-Abdullah anti-Ghani slogans).

Destroyed Soviet armored personnel carrier

UPDATE: According to the Ministry of Interior, one person has been killed and 5 wounded so far by celebratory gunfire. I'm surprised there aren't more casualties from falling bullets.

man spa

I went to a fancy pool/sauna with one of the karaoke guys and two of his friends last night. All three are rich young businessmen in shiny suits and it occurred to me as we changed that I look like a fucking peasant next to them in my cheap shalwar kameez and kafiyeh.
For about $10 per person we got a huge pool, two water slides, jacuzzi, steam room, sauna (which they call dry room--they refer to the whole place as sauna), kiddy pool (which one of our number, who couldn't swim and didn't trust the strap then kept coming loose on the orange life vest he borrowed, prefer but was kicked out of), and a clever rubberized bracelet with a metal iButton that opened a personal locker.
They seemed to know half the people there (FYI the average weight of Afghans as in most of the world--with the US as an exception--is positively correlated to their wealth) but at the echoing poolside my Persian comprehension fell to about 3% and I returned to the sauna several times because that was the only place I could understand the conversation (the pace of conversation also seemed to slow in there). I've found that once you start trying to socialize in foreign countries the some of the first slang you learn is the expression to be bored (here "degh avardan"--I have no idea was "degh" means by itself -- google translate says "percussion") because everybody is worried that you aren't having fun. Upstairs after swimming we ate mediocre overpriced shwarmas (my impression is that there is absolutely no correlation between the price and either tastiness or healthiness of food in this country) in a room with less echo where I could participate more and join in joke telling. A new one I heard:
An Afghan goes to the US for the first time and when he comes back his friends ask him was he thought of the place. It's such a developed country, he replies, Even little children can speak English.
My story went over well about how when I first went to Tehran I quickly learned the shared taxi system: you shouted your destination as the taxi passed and if going your way it stopped for you. But I was puzzled that whenever a prospective taxi rider called out "mostaqim" he/she was picked up. So I took out my city map and looked all over for Mostaqim Square, wondering why all the taxis went there. Mostaqim means straight ahead.
As most who become friendly do they made fun of me for my Iranian accept. You sound like the BBC, one said, "Good evening, this is London," he mimicked sing-song girly Farsi. ouch.
We got back to the locker room and one of the new friends showed me that he had 15 missed calls from family on his phone and a text from his sister saying that they were all very worried. He called back and was dressed down for not telling them of his plans beforehand--here when you don't pick up your phone people assume the worst, he told me.


This climate doesn't make sense. It's so dry and dusty yet fruits and mosquitos thrive like few places I've been. I've been slapping 10-20 mosquitos daily and sprayed my room and the bathroom with some very toxic stuff that didn't seem to put a dent in their population. I do however  recommend the 3M ultrathon repellent lotion I've discovered on this trip.

new friend (cont)

Wahid, the little housekeeper from my former guesthouse, stopped by yesterday not for a social visit but to inform me that he'd quit his job at the other house and hand me a copy of his CV. Apparently he worked as a welder for a Turkish construction company from the ages of 14-16. Also he worked for Blackwater (since renamed Academi) for a couple years; he biked over to their base to drop off a CV before visiting me. I posted an ad on the "Kabul Survival Guide" online bulletin board advertising his services as a chowkidar (literally: one who has a chair) and handyman but doubt anything will come of it. Postings per day on the site are far lower than 2 years ago.
Wahid said he'd bring me the momlayi he'd promised to get delivered from Badakhshan in the next week (which I thought was the purpose of his visit). He swears by it as the best remedy for back pain. I wonder if it would be a mistake to try to bring some back to the US through customs.

election

The electoral commission here announced that they would complete the audit of ballots tonight, so we may have an announcement of results and even a new president here tomorrow morning, after an election that has dragged on since April. There are a lot of jokes out there along the lines of Ghani being inaugurated in 2050 at this rate.
Yesterday on a visit to a think tank I pored over some copies of ballots that the Abdullah team had presented claiming them to be written by the same hands. I don't know what they were getting at--the handwriting looked distinctive on each of them--different ways of writings s's and n's, different angle of writing,etc--and those were the one's the team had cherry picked as examples. I was surprised actually--I'd taken it for granted that both sides in the election have been right about the other side cheating.

Kabul Karaoke

Can you believe this is Kabul? My new friend asked. You must think you've gone to America.
Some of the songs sung by my and the only other group present sounded completely Bollywood but with Persian or Pashtu lyrics. The other group got up and left during my Desperado, though I'd like to think that was coincidental and they nodded and smiled sympathetically to me on their way out.

Today

I think I'm going to stay indoors today. Today is the deadline that Dr Abdullah's faction set in their ultimatum that their demands for the audit of the presidential election be met; otherwise they have promised to pull out of the electoral process. And the rumor is that Karzai intends to vacate the presidential palace today because it is the day he set for the inauguration of the new president. I had dinner with a journalist last night who had just visited Karzai and asked him about the rumors. He replied that everyone was advising Karzai not to leave the palace because it would create a power vacuum and invite a coup. But he didn't say Karzai agreed with everyone.
If Karzai does leave the palace it will be perfect timing for the Taliban to launch as many attacks as possible on both Ghani and Abdullah's factions and generally to paralyze the capital in order to foment political chaos. Chaos in the central government can only help the Taliban comeback.
So I'm going to stay home and read and check Twitter often and hope that I'm being alarmist and that nothing happens.

UPDATE: I was being alarmist. I'm going to Karaoke.

New neighborhood

I've moved out of Taimani/Qala-e Fatullah, where a mix of middle class Afghans and mostly small NGOs and news offices are hidden behind high walls, to Wazir Akbar Khan, where embassies and larger NGOs and news offices are hidden behind even higher walls.

Here are some sheep eating garbage. General/VP Hopeful Rashid Dostum's heavily-guarded mansion with its pink-tinted windows is just behind me around the corner. This sums it up pretty well.
It's a bizarre mix of extreme poverty--trash pickers and mud brick hovels--and McMansions owned by the nouveau riche (read: warlords) or rented by foreign organizations. The AP was paying $18,000/month for theirs last I heard but they recoup some of it by charging other TV stations to use their balcony for broadcasts because it has a good view of the area including the US embassy that is most often hit with large-scale attacks.
Despite the wealth the roads are still some of the worst unpaved and jagged rocky in the central city. Maybe this is by design for security because it forces everyone to drive very slowly.

Here's one from one of the fancy new malls that's opened up in the past 2 years since I was here for fair and balanced reporting:

finer points of conversation

One cultural nut I have made absolutely no progress in cracking is phone answering etiquette. No matter what I do I end up with a long confused silence. I have no idea what's expected of me. When I call people here they answer Yes? and wait for my response. I introduce myself and ask how they are before moving on to what I'm calling about. So far so good.
But when I'm on the receiving end, I answer Yes? and they say Hello. And then silence. I try to fill it with Hello, how are you? or Hello, go ahead. These responses are met respectively with Fine, thank you, and then silence--or Just Silence. Today I let this silence run a few seconds and he asked confusedly who he was on the phone with. Was I supposed to identify myself upon answering the phone? They never do. And the caller hadn't identified himself and it was a new number. What the fuck? So I identified myself and he said something to the effect of Oh, it is you...and then more silence. Then he switched to English and somehow that allowed us to go on with the normal conversation: he was so and so I had email him we could meet soon etc etc.
I have yet to receive a phone call from an unknown number that didn't follow this general pattern. Maybe I'll start answering Hello who is this?

Journalist Safety Committee

I sat in on an interview (not because I was invited but because I didn't gracefully leave the room in time) about a report on attacks on journalists in Afghanistan from a local group that's based itself on CPJ and RSF. Maybe the most interesting thing is that they found only 11% of attacks were by the Taliban. Their explanation is that the Taliban in fact want to retain good relations with journalists and have found that killing journalists works against them. They want publicity, ASJC's officers said. When journalists call Taliban spokespeople they answer on the first ring; journos have to call government ministries repeatedly just to get the official line. After prominent journalist Sardar Ahmad was in the wrong place and the wrong time and gunned down with his wife and children in an attack on the Agha Khan's Serena Hotel in March, a large group of Afghan journalists boycotted any coverage of the Taliban, which ASJC says the Taliban recognized really didn't serve their propaganda interests. When another journalist was killed in a suicide attack a few months later, the Taliban issued a statement of regret.
The government is another story. According to ASJC, big politicians and especially warlords/governors out in the provinces all have their own TV and radio stations and newspapers so they have less need or patience for independent journalists.

The interview was weirdly reassuring actually--there have been fewer and for the most part more predictable attacks on local journalists than I had assumed/thought from reading occasional news.

ASJC is looking for foreign interns, by the way. Spread the word.

Bush Market

I walked to the mostly empty Bush aka Obama (formerly known as Brezhnev) Bazaar today and bought a couple pairs of shoes. Apparently they've fallen on hard times with less and less falling off the back of American trucks as troops withdraw and Chinese knock-offs filling in inventory. If the ones I bought are knock-offs they are excellent ones--they came boxed and tagged and appear identical to pictures of the models I've found online for about 4x the price.

The market seems a great place to sock up on bulk cleaning supplies, cooking oil, etc. They sell boxes of a dozen Clif Bars (only chocolate chip, chocolate peanut crunch, and crunchy peanut butter flavors though) for about $3.50, though they are almost all recently expired. I guess Clif shipments have ground to the halt as part of the US military drawdown. When I asked about fresher bars because the whole stack he had were dated 14 July, a teenage shopkeeper played ignorant but them as I started to walk away said Wait, I can get you 24 September bars. He couldn't find any in the end though. I do regret not buying the one box of 14 September bars I found--that's like a 90% discount off of bodega prices.

a new friend

I think I may be stirring up insubordination at the guesthouse.
It started when I insisted Waheedullah, the short 22 year old Hazara house keeper, join me for dinner yesterday evening. Soon he was trash talking the newspaper staff for treating him generally like dirt and never letting him eat a meal with them. Recently the journalist mentioned in my previous post heard gunfire from a nearby wedding celebration and thought it was an attack and locked herself in the steel-walled safe room. It took Waheed some time with his limited English to coax her out. It says a lot, I think, that she didn't immediately let him in to take shelter with her if she thought they were under attack.
Then I told him, honestly, that I'm moving out soon because they charge $50/night at this guest house. He was incredulous--I didn't ask what percentage of that they give him. He's supporting a big family: six sisters, a mother, and a father who can't work because his knee was destroyed by a bullet and subsequent botched surgery received before they fled to Pakistan, where Waheed spent most of his childhood.
Then I mentioned that I am into martial arts to steer the conversation in a light direction and he first responded with an anecdote about a Panjsheri (READ: arrogant Tajik) cracking him with a clean left hook (one of several scars on his face) because Waheed had bumped the Panjsheri's pickup truck with his bicycle (the police then showed up and shook Waheed down for money--Shiite Hazaras don't have it easy). Then today he asked me for some martial arts instruction. I showed him one sambo move and introduced him to the wide world of mma videos. He asked me not to mention martial arts or that he exercises in the gym to the cook, his boss. Apparently the landlord forbade Waheed from working out after Waheed knocked down the cook for slapping and haranguing him for laziness one day when Waheed was sick from heat and Ramadan fasting.
So basically I'm doing all I can to encourage him to fight and disrespect hierarchy--evident already in that he drafted me to spend about 2 hours last night installing and running antivirus software for him. He's not the first Afghan I've given tech support and none of them have made any effort to hide their porn collections--not sure if that's from lack of know-how or because it's nothing to be embarrassed of.

A few pics of Friday recreation in Shahr-e No park:

I didn't get one of the boys chasing each other in flip flops around the perilously wet top of the tanker.

They are very South Asian in their cinematic tastes around here. I got my beard trimmed on my way home and at the Salon of Hair Reform they had a Bollywood action flick playing. I watched nervously as the hero was beat up in a barber shop and the villain slashed his face with a straight razor while minions held him down.

A swarm of schoolgirls:

I spent much of the day walking around the city and the only visibly foreigners I saw outside armored vehicles were a group of Chinese men in a shop. Seems those expats left are hunkered down even more than 2 years ago. I took a look at a room for rent and from my conversation with the current resident it seems that it's a renter's market now, with landlords trying to fill vacancies that haven't had since the boom days of the Obama surge.
You get an idea of the doom and gloom here. I must say that photo at the top of the article is ridiculously captioned, suggesting that what my best guess is a teenage boy trying to play soccer without getting dust in his eyes is an insurgent who targets foreign civilians.

Friendship Fail No 2

In a second attempt to befriend my American journalist housemate, I waited around to eat with her after the house cook brought in a huge pile of rice, entire chicken, soup and salad (the latter of which I avoid while my stomach acclimates). Finally she appeared, said Hey, ladled half the soup into her bowl, and disappeared back into her room to type and make phone calls. I sat at the dining table alone and ate. A few minutes later she returned and, in the 15 seconds during which she fixed a place of rice and chicken and grabbed a diet coke, grumbled that she was supposed to have her farewell dinner with friends tonight but an emergency story has come up and there goes her last evening in town. I've never once sat at that table, she said of the dining table as she walked away. Minutes later she was on her cell again rushing out to let someone she's now interviewing into the guesthouse. Perhaps I did right choosing grad school over journalism.

Back in Kabul

I'm back in Kabul to begin dissertation research on local fixers/interpreters who work with foreign journalists. Here's the view of Dubai's skyline in the distance:

And of the hi tech entertainment station Emirates provided on my way to Dubai:

What a fancy airline. On my first flight, New York-Dubai, a kid sitting behind me was restless so a flight attendant came over and handed the kid his personal iPhone ('my iPhone, a thousand dollars, I give it to you') to play with until in-flight entertainment system kicked in.
On the second flight the attendant-passenger relationship was more acrimonious because of the disobedience and/or lack of English comprehensive of many passengers. A flight attendant would pass by and force a seat back upright for takeoff/landing and then moments later the passenger would sneak a glance over their shoulder and then decline right back. Hissed and repeated requests to sit back down and not access the overhead compartments as the plane banked steeply for landing were casually ignored.

I'm staying in the lovely green expensive guesthouse of a US news organization for the next few days until I find something affordable and equally inconspicuous. The idea is to meet some people who will let me observe them as they work but thus far I have managed to earn an only exasperated sigh from the one journalist I've met so far (over my inability to connect to their wi-fi) but have done better chatting with the Afghan driver and housekeeper.


If just tuning in to this blog, you will find below stories not from Kabul but from Istanbul last summer. There are more posts and pictures from Afghanistan if you navigate back to summer 2012.