After much work and a few days--mostly wonderful except when we wandered the cruiseship port of touristic hell of Kuşadası and were told by a roided-out bouncer that there was no room in the visibly empty seaside douche club with the only beach we could find--of escape to the Aegean coast, we left behind Mother of Love. I'm staying in İstanbul (expertly using an internet cafe's Turkish keyboard, as you can see) and Brett is back in New York. So back to work, interviewing journalists and fixer for the next month before maybe going back to Diyarbakır. August there will be a sizzler.
I moved into a bedroom in a basement apartment two days ago and for the first day the only thing getting on my nerves was the roommates, Americans expats who refuse to admit they are out of America except to complain about the natives. They seem to eat Pap John's pizza 4 nights a week and haven't learned more than Right Left Stop (for taxi drivers) of Turkish after well over a year of being here, which they compensate for by speaking loudly and patronizingly to make their English understood, and as I'm discovering by enlisting me to be their unpaid interpreter. About 15 minutes after I entered the apartment one handed me his Turkish-language contract as a university English teacher; he wanted me to confirm that he would be able to sit around and do no work for the next month and then give one month notice in time for his vacation in the Philippines without legal/financial penalty.
So maybe it is so for best that my ceiling started leaking water at 1am last night and I noticed for the first time the black mold infesting that corner of the room, in the last straw was piled on without much delay and I am getting out of here. In the meantime I am still translating, now with a very unpleasant landlady and the Syrian family upstairs--only one member of which speaks more than a few words of Turkish--who have insisted on doing all the pipe and ceiling repairs themselves rather than involving the insurance company. I must wait another week to escape because my other option for a bedroom, with another American but one whom I have known a while and trust and with whom should have stayed to begin with, has now been occupied for the present by his girlfriend's visiting friends.
I moved into a bedroom in a basement apartment two days ago and for the first day the only thing getting on my nerves was the roommates, Americans expats who refuse to admit they are out of America except to complain about the natives. They seem to eat Pap John's pizza 4 nights a week and haven't learned more than Right Left Stop (for taxi drivers) of Turkish after well over a year of being here, which they compensate for by speaking loudly and patronizingly to make their English understood, and as I'm discovering by enlisting me to be their unpaid interpreter. About 15 minutes after I entered the apartment one handed me his Turkish-language contract as a university English teacher; he wanted me to confirm that he would be able to sit around and do no work for the next month and then give one month notice in time for his vacation in the Philippines without legal/financial penalty.
So maybe it is so for best that my ceiling started leaking water at 1am last night and I noticed for the first time the black mold infesting that corner of the room, in the last straw was piled on without much delay and I am getting out of here. In the meantime I am still translating, now with a very unpleasant landlady and the Syrian family upstairs--only one member of which speaks more than a few words of Turkish--who have insisted on doing all the pipe and ceiling repairs themselves rather than involving the insurance company. I must wait another week to escape because my other option for a bedroom, with another American but one whom I have known a while and trust and with whom should have stayed to begin with, has now been occupied for the present by his girlfriend's visiting friends.
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