Research is going well. Last week I had three very productive meetings and this upcoming week looks to be busy. Increasingly I think it will be necessary and realistic for me to include reportage of the Syrian war as one of my focuses. The market for Syrian fixers is much more in flux, much less routinized or professionalized than within Turkey and together with the fog of civil war seem to come murky journalist-fixer relations. Stories abound of journalists and fixers trying to feel out each others' secret allegiances and affiliations, of fixers desperate enough to make a buck and journalists desperate enough to win awards to take crazy risks and report factually shaky stories, as well as of mutually exploitative romances in which ambitious journalists shack up with and get free labor from fixers who in turn sway those journalists from reporting to activism on behalf of factions those journalists do not well understand.
Luckily I am realizing that many of the Syrian fixers working in Turkey are regularly in Istanbul so I will be able to interview them without going anywhere near the border. The big cities--Antep, Urfa, Adana--in the region are said to be safe and are indeed teeming with foreign journalists and aid workers, but the little towns on the border like Akçakale, Kilis, and Suruç where much of the reporting is done are less so, and I don't miss the tight feeling of always being on the lookout, wondering what could be about to happen, that I lived with in Afghanistan.
In other news, I am moving on Tuesday to better lodging in Beşiktaş and have found a gym very near to it. I went to my first thai kickboxing class there on Friday and it was excellent. Many students do not come during Ramadan (as opposed to the kickboxing club I attended in Kabul, at which all the students attended evening class despite all fasting--or claiming to--for Ramadan) so there were just 3 of us plus a teacher and I got about an hour of one-on-one instruction to shore up the fundamentals I'd forgotten. I wish Ramadan would last a few weeks longer.
Luckily I am realizing that many of the Syrian fixers working in Turkey are regularly in Istanbul so I will be able to interview them without going anywhere near the border. The big cities--Antep, Urfa, Adana--in the region are said to be safe and are indeed teeming with foreign journalists and aid workers, but the little towns on the border like Akçakale, Kilis, and Suruç where much of the reporting is done are less so, and I don't miss the tight feeling of always being on the lookout, wondering what could be about to happen, that I lived with in Afghanistan.
In other news, I am moving on Tuesday to better lodging in Beşiktaş and have found a gym very near to it. I went to my first thai kickboxing class there on Friday and it was excellent. Many students do not come during Ramadan (as opposed to the kickboxing club I attended in Kabul, at which all the students attended evening class despite all fasting--or claiming to--for Ramadan) so there were just 3 of us plus a teacher and I got about an hour of one-on-one instruction to shore up the fundamentals I'd forgotten. I wish Ramadan would last a few weeks longer.
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