Mensch!
On the long day before a set of flights home to Colorado, I helped with a Halloween party in a private Austrian school. My favorite child, Phillip, with a perpetual … Continue reading
This Too
He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant thing that he had forgotten had happened to him. -Flannery O’Connor. Wise Blood. (Photo from … Continue reading
Next Stop
As usual, stops were not announced on the train. People familiar with the route rushed the hallways as we pulled into a station–or the last scraps of one. The train … Continue reading
There’s No Place Like The Last
Basically, like nine-tenths of humanity, I always wanted to be somewhere else, in the place I have just fled from. -Thomas Bernhard. Wittgenstein’s Nephew.
Not Helpless
I was trudging home from an English lesson with my astounding student, an asylum seeker and former child soldier from Sierra Leone who had the most remarkably shy smile. He … Continue reading
This is Grimm
The movies are onto the search, but they screw it up. The search always ends in despair. They like to show a fellow coming to himself in a strange place–but … Continue reading
You Can Read Over My Shoulder, But You Can’t Come Along
In the shuttle bus to the airplane, I break into scraps of conversational Turkish with a group of teenage boys from Kahramanmaraş. Even the boldest among them–a boy with smooth … Continue reading
Say Peynir!
From a spot in Gülhane park, one can keep a clear sight of the lines of people posing with the Atatürk statue. A bronze figure on a stone base, he … Continue reading
Scrawling On…
An author’s fondest dream is to turn the reader into a spectator. -Vladimir Nabokov. Despair.
Welcome Home
Long blonde ponytailed-twentysomething balances on her wedge shoes and tugs her jacket over her leggings and looks as angry as she had in our excessively hot airplane. She waites for … Continue reading
Why Read?
Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men … Continue reading
En Route
It’s a travel back the the States day, a “get on the bus to the airport at 8:30 am Istanbul time and hope to catch the shuttle home at 9:30 … Continue reading
Hand-Holding, Skeletons, and Snacks
Whenever I remember that I have a skeleton, I get a wave of anxious queasiness. In science classrooms, I would cringe at the bleached construction of what allegedly resides under … Continue reading
Underline.
Read sparingly but ardently. That way you’ll look far more knowledgeable than those who read a great deal but enjoy nothing. -Orhan Pamuk. The Black Book. (One might even trade … Continue reading
French on Film
Two French tourists in white running shoes jogged yet another lap through the park packed with visitors. Actually, not jogging so much as springing in an animated walk. Even on … Continue reading
Safe and Sorry
An elderly woman in a headscarf lined up the start of YMCA, arms outstretched, but there was no one else to finish the chorus. Preparing for the 2 am flight … Continue reading
The Rush
In Kreutzberg, on a street of hip shops and Indian restaurants and postcard stands, a young boy with wavy brown hair hurries down the street. In winter, the sidewalks are … Continue reading
Nice to Meet You
His mother always started up a conversation with the other people on the train. She was like an old bird dog just unpenned that raced, sniffing up every rock and … Continue reading
Love Can Also Be Restless, Ferocious.
I know now, what I didn’t know then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways; and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for … Continue reading
Pick Me Up
The Taksim bus station, night and day, hosts chaos. Buses line up and depart from four doubled-up lines and feature the soundtrack of air brakes and honking horns. Pedestrians, as … Continue reading
The Nice Thing About Strangers 