The Church Flirt
The church is freezing, though it isn’t particularly cold outside. Suddenly even attending Mass seems an exceptionally pious act. The tourists walking through blow steam from their lips. They clasp … Continue reading
En Sonunda/Finally
Friday in Istanbul and a surprise: The Reason I’m Learning Turkish took the day off so we could hang out. Yay! *Beam!* Still, I like that reading habit you’re rocking … Continue reading
Relieved
A stray dog circles the rather vacant beach. Lean and leisurely, he weaves around people sunning themselves like he’s a bored security guard. He heads for an unattended pile of … Continue reading
Linger, Loiter
The pair meets in the Kültürpark, a space filled with palm trees, joggers, idle folks napping on benches, doing Sudoku on benches, staring into space on benches. A grandfather takes … Continue reading
A Warning for the End of the Wanderlust
I would become a respectable person. I left the university, trained for my father’s profession, went abroad to get a better grasp of things, then went home and worked hard … Continue reading
Overhead
Still not moving–thirty minutes after the departure time. Passengers check the clocks on their cell phones, sigh, slap their legs, make utterances in their native tongues. When the bus to … Continue reading
Hats Off
He tumbles, his small souvenir fez cap flying. The boy and his younger sister had been running down the cobblestones by the Archaeology Museum in Istanbul, dashing on ahead of … Continue reading
Visas and Patience
He took the window seat and buckled himself in. His adult daughter shuffled belongings around the overhead compartment and gave commentary on her discomfort. He nodded at her words, not … Continue reading
Neighborly
The eleven year old girl on the bus moves over to sit in front of her mother. This way she is now in the row across the aisle from me, … Continue reading
Double Date
The couple ducks into the restaurant–the doorways give them plenty of clearance, but they bow anyway. The host shows them to a table and the woman takes the chair facing … Continue reading
On The Move
Whenever he was en route from one place to another, he was able to look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual. -Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky … 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.
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
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
The Bold and the Apprehensive
The couple boarded the plane extremely late and toting five carry-on bags between them. The flight crew looked the other way. He opened nearly every overhead compartment in their section … Continue reading
Shoulder to Shoulder
On the winding road down the Croatian coast, a couple gazes toward the turquoise sea one usually only glimpses in movies. She sighs, ”We’re driving in the clouds.” But he … Continue reading
Personal Space
At mid-morning, the U-Bahn platform was nearly abandoned. The young woman with ceaseless layers walked to her usual waiting place and stopped. From this point, her transfers to other subway … Continue reading
The Nice Thing About Strangers 