go hiking Josh Turkey is an excellent place for hiking. To mention just a few possibilities: Some friends of mine raved about the hikes on the Lycean Way near Fehtiye. The Kaçkar Mountains are supposedly brilliant places for hiking. Kapadokya has plenty of fantastic places for hiking. Deep in the southeast (near Hakkari) there are supposed to be some stunning hikes too. Have a great trip!
Enjoyed the blog I'm from Liverpool myself and I thought your entry was excellent and I'm glad you enjoyed your time in the City
If you listen to other people (not from the city or who have never been) they have you believe its a shit hole and dangerous I'm glad you didn't believe the hype and seemed to enjoy yourself
Did the Sayyida Ruqayya Mosque have neon signs like that cathedral church thing in Moscow did? The one that used to be a pool (and if it had already come to that should have just stayed a pool).
Last play you were in you played a psycho killer HS teacher... Now George Bush... How does dear sweet ol' creepy Jim get stuck with roles such as these?
I certainly hope the hotel babushka wasn't anything like museum babushkas.
marshrutka is sorta a Russian word!
I'm very happy that you haven't let it die completely ;)
Merhaba Jim! Go Jim! Thanks for all the vicarious trips! Your stories and pictures are awesome. I feel like I vacationed in Kars this weekend too! I really liked the story about Yaprak and her family!
Enjoy, take care, and keep us posted!
anne
Tickling babies usually gets them to listen their grip a little. I would recommend this course of action next time you are faced with the challenge of baby vs technology.
compassion and empathy Cheers for your comments. Batman and Ani, right on. I'm not shocked to discover that I am on the same page with you guys. I've certainly come to realize over the years that people in all corners of the globe do not judge Americans using the American government and its policies as a yardstick. This situation is of course no different. I think it is the fact that the war is still very much a defining part of everyday life in Iraq that made me percieve this situation as more intense, more personal. Zainep has family there now, including her mother who went back and got stranded because the Baghdad aiport regularly shuts down. Some American friends of mine were there not long ago, as soldiers. With thoughts like this in mind, when all Zainep and I knew about one another were each others' nationalities, it was hard for me to feel comfortable.
And Masha, I'm sure you understand that my criticism of the war is in no way meant to forgive any of Saddam's atrocities. It is incomprehesible that such a monster was able to sieze power for so many decades. His sins are vast and unforgivable. Still, our world is ruled by monsters. It is hard to argue that Iraq is better off now than it was before this war. As the newspaper reports progress and improvements in Iraq, it seems to me that things are shifting from very, very horrible to perhaps only very horrible. We've taken a country f1lled w1th people l1v1ng under an oppressed system and somehow made life there much, much worse.
The shame is not mine, but it remains a shameful situation.
ani says... i have many thoughts on this but i tend to think ani difranco says them better than me... i thought of this part of her song "animal" as i was thinking about this:
And there's this brutal imperial power
That my passport says I represent
But it will never represent where my heart lives
Only vaguely where it went
Cause I know when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You learn that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
it's a bit idealistic, i realize, but i think there's truth in the need to think of ourselves outside of the labels that others might use to define us. so you're american. that can mean whatever you want it to mean.
My Arabic prof is from Iraq. He told us how before he came here he and his family, along with other Shiites in some town (whose name he wouldn't mention) were part of an underground rebel group who fought against Saddam and his troops - his house was the headquarters where they stored weapons and fed the fighters. Apparently during one of the uprisings, when he was just in HS, he was shot in the leg by one of the government troops. A little later Saddam attacked the city full force and he was forced to run with his family and drive a car-full of people and stuff even though he didn't even have his license yet... They only took his mom's pocketbook and a few bags of flour because they were so sure they'd come back, but every time they would move the government forces would advance on them so that they could only go further away from home - part of the problem with this, though, was that during the uprising 2 of his brothers disappeared so that they farther they went the less likely finding them became. They traveled in the desert for 3 months and finally came to the border with Saudi Arabia where they found a bunch of American troops who sent them to a refugee camp. Unfortunately the Saudis who helped 'guard' the camp were Sunnis so they weren't too friendly. For some strange reason a few months later the Americans just up and left, deserting the refugees in the hands of these guards who constantly abused them and randomly killed people. They had to build houses out of mud and go to school under a huge tent where they would get laughed at because 'there was no point in studying if they were all going to die anyway'. Somehow 3 years later he managed to immigrate to the US and luckily his 2 lost brothers somehow turned up too (his story got a little fuzzy at this point). It was completely insane and mouth-dropping for us to hear this because looking at him you would NEVER imagine that this is what he came from - not only does he look like a 10 year old with a bunch of out of place wrinkles but he's always smiling and laughing about everything.
I guess Jima, I understand your guilt and you know that I hate what this country is doing/has done over there as much as you... But you have to remember that their own government has hurt them pretty badly too, along with other Arabs in the area. Unfortunately Iraq got a really crappy deal left and right by some really strange turns of fate. While your guilt is understandable, just remember that it isn't ALL on your American back.
As weird as this sounds, I would say, cheer up, you really have no part in the actions of the American state. Probably you and I have about as much to do with what the American military does as we have to do with what the Chinese military does. I'm not just talking about the vote, either; I'm not saying that you (or anyone) is not responsible for what the Bush administration does, just because you didn't vote for him. Maybe you did for all I know, although judging from this entry I would say the likelihood of this is "low." I guess I would say that the vote itself is more of a token or an illusion that we usually think it is. We are sort of put in a situation where, under duress, we must choose between two very bad alternatives. It's like when Batman is forced to choose between saving his girlfriend or saving his sidekick. This never happens, but if hypothetically Batman was only able to save Robin, we would probably say that it was not Batman who killed his girlfriend, it was the villain who set up the whole demented situation. We are told from a very young age that the state is the people, that we are all joint participants in self-rule, cogs in a grand democratic machine. This is in some small way sort of true, but I think it's more accurate to say that we are subjects of our government than co-rulers of our government. Another way of looking at this is to see that no action you could have taken before March 2003 would have prevented the American military from entering Iraq.
You seem to be self-identifying as an "American;" "Americans" invaded Iraq, you're an "American," and so you're responsible in some way. My thought is, you and I are part of the American people but not the American state. I hope I do not sound like too much of a conspiracy theorist when I say that the state (pretty much every state, around the world) makes an enormous effort to propogate a grand lie, namely that "I, the state, am the people." States come and go, often quickly and violently; what endures after such a coup is the people. I would not hold yourself any more responsible for the war, than I hold my Chinese friends responsible for their government's actions in Tibet, or than you hold Zainep responsible for what Saddam did to the Kurds. Much more appropriate than shame here are simply compassion and empathy. I always prefer to relate to people on the human level, and compassion (in the Latin the word literally means "suffering-with") is a more profound and even sacred force I think than anything to with guilt or responsibility.
Great pics, as usual! Hey, Dima, check out this site James found:
http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=50672
He's a musician, I believe from Istanbul - have you heard of him? The music is really beautiful!
Love your pictures - looks like you are having a great time! And midterms ALREADY? Time does fly!
C'mooooooooooon Sheesh Jima, update already! I'm melting into the floor of boredom in VT and constantly look at your site in hopes of entertainment, sadly disappointed every time. The bonds of mayonaise require that your provide me with amusements of sorts!
ok, i think i owe you an apology for my words because they were a bit harsh. "hostility" is a very unpleasent word and i dont want to be known as a hater. sorry for that. what i think about "türban" issue is that people should be free to wear it. thats a person's own choice. but in our country some people force others to be what they want, which is smth i am opposite of. i think that people should respect other peoples opinions, political thoughts, religions, ethnicity. we should be really free to express our opinions not partly. but this is not possible and i dont think it will be. welcome again
tamam
Jim Kuras
go hiking Josh
Turkey is an excellent place for hiking. To mention just a few possibilities: Some friends of mine raved about the hikes on the Lycean Way near Fehtiye. The Kaçkar Mountains are supposedly brilliant places for hiking. Kapadokya has plenty of fantastic places for hiking. Deep in the southeast (near Hakkari) there are supposed to be some stunning hikes too. Have a great trip!