A Chapter from Shrinking Oases of Useless Eaters

As published at SubStack, 2/25/24:

[sniffing glue by the Golden Horn in Istanbul, 12/22/15]

There’s a Vietnamese saying, “Seances produce spirits, sweeping generates trash.” For a month, I’ve been compiling books. Since this entails going over old articles, some dating back more than a decade, it’s been an excruciatingly humbling process. A lot should have been said much better, with some not at all. The more I edited, the more there was to clean up. Since this process can easily take up several lifetimes, which I may or may not have, I’ve had to stop prematurely and arbitrarily to, simply, fling out books! Since they’ve caused almost no ripple, not much harm has been done, so all is well, I suppose.

To those few who’ve read or sent supportive messages, I thank you. You’re in the most exclusive of clubs!

Just as a carelessly cooked meal is an affront, so is a sloppily composed article or book. So I’ve tried, but that’s what they all say, and so what if conditions were far from perfect? Much sturdier men have composed after being tortured, shot, bombed or starved. Here I am lounging in a cafe with a cappuccino. Cooled by a sea breeze, I leisurely weigh a comma.

At the corner of 15th and South in Philadelphia, there was a used bookstore, Factotum, with this on its sign, “Here I am book assembling, for to have many it is a pleasant thing.” Undoubtedly, I’ve butchered it, for it’s been two decades.

In Vung Tau, I’m still slapping books together, so here’s a chapter from Shrinking Oases of Useless Eaters, to be released, unleashed or dumped in coming days. Although it has been tightened up, with a few vignettes added, no political observations have been slipped in with hindsight, for that would be cheating, no?

Turkey’s Weasel Problem

12/27/15--I came to Turkey with German pork sausagesfor a Jewish couple living on Burgazada, an island more than an hour away by ferry from Istanbul. These retirees from Boston intend to be buried in their adopted country. In Turkey seven years, they've learnt the language well enough to become Turkish citizens.

Teaching two classes in Leipzig, I could only hop over during Christmas break. A college drop out, I’m no academic, but when asked to be a perfesser anywhere, I’ve always say yes, not just for the income but the chance to spend a few months in an alien environment. Most people hate to be displaced. I rather love it, though perhaps not permanently.

Maybe I just like to get lost. In Blood and Soap (2004), I had written, “He loves maps for their own sake, it is true, and when he shouts out while pointing at a random destination, ‘I want to be there,’ he is not expressing a desire to be anywhere, particularly, on this great earth, but only a wish to be a fiber, a speck at most, on an intricately-folded, colorful piece of paper.”

Traveling without a cellphone, so no Google Maps, I had some problems locating my tiny hotel on a side street in the dark and cold. Immediately, Istanbul impressed me with its gravity and grandeur, seasoned by so much history. I had entered a fable.

Its latest twist, though, portends disaster. Turkey has just shot down a Russian plane, killing two Russians. This makes no sense until one realizes it was abetted by Uncle Sam, to scuttle Blue Stream, a gas pipeline from Russia. America is also trying to block the extension of Nord Stream. In Ukraine, the US-directed coup was another attempt to interfere with Russia’s gas export. Clinging to what's left of his hegemony, crazed Samuel may blow up the entire world.

Say, is there a bigger weasel in world politics than Recep Tayyip Erdogan? With him, a yes may be a no, and a warm hug is a prelude to a backstab. On September 23rd, Erdogan went to Moscow for the opening of the grand Cathedral Mosque, partly built with Turkish money. While there, he called Putin “dear brother.” Shaking the Russian leader’s hand, Erdogan also grabbed the man’s elbow, so overwhelming was his affection. (I’m reminded of how Berlusconi used to lean all over Bush.) Just two months later, Erdogan had that plane shot down. After crowing over this stunt, the weasel then blamed it on his air force chief, Abidin Üna!

As with any recent US President, Erdogan's words are just flourishes. Shameless weasels all, they arm, fund, train and do business with terrorists while pretending to fight terrorism. Triggering a horrible refugee crisis, they pose as protectors of these poor wretches swarming into Europe or begging in Turkish cities. Of the 2.3 million Syrians in Turkey, only 261,000 are in refugee camps. The rest must fend for themselves. Most are penniless, unable to speak Turkish and legally prevented from working. These Syrians are only slightly better off than the stray dogs and cats you find all over Turkey.

Next to Turkey, Lebanon has the most Syrian refugees with 1.1 million, Jordan with 633,000 and troubled Iraq, incredibly, with 245,000. Remember that 250,000 Iraqis fled to Syria after the US devastated that country. Now Syrians are escaping to Iraq. Americans seem unfazed, though, at their country’s status as the world’s leader, by far, in destroying other people’s homelands, when not killing them. History will curse our casually Satanic behavior. With each farcical election, we enthusiastically vote for another mass murderer. America has become a nation of cold-blooded butchers.

As the left shout “refugees welcome,” the right cynically pretend refugees are merely economic migrants or potential terrorists. Almost no one is urgently demanding the US, EU, Israel, Turkey and the Gulf States stop their criminal war against Syria. With all these players ganging up to terrorize and destabilize it, a massive refugee crisis is inevitable.

In Istanbul, I found Syrian mothers with infants silently slumped on sidewalks. I saw entire families huddling in the cold. Not used to begging, they whispered meekly. Shooed away by shop owners, many occupied poorly lit, less trafficked spots. I saw a lone child of about eight on the concrete, looking stunned. He was trying to sell three packets of tissue paper. Street cleaners swept around these human detritus.

Many had plastic sleeved signs, “WE ARE FROM SYRIA / GAN YOU HELP US!!! Thank You,” “I AM FROM SYRIA / PLEASE HELP,” “PLEASE / ME AND FAMILY NEED HELP / (WIFE AND 3 GIRLS) / WE ARE FROM SYRIA / WE CAME HERE BECAUSE OF WAR / WE HAVE NO PLECE TO BE SAFE / THANK YOU / MAY GOD HELP YOU / HELP US,” etc. They showed passports to prove they’re really Syrian. Like most Americans, however, many Syrians never had a passport. Fleeing war, others have lost all papers.

On Cadirci Cami, I stumbled upon a couple with two kids, one an infant. It was freezing. Plopped on the ground in darkness, they had a sign, “WE ARE FROM SYRIA !! / WE SLEEP IN PARK / CAN YOU HELP US !! / THANK YOU.” He showed me his passport. Staring at me, she picked up an empty box of Bebelac powdered milk and shook it twice. With no shared language, we couldn’t talk. After giving them some cash, I tried to indicate I would return shortly with more, but they were gone when I came back.

Living so precariously, many Syrians naturally dream of escaping to Europe. Greece seems so close, with Lesbos right there. In several Istanbul neighborhoods, stores stock inner tubes, life jackets or even boats for Syrians. These bright orange symbols of survival dangle outside grocery and hardware stores. You can get an inner tube for just $5, and the most suspect life jacket costs 15. It’s estimated 5,000 Syrians have already drowned in the Aegean Sea. That’s nearly 1% of those who’ve attempted to reach Greece.

Syrians have no legal status in Turkey and their children born there are stateless. Politicians have threatened to send them all back home. Riots have already broken out, with Syrians assaulted and their store windows smashed. Turks, one must remember, are adept at the wholesale removal of an unwanted people. Their Armenian and Greek populations, once so numerous, are almost entirely gone. Their expulsion of Greeks came in a population exchange after a Greek invasion had been repulsed, so Turks shouldn’t be blamed, but the Armenian Genocide that killed 1.5 million is a huge black stain on the Turkish soul. Turkey still refuses to acknowledge it. Turks also murdered or chased out nearly 300,000 Bulgarians in 1913.

A poor Turk, though, sees no reason why he must compete against Syrians working illegally. More than a third of Turks must survive on just $343 a month, the second lowest minimum wage in Europe. Unemployment is over 10%. In Mardin near the Syrian border, it has doubled within four years to at least 21%, with the increase blamed on the Syrian influx. There are also constant complaints about crimes committed by refugees. Staging war against Syria, Erdogan has brought social chaos to his own country.

A graffiti in English, “fuck israel REAL TERORIS.”

One in Turkish, “DEATH IS AFTER YOU WHAT YOU GONNA DO… A LIFE OF FAITH AND JIHAD…” [“ÖLÜM SENIN PEŞINDE SEN NEYIN PEŞINDESIN… HAYAT IMAN VE CIHAD…”]

By the Golden Horn, two teenaged boys sniffed glue as ferry commuters hurried by. Like most Turks, they were neatly dressed. I noticed scavengers of plastic and glass pulling heavy carts with huge, tent like bags. Roaming all over at all hours, I spotted almost no homeless Turks, however. I did run into an old man who slept sitting up with his feet wrapped in white trash bags, fastened to his calves with yellow strings. He refused to take my money. For a city of 17 million, Istanbul has almost no visible homeless population save its war refugees.

Besides Syrians, Turkey also hosts many immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Bulgaria. Wandering through Kumkapi, formerly an Armenian neighborhood, I encountered many people from Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East. At numerous call centers, signs display dozens of flags, with per minute rates posted for Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, Iraq and Cameroon, etc. At night, African whores lurk and smile, while in adjacent Laleli, Ukrainians, Romanians, Belarusians and Russians are available.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, thousands of Natashas flooded in. Bewitched, some Turks even dumped their dark haired wives. I asked a whore with dirty blonde hair if she was Turkish. Guessing my preference, she declared quite unconvincingly, “Yes, I am Turkish girl!”

Though street walking is illegal, prostitution itself is not. With some restrictions, producing pornography is also kosher. There's not even an age limit to its consumption. Way ahead of other countries, homosexuality was legalized in 1858. Unusual for a Muslim nation, Turkey also makes a fine pilsner, Efes. Beer is widely sold.

Writing in 1963, Paul Bowles tied beer drinking to Westernization and perhaps even to democracy:

Alcohol blurs the personality by loosening inhibitions. The drinker feels, temporarily at least, a sense of participation. Kif abolishes no inhibitions; on the contrary it reinforces them, pushes the individual further back into the recesses of his own isolated personality, pledging him to contemplation and inaction. It is to be expected that there should be a close relationship between the culture of a given society and the means used by its members to achieve release and euphoria. For Judaism and Christianity the means has always been alcohol; for Islam it has been hashish. The first is dynamic in its effects, the other static. If a nation wishes, however mistakenly, to Westernize itself, first let it give up hashish. The rest will follow, more or less as a matter of course.

Tellingly, the title of the essay is “A Man Must Not Be Very Moslem.”

Until a month ago, Laleli was swarming with Russian tourists. Cyrillic are on many shop signs. Only Germany sent more visitors, though many of these were just Turks returning. Getting on the Turkish Air flight in Leipzig, I could clearly see elation on the faces of many Turkish passengers. Landing in Istanbul, I anticipated applause before it happened. I knew the phenomenon from witnessing repatriating Vietnamese. A weight had been lifted.

For the duration of their stay, these folks could jettison the immigrant's double life and be fully themselves. There is no deception here, for the same dynamic affects all transplants, even a city-based hick returning to the sticks, blue hills, corn rows, bayous or trailer park.

Home is also relative. Chanced upon Istanbul's Goethe Institute, my heart gladdened because it made me think of Leipzig. While living in Certaldo, Italy, I took a train from Paris to Florence by way of Geneva. Hearing Italian at the Swiss train station, I also cheered up.

In 2014, 4.48 million Russians visiting Turkey spent nearly $4 billion. That spigot has suddenly gone dry. Ninety-thousand Turkish workers are also being booted from Russia, and Turkish agricultural exports, chicken in particular, must find new markets. Erdogan thought the war with Syria would be over by now. Foolishly, he didn’t think the Kremlin would intervene, but a war against Syria is an attack on Russia.

While using terrorists to sic both his foreign and domestic foes, Erdogan poses as a shield against terrorism. A blood red poster announces, “LET’S UNITE AGAINST TERRORISM / REPORT TERRORISTS TO MAINTAIN PEACE AND SECURITY.” Someone should turn in Erdogan.

At Kale Outlet Center, there's airport style security at each entrance. At the risk of starring in the next Midnight Express, I had to photograph the walk-through metal detectors, with their McDonald’s advertising. Outside the mall, a grim guard peered into the trunk or rear hatch of each car before allowing it to enter the underground garage. A bomb exploding there just wouldn't do. At the touristy Grand Bazaar, cops waved metal detecting wands at selected visitors.

Hook nosed blind man in Grand Bazaar had this sign in English: 

It is a beautiful day but I can't see it 
HELLO [with three smiling faces] 
MY EYES COULD NOT SEE ENOUGH 
PLEASE COULD YOU HELP ME?
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE AS MUCH AS YOU 
--LIFE IS SHORT

Though every man isn’t quite every other man, we’re close enough. Further, just about any man can suddenly become, without warnings, omens, persistent foolishness or just a second of carelessness, totally blind, entirely deaf, a frog, a pile of shit or a heap of garbage.

Erdogan’s charisma, working class background and even stint as a semi-professional soccer player have endeared him to ordinary Turks, but too many devious moves have exposed the weasel. Inside Turkey, one can’t state the obvious, however, for it’s a crime to “insult” the Mad Man of Ankara.

Turks used to storm into Europe as conquerors, not treated as scorned immigrants or be rebuffed repeatedly by the EU. Surely this rankles. Dissed by the West, Turkey could have retaliated by pivoting East to align itself with Russia, but Erdogan had to shoot that plane down.

Reacting to a Greek-sponsored coup in Cyprus, Turkey invaded it in 1974 so was accused by Greece of “Neo-Ottomanism.” It's a hyperbolic tag, perhaps, but Ottoman glories are a nagging reminder of what Turks used to be, how far they have fallen and, if one draws deeply from that shisha pipe, can become again. In 2012, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared, “Without going to war, we will again tie Sarajevo to Damascus, Benghazi to Erzurum and to Batumi.”

From January 2011 to September 2013, Turkish TV viewers were mesmerized by 139 episodes of The Magnificent Century. This series on Suleiman the Magnificent was also hugely addictive in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia. See, see, they’re all flocking back into the Ottoman folds! With even Greeks hooked, Bishop Anthimos of Thessaloniki had to bark, “No one should watch The Magnificent Century. By watching the Turkish series, we are telling them we have surrendered.”

Five centuries ago is like yesterday to a Turk. After Suleiman’s execution of his oldest son was televised, a 47-year-old man went to the prosecutor’s office in Bursa to demand all of the murder’s plotters be punished, and Sezahde Mustafa’s honor restored. Who wouldn’t be outraged by the three-minute killing scene, much of it shown in slow motion?

Flashing kung fu moves, Mustafa fought back gamely against six goons before two finally strangled him. With fierce eyes, his father stonily watched. In death, Mustafa’s handsome, bearded face filled the screen of practically every home in the former Ottoman Empire.

The higher up, the fiercer the competition for power, of course, but dumbshits dwelling in pseudo democracies often think palace intrigues no longer exist.

Under Suleiman, Turks gobbled up the Balkans, defeated Hungary and laid siege to Vienna. They ruled nearly all of the Middle East and much of North Africa. Suleiman's choice of wife, too, betrays his expansive appetite. His main consort was a red headed Slav. Roxelana was born in Rohatyn, a town in today's Ukraine. Sultans and pashas dig snowy skin. Mahouts, too.

If Erdogan has Ottoman dreams, he must work a lot harder. He's already 60. Suleiman died at 72.

On my last night in Istanbul, a stray dog followed me. Since I had nothing to feed this pensive, aimless yet self-possessed creature, he just liked my company. Kindred souls, we wandered through the most soulful city on earth. Together, we discovered hardened bread, broken crab legs and even sheep bones with bits of meat. It's alway good to be desired without ulterior motives. Auras aren't insignificant gifts.

Postscript: Two weeks after my departure, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 13 tourists and injured nine near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. Since my hotel was nearby, I walked by these stupendous buildings several times a day. Most victims were Germans.

Six months later, an attack at the airport killed 45 and injured at least 230 people. Though authorities blamed ISIL, no one ever claimed responsibility.

While in Belgrade in 2020, I thought of returning to the City of the World's Desires for a much longer look. Reading of my intention, a Turkish reader strongly advised me against it. What I had written nearly five years earlier was on the record.

Flying from Skopje to Beirut in 2020, I had a 16 hour layover in Istanbul! Without a visa to escape that glitzy yet sterile collection of fastfood chains and high end boutiques, I never had a chance to breathe in, again, Istanbul's complex aroma. Still, there was enough of that magical city in many faces and voices to remind me how lucky I'd been.

With so many seconds in your life and Atatürk International so vast, your odds of being blown up there approach zero. It will have to happen elsewhere.

[security at Kale Outlet Center in Istanbul, 12/22/15]

[Istanbul, 12/23/15]

[Istanbul on 12/22/15]

[Hagia Sophia on 12/23/15]