Carpetblogger

We Watch Sports

As many of you know, Carpetblog is an American-run operation. A female American-run operation. That means that our interest in almost all kinds of sport is surpassed only by our interest in, say, derivatives. Our interest in football is even more intense.

We've heard the arguments in favor of football and none are very compelling. Some have compared football to religion, which, while accurate, does nothing to enhance our appreciation for it. Lots of things are wildly popular while at the same time being screamingly boring.

Under intense pressure, and having not one better option on a Wednesday night, we succumbed and went to a bar, and not just to do what we normally do at bars. We went with the specific intent of watching Turkey play Germany in the 2008 Euro cup. If you want to understand how Turkey got there and what the achievement represents, there are plenty of other blogs that can explain it for you.

Because Americans view soccer/football as a game played by no one older than age 11, this is something of a watershed. Not that we've never watched a soccer game before -- alert readers will remember our monumental photographic achievements following in some aspect of the 2006 World Cup which involved Ukraine. We watched at least seven minutes of that game and joined the crowd celebrating on Maidan afterwards. We kept our shirt on, however.

 
It's true that there weren't as many boobies on display afterwards this time, and not just because the Turks lost. Unlike Ukies, Turkish women rarely take their clothes off in public.

We're not sure we can accurately characterize nature of the Turkey/Germany rivalry for Americans. It's sort of as if America played Mexico in some sport that we can't think of, with all the racism and divided loyalties it would inspire. As happens in a lot of countries, football exacerbates a particularly virulent strain of testosterone-driven nationalism here that needs little encouragement, even on ordinary days. People --particularly those with penises -- were pretty much out of their heads. Walking down Istiklal was like entering Magandalarstan!

The bar scene was grim. There were a lot of people actually watching the game, which we did not anticipate. No one wanted to chat. And they all devoted a lot of energy getting very excited about things that almost happened during the game, which is apparently very common when people watch football matches.

Don't misinterpret. We totally were rooting for the Turks. Anytime Turks want to wreak havoc in Vienna, Carpetblog is behind them. But really, our primary motivation for watching was seeing Turkey win, and hoping Russia would win, so they would play each other and we could root against Russia.

Bursa's Women

Carpetblogger and Red State Sibling spent last weekend in Bursa, one of Turkey's largest cities, situated south of Istanbul and 30 kms inland from the Sea of Marmara. The historic (as opposed to the sprawling concrete) part of the city climbs up the side of Mount Uludağ and is home to lots of hot spring hammams. As (one of many) terminals of the Silk Road and the center of Ottoman silk production, it has wonderful hans and bazaars, even though the silk production industry has long since moved on to other places.

Now, it's a center of cotton production and is famous for its towels. Had I known how awesome and absorbent Bursa's cotton towels are, I would have bought a million kilos (the guy I bought from sold them for 10 YTL a kilo).

Even though Bursa's full of cotton and silk, this is not really a post about textiles. We discovered something about Bursa that's even more interesting than textiles, though still tangentially related.

In addition to the typical produce, silk and clothing bazaars, there's a "women's handicraft bazaar" in the center of the city. The stuff on sale isn't all that appealing -- a lot of polyester embroideries and laces in colors that don't appear in nature-- and targeted at locals, not foreigners. I passed through the stalls -- almost all of which were run by women -- taking photos because I thought it was pretty cool that there were so many women working outside the home in one of Turkey's most conservative cities.

Bursa was once the center of silk production and nearly every single woman on the street wears the ever-so-controversial turban (the Turkish headscarf that indicates the wearer is observant, rather than simply culturally conservative and/or from an Anatolian village. It's been in the news a bit lately). So it's not terribly surprising there are a lot of scarf sellers in the covered bazaar.

What was really surprising is how many of these scarf stalls were run by women. It's not that uncommon to see women working produce stalls, but to see women unfurling scarves like flags, while female customers gather around is really unusual. 

Then it occurred to me that the immaculate and friendly hotel we chose (the Çeşmelı) is run entirely by women (the reception staff cheered when we returned from the bazaar laden with shopping bags).

Someone needs to look into this. Is there a correlation between that women's handicraft bazaar and the number of women working in the mainstream bazaar? Do they start out in the women's bazaar and develop the skills they need to work with the big kids? Do daughters see their mothers working in the bazaar and decide that there's no reason they can't do the same or even manage a hotel?

I am fully aware that the turban is a powerful symbol of encroaching Islamization and a threat to the secular heritage of Ataturk, but it can also be a stylish accessory!  Bursa women -- to an even greater degree than their more cosmopolitan sisters in Istanbul -- really rock the look. The attention paid to coordinating scarf/jacket/shoes is impressive.

Of course,  if you keep your eyes open, there's always a devushka somewhere. The one in this photo must have just hopped off the Ukrferry from Odessa, except the length of her skirt and the absence of sequins, brass and rhinestones on her outfit make me suspect she might be an impostor.

Siirt Blankets on the Streets of Galata

Many people have asked lately, "Carpetblogger! Where are all the textiles?" It is true, I have not bought one since October, in Afghanistan. There are many explanations for this, mostly related to the slide of the American Peso and sharp spending cuts dictated by the Central Bank.   

Walking home this afternoon from a leisurely "Consultant's Lunch," I spotted a pile of textiles stacked on abandoned fruit stand, tended to by an old man. I pass this fruit stand nearly every day and I can say with absolute certainty it is a place where textiles usually are not. They called to me. I had no choice but to investigate further. I pawed through the piles.

He had a few woolly blankets and wall hangings folded up in old bags, which, when opened, released pungent sheepiness.  I had never seen such textiles before; neutral colored flatweave on one side, soft furry wool on the other, brushed smooth into patterns.

I asked some basic questions but assumed my Turkish has regressed even farther because I didn't really good answers from the old guy -- only that the blankets are from Siirt. Truthfully, I had no clue where that is (it's in Southeastern  Turkey and the old guy probably spoke Kurdish, but it's equally plausible that my Turkish is, in fact, unintelligible).

Twenty YTL seemed like a bargain to me, so I snapped one up.  (Then, after I wrote this post, I went back and bought the rest of them).

As it turns out, they are Siirt Battaniyesi, (Siirt Blankets) and the town of Siirt is famous for them. Made from local mohair with a cotton weft. As it's woven, the backside is brushed with a metal comb across the warp to make a geometric pattern of hairy pile, different from the simple pattern on the reverse.  I like them quite a lot.

Although I know it doesn't exist and it is treasonous to suggest as much, my house currently smells very much like Kurdistan.  Very, very sheepy.

An Article about Istanbul that Doesn't Suck!

In today's NYT travel section, Matt Gross writes about the restaurant scene, and mentions my current favorite Istanbul restaurant, Çiya (pronounced like the pet).  The cold mezzes are absolutely to die for and the special Çiya kebab -- ground meat with melted cheese in a fresh pide -- is one thousand different kinds of awesome. I tried a green mezze there that was so unlike anything I had ever tasted before, I can't even describe its taste. The menu has been different every time I've been. Seriously, there's no excuse not to make the easy ferry trip to Kadiköy to try this place out if you're in Istanbul.

Also, I need to talk about brunch for a moment. It is becoming my favorite day of the week. There are two kinds of brunch. The first is the kind with bacon and pancakes and scrambled eggs and lots of coffee. You can call it American or you can call it English, the goal is the same: repair one's system after a night of drinking.

Right now, our fave place for this is Kahvedan, in Cihangir. It is not perfect. Asking for substitutions like "no eggs, extra bacon" can be risky, but they're getting better all the time. We know the owner and the cook and most of the waiters all of which is important. Kahvedan's minor sins of commission and omission are usually forgiven because it serves real bacon.

The other kind of brunch is Turkish breakfast. As a rule, Turkish breakfast is the best basic breakfast, even if it's served in the cheapest, most touristy hotel in Sultanahmet: fresh crusty bread, white cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, jams and a boiled egg. It's simple, to the point and hard to fuck up. However, its simplicity suggests it's not the kind of meal over which one might linger to discuss the issues of the day with one's contemporaries.

When some actual effort is put into it, Turkish breakfast is actually extremely well-suited to lengthy brunch with your pals. It doesn't get cold. It can sit untouched while you consider your next move or expound at length about Istanbul's Arabic death metal scene. Its components are easily shared. The cons are that it generally doesn't come with filter coffee (Turkish coffee: not the same) and there's very little grease. It's not a hangover cure by any stretch.

New favorite breakfast place: Van Kahvalti Evi. Van is a largely Kurdish city in far eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran, known for its breakfast culture. Van Kahvalti Evi is a very good example of the evolving food scene in Istanbul scene that the NYT article mentions: fresh ingredients typical of and unique to this huge country's ecologically diverse regions. I wonder if it's coincidental that both Van Kahvalti and Çiya specialize in food from the east, where there are a lot of, uh, Mountain Turks?

Van Kahvalti Evi recently opened in my 'hood and we approached its bright yellow exterior and IKEA-lite interior with some trepidation (it needs to be substantially gay'ed up). It's got a slave* lady who makes fresh gözleme (flat pancakes stuffed with cheese or potatoes) on a convex black griddle in the window and a rather limited menu. A window case holds mounds of fresh cheeses and honey.

May I recommend Van's Luks Kahvalti plate? Sure, it's got the usual boiled egg and some cukes, tomatoes and olives, but the real stars are the sides. Have you ever had fresh kaymak? It's a clotted cream and, when mixed with honey, it may be the food of all gods, monotheist and polytheist alike.  Van's is as fresh as the day and the honey has little chunks of comb in it. There's a guy in my neighborhood who sells it from his car from time to time, but it's not the sort of thing you should eat every day. Go find some for yourself.

There's also a thick cacik (yogurt with herbs) with fresh butter, and at least three different kinds of fresh cheeses. My approach to Turkish cheese is pretty much "there's all kinds of cheese here as long as its white," but Van serves on that's sort of like a Georgian sulguni and a famous "grassy cheese," because, well, it's got greenery in it. The most unusual side is murtuğa, a heavy wheat flour porridge that I find appealing in neither taste nor texture, even when it's mixed with fresh honey or eggs. It, too, is a specialty of the region. And they've got the various types of egg dishes (menemen), but I recommend the Luks plate. It'll keep you going all day.

Like Fasuli (a local place that serves Black Sea specialties), you'll never see Van Kahvalti in the New York Times. It's just a low-key neighborhood joint with increasingly long lines on the sidewalk on Sunday mornings.

*I have no idea if this woman is a slave or not. We refer to all the ladies who cook gözleme in restaurant windows as slave ladies. I am sure she is very well-compensated. Regardless, her cheese gözleme are outstanding and she deserves a merit raise on those grounds alone.

Turknology

Commenter Roy cracked me up with his description of "Turknology":

There are a couple useful words some friends and I coined while living in Turkey. Turknology allowed one to jack a broken truck up on wooden blocks, then build a small fire under it so one could see what was broken on the undercarriage. It also allowed you to to plug the telephone wires that come out of the wall into 220v. Then all you have to do go to the ground floor and run a screwdriver over the telephone block until you get big sparks. This is how you identify the correct wires!

I laugh because last week, I finally got the refrigerator fixed. Seriously, it was so hard for me to get the master out I was envisioning life without a refrigerator and thinking it wouldn't be all that bad.

My less-than-year old refrigerator's motor broke.  Yes, I know it should have been under warranty. No, I had no clue how to administer the warranty service process.

"JUST FIX IT! I WILL PAY." I could say that.

Two masters arrived with their equipment. Removing and repairing the motor required welding. In my wood kitchen. The kitchen was filled with freon gas and the smell of welding. What could possibly go wrong?

The smoke alarm screeched. The masters looked at me and asked "what's that?"

Also, the master came to fix the leaking skylight/roof. It, too, requiring welding.

Why Turks Are Such Fantastic Salesmen

Depending on your perspective, Istanbul's Grand Bazaar is either a brilliant display of the ageless rhythms of pure capitalism or the seventh circle of hell. Although I tend to hold the latter view, I have begun to discover hidden corners of the bazaar off the main axes that are quite delightful. And by delightful I mean "devoid of obnoxious salesmen."

Coming from a line of salesmen (father and father-in-law) I do appreciate a quality sales pitch and BS session. However, in certain quarters of Sultanahmet, the sales patter is a deterrent rather than draw. Too many touts take advantage of Turks' natural propensity for openness and hospitality to manipulate visitors. In fact, it's completely understandable why some people leave Sultanahmet distrustful of Turks (which is why I strongly advise against anyone staying there).

My carpetfriend Kathy Hamilton, who owns a lovely carpetshop with her Turkish husband and has showed me some great, fresh shops in the GB, decided it was time to explore the methods behind GB vendors' madness. She wandered the long tunnels and hidden hans, asking sellers why they choose particular pitches to attract customers and how they assess which pitch will work best, using factors such as body language, nationality, language and gender. She discovered there is not only a methodology, but results are measurable.

Since it's impossible to live in Istanbul and avoid the GB entirely, read her article.  It will help you understand, if not embrace, the dynamic a little better.

*The carpetcamera is in the hospital, which will encourage me to edit and post all my old photos.

Carpetblogger Weighed In

A few weeks ago, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee was voting on the Armenian Genocide resolution, Carpetblogger, in a rare burst of civic participation, organized all the people we know who have professional or personal interests in the region to write letters to their Member of Congress asking him or her to, at minimum, postpone the vote until, well, never.

As a former political consultant, I know the influence genuine constituent letters can have on a congressional office but I always viewed writing my Representative as something people who are not me do. Now, I am more like a regular voter than I've ever been (I complain about the garbage and streetlights in my neighborhood like the best neighborhood activist whack job), so I visited the website of Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D, OR-03) and sent off a letter.

I had no illusions that Rep. Blumenauer, who sits on the committee and is a co-sponsor, would change his vote but as a constituent who knows a little bit about the issue, I thought I should weigh in. The Producer did as well, as did about a dozen other folks.

If you have been living under a rock and don't know why this resolution is such a spectacularly bad idea, read this, this and this.

I'm pretty sure it was Carpetblog's organizational efforts that resulted in the postponement of the floor vote, much more so than the opposition of all the former Secretaries of State and the whole of the Bush Administration (though in all truthfulness, realizing I held the same position as the Bush Administration made me pause for a moment and wonder if I was actually on the right side of the issue).

The real point of this post, however, is that Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D, OR-03), failed to respond to my and the Producer's letters. I find that so very discouraging.   

Drummer Accountability Project (DAP)

I've started a new NGO. It's called the Drummer Accountability Project. So far it has achieved measurable results: The drummers who asked me for money on Friday were the same ones I photographed earlier in the week.

Did I give them money? Ha Ha. Would you reward people who stood underneath your window at 3 am every morning for a month banging drums? At best, wouldn't you ask them for payment or alternatively, pelt them with eggs? As a grant-giving organization, DAP believes that its grant recipients need to strive for sustainability and cultivate local funding sources.

DAP also noticed that the local drummers are building capacity for future activities. As they paraded through the neighborhood, their intern -- who based on the tone of his voice was probably seven -- was calling out the prayers.

 

The drummer in question's face is in the lower right

Catch you next year, Davulcu.

Know Your Neighborhood Drummer

Helpful reader  Bulent Murtezaoglu offers a valuable piece of pre-Bayram advice: Know your drummer!

"He'll go door to door asking for money tomorrow. At least you know what yours looks like. It used to be not that uncommon for several to show up, each claiming he's the real one and the others are fake. The joke below is actually based on real pamphlets you'd occasionally see:"

It's a picture of Mr. Prime Minister Erdoğan and the top says "I am this neighborhood's drummer. Don't give money to any other drummer." I don't know what the rest says, 'cause my Turkish regresses daily. I bet it's funny though!

I'm so glad I got up at 4am to take a picture of my drummer. I would hate to reward an imposter for waking me up every single day between 3am and 4am this month.

Iyi Bayramlar indeed!

Since Ramazan is Almost Over

Couples sit beneath the reddening grape arbor, sipping tea in the garden beneath the minaret of the green Firuzaga mosque. On every corner, greasy doner kebabs slowly rotate in front of glowing orange heat panels, providing a quick lunch to doctors in white coats from the nearby public hospital. Tobacco smoke mixes with car exhaust on Sirasilever Caddesi. The casual observer of my Istanbul neighborhood might not know it’s the middle of Ramazan, Islam’s holiest month.

“Should we not eat outside today?” I asked my lunch companions, wanting to avoid offending those who are keeping the fast.

“Why not? It’s Cihangir! No one’s fasting here.”

Turkey’s polarized secularist-versus-Islamist political environment, some residents disregard their neighbors’ religious traditions without a second thought. As home to many of Istanbul’s artists, writers and free-thinkers, Cihangir probably has one of the lowest proportions of fasters in the whole city. For Istanbul’s secular elite, fasting during Ramazan is a tradition left to the pious.

But walk a few blocks downhill from Cihangir Square, into the warren of alleys threading between decaying wooden houses and decrepit Greek mansions perched on the hill above the Bosporus, the atmosphere changes noticeably. The number of headscarves and chadors increase. Most small cafes are closed because few eat in public during the day.

Iftar – the evening meal that breaks the daily fast -- falls at around 7:00 pm Aromas from the evening’s meal drift from open windows throughout the afternoon, dizzying to even those who haven’t eaten since, well, lunch. A line of men and children completing the final, pre-feast errand forms outside Ekmek Dunyasi (“Bread World”), the bakery that sells the best bread in the neighborhood. Their task is to collect the freshest, warmest Ramazan pide possible.  No fast can be broken without the round, flattish loaf sprinkled with black sesame seeds. Ekmek Dunyasi stays open 24 hours a day during Ramazan to meet the demand.

As the sun sets lower, people scurry to get home and a hum of excitement comes from every apartment as dishes and silverware are hurriedly set on tables and cranky children bicker and squawk. When a short, choppy ezan calls from the city’s thousands of minarets, the alleys fall silent. Iftar has begun.

Even in Cihangir, there’s one time of day, however, that not even the most devoted Kemalist can ignore Ramazan: 3:30 am. That’s when the “Ramazan Davulcusu,” or Ramazan drummers, make their way up and down the hill, providing a free-wake up call for fasters who want to be sure they have enough time for sahur, the pre-dawn meal that will sustain them through a long day with no food.  They do this every morning during the holy month of Ramazan.

The drummers, usually young men with booming voices carrying double headed drums (davul), are an anachronism left from the days when no one had alarm clocks. Because they are, to some, a nuisance, a few municipalities have banned them. Still, many Istanbullus remember them fondly from their childhoods or from their old lives in the village and are happy to give them tips.

Others give them tips to stay away.

Sometimes the davulcusu wait until 4:00 am to begin their rounds. Other mornings, inexplicably, they start at 2:30 am. They are expert at taking short breaks between staccato bursts of drum beats and mani (rhyming couplets), just long enough to allow me go back to sleep. Sometimes, it sounds like they position themselves for hours beneath my street-facing second floor bedroom window.

The davulcusu don’t discern between fasters and non-fasters. They wake the pious and pagan alike, gleefully rousting at 4 am the people who smugly sit at Cihangir’s outdoor cafes at noon, smoking and sipping tea.

The most unforgivably trite description of Istanbul is that it’s a bridge between continents, where east meets west. Not only is it a cliché, it oversimplifies the mix of cultures and attitudes that collide and co-exist, with varying degrees of success, every single day.  In the spirit of Ramazan, when Muslims are supposed to examine their lives and reacquaint themselves with the virtues of compassion and forgiveness, Cihangir’s believers and non-believers have figured out ways to annoy, if not completely accommodate, one another. It’s a step in the right direction.

Let's agree to disagree