I guess you could say I’m lucky to be living in my neighborhood because, as my friend Maureen once said about living in Hollywood, you can always buy a quart of milk at two in the morning, I, too, can always get something to eat as I wander home from wherever it is I was, past midnight here in Moda/Kadikoy. And tonight, as I climbed the hill toward home, I had a craving for kokoreç, which I will not explain what that is lest I lose a few readers along the way.

Anyway, I had been to the movies with a friend and former colleague from my first college here in Istanbul, a movie I found about one hour and fifty minutes too long, but at least it was in 3D and I have never really seen a movie in 3D before, at least not totally in 3D, so this was interesting to me for about 10 minutes. Then we had cheesecake, or at least I had cheesecake, or what passes for cheesecake here which isn’t exactly the same thing when you’ve been raised on a variety of cheesecakes that have nothing in common with what was placed before me at this place in Taksim, but there was fruit on top so I ate it.

But I was still hungry coming home later, and needed something to take my mind of the kamikaze ride I had in the dolmuş (read mini-bus if you’re reading this outside of Turkey, which most of you are) and so I had kokoreç served on half a loaf of bread that’s similar to a loaf of Italian bread but is Turkish bread because that’s where I’m eating it and this seemed like a good idea considering the options, and I took it home to wash down with a can of beer that has been sitting in my refrigerator for about 8 months (I’m not a beer drinker and only bought it for a friend who came to visit one night and who didn’t drink it and I keep meaning to dispose of it somehow) since I asked for the kokereç spicy and that it was.

So I’m eating my kokoreç sandwich (called Yarım Ekmet Kokereç in case you come to Turkey and feel adventurous) but only after I gave the cat his portion of wet food from a can of Whiskers because he won’t give me any rest until I do that, and lo and behold I had this thought: I’m home.

This is the thing: I keep saying I’m home here and most times I’m mentally here but there are those moments when I’m emotionally here and eating that kokoreç sandwich last night at one am at my dining room table in my apartment in Moda with the cat in the other room, his cat’s room, eating his chicken bits, with my strange lamp with the various colored glass that I bought from Alex at his shop around the corner glowing on the end table and Pat Metheny’s September Fifteenth playing softly on the stereo in the living room behind me in my fleece-lined slippers thinking tomorrow is a holiday and I can, if I want, sleep late, was just such a moment.

And there you are, or actually here I am, content, at peace with the world. And it’s morning now, the world lighting up here on this side of the ocean and seas that lie between me and where I’m from, and that’s okay. I’ll wander around my neighborhhod later, have some ice cream from Ali Usta around dinner time and maybe take some pictures of this neighborhood that now occupies a special place in my heart, so I can send them to Chuck who keeps pestering me to do that, and know I’ll miss this neighborhood after I move more than I care to admit, but life goes on and we go with it and here, in Istanbul, is where I live, now, my home.