my neighborhood

still hungry after midnight in Istanbul

/ zdunno03 / Leave a comment

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.

where home is

/ zdunno03 / Leave a comment

A walk around my neighborhood any day of the week puts my mind at ease. Today I didn’t go in to work, having spent the last two nights reliving memories death always conjures, so I took a walk, or rather limp since I fell yesterday running to catch the ferry and this body is slow in recovering, but anyway, a limp around the neighborhood to sort of ground myself again in the present tense of my life, rather than the past. And there it was, a nice, fairly sunny day, and I sat at the tea garden overlooking the Sea of Marmara, to rest my aching toe and my shoulder, and watched ships out at sea, had a Turkish coffee without sugar, then two glasses of cay and let myself be lulled into a peaceful state of mind.

I find there has been turmoil in my mind these last several months, thoughts of leaving, going back to The States, perhaps, or to another city in Turkey, Izmir, which is much more manageable than Istanbul, even thoughts of Naples, though on an internet search I could find no suitable employment there, but the idea of having broccoli rabe and sausage on a weekly basis, along with white clam sauce and linguine, does still appeal to me. I’m still torn emotionally about America. Sure, I miss those I love back there, my brothers, my friends, Rita, Steve & Ren in NY, David upstate, Gene in New Haven, Jimmy sunning himself in Puerto Vallarta now and posting numerous pictures on facebook to prove it, Randy in Seattle, the two Chucks in San Francisco, and Maureen and Carl in LA. Sure, I would like to be in a place where I could easily see them as frequently as I wanted, and needed, to. And the numerous people I love from the old ELI, Gilda, Jenny, Maria, Fernando, Jia Ling, the list too long to reproduce here. But my heart is still torn, perhaps never to heal properly, by others I helped so unselfishly who had a hand in dismantling all that I accomplished.

So I still linger here, where there are a few people who actually appreciate me, perhaps even understand me a bit, and there is time to write without the distractions of New York, though I miss some of those distractions–the theatre, films, the restaurants, the hum of Manhattan–but of all the many places I’ve lived, I find this neighborhood heads the list of favorites. And I have my opera house here which I go to several times during the season, and now have found two theatre companies within walking distance and so have seen Cyrano last week and will see Hamlet on Sunday. And though they’re in Turkish, I know the plays well enough to not only understand them, but to enjoy the acting, the production. And I have my neighborhood restaurants here, my barber, dry cleaner, fish market, fruit carts, grocery stores, my friendly pharmacy. It’s a world complete for me, and I feel so comfortable here I wonder why I would want to leave.

So though I’m not necessarily as happy as I was at work, it may be time to either change jobs or change the job into what I want (as my favorite Uncle Mike would say). I have a close friend returning to Istanbul soon so the conversations about books that I miss so much, about film, are not far away. These next few months are important in terms of decision-making for me and so I must also consider this neighborhood, my life here on weekends especially when I am completely at home, as a factor. And now, as I pause to grill some fish I bought earlier in the week from the fish stalls in Kadikoy and saute some spinach, to settle back to watch an episode from the Inspector Montalbano series I love so much, I feel at peace, even though there is no one special here to celebrate this day, this weekend with, but myself. But as a waiter once told me many years ago, “Better to be alone than in bad company.”

How true that is. How true it always was.