who we are / how we live

Aid for Haiti: Help is on the Way, It Just Can't Get There

2010-01-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

This article originally appeared in Sphere and may not be reprinted without permission. Please follow my other essays for Sphere in a series on Haiti.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Jan. 19) -- I didn't intend to get so angry, so early. I was hopeful, about the arrival of aid to Haiti -- hopeful, even, that some of my friends trapped in the rubble might be alive. But after two days in the capital of the Dominican Republic, I understand why help is so slow getting there.

Saturday, I flew into Santo Domingo on a commercial American flight. I estimated that 30 percent of the 100 or so passengers might be humanitarian aid workers. Some had uniforms, work boots, sleeping bags, military khakis or T-shirts of various affiliations. Some of them just had the manners of missionaries: exceptionally friendly, verging on obsequious.

The flight attendants became de facto travel agents, setting up people without a way into Port-au-Prince with other groups who had convoys already set up. Overland buses are leaving constantly, but battling the challenges of a poor road and traffic at the border. The journey takes 10 hours.

After we arrived, I noticed a well-equipped French search-and-rescue team from another flight in the baggage area. They were dressed for work. Their uniforms resembled those of firefighters. They were surrounded by first-class gear: compact ladders, dogs, stretchers.

I walked through their makeshift camp, just to say hello and wish them well. But finally, after 15 minutes, I had to ask: "What are you waiting for?"

Eric Zipper, one of the team members, said they were waiting for their bags. Like everyone else. News from Port-au-Prince confirms that unloading planes is one of the slowest challenges to delivering aid. I saw it even at this small level. There is nothing worse than imagining thousands of people trapped by rubble and seeing a body-sniffing dog cry out from his cage at the luggage carousel, 200 miles away.

The French team members came to Santo Domingo because they could not find someone to help them in Miami. I soon learned that they had no way into Port-au-Prince, no contacts on the ground, and no one knew they were coming. "Didn't you call the French Embassy?" I asked. They said they got no answer there or from anyone else. They decided to come anyway.

Just two weeks ago, I was in buildings that later collapsed in Port-au-Prince: Hotel Montana, Hotel Christopher, homes, offices. It could be me trapped there now. And if it were, for as long as I held on, I would be asking, "Where is everyone?"

I promised Eric I would help in any way I could to find a flight. They had 2,000 kilos of gear with them, which meant they needed a plane, or a heavy-duty helicopter. Alternately, they could go in with a mini-squad and the gear could come later.

As we walked out of immigration, I spotted a small piece of paper taped to the wall: "UN Reception Center." An arrow pointed up a set of stairs. It reminded me of when I arrived in Baghdad in 2005 and the Iraqis had scrawled out a little sign, "Visa Office," and taped it to a wall. They had set up two desks with nothing but pens, their cigarettes and a stamp.

At midnight Saturday, when we came in, the U.N. desk was empty. There was a paper form for organizations to fill out saying who they are and what they are doing. About a dozen forms left from the day before were sitting on the table.

Also on the desk, written out with a marker, was a sign listing "Useful Numbers." Once I saw that sign, I felt the dread rising. Santo Domingo is not even within the crisis zone, yet coordination is so minimal, so unprofessional, so clearly without leadership that my heart sank.

The "Useful Numbers" sign listed the International Disaster Hotline, Emergency UNDAC, the World Food Program, Dominican Civil Defense and the U.S. State Department.

The paperwork was provided by USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) and INSARAG (International Search and Rescue Advisory Group), a network of 80 countries and disaster response organizations led by the U.N. The list gives a sense of how many hands are in this pot, and why it's impossible to get clear information at any given moment.

By coincidence, there was a commercial helicopter pilot talking to an airport employee in the same room. Bill Doonen, a representative of Evergreen Helicopters, said he could take the French team in. But it would cost about $7,000 an hour, with a four-hour minimum.

"Of course," he said, "it would take some time. We'd have to go through the normal contracting process, defining a statement of mission and so forth, but I'm sure we could work with your company. A couple days, minimum." The Frenchmen, luckily, couldn't understand him.

Along with my friend, Helder Tavarez, a Dominican, we looked over the map of Haiti with the team. They said they were interested in going to Jacmel, a border town in Haiti that some say was hit worse than Port-au-Prince. I suggested they take a boat. Helder described how they could easily go from the town of Pedernales and the port of Cabo Rojo to Haiti.

"OK," Eric said, "but if we take a boat, then the problem is getting a truck to carry all this gear into the town."

"Are you kidding?!" I said. "Hire a dozen guys to carry it! Go!"

Eventually, they left their paperwork at the desk and went off, discouraged, to rest for the next day. On Monday I discovered that they were able to get a boat into Jacmel, with the cooperation of the Dominican government, which will now begin running regular military-led boat trips from Cabo Rojo to Jacmel to support the relief effort.

Part of me wanted to scream, "Too little! Too late!" I knew there was no aid coming in. I saw the same reports as everyone else about "coordination" problems. But somehow, I didn't believe that a 20-person, search-and-rescue team could arrive without welcome, without any communal urgency, with only a hand-scrawled list of names to call. There is no one in charge, that much is clear.

Everyone who is getting in now is doing so through their own audacious persistence, me included.

Bill Doonen, on the other hand, is already starting negotiations with the U.N. "People are doing a lot of humanitarian, charity flights in now," he said. "But that's going to dry up soon. And that's where we come in."

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/emilytroutman

Remembering Haiti Before the Quake

2010-01-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

This article originally appeared in Sphere and may not be reprinted without permission. Please follow my other essays for Sphere in a series on Haiti.

(Jan. 15) -- I heard the lull in the conversation even on my first day in Haiti last month. It always followed discussion of one of the country's many problems -- "and, oh, we have earthquakes." Then there was a quiet moment. It's painful to remember now.

I traveled the country for three weeks as an independent photojournalist, trying to understand, even then, the tremendous humanitarian crisis there. I also traveled with an honorary title, U.N. Citizen Ambassador, and spent a great deal of time knocking on doors.

People were happy to tell me what they knew. In exchange, I promised to share the story of Haiti, to bring attention to the issues that were important to them.

I first met with Andy Wyllie in Port-au-Prince. Andy is the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). His office was at the U.N. compound in Petionville, near Hotel Christopher. He was new to Haiti. I had been introduced to him via e-mail through friends in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he worked previously.

I spent a month in the DRC last year, and as we got to know each other our shared experiences became a constant refrain: "What do you think? Which country is worse off? Haiti or DRC?" And sometimes, "Which country has nicer people?" or "Which country has better music?"

People like us play games like that. Compare/contrast about all the horrible places we had been. It was a way to make conversation; it also was a way to learn and see patterns. To define each country and decide whether money was being spent in the right ways.

Haiti was so destitute, so broken. Our first conversation -- my first real conversation in the country -- was about planning for disasters. Andy told me bluntly, "There is no plan."

The hurricanes that devastated Haiti, particularly the town of Gonaives, in 2004 and 2008 made planning a priority. The priority. But for most of its existence, Haiti has had a highly centralized government, with local authorities either invisible or impotent.

Of course, the first part of any good plan is coordination between local and federal authorities. But local governments in Haiti rarely governed. I soon learned "capacity building" was a slow process.

I went to Gonaives a few weeks later, with Andy and a team assembled around Kim Bolduc, the Deputy Special Representative for the U.N.'s mission in Haiti, and I saw the situation for myself. Public garbage collection did not exist. In Gonaives, like so many other places, people threw their garbage into the canals, clogging the drainage system and making hurricanes an even scarier proposition.

Haitians threw the trash there and then waited for the government to pick it up. It's a problem that all the humanitarians in the country felt they contributed to: a culture of dependence. The phrase I heard most in Haiti, from everyone at every level of society was, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day ..."

But the needs remained. Haiti's problems were complicated, old and typical. Haiti was ruled by autocrats for so many years that it seemed no one shared any sense of national identity. If the country doesn't serve you, why should you serve it?

So as I learned and saw more of the country, my Congo vs. Haiti debate with Andy grew complex. In Haiti, there were no farms, no public schools, no jobs. But there was peace and a vivid, gorgeous culture.

The music was intoxicating and everywhere. Musicians played on horns they made by hand. Port-au-Prince itself was a yellow and blue and pink tapestry of taxis, each intricately painted to reflect something about the owner.

There was Croix des Bouquets, a town filled with nothing but artists. There was the Grand Rue, a slum filled with sculptures that spoke a new language. Sculptures made out of trash! By people living in aluminum shacks! It brought an exclamation point to any conversation! The art! The art! It was Haiti's wildly beating heart. VIDEO: Horns Lead Joyous Dance in Haiti

But then there was the talk about earthquakes. With everyone, conversations went around in circles like this: hurricanes, security, food, jobs, trash, health care, education, infrastructure, governance ... oh, AND earthquakes.

Earthquakes were an "icing on the cake" problem. Or more accurately, a "salt in the wound" problem. They are not frequent, but because of the country's location, they can be devastating.

Even on my last day there, I talked about earthquakes with my friend, Jean-Cyril Pressoir, as we drove up the hill on John Brown Avenue; ironically, and terribly, it was just as we were passing the U.N. compound on the way to Petionville.

"We are due for one," he said.

And I just said, "I know." Because everyone knew.

The sun was setting, and I looked out at the orange-tinged hillsides, teeming with gray cinder block shanties. "That would be bad," we both said. And then there was the familiar, morbid lull.

As we drove in silence, I reflected on my time in Haiti and knew I had to come back. It wasn't a place to be calculated, and comparing it to anywhere was futile. It was struggling and poor, but it was beautiful. The country's joy and the music, where it existed, defied the evidence of its ordinary failures. Somewhere underneath, it was alive.

"Next time I come," I said, "I want to climb those hills and go right there." I pointed to the highest cinder block house on the mountain, trying to imagine what it looked like inside, wanting to meet whoever lived there and see what the world looked like from their window. We agreed it would be interesting. "Next time," we said.

For the first 48 hours after I heard about the earthquake, I didn't sleep. I obsessively combed Twitter looking for any news of who was dead or alive. When I finally learned the extent of the disaster, and that the U.N. compound, including Hotel Christopher, had collapsed, with most of its staff inside, I felt like I was trapped under the rubble, too.

Sitting here in Baltimore, in the blue light of my computer, I could barely breathe, knowing that I had accidentally photographed the last few weeks of the lives of many of my new friends. Andy, Cyril and Kim survived. Others did not. Every photo from those final weeks implores, "Come find me." And so I will go back. I know that what awaits me in Port-au-Prince will be unbearable, but I made a promise: to share Haiti's story, to talk about what is important.

Becoming UN Citizen Ambassador

2009-12-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

Because the CNN interview is 2 minutes long, I will forgive them for not pulling my best quotes and for making me seem like a giddy school girl. On the other hand, I did get to say, "democratizer" on TV... a five syllable word, though probably not a real one.

The "gotcha" moment at the end with the empty General Assembly, I think kind of misses the point. Not to sound too cynical, but OF COURSE it was empty. The whole UN Citizen Ambassador initiative is essentially a response to this kind of failure. Traditional methods of communication and power structures in the organization--just like in governments everywhere--don't work. They're old-fashioned, inefficient, they consolidate power and they don't move and inspire people.

The UN Citizen Ambassador initiative is important because they found a way to quietly circumvent the system. They make it look like "outreach," but actually, it's "reach-in." At one point during my nearly 3 hour (!) CNN interview, Richard Roth went on a negative tangent about the how the UN is a closed system... [and in a CORRECTION, he does point out that we talked for 14 minutes, they followed me for the afternoon]...

He said, "I've covered the UN for 13 years. This is a club. They don't care what ordinary people think. If the general public wants to share an opinion, they schedule the meeting for 6pm on a Friday in the basement. What makes you think an ordinary citizen can even be heard?"

"Well," I said, "You've worked here 13 years. You could be on the 38th floor right now talking to Ban ki Moon. But you're not. You're talking to me. And I'm nobody."

In reality, it's not CNN's job to send my message, nor is it the UN's. And, my apologies to the General Assembly, because I know my message was supposedly to "world leaders"... but sometimes world leaders are ordinary people in extraordinary jobs. And other times, they are extraordinary people in ordinary jobs. They are people, for example, who watch YouTube.

That's why, ultimately, I decided not to make a policy statement as my message. My goal was to help us all, me included, reconnect with what is leadership... what is change.

I believe real change only happens when I can take personal responsibility for my own actions, when I can acknowledge and act on truth, when I can connect with other people's experiences and find strength in admitting failure.

For example, I just went to dictionary.com and discovered that "democratizer" actually is a word... huh. I got lucky. But! I would like you to know that I was ready! I was ready to tell you I was wrong!

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The Baltimore Sun article, which famously highlights my cats and "sticks of furniture."

The Catonsville Times article

A great interview from The Road to the Horizon

And an older interview in The Road to the Horizon, about my work in Congo.

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Catch up with me on the Marc Steiner show on Baltimore radio 88.9 FM WMAA, Tuesday, January 5, between 5 and 7pm. I'll be discussing the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

http://www.steinershow.org/
Listen Live: http://www.weaa.org/

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This is a fantastic mini-documentary of the entire project and our day becoming UN Citizen Ambassadors...

Other recent media:

My Message to World Leaders

2009-10-09T06:43:00.000-07:00

Dear World Leaders,

I'm sending you this message from the United States of America, from Baltimore, Maryland, where just a few days ago, my friends lost their baby. And in the night, when they went to the hospital... their house was robbed. What happened to them reminded me of what I wanted to say to you.

Everyday, I want you to wake up and know that you work for 6.7 billion real people, one person at a time. People with children and dreams and stories.

Everyday, I want you to wake up and know that you were given a life and a gift that most people weren't lucky enough to receive.

These days, I find that I wake up and I think about my time as a photographer in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Where I saw what life looks like in a country where 20% of babies will die before they're five years old, where tens of thousands of women are raped each year, where 17,000 UN peacekeepers can't seem to help.

I want us both to agree to say one true thing out loud everyday. To remember one real person. To remind ourselves that our tragedies—yours and mine—are lived and felt one person at a time; just like our hope, our renewal, our future can also be lived and carried out into the world, one person at a time. You have a chance to be that person.

So make a promise with me:

I promise to humble myself.

I promise to grieve.

I promise to bow down to truth.

I promise to argue.

I promise to listen and to live with intention.

I promise to know my own strength.

I promise to risk something.

I promise to stop talking about what hasn't been done
and start doing something different.

We are 6.7 billion real people who want to be remembered, who only want to live a life as good and as safe as the one you live. If we promise to think of you, to work with you; I hope you'll promise to think of us, to work for us. One person, one small baby, one dream at a time.

Sincerely,

Emily Troutman

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A sincere thanks to Matt Dosberg, who composed and produced original music for this film.

You can check out more of his work here: http://www.telograph.com/

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You can view other people's messages to world leaders on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4bYwz-cgxo&feature=video_response

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Top 5 Reasons Congo Still Matters

2009-10-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

A woman is placed in forced isolation due to suspected tuberculosis.

1. An enormous tragedy requires an enormous response: Since 1998, 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes in the DRC, making it the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WWII.

The above quote comes from the International Rescue Committee and is often cited in coverage of Congo. But for full effect, it ought to be amended to this: “Since 1998, 5.4 million people have died―one at a time―from war-related causes.” 5.4 million is such an astonishing number that it has the power to make progress seem impossible.

We are asked in a situation like this to think smaller, not bigger. Just as death is experienced one person at a time, so hope and progress can happen through each of us. The enormity of our response is not a measure of size, but of depth and of commitment over time.

A 45-year old woman is near death from an unknown illness.

2. A little safety goes a long way: 90% of early deaths are due to non-violent, preventable causes including malnutrition, infectious disease and complications from childbirth.

Congo's staggering mortality rate results from their ongoing battle with the FDLR, Hutu forces that invaded the country following the genocide in Rwanda. But most people will be affected by the ways in which this violence limits their freedom of movement. When people don't feel safe to travel, they also don't have access to medicine, health care, education, or clean water.

This young woman made it to a hospital after a near-fatal miscarriage. Local midwives are undereducated and often unable to handle complex births.

3. Women need other women to stand beside them: In March of 2009, there were 1,154 confirmed rapes just in North Kivu province. Of these rapes, 65% were committed by the armed forces.

The national army, FARDC, recently underwent an integration of forces, in which a Tutsi rebel group, the CNDP, was folded into the regular army. Some people blame these numbers on that change, saying a new, more criminal element is at work. But ultimately, the epidemic of rape in Congo is an old problem that only got worse.

At the heart of the problem is the Congolese government's unwillingness to hold criminals accountable. Rapists are either not tried, or tried and then set free. In addition, there are no safeguards to keep people with known criminal records out of the military. UN peacekeeping forces continue to work side-by-side with the FARDC, despite their miserable and obvious incompetence.

Two million children, around the world, die from diarrhea each year despite very simple cures and strategies for prevention.

4. If you're reading this on a computer, you're implicated in the crisis: Congo holds 80% of the world's resources of coltan, a rare mineral that is a critical component of cell phones and other electronic devices.

The battle in Congo right now is not about identity, it is about resources. The FDLR, as well as dozens of unaffiliated gangs of criminals, are hiding in the mountainous jungles in order to secure their own wealth. Congo exports numerous minerals, including gold and diamonds. But right now, global demand is especially high for columbite-tantalite (coltan) and cassiterite, which are used in nearly every electronic device; including phones, game stations, computers and cameras.

This young boy's parents have placed a medicinal leaf in their son's ear because of an ear infection. In an isolated village, they were unable to reach any painkillers or antibiotics.

5. Your attention can create change: People are talking about Congo now more than ever before and, as a result, international actors are starting to respond.

Just last week, the number one purchaser of tin ore from Eastern Congo, Thiascaro, pulled out of the country, citing "bad publicity" (Reuters). Thiascaro, whose parent company is based in the UK, was involved with the development and implementation of a new "certification process" to ensure mines aren't funding the FDLR, in keeping with new UN regulations. But the certification process, meant to launch in early 2009, hasn't happened.

In the United States, more pressure needs to be placed on companies like Apple and Intel to offer "conflict free" electronic devices, much in the same way the public increased awareness regarding "blood diamonds."

US Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) has put forward the "Congo Conflict Minerals Act" (S.891), which would support the UN regulations for transparency and require companies to declare which mine their materials came from. But without wide-ranging public demand, it is unlikely to move forward. You can help by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and asking for your Senators' office.
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This post also appears at Change.org.

Why Congo Matters from Emily Troutman on Vimeo.

Why Congo Matters

2009-08-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Why Congo Matters from Emily Troutman on Vimeo.

After spending a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I find myself speaking most often about the numbers: 5.4 million dead, 2,000 rapes per month, 17,000 UN soldiers, a war that started 15 years ago (or more?)....

And suddenly, the conflict seems impossibly huge, unsolvable, tragic, and remote. It is easy to forget that numbers are symbols, representing real people who take up an actual, physical space; who walk the down the dirt roads at sunset and carry water from the river, just as they did when I was there.

Numbers are a simple way to measure what has been lost. But we also lose something in the counting. We begin to think we know the exact dimensions of a problem, and then, we file it away to be solved later, somewhere between running out of milk and global warming.

For a number to be useful, it should have a beating heart and a face. It should collect names and remind us of something in ourselves. A number should challenge us to unravel it, to give it a smell (the earthy jungle undergrowth), a color (the black volcanic dust), a taste (papaya), and a sound (the 'snap' of a green bean).

Each death, each rape in Congo, happens in a moment when the sun is either up or down, when the rain has started or stopped, when a small phrase was uttered, or a glance exchanged. The numbers can tell us something about how often it has happened, but almost nothing about how. Or who.

With a story this big, and so little public awareness of it, I started to ask myself, Does Congo matter? I don't know. I guess that's hard to measure. It matters to the people who live there. It matters to me.

The statistics used in this video can be found in the following reports:

UNICEF

Country Statistics

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/drcongo_statistics.html#61

International Rescue Committee

Mortality in the DRC, An Ongoing Crisis

http://www.theirc.org/special-report/congo-forgotten-crisis.html

International Committee of the Red Cross

Survey on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Civilians

http://icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/views-from-field-report-congo-kinshasa-230609

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www.emilytroutman.com
troutman.emily@gmail.com

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The Problem With the Solution: War in Congo

2009-06-10T04:08:00.000-07:00

Josephine, and her baby, Marlena, are IDP's living in Pinga

who recently came from an eastern village.

Probably, when sent to inspect the condition of a road, one ought to expect to find its condition very poor.

I set off last Tuesday, traveling with seven Congolese men—doctors, humanitarians—to visit the remote, northern town of Pinga. The mission was lead by UNOCHA to assess safety and accessibility of the road from Kitshanga to Pinga. Three weeks ago, reports came in that two bridges, crossing the Mweso river, high in the jungles of North Kivu province, were finally rebuilt after being destroyed months ago by the FDLR, a Hutu militia.

This dense, wooded region is one of the few front lines in Congo’s war against the FDLR. With the support of UN forces (MONUC), the Congolese Army (FARDC) recently began a renewed military offensive to root out the FDLR. The campaign is called Kimia II, and follows the marginally successful Kimia I in January of this year.

Kimia II has had a profound effect on the people of the DRC. With each small battle, thousands of people abandon their homes to find safety—which is becoming harder to find. A military struggle is considered the most effective, and perhaps only, solution to the problem of the FDLR. But the offensive has caused tremendous problems of its own.

Last week, during a meeting here in Goma, the humanitarian community shared strong words with the UN Security Council: Are we really protecting civilians? Or are we putting them in danger?

My journey from Goma to Pinga turned out to be a radical adventure, as well as a crash course in Central African politics—a story of failed armies, successful terrorists, human suffering, and the catastrophic and intractable effects of ethnic violence and the war for resources.

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Milkmaid at a dairy house in a Tutsi village near Kingi.

On the first day of our journey, we traveled from Goma to Kitshanga, bending and rising into the northern mountains and gazing down onto a vast expanse of savanna. The hills and valleys here were formed by volcano—some more recently than others—and along the road, everything that grows has the vibrant, green glow of the newly born; of that which has just arrived, out of soot and fire.

Just a few months ago, these hills were controlled by rebel Tutsi forces. The CNDP was a violent rebel militia, its members set on destroying the FDLR and its followers at any cost. But after mysterious negotiations, the CNDP were absorbed into the FARDC in March. In many ways, it is a surprising turn of events… What would cause a successful rebel group to voluntarily join up with the national army? Though the details are unknown, it seems certain that resources were promised, territory exchanged.

Congo is rich in resources—diamonds, copper, silver, gold, and palladium; but also, colton, an important mineral used in cell phones. The real battle for colton is just beginning: 80% of the world’s reserves are in the DRC. For the average soldier, the agreement between FARDC and CNDP is probably of little relevance. It is an old story, especially for this part of the world: same war, different uniforms.

The hills north of Sake, where CNDP leader Nkunda had his base.

As we round a long corner, I begin to realize I am on a very unlikely tour. Our SUV slows and the mission leader, Daniel Ahula, points to a far hillside, “Here is where the CNDP leader, Laurent Nkunda, had his base in past times.” Nkunda is a notorious war criminal, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. Daniel points out the hill for my benefit. Everyone else here knows too well the geopolitical contours of the land. After all, there are only two roads to Kitshanga, and this is the good one.

Nkunda is now under arrest in Rwanda, but the hillside where he had his home is calm; bucolic, even. White clouds dot the distant sky as stark black cows graze in stillness. It is one of those gorgeous, surprising views that pop up from time to time in Congo and reaffirm the madness of the country’s war.

In my opinion, this looks like a very bad place to hide—it is not hidden at all. But of course, the CNDP had no need to hide. Before the merge with FARDC, the CNDP controlled the land all the way from Nkunda’s Eagle’s Nest, across the hills, and down into the town of Kitshanga, 10 kilometers north.

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The first sign we have arrived in Kitshanga, as with most big towns in the DRC, is the near sudden appearance of hundreds, then thousands of small thatched huts covered in the white plastic tarps of USAID. There are at least 50,000 internally displaced people in Kitshanga, in two major camps, filled primarily with people of Tutsi descent.

The huts fill the valley floor and wind around the base of the hills. No one can estimate how many Tutsi refugees from Rwanda are also here, but over the years, they have come and gone in waves from Rwanda to Congo and back, as their people fell in and out of power. Hutus, too, have come and gone in droves. When people are being killed, everyone runs.

Man with a machete on the road between Kitshanga and Mweso, coming from work in the fields.

My first week here, while traveling with my UN hosts, both foreigners, I asked the impolite question of identity: Can you tell a Hutu from a Tutsi? Whether or not they can (they said they couldn’t), it is the explicit intention of humanitarians to give aid despite identity; to be blind to political alliances, which in this country are almost entirely defined by ethnicity and tribe. This is why the UN divides the roles of its humanitarian missions and military (“peacekeepers”). Picking sides is a fast way to get killed.

I quickly learned, however, that for the Congolese humanitarians with whom I was traveling, identity is still acutely relevant. They can’t help but know the differences—linguistically, culturally, geographically and “morphologically”—between Hutus and Tutsis. And of course, there are others: Kundi, Nganga, Nandi. Some tribes and ethnicity have their own militias; some have joined up with others’.

“For example,” said the Congolese doctor with whom I was traveling, “you would be a Tutsi.” I am tall, like a cattle herder. “But,” I said, “You are also tall.” He grabbed his arms, “Yes, but my body is like this and my face… Trust me, I look Bantu.” He laughed. Daniel laughed. “We can just tell,” he said.

After they taught me the basic differences, I could guess which FARDC soldiers used to be CNDP. I also began to know which village belonged to whom and what side of a battle they might choose, or whose soldiers they might run to escape.

Later that evening we arrived at the rustic, wooden guest house of the Catholic church in Kitshanga, where we would spend three nights. Just out of earshot, I heard my hosts in conversation with the priest, asking that I be given a room in the main building; being the only woman and wanting to ensure my safety. They called me “muzungu” (white person), which, while not exactly impolite, did strike me as a bit incomplete. It reminded me how deeply rooted and distasteful and dangerous this habit of identity can be.

It is true that in Congo’s war, there are sides. But if recent history proves anything, it proves that both sides are equal in their ferocity. And equal, also, in their indifference—their hostility—to humanity.

The priest at the Catholic parish, who's ethnicity is Nandi

and sees himself primarily as a mediator between Hutu and Tutsi.

..........

In the morning, we gathered for the ride from Kitshanga to Pinga. This would be the most important length of our journey. During our security briefing, we were warned that FDLR and Pareco guerillas (another militia) still control about the half the distance to Pinga—everything from the village of Kalembe to Minjenji. The week before our trip, two FARDC soldiers were killed in clashes there. For the moment, FDLR is allowing humanitarians to pass.

MONUC forces traveled in front of and behind us in huge armored vehicles, seven or eight soldiers in each, with an armed lookout standing and surveying each part of the road as we entered. After hearing about the recent clashes between FDLR and FARDC, we decide to make a stop, halfway through our journey, in the village of Kalembe to assess the humanitarian situation.

Every small battle has an exponentially huge effect on the population. People flee to neighboring towns, to their friends or family, in order to avoid being caught in the crossfire—or more significantly, to avoid being killed in revenge attacks, where villagers of the wrong affiliation are spontaneously looted, beaten, raped, massacred, or set on fire.

A mother in Pinga's IDP camp. She came from a more southwestern village.

A lot of population movement is fueled by rumor. But even these days, when the war itself is down to a low roar, such attacks are not unheard of and seem to be occurring on both sides. Since CNDP joined the FARDC, the situation has escalated. The FARDC, which numbers around 200,000, was already notoriously undisciplined. But now, with the CNDP in the ranks, their reputation for wicked retribution is on the rise. A few weeks ago, FARDC reportedly burned down a village in Lubero territory.

The biggest problem now with the FARDC is sexual violence. From January to March of 2009, there were 1,154 confirmed rapes just in North Kivu province. Of these rapes, 65% were committed by the armed forces. In April, a group of FARDC kidnapped and raped a minor, holding her captive for three days. No one was punished. There are rapists and criminals in the highest levels of FARDC command.

A 7 yr old girl in the village of Kalembe.

For all these reasons, it takes a lot of guesswork, and some knowledge of historical trends, to figure out exactly where people will go when things go wrong. Sometimes they choose not to go where one would expect, and to the untrained eye, people seem merely to scatter, by the thousands and tens of thousands. Sometimes they don't make it to a village. Sometimes they find trees or bushes to hide in.

To get the real picture, humanitarians must go from town to town, essentially asking people, “Where did you come from?”, “Where are you going?” and “Why?” It is incredibly dangerous and time consuming work. As our journey stretched into two, then three hours, I learned how to say these few phrases in Swahili. I also learned to say, “How old are you?” and “What is your name?”

..........

The young Chief of villagers in Kalembe.

In Kalembe, Daniel knocks on the wooden door of a small shack with a handwritten sign that reads, “Agence Nationale des Renseignements” (ANR, National Agency of Reassignment). Here, we find a clerk, in front of a neat stack of registration booklets. Daniel asks to speak to the President of the Internally Displaced People (IDP’s), who often nominate a representative to speak to for them. Instead, we are ushered into a small room to meet with the Chief.

Chiefs, IDP Presidents, the occasional King, all maintain various forms of registration for their citizens. ANR, which is an intelligence agency, also keeps numbers, though their motivations are not exactly transparent. Every time someone officially registers, they run the risk of paying a “tax.” Understandably, no one person or agency’s numbers is ever quite correct, but they provide a good beginning for assessing where people are going, and why.

We learn that there are 1,857 IDP families in Kalembe; about 10,000 people. They are unable to tell us exactly how many of those families are new (within the last few weeks), but we do know that they have come from areas near conflict: Bibwe, Ngange and Melemo.

As we begin the second half of our journey north, towards the jungle, ghost villages begin to appear out of the trees. Rows of empty huts stand idle in the silence of the tall grass. In a place where people have so little resources, the site of a barren home is a somber reminder of what is at stake in Congo. Burai, Katobi, Mera, Malemo, Minzenze, Minjenji—have been mostly abandoned.

Tall grasses surround an abandoned hut in Mera.

The path from Kalembe to Pinga is beautiful country, and it gives a comforting, though deeply false, appearance of peace. This is one of the few places in Congo where old growth trees still exist. The limbs of tall eucalyptus and African teak trees reach up like long arms from the dense green undergrowth, barely touching the low mist and cascading in a beautiful, organic geometry across the cliffs and valleys. Small, silent corridors of light shine through the leaves onto the forest floor and it is suddenly easy to remember how this curse of resources feels exactly like that; a curse.

Through some parts of the road, I was reminded of home; of driving up Beach Drive through Rock Creek Park from DC to Maryland. The distance is about the same, and for most of the way, we traveled along a river. There the comparison ends, though. The distance, 60 kilometers (about 40 miles), took us five hours, through dense jungle, on a mud road maintained by machete and infested, though it does not always appear to be, by armed militia of various stripes.

I would call the road “barely passable.” But of course in a war zone, where people are waiting for food and medicine, what passes as passable is far beyond any standard I could recognize. There were essentially two terrible tracks in a deep, hard, pit of mud. The bottom of our vehicle scraped, banged and slogged its slow way forward.

MONUC vehicle traveling in front of us, crossing the first bridge, which was just rebuilt.

The MONUC troops who escorted us were South African, but this part of the road, from Kalembe to the village of Peti, is actually guarded by Uruguayan UN troops spread out in three camps. They guard the two small but critical bridges that were destroyed three months ago, and organized, with the public, their rebuilding. As we pass, the Uruguayan men stand in their camp behind a low barbed wire barrier—smoking, eating, and staring blankly in various states of undress. It is hot in the jungle and they look magnificently bored.

Each member country of the UN can designate troops to serve here. Right now, the DRC is guarded by 17,000 troops from numerous countries, including South Africa, Uruguay, Nepal, Senegal, India and Bolivia. It’s not exactly a Who’s Who of international military talent, which says something, certainly, about the desirability of serving in Sub-Saharan Africa; but also, about the developed world’s position, in general, regarding the importance of this war.

Even without military support from the big five, the DRC is the single biggest deployment of UN troops anywhere. A report from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) estimated that 5.4 million people have died in Congo since 1998, making it the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world.

..........

As we head north, the road on both sides of us is enveloped by two enormous walls of sharp, dense grasses that are more than two meters high. Because it is hot, we travel with the windows open and the long, bright green leaves whistle and smack against the edges of the car. I move closer to the middle of the seats to avoid being hit and gaze out, mesmerized by this impenetrable wall. We are halfway between Kalembe and Pinga, in the heart of FDLR territory.

Just at that moment I realize: if I stick my arm out a few inches from the car, only a few, I could touch a man and never see him. There could be a carnival a meter from the road and we would never know. This jungle is more than camouflage; it is real, deep, opaque cover. And an armed escort is an assurance, but it is only that.

Suddenly, the convoy comes to a halt and our cars are surrounded by a line of hundreds of people walking south. They are moving through the mud in rubber slippers, bare feet. Everyone is carrying something and some of the bags are enormous and unwieldy—yellow jugs of petrol, black and grey coal, multicolored beans, the green leaves of cassava, huge bunches of bananas.

Hundreds of people surround the car as we pass from Kalembe to Pinga.

We begin to roll down the windows, sticking our heads out to ask, “Ona tako wapay?” Where are you coming from? “Pinga,” they say. We discover that they are walking en masse to protect their own safety, and finally, at the end of the line, a MONUC vehicle appears. The Uruguayan troops have gathered everyone together in order to ensure no one is ambushed and killed while walking to market.

A young man pushes a bike carrying petrol.

Each week, people walk hundreds of kilometers in order to arrive in each town for its market day. In this region, they travel on a five day circuit, going from Pinga to Kalembe to Kitshanga; then back to Mweso, and then Pinga. The journey is exceptionally dangerous, but if they want to sell their goods, then there is no choice.

After the convoy of people passes, we go about 20 meters when an FDLR soldier appears, carrying his gun. We are silent, just watching him, when the doctor sitting next to me smiles and rolls down his window. “And how about you?” he asks the young rebel. “Are you escorting these people safely to Kalembe, as well??” The kid either doesn’t get the sarcasm or ignores it. “Yes,” he says simply.

..........

Pinga arrives in the manner of other big Congolese towns—IDP huts as far as the eye can see. We park in the schoolyard and walk a short distance to the MONUC camp, nestled beside the Oyso River. The MONUC camp is more or less a conflagration of tents; I spot one with a television. We head to a small building and are escorted inside for our security briefing.

The South African Captain, who is brutish and imposing, introduces his young intelligence officer. The officer is petite, about 22 years old; and exceptionally tidy, with his pants belted tightly in the middle of his small waist. He speaks in a British accent (decidedly more New Dehli than Oxford) and welcomes us, waiting for the Congolese translator to catch up in French. As soon as he begins, he starts gesticulating voraciously with a long white pointing device at a paper map on the wall.

The whole place feels like an odd Colonial anachronism; and as he speaks, he obviously has no idea that each of the ten Congolese humanitarians in front of him knows more about what’s going on in Congo than he could learn in a dozen tours of duty. They listen politely. He says that the 11th Division of the FARDC has been assigned to Pinga, where they are working with MONUC. The 12th Division has moved out, to somewhere between Pinga and Kitchanga, the area we just traveled.

A member of the 12th Division of FARDC at a jungle lookout.

I resume listening when he says, without any reticence, “Since the 12th Division moved out of Pinga there have been significant reports from the citizens of harassment and looting.” I had heard that some divisions of the Congolese Army are well-known for being uncontrollable. I watch as the Captain watches him; it is possible that the officer has already said too much, but he does not mention rape.

Even though the issues with FARDC are notorious, some members of MONUC refuse to discuss the problem of the Congolese Army. “So,” I ask, “have you had any reports of problems with the 11th Division?” I am curious if FARDC can be controlled at all, even when they are being (sort of) supervised by MONUC.

Here, the Captain himself interrupts the officer before he can answer. “Look,” he says. “When all the international press can talk about is FARDC we’ve got a problem. It’s just spreading fear. We’ve got to stop badmouthing and making allegations about FARDC because otherwise they’ll never be able to make a relationship with the Congolese people.”

A boy waits for us, outside the MONUC base in Pinga,

hoping to tell us the problems facing his neighborhood of the camp.

..........

I am fairly certain—even with my limited knowledge of the DRC—that the international press is not at all the problem FARDC is having with their community. What international press? There’s no electricity in this country. I’ve been here a month and hardly seen paper, let alone a newspaper. The problem is sexual violence, looting, false checkpoints, attacks on civilians and general criminality. Does FARDC want to build trust? Put someone, anyone, in jail for rape and keep them there.

But as the day wears on, and we walk around the village of Pinga, I endeavor to see the Captain’s point. Everywhere we go, children yell to me, “Muzungu!” (White person!), and hold out their hand to beg. At the end of the day, I am surrounded by pleading children while I sit in the car in the schoolyard waiting to go back to Kitshanga.

A pregnant woman, an IDP in Pinga, standing in front of her bed,

which she will move to make room during the day.

The truth is, I am really hungry, but I wish that I wasn’t. I finally lower the car window and give one small kid the last third of my banana. He followed me around all day in the heat. When I look at him, he nods his head in a gesture of thanks. I hate that he feels he has to thank me for four bites of my leftover banana.

In an ideal world, this would be a war that the Congolese could fight. These MONUC soldiers don’t want to be here. And even the humanitarians have trouble accepting, and take huge efforts to discourage, a culture of dependence. No one wants to be here, not particularly. How can we help without also hurting?

Daniel (left) walks through Pinga with a village leader, his son,

and a South African MONUC soldier.

Now the question is becoming more complicated: How can we help the hurting caused by our helping? On Friday, I ended the week in Goma, where I began and reflected back to Monday. The week started with a rather contentious meeting with the UN Security Council. The UNSC was on a seven day tour of African hotspots and spent a day and a half here in the DRC.

In his briefing on behalf of the humanitarian community, Esteban got right to the point, “It is our finding that there is a fundamental conflict between the current Kimia II joint-military operation in which MONUC supports FARDC in the Kivus, and MONUC’s mandate to protect civilians. As part of Kimia II, MONUC has been working side-by-side with FARDC despite the human rights violations committed by the Congolese Army.”

In other words, the UNSC has demanded that MONUC protect civilians, and also cooperate with FARDC, but both cannot be done at the same time. Right now in the Congo, it is unclear who the real enemy is. In reality, everyone's the enemy. No one's hands are clean. But are some dirtier than others?

Certainly, everyone wants the FDLR out, but at what cost? What does it mean for other members of the UN—OCHA, UNICEF, the World Food Program, the Commission on Human Rights—if the organization as a whole is supporting an army of criminals?

During the question period, US Ambassador Susan Rice seemed genuinely concerned and asked Esteban, “How do you recommend that we hold the government of the DRC responsible? How can we actually do this?” Someone from the audience suggested, blithely, that the UN look at the list of rapists who hold high positions in the FARDC. “Is there such a list?” asked Rice. “Yes,” said the woman in the audience, “We gave it to you the last time you were here.”

The UK Ambassador took a more pragmatic approach, “Going in, we knew there was going to be a j-curve to this process…” I stopped breathing. J-curve? Is that what we’re calling 2,000 rapes a month? The bottom of a j-curve? His phrase haunted me. And what if they lose? I thought, what is the definition of winning and losing now?

Jacqueline, who just lost her baby.

Back in Kitchanga, I spent some time in the small Catholic hospital behind the guesthouse and spoke at length with a woman named Jacqueline. She was in the hospital after a botched birth, and a miscarriage. Her midwife crushed her baby in an effort to force it out, probably because they did not realize she suffered from an obstetric fistula.

Jacqueline’s anatomy was damaged at a very young age from sexual trauma, and she has been completely incontinent ever since. She admitted that she felt the death of the baby was her fault and she was despondent. Before I spoke to her, or really even looked at her, I quickly took her photo. But when I glanced down to look at it, I just had to sit down next to her. Her face was frozen in despair and I felt certain that I knew what she would say before she said it.

Following the UNSC meeting, someone said that perhaps sharing some of the more dramatic examples of sexual violence would help the members identify more closely with the problem—to help them start imagining that this is about their own daughters, or sisters.

Women and girls are most vulnerable to rape as they

collect wood or carry water on the road.

As a woman, it’s easy for me to take it one step further than that. It could be me. On the day we passed through the tall grasses between Kalembe and Minjenje, I realized that if someone were hiding just a few inches from the car, I could reach into the grass and grab him without ever seeing him. I also knew that he could grab me. That knowledge is called fear.

I understood it and I felt it in my bones when I walked into the country. And 80% of the women I know would feel it in the air just like I did. It is no exaggeration to say that the threat of rape is palpable. But what does that mean in terms of policy? What does that mean to the UNSC? Is it possible that everyone is a potential enemy and a victim?

The deep forest, along the road to Pinga is one of the few places where there are still harvestable trees in Congo, and dozens of women and children passed our car that day, unguarded, gathering wood for their fires. Some were walking toward safety, but in the end, it is an unsafe road.

Two days after our journey, 17 civilians walking unescorted were ambushed and killed by the FDLR just outside the abandoned village of Mera.

Last week, a convoy traveling with humanitarian aid and MONUC escorts were also shot at by the FDLR. A driver for the World Food Program, a UN agency, was shot in the face but lived. Humanitarian aid and workers continue to travel the road to Pinga despite these challenges.

Contact me: troutman.emily@gmail.com
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Enchante: DRC Week One

2009-05-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

Where are you, anyway?

On Sunday afternoon, I arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after a long haul through London, Nairobi and Kigali. (Note: When passing through airport security in Africa, try to make sure you have an “Obama 2008” sticker on your laptop… this will elicit lots of “OH!BaaaaMAAA!!!” shouts, hand shaking and high-fives. I started to think, “Yes, yes. You’re welcome.” As if I had personally elected the man.)

I’m spending the next month with my friend, Esteban, who works for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Goma. Goma is a pretty big city on the edge of Lake Kivu and the house Esteban rents is a gorgeous, colonial-style place on the water. The guys actually convinced me to go swimming yesterday, waterborne illness be damned (for sure, much cleaner than swimming in the Patapsco). It was perfect. The house has a boat house and dock, and definitely conjures thoughts about the good/bad old days when the conspicuously wealthy holidayed here without reprieve.

I came to take pictures, which isn’t exactly easy. In the first place, Goma isn’t safe enough for me to walk around. That’s annoying. The house and the office are gated and covered in barbed wire and there is constant security. Plus, the DRC has some crazy rules about photography. So far, it’s been best for me to only take pictures when I’m out of town and not around any DRC military or police.

What’s going on?

The UN is spending about a billion dollars a year here, with most of the money going toward security. There are 17,000 UN peacekeepers in the DRC; they call them MONUC. 17,000 soldiers sounds like a lot, but it’s sort of a drop in the bucket. The DRC is about 25% of the size of all of the United States.

Esteban coordinates efforts to address humanitarian needs in the province of North Kivu. There are 10 provinces, but North Kivu is probably the most distressed because of its proximity to Uganda and Rwanda. After the Rwandan genocide in 1994, during which Hutu forces killed almost a million Tutsi people, the Hutu militias retreated into the mountains and jungles of the DRC.

The war between Hutus and Tutsis is over now, but the bad guys are still around and still killing people. Their militia is called FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and their numbers are estimated to be around 6,000. The FDLR’s professed goal is to free Rwanda and Hutus from the rule of Tutsis, but their real goal seems to be maintaining power and controlling resources. They do this by attacking villages and killing people. The Congolese Army regularly battles the FDLR.

On Monday, there were reportedly three FDLR attacks in the southwest-central part of the North Kivu province. 60 civilians and 30 Congolese soldiers died. Yesterday, we made a trip to the town of Minova to assess the humanitarian situation resulting from these attacks.

Internally Displaced People

After every attack, thousands of Congolese people walk to the nearest big town. They are called Internally Displaced People (IDP’s), basically refugees who may only be five miles from their own home. They go wherever they think they will be safer, and also where they know there are services to help them.

There are about 1.5 million IDP’s in the DRC. And 900,000 of them are in North Kivu.

We visited an IDP camp where about 2,000 people live. Some of the people have been there a year, and some just arrived on Monday. For humanitarian organizations, it’s a really complicated problem: How do they distribute support in a way that won’t encourage people to stay too long or make them dependent? How should they encourage people who are no longer in danger to go home while also taking care of the people who just arrived?

After paying for MONUC soldiers, the next biggest expense of the UN in the DRC is food. Food is expensive and complicated to transport and distribute: So should they only give food to some of the people, but not others? For example, if there are two kids, one whose parents just arrived at the camp, and one whose parents have been there a year, how can they tell the difference? And should one go hungry just because his parents refuse to go home? What about health care? Education? Water? Who should pay? And how much should we give?

At the IDP camp, I noticed lots of young kids taking care of babies, which probably means that their parents are commuting back to their old village for work, to tend their farms. We saw some malnourished babies who look different from the others because their hair is discolored. Definitely, the kids don’t know how to take care of babies and are feeding them poorly.

The other big problem at the camp was the huts. Lots of them were in pretty bad shape and didn’t have plastic covers. If it rains a lot, that means they will be completely wet. Also, the international standard for refugees is supposed to be 3.5 to 4.5 sq. meters per person… hmmm. The huts were (generously) about 5 sq. meters, but about 5 people were living in each of them. Not good. That’s about 1 sq. meter per person.

While at the camp, I was able to wander around freely, though one of the local UN guys followed me at a distance polite enough to help me believe I wasn’t being protected. That was nice of him, I thought. The kids more or less mobbed us, shouting “Bisqweet!!” (biscuit) because I guess when MONUC comes around, they give out cookies. Whenever they put out their hand to beg, I developed a technique of giving them a high five or shaking their hand and saying “Bonjour, enchante!” with a faux-serious nod. It was a big hit, causing them to just collapse into giggles.

Sexual Violence

Security and food are easily among the most important issues in the DRC. But lately, sexual violence is also gaining importance. One study reports that rapes in the DRC occur at a rate of 2,000 per month. It’s staggering. That’s about 67 rapes per day. The main perpetrators are the Congolese Army. The government is basically letting these guys get away with it. I guess the phrase is “culture of impunity.” There is no consistent policy of charging, arresting and punishing rapists. Once in a while, they will arrest someone, even sentence them to death, but then they will buy their way out of jail.

We stopped at a small center for victims of sexual violence. They told us that just on Tuesday, nine women came for help. The center transports women to the hospital for care. They have also become a drop-off point for orphan babies who are the product of rape.

I sat in the sun for a while with the women there, shucking beans and laughing while trying to convince the little kids to call me “Emily” instead of “Muzungu” (white person). They thought that was pretty funny.

I definitely didn’t lose it at any point. But I was pretty pissed off to find one baby just crying and crying alone in a corner. He was dressed but covered in his own waste, wearing a hat and laying on wool blankets in 80 degree heat. Adopt. For the moment, I guess that’s all I can say about that.

What’s next?

The folks here are working on getting me a photography permit and then I’ll find a fixer to do some work in Goma. I hope to shoot some videos and have a few stories in mind. I'll also be traveling. Stay tuned, my friends. And send me a note. This is a sobering, but beautiful country and every day is a small revelation.

President Obama Inauguration: Words for How We Feel Now

2009-01-20T07:06:00.000-08:00

WATCH THIS VIDEO AT FULL SCREEN SIZE IN HIGH DEFINITION
by clicking here: http://vimeo.com/2895468

Also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=46626022461

And on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIo-zH5mOw8

WORDS FOR HOW WE FEEL NOW: en Français
...

This week I made my way around Washington, D.C. and asked hundreds of people to pick words to represent how they feel now, at the dawn of a new beginning for the United States. Participants chose from 26 words:

Alive, Angry, Anxious, Awed, Believe, Curious, Dancer, Excited, Grateful, Happy, Hopeful, Human, Humble, Jealous, Joyful, Love, Obama, Patient, Proud, Ready, Scared, Skeptical, Tired, Together, Wonder, Worried

Children tended to choose the words “Love” and “Obama” because they are easy. But happy was a close third. For the other participants, “Hopeful” and “Proud” won the day. People with family or friends chose “Together” to represent the importance of experiencing the inauguration with the ones they love. No one picked the word Angry or Scared, despite my best efforts. Even Rubin Israel, the man holding the sign "Homo Sex is Sin" would only go so far as "Skeptical."

The list is pretty comprehensive, but these are some of the words that people recommended:

Abomination, Indifferent, Justice, Peace, Peaceful, Change, Inspired

Though "Obama" doesn't necessarily seem like a feeling, Al Hillman, of Al's Barbershop on H Street NE, put it best when he said, "You know, I just feel Obama, don't you feel Obama?"

While shooting these portraits I had some serious logistical challenges, mostly that everytime I set up a shot, everyone around me pulled out their cameras. For the big shot of 15 to 20 people standing on a wall at the National Mall, I had to scream, "LOOK AT ME!" to keep my subjects from looking at dozens of other photographers. I managed to get off a couple good shots, but the problem plagued me everywhere.

Of course, I shouldn't say it was a problem because I was really excited to see how people responded so deeply to the project. On lots of occasions cars honked their horns, people screamed, everyone wanted to know where I "bought those signs." I heard a lot of "Yes!" and "You know that's right!"

I made a special trip to visit my sister, Lauren Troutman's, first grade class at Wolfe Street Academy in Fells Point, Baltimore. Unfortunately, I made the silly mistake of sending home permission slips with a small picture of the Barack Obama "Hope" poster. The kids thought that Barack Obama was coming to school for pictures and my sister had to break their hearts! The new President is generally known in her class as, "Rock Obama." Since her students mostly speak english as a second language, I picked 5 easy words for them to choose from. They loved "Love."

Thanks for checking out my video,

(ba)Rock On... Emily

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Releases on file for all participants. High-res images available for editorial use.

Images shot with Canon 5D.

Music by The Killers, no copyright infringement intended. The song is "Human."

...

If you are IN one of the photos, please be patient, I will have them all online for you to download in the next few weeks. Feel free to send me an email at troutman.emily@gmail.com.

www.emilytroutman.com

Words for How We Feel Now: en Français

2009-01-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

HD: http://vimeo.com/2895468

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=46626022461

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIo-zH5mOw8

Cette semaine, j'ai fait un tour dans Washington DC et demandé à des centaines de personnes de sélectionner les mots qui exprimaient leur sentiment du moment en ce début de renouveau pour les Etats-Unis.

Les participants ont du choisir parmi une liste de 26 mots :

vivant, fâché, inquiet, craintif, croire, curieux, danceur, enthousiaste, reconnaissant, heureux, plein d'espoir, humain, humble, jalous, plein de joie, amour, Obama, patient, fier, prêt, effrayé, sceptique, fatigué, ensemble, (s')étonner, désolé.

La tendance des enfants s'est portée vers les mots « amour » et « Obama » parce qu'ils sont faciles. Mais « heureux » a suivi de près. « Plein d'espoir » and proud ont été les gagnants du jour parmi les autres participants. Les personnes en famille ou entre amis ont choisi « ensemble » pour exprimer l'importance de vivre cette investiture avec les êtres aimés. Malgré tous mes efforts, personne n'a utilisé les mots «fâché » ou « effrayé ». Même Rubin Israel, l'homme qui tient la pancarte « l'homosexualité est un pêché » n'est pas allé plus loin que « Sceptique ».

Des gens ont recommandé de compléter cette liste, plutôt large par :

« abomination », « indifférent », « justice », « paix », « paisible/pacifique », « changement », « inspirer ».

Bien qu'Obama ne se réduise pas nécessairement à un sentiment. Al Hillman, barbier sur H street NE l'exprime mieux lorsqu'il dit « Je sens Obama, tu ne sens pas Obama ? « .

Plusieurs challenges logistiques sérieux se sont présentés à moi, la plupart lorsque j'organisais une prise de vue, chacun autour de moi sortant son appareil photo.Pour le grand cliché de 15 à 20 personnes posant devant un mur au National Mall, j'ai du hurler « REGARDEZ MOI » pour détourner l'attention de mes sujets de douzaines d'autres photographes.

Bien sûr je ne dirais pas que ce fut un problème car j'étais vraiment enthousiasmée de voir comment les gens ont si profondément adhéré à ce projet. Dans de nombreuses occasions, des automobilistes ont klaxonné, des gens ont poussé des cris, chacun voulait savoir où j'avais « acheté ces pancartes ». J'ai entendu de nombreux « oui » et « c'est juste ».

J'ai fait un voyage spécialement pour rendre visite à ma soeur, « first grade class » à l'académie Wolfe Street de Fells Point, à Baltimore. Malheureusement, j'ai fait l'erreur stupide d'envoyer à oa maison une petite image de l'affiche « espérer » de Barack Obama. Les enfants ont pensé que Barack Obama allait venir faire des photos dans leur école et ma soeur leur a brisé le coeur en les détrompant ! Notre nouveau président est communément connu dans sa classe comme « Obama, le roc ». Comme l'anglais n'est pas la langue maternelle de la plupart de ses élèves, j'ai sélectionné pour eux cinq mots faciles. Ils ont adoré « love ».

Merci d'avoir visionné ma vidéo.

--emily

French translation by Isabelle Agi

...

Merci Isabelle!!

This Turkish Life:

2007-12-04T06:52:00.000-08:00

How I Battled Eviction, Learned to Love Condi, and Stuck It to The Man… with a Little Help from Britney.

Click here to play Streaming Audio

Radar

A few years ago, I got into a heated debate with my Australian friend Tim while we were stuck in traffic on a Turkish bus. He insisted that, no matter what her politics may be, the appointment of Condoleeza Rice to Secretary of State had the potential to transform global prejudices about the place of women—and especially, black women—in international politics. I stubbornly disagreed with him, mostly because I was unwilling to make that leap: “no matter what her politics may be.” I’m pretty sure I bandied about some harsh words (“puppet” and “war monger” spring to mind).

A year later, Tim rolled through town on his way home from Budapest, and as we sipped our beers on a Beyoğlu rooftop, I conceded that he had been right. Like a true gentleman, he was gracious and declined his opportunity to gloat. For a foreign woman, negotiating with Turkish men feels a little bit like playing charades with a blind man. Rules are irrelevant. She waves her arms, he listening to her feet shuffle. Things go beyond futility, into the realm of absurdity and farce.

Over the past few months, I have been embroiled in a huge battle with my landlord and (somewhat reluctantly) find myself on the front lines of feminism. Needlesstosay, when Condi hit up Istanbul last month to negotiate with Prime Minister Erdoğan, I found myself whispering to the television…Condi, girl, I feel you. They say all politics is local and if that is true, then my story should hold some useful lessons for Secretary Rice, my apparent compatriot.

Piece of Me

In August my landlord, Mr. Gorgun, invited me upstairs for tea. We were just settling in to our normal bucolic routine, when Mr. Gorgun told me that he was tearing down the building and I had one month to move out. I should’ve just said, “Of course you are.” But instead, I was stunned and doe-eyed. I was locked into a self-delusory state of comfort and ease. Life in the neighborhood was good. Cihangir had imprinted itself in my mind as both the future and the past of Istanbul, and since moving here two years ago, I prided myself on how I managed to carve out a little space of my own.

I found a good tailor and a shoe repair guy. Local taxis took me on short runs, to places most drivers would refuse. My manicurist asked, “How is the book going?” and my neighbor held tickets for me at the symphony. I felt tapped in and connected to my neighborhood in a way that I never had before.

I comforted myself for the lack of genuine civic engagement (something I hardly went in for in my own country) by sometimes imagining that if a car finally managed to run me over, every butcher and baker and candlestick, eh, seller in the neighborhood could point to my apartment and say, “She lives there.” It isn’t quite as small a feat as it sounds. I thought, hey, who needs PTA meetings, or co-ops, or those horrible kick ball teams? We make time to socialize and be neighborly. Isn’t that what America is really craving when they buy more stuff and eat too much?

Oh, how the mighty will fall. I understood that Mr. Gorgun wanted to demolish the building to make six $1 million flats. He plied me with pity, “We are getting old, we need an elevator,” and I really, really wanted to believe him. But I considered the fate of my upstairs neighbor, Sami, who had it much worse than me. He lived in this building for nearly 20 years. He raised his daughter next door to the Gorgun’s two sons. He paid rent at a 1980’s rate and he could never afford to live in this neighborhood again, not even close. In fact, neither could I. In the ultimate irony, the gentrifier was being gentrified.

Six months after moving in: I finally buy a desk.

Mr. Gorgun said the building was scheduled for demolition and I suddenly recognized the glass of tea in my hand for what it was, a custom, not a gesture of good will. Likewise, I saw how my experience of Cihangir was not illusory, but to a certain extent, hollow. Cihangir delineates the differences between neighborhood and community. On a grander scale, it exemplifies the discontinuity between economic and social advancement in Turkey. Flats cost upwards of a million dollars, but meanwhile, landlords trample on legal transactions as simple as a lease. My lease was good until February, and there were no clauses that allowed Mr. Gorgun to kick me out, or as I’m sure he fantasized, to demolish the building while I was in it.

During Better Times: the Gorguns help me celebrate my birthday

When I went to see my neighbor Sami, he was demoralized and weak. He told a long-winded story about a famous lawyer who saved a Turkish village from demolition in the 1970’s. Then he mumbled something about “the people” and “revolución.” We decided to fight the power. Sami and I met with the only other tenant in the building, a young Turkish girl who taught English at a local college. We tried to convince her to stay with us and fight. But she was meek. She said, “I’ve discussed this with my father and we’ve decided that Mr. Gorgun is a very good man, so I will leave.” It was such a heartless response. Sami and I just looked at each other.

Break the Ice

Mr. Gorgun split the property and sold two of his four flats to a nearby engineer, who recently built two new buildings next door. Their plan is to demolish our four story building, shorten the tall ceilings, expand the property to the street, and build six condos with the bottom floor for mixed use. This building is not technically “historic,” but it does bear many of the trademarks of old Istanbul, hardwood floors, huge wood-framed windows, original brass hardware and big balconies. It also bears some of the less desirable hallmarks of Cihangir, most notably shoddy plumbing and scary electricity.

With Sami still in mind, I attempted to hold negotiations with Mr. Gorgun and the engineer. They offered to buy me out of the remaining four months of my lease. They also offered to help me leave by arranging movers, an added value of less than $100. During this meeting, my landlord was my de-facto translator and the whole thing descended into them talking to each other for and about me.

Each time I head into a negotiation, I remember my tough-as-nails grandfather. During the college years I would say, “Opa, I’ve decided to study writing.” Without blinking, he would reply, “Chemistry is an excellent career.” Not really the same thing at all, but then, he was never really listening. Negotiating with Turkish men is pretty much the same game: it’s all about signals and signifiers, tea, handshakes, candies and passive aggressive suggestions that go nowhere. My landlord says, “You can find many, many nice flats in Üsküdar. It is only a short ferry ride away!” Üsküdar? Are you kidding? So I say, “You can delay your project until February, or March, at the latest. Spring will be just around the corner!”

In My Bedroom: We had so much snow that winter!

Since it was my first negotiation with Mr. Gorgun, I wasn’t ready to take the gloves off yet. I didn’t want him or the engineer to know about the revolución until it was absolutely necessary. I batted my eyelashes and said, “The apartment has such nice light. I’d hate to leave,” politely declining their offer. Finally, Mr. Gorgun started to threaten me. He said that first they would rip off the roof of the building, then they would take away the windows. Eventually, they would reach my flat. Without so much as a blink, or trace of guile, he warned me, “It won’t be safe for you here.” He then added that it would be terribly expensive for me to hire a lawyer and I should give up. In a moment of uncommon clarity I looked him in the eye and said, “I have a lease, Mr. Gorgun. The law is on my side. I think you need to hire a lawyer.” We silently finished our tea.

The view of Akarsu Sokak, before Mr. Bicer's first project.

Meanwhile, I went back to the states for about a month and when I returned, I discovered that Sami had caved. They gave him a financial settlement far lower than the $25,000 he wanted. He nearly cried when he told me and I forgave him because I knew the symphony’s season was about to begin, and he was old, and he couldn’t afford a lawyer, and at the end of the day he could use the money to support his daughter. Tenant rights are strong in Turkey, but fighting landlords does require battling it out in court. Sami moved out of the neighborhood. The landlord and engineer forced Sami to swear that he would tell me he was given about half of the amount they actually gave him, which I then understood was the amount they wanted to give me.

Tea for Peace: Sami, Me, and our friend, Irmak in my flat

Sami and I listen to Mete, making another good point.

In another inconvenient blow, my roommate bailed. Mete was scared that things would get ugly and couldn’t bear the atmosphere of anger and pressure that was building around us. Mete wasn’t on the lease, and therefore, he had no vested interest in the negotiations. With all this trouble, he stood to gain nothing but an ulcer. Meanwhile, the engineer moved his construction workers into the flat underneath mine. He also affixed a sign to the front of the building, “Biçer Inşaat,” Biçer Construction. Although Biçer is the builder’s last name, it also happens to mean “reaper.” Suddenly it was my revolución. I was the only one left in the building, not counting the construction workers.

Arriving home to find a sign like this is Never a good thing.

Get Naked (I Got a Plan)

Mete and I calculated that if I delayed the project by only four months, the builder and my landlord would lose close to half a million dollars. Mete is extremely knowledgeable about real estate and based his opinion on their lost rent, as well as potentially losing their construction crew or paying them to sit around and wait. According to the law, I had every right to fight the eviction in court. Since my lease expired in February, the court case would undoubtedly extend into the summer, when the courts close for vacation. Theoretically, I could set this project back for a year or more. Confident of my position, I prepared to renegotiate.

Part of me was determined to get more money, and show that I was not the girl they thought I was, and another part of me was determined to prove that the rule of law could work, should work and was the key to democracy con capitalism. It got weird. I started thinking of myself as someone who had the means and power to stand for the rights of Turkish people. Actually not Turkish people… if I’m honest with myself, I felt that I had the means and power to stand for democratic people. I kept thinking about how swiftly and seamlessly Mr. Gorgun could serve a glass of tea and then stab someone in the back.

The ExPat's concept of "furniture" leaves some room for improvement...

I then did what any normal American would do in this situation—I hired a lawyer, a really good, really expensive lawyer. I decided not to bring the lawyer to the second round of negotiations (keeping another option in my back pocket), but I did bring a translator. I asked Mete’s sister, Yasemin, who just moved back from New York, to come with me. Although many of my male Turkish friends offered to come along, I declined. Negotiation is seen as the purview of men in this country and I was afraid that even if I brought along a man I trusted, he might end up arguing against my wishes, allowing himself to be swayed in some inevitable brotherly, abi-to-abi exchange. I wanted them to look me in the eyes.

Heaven On Earth

We met in my landlord’s empty apartment. Mr. Gorgun and the engineer, Mr. Biçer, had set up four chairs, one of which was behind a desk awkwardly placed in the middle of the room and seeming to serve the sole purpose of this negotiation. They offered me another figure. I told Yasemin to tell them I wanted four times as much. At first they laughed, but that was momentary. They spun into a tornado of indignation and rage. Yasemin was translating at a rapid fire pace. The engineer and Mr. Gorgun were both spewing words. I understood much of what was said, but not everything. The engineer managed 30 sentences all using the word “ayup,” which of course translates to “shame.”

They both insisted that my proposal was an insult to them. They repeated this message. And despite all the lies they told, I did believe this was true. But not for the reasons they suggested. They were insulted mostly because I am a woman and a foreign one, at that. It turns out that the teacher girl, who Sami and I had tried to convince to stay in the building, left for a settlement of 400 lira. Mr. Biçer slammed his fists on the desk... conveniently placed in front of him.

I said, if my request is an insult to you, then give me another offer. Mr. Gorgun went into a tailspin of personal insults and accusations. He launched into a rampage about my roommate, Mete, who had angrily slammed a door the day before. He had no idea that Yasemin, my translator, was Mete’s sister. He embarrassed himself by saying that if he ever saw Mete in the street, that he would beat him up. Mr. Gorgun insisted that Mete move out by the next day, that due to my impertinence, I was no longer allowed to have a roommate. I said, “No problem.” Of course, Mete was already planning to leave in the morning. This made Mr. Gorgun burn with shock and disbelief, “What?! You would just throw your comrade out into the streets like that? In one day?” “Yes,” I replied.

Mete: our erstwhile Business Consultant.

I looked a lot more cool and calm than I was. I tried to channel the advice of my most business-minded male friends who all told me, “Emily, it’s not personal, it’s business. You have something they want. It makes sense for you to negotiate.” Mr. Gorgun’s wife eventually brought us all glasses of tea, but I just held mine in my lap, so that they wouldn’t see my hands shaking.

Mete moves out.

Hot As Ice

Following our failed negotiations, Mr. Gorgun turned off my heat. The construction workers downstairs started to make as much noise as possible, and for the next few weeks, it seemed like they were walking in circles, yelling nonsense to each other, and slamming doors for fun. Once, at 6am, they turned the television on to full blast, a volume loud enough to wake the neighbors. I responded to their loud voices and scare tactics by walking around the apartment exclusively in heels. After Britney’s new album came out, I played it at full blast, day and night, with my speakers laying flat on the floor.

A few weeks later, my lawyer filed a legal response to their letter and then made a house call to see what was going on in the building. She seemed scared; just as I was showing her out of the apartment, some man was uselessly banging on a rusty metal wall next to the windows in the stairwell. A piece of metal went loose and broke the window. Glass and metal was falling around the building and my lawyer told me, “You should move out. I’ll call them to see what they want.”

Anonymous Revelers at my house: Letting the Party get the Best of Them

Not surprisingly, Mr. Biçer and Mr. Gorgun stuck by their original offer. Mr. Biçer said that if I declined the offer, he would renovate the flat above mine and rent it out, “Causing significant noise and inconvenience to you.” I knew he was bluffing, no engineer gets into a deal like this to renovate a flat. But it had been a very cold month and my lawyers suggested that I accept the amount. By this time I was in too deep to back out, I had paid the lawyers, covered the rent on my own for a month, and I was angry. Really angry. I counter-offered 30% more. They refused.

Freakshow

I stopped by the lawyer’s office a week later and had a brief conversation with a nice, young guy, one of the lawyers, who questioned me, “They’ve refused to give 30% more, what would you like to respond to their offer?” I went on a tangent, “They are bluffing. Their proposal to renovate the flat is a complete lie!” He said, “Maybe they will renovate. Maybe it’s not a lie.” I angrily barked back, “They’re lying. They think I’m just some girl they can push around. And they are wrong! So what if I don’t get the money? I never had it in the first place, so I have nothing to lose. They have everything to lose. You know what? F*&^% them!”

My colorful language seemed to paint a picture for the guy. He said, “I get you now.” Which in my mind of course translated to, “You are a crazy American girl.” Good, I thought, we finally understand each other.

The Hallway of the Building, Pre-Bicer.

Post Bicer: the New Face of Cihangir and the Broken stairwell window.

In mid-November, Mr. Biçer agreed to my October offer. And without my knowledge, my lawyers accepted. After spending weeks in a freezing apartment, listening to construction workers come and go, I was furious. I made that offer in October, I told them, before I paid rent and shelled out money for my utilities. By letting a month pass before accepting, the engineer had essentially lowered his offer. I wanted 10% more.

In a surprising turn, my lawyers dumped me. They thought it was unethical to renegotiate after accepting the previous offer on my behalf. In an angry email to the head of the law firm, I explained that we are not negotiating for an object; my offer was obviously time-sensitive. I threatened not to pay. In his reply, Mr. Yazici said, “We recommend that you either accept Mr. Biçer’s offer, or continue to negotiate without our help.” He twice mentioned that the firm admired my negotiation skills, though clearly, the firm also seemed to think I was pushing my luck.

Toy Soldier

Condoleeza Rice’s visit to Turkey was followed by Erdoğan making a visit to Washington, D.C. to speak to President Bush directly. Which figures. In the end, Rice and Bush share the same agenda, but I can imagine that Erdoğan was hoping for a more brotherly conversation with the President. I feel sorry for Condi, who jets all the way around the world to have constant conversations with men who undoubtedly send her away with the message, “Let us know when the President himself is available.”
Likewise, I realized that my negotiations finally required a man to seal the deal. I asked Murat to call Mr. Biçer and tell him I wanted 10% more. Murat works in a traditional industry, and for that reason, he can play a Turkish Turk better than any of my other friends. I knew he could manage the strange combination of machismo and man-on-the-street flattery that was necessary to convince Mr. Biçer.

In the end, I got the amount I wanted. I won. And there it is, the second sentence in the forth paragraph, in the fifth section of a very long story, which is pretty much how it felt, after too many cold months and sleepless nights. Murat came with me a week later when I met with Mr. Biçer at the notary. Somehow, after all my bold negotiations, I didn’t have the nerve to count the money in the guy’s face. I also didn’t have the nerve to carry it around.

Afterward, Mr. Biçer and Murat and I had a very awkward glass of tea to celebrate. I played with my cell phone while Murat engaged in all the requisite “geyik” (chit chat) with the engineer. In a predictably Turkish moment, Mr. Biçer told Murat, “Abi, if there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know.” Under my breath I said, “Yeah, you can turn on the f-ing heat.” Then I realized I would like some heat, and asked him to turn it on. Mr. Biçer chuckled a little, touched my hand and said, “Tamım, canım, tamım.” (Ok, sweety, ok.)

Why Should I Be Sad?

Turkey is in an unusual economic and geo-political position, in which it seems to be getting a little too big for its britches. The situation with the Kurds is a perfect case-in-point. When they finally convened in D.C., I’m sure President Bush didn’t fail to mention NATO, and the obligations therein, to Mr. Erdogan. Turkey cannot push out Incirlik Air Force Base without facing huge ramifications. By the same token, my little pashas, Mr. Biçer and Mr. Gorgun, were riding pretty high until I dug in, reminded them of my lease, and basically called their bluff.

During these months, I drank a dozen glasses of tea, each time perceiving them in a different way. Sometimes the tea seemed superfluous, sometimes grand, sometimes it was a mark of solidarity, and sometimes I was sure it was a passive aggressive swipe at my Americanism. On that final day, after the deal was done, our tea glasses stood there between us like a small tribute to the little that was left of our civility. In a sense, Mr. Biçer was only following tradition when he offered, “If there’s anything we can do…” But he honored his promise, and since that moment, my apartment has never been warmer.

My first roommate, Staton, assembling our stove.

Turkish businessmen may not follow the law, per se, but they are irreversibly traditional, and within that tradition, there is some space for appeal. I learned that there is a time and a place for customs. My hope is that I twisted, pushed at, and ultimately, conformed to their male dominated world in just the right order to come out ahead. I played rough, like they did, using the law when it was useful to me, but I didn’t insist upon it, or take them to court. I accepted their tea, but didn’t always drink it.

Gimme More

Ultimately, I can’t claim any stake on the world of Turks, men, or negotiation. Americans and women don’t belong here, and ironically, I won because I am an American woman. If a Turkish guy had been in my situation, they would have followed him into a dark alley, and reverted to that familiar Hobbesian rule of law, which is no law. My femininity forced these men to act (mostly) within the confines of the law. They yelled, they slammed, and they hammered the building around me, and I certainly felt ill at ease a lot of the time. But ultimately, my gender was both power and protection.

So Tim was right. In fact, he was more than right. Women in politics, in power, have the opportunity to exert pressure and demand action in a way that is unique to them. My landlord, and his partner, “Mr. Reaper,” were taken by a woman. I’m sure this came as a shock to them. I took more than 500% of their first offer.

As you may know, they gave me more than enough money to start a new life. And I’ve decided that Washington, D.C. might be the right place for me. I’ll be in the city January 3. If you happen to meet my new landlord, don’t tell him this story.

After, finally, settling with Mr. Bicer and the landlord.

NOTE TO LOCALS:

WE'RE HELPING THEM TEAR DOWN THE HOUSE...

TONIGHT, THURSDAY, IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SPRAYPAINT...

CALL OR MESSAGE ME FOR INVITE.

Henry Goes to the Vet

2007-07-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

(Henry, at my Mom's house in Baltimore.)

When I decided to bring my two cats, Henry and Sasha, to live with me in Istanbul, my #1 concern was making sure they could never, ever escape into the city. Istanbul is a honeycomb of cat-sized nooks and crannies, and it is filled with legions of immoral, unscrupulous villains: feral dogs; dirty, boorish orphan cats; and wicked, unsupervised children who cut off the tails of animals for fun.

Then, about a month ago, it looked as if Henry had escaped the apartment while a team of carpenters installed our security system. (The irony wasn’t lost on him, I’m sure. In my incessant personification of my cats, Sasha is brilliant and sophisticated and Henry is always the idiot-savant. I throw a ball for Sasha and she will bring it back. Henry, on the other hand, is too stupid to chase after his toys, but clever enough to laugh while I throw them again and again and again. Henry, as a result, is fat, while Sasha is a sleek, athletic machine. “Sasha,” I imagine him saying, “if you just leave the ball, that woman will pick it up. You needn’t tire yourself.”)

(Sasha, who never tires.)

After I couldn’t find Henry in the apartment, I was petrified. My roommate, Mete, was certain that the fat guy was hiding somewhere, but I thought I better look around the neighborhood before he had the chance to get very far. I started in the back garden, which threw me into a swift panic.

Our garden is controlled by a mean, dead-eyed white cat, who makes ungodly noises at night, presumably to attract the desperate sluts from other gardens, who then make love to him in a wild cacophony of growls and hisses. Henry and Sasha were both “fixed” when they were kittens and each night, when the noise of illicit love rises from the garden into our living room windows, they freeze and look at each other with fear and confusion. Their ears twitch and I imagine they’re asking each other, “Do you think that’s how it’s done?” I always breathe a sigh of relief that I will never have to explain the natives’ ritual to my naïve, virgin boarders.

As soon as I locked eyes with Evil White Cat McGee in the garden, I felt a chill run through my body. Henry is pudgy and dumb. He is a pure bred Persian, a pretty boy. In this part of the world, they call him an “Iranian” cat, a phrase that conjures images of him smoking opium in some posh compound, pining over the old days when the Shah held fabulous parties and no one concerned themselves with “the public.” If Henry was outside, lost in the neighborhood, he was surely stuck in a kittified Gangs of New York hell. There are thousands of cats in Istanbul and they are fiercely territorial. If Henry was forced to defend himself, he still had his claws, though I doubted he knew how to use them. He is effete and slow; he doesn’t walk so much as tumble forward.

My cats were born rich, that woman brings their food to them every morning, and they have never heard of, much less seen, the so-called “animal kingdom.” Henry and Sasha seem to have no idea that feather toys are meant to resemble real birds, or that kitty jungle gyms are a less fun version of actual trees. In the end, all of my panic was unnecessary, as Henry casually stumbled through the apartment as soon as Mete arrived. I picked up Henry and stared at his big eyes and flat, nearly concave face; I prayed that he was too stupid to purposely play an adolescent prank on me, but somehow, I was filled with doubt. Maybe this was my punishment for selfishly shielding him from the real carnal pleasures of the cat world? “Were you frightened?” he seemed to say.

As it turns out, Henry is perfectly capable of getting into trouble at home. On Sunday, I rushed him to the vet’s office after his vile, dog-like habit of drinking out of the toilet finally caught up with him. He hadn’t eaten in days and his normal, compulsive laziness had transformed into an ugly depression.

Most Turkish people don’t have pets. This is partially from the practice of Islam, which some people interpret as expressly forbidding animals in the home. It is also a natural result of people not having enough money to care for animals. Although many people, especially women, will put out food for stray animals, they are less likely to take dogs or cats inside in the winter or take them to the vet when they are ill. But as Istanbul is changing, and I live in one of the most gentrified, foreign-friendly neighborhoods in the city, I can find at least five veterinary offices in a five block radius of my house.

I was thrilled to find a vet open on Sunday and rushed Henry over there in his name-brand kitty carrier. Unbelievably, we were able to walk right in without an appointment and see the doctor immediately. No unnecessary paperwork, no color-coded medical files, no searching for a 24-hour emergency vet.

Henry and Sasha’s first vet was in Uptown Minneapolis, where the office had separate entries and waiting areas for dogs and cats. The vet offered chiropractic care, herbal supplements, and acupuncture. Their doctor was a sensitive but straight-talking gay woman, who inadvertently set me up on this path of shameless pandering and kitty personification when I asked her how to deal with Henry’s habit of viciously biting me.

Many mornings I woke up to feel his sharp little teeth hooked onto my nose. The vet looked me in the eyes and said (with all seriousness), “When my cat bites me, I don’t get angry, I just turn to him and honestly say, That hurt me.” Her face contorted to show her pain. “Don’t worry, he’ll understand.” I nodded eagerly. Yes, I thought, Henry will understand. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Yes! Why hadn’t I thought of that?!” Henry seemed to think.

Over the years, we came to trust this doctor. She responded with compassion and was non-judgmental when it turned out Sasha had contracted herpes in her eye (don’t ask) and Henry had an impacted testicle. Henry’s testicle required a special operation that she likened to being “spayed,” the girl version of being neutered, but she said it with such a spirit of openmindedness and love, that I was sure Henry would someday be comfortable in his new gender identity. Sasha was prescribed some herbs for her “personal issue,” which worked perfectly to calm those troublesome flare ups. In later years, our vet grew concerned about Henry’s tartar build up and sent us off with a teeny tiny little kitty toothbrush and toothpaste. She encouraged me to consider buying Kitty Medical Insurance, which, she assured me, the office honored fully.

(Henry, embracing his new gender identity.

How could Muslims possibly think cats are dirty?)

So imagine my surprise when our new Turkish Vet didn’t even bother to ask Henry’s name. I kept trying to insert it into my story, just in case he had inadvertently forgotten to ask, “Well,” I said, “Henry has been sick for four days, and poor Henry isn’t eating at all…” He asked The Cat’s age, took the little sample of poo I had brought, gave The Cat a once-over and then asked if he could keep The Cat to observe him for a few days. Keep him? I thought. You barely know him.

Once I had accepted the idea that it would be best to leave Henry for observation, I immediately asked, “So how much does that cost?” My cats may be rich compared to all the orphans in the neighborhood, but they weren’t born with trust funds and I seriously doubted this vet honored Kitty Insurance. The grand total for a night’s stay with food and medicine: $20. “Sure, keep him,” I said.

Henry is now recovering at the vet’s office for a few more days. They are feeding him, taking tests, monitoring his progress. I called this morning to check up on him and tried not to snap when the vet said, “The Cat—is it a girl or a boy?”

“He’s a boy!” I nearly shouted back, “His name is HENRY.”

“Well, anyway,” the vet replied, “he is doing much better.”

At this point, I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that for a cat to receive proper medical care, it may not be necessary to call him by his first and last name, in the manner of American vets. His full title, Henry Troutman, now seems slightly excessive. In fact, the vet couldn’t even get my name right, and jotted it by my phone number on a little sheet of paper as, “Emilliee” (rhymes with cry-baBy).

In the meantime, Henry is probably getting accustomed to being fed by hand and when he gets home, he’ll undoubtedly bring out that familiar idiot in me, “Henry, you scared me. When you drink out of the toilet, you hurt me.” If the day comes that he finally does manage to escape, into a world of manly cats and free love, no one except me will be surprised. “Henry Troutman—I thought we had an understanding.”

(Henry in the bathroom sink, demonstrating his obvious capacity for deep understanding.)

Istanbul Essentials: Getting By

2007-03-30T04:27:00.000-07:00

It’s very nearly spring in Istanbul, a perfect time of year to wander the bazaar and hang around Galata Bridge—my favorite spot in the city. I’ve written before about how Istanbul is a city of a thousand brilliant moments and I’ve tried to share those moments and images with you through photos. But this is also a city of movement and sound. It is constantly in transition, constantly readjusting and rearranging itself. It is, for lack of a better word, organic. Cats mosey through cafes, men wander by with carts of oranges, fights break out and dissipate. On most days here in Cihangir, some well-meaning guy volunteers to stand in the intersection, directing traffic. I love that guy, whoever he is; scrap-seller, lion-tamer, self-appointed mayor.

This week I am launching a new series of videos, called “Istanbul Essentials.” They’re nothing fancy, just my minuscule attempt to capture the movement and energy of the city. On Saturday, I put aside my Nikon and picked up my nifty (read: cheap) little video camera. I headed from my house up to Taksim, over to Tünel, down the hill to Karaköy, and over the bridge to Eminönü. 10 neighborhoods in 20 minutes—the mind reels.

The artichoke / With a tender heart / Dressed up like a warrior, / Standing at attention, it built / A small helmet / Under its scales / It remained / Unshakable

I focused my video on how people make a living in the street. Most of the people shown in the video are not homeless, though some are. I have a special affection in my heart for the Artichoke Man, who camps out on Siraselviler Caddesi. I tried to take his photo a couple times before but must have hit him on bad days; he scowled. On Saturday, he put on a little show and even smiled. It was 8 a.m., the streets were nearly empty and still dark from the early morning rain. In my mind, we totally bonded, though I’ll concede that part of my adoration for him is as proxy for that enchanting Chilean poet.

By its side / The crazy vegetables / Uncurled / Their tendrills and leaf-crowns, / Throbbing bulbs, / In the sub-soil / The carrot / With its red mustaches / Was sleeping

In some ways, I feel like this video, which I shot with unabashed love, is penitence for all the days I sleepwalk through the streets. One image I was eager to capture is of the porters outside Dogu Bank in Karaköy. When I first saw these men with saddles on their back, carrying 40 inch flat screen televisions, I felt the irony and injustice of the digital era. At the end of all our so-called advances and conveniences are people who carry the weight for others. No metaphor necessary. I continue to reflect on the philosophical breakdown of a close friend who spent many months in China, then hopped a flight to Japan and knew—knew with unfaltering conviction—that the technological advances of the “developed” world will brutally and miserably fail. Drink the oil while you can, he said, our comeuppance is coming.

The grapevine / Hung out to dry its branches / Through which the wine will rise, / The cabbage / Dedicated itself / To trying on skirts, / The oregano / To perfuming the world / And the sweet / Artichoke / There in the garden, / Dressed like a warrior, / Burnished / Like a proud / Pomegranate.

A few of the images show children at work. Children working in the streets present one of the more difficult ethical dilemmas in Istanbul. Do I give her money and reward her parents for sending her out in the streets? Or do I walk past her? As an artist (of sorts) I think I also have to concede that I find something beautiful, poetic, and true in her. I want justice, but how badly? This is something similar to the way I feel about Islam. I resent its social and political hegemony in Turkey; but I love the mosques. I love the convenience of the imagery and the contrast it provides to all my unceasing humanism and cosmopolitanism and secularism. As Murat and I eat dinner on his balcony, looking out over the Bosphorus, a dozen mosques begin their unrelenting chorus and we say, “Geez, the call to prayer is so loud.” But shouldn’t it be?

And one day / Side by side / In big wicker baskets / Walking through the market / To realize their dream / The artichoke army / In formation. / Never was it so military / Like on parade. / The men / In their white shirts / Among the vegetables / Were / The Marshals / Of the artichokes / Lines in close order / Command voices, / And the bang / Of a falling box.

I think Turkish people are really fun. Yeah, that’s the lamest sentence of the century, but I’m not sure how else to convey my appreciation for their coy countenance. Artichokes, all of them. Hard on the outside, but quick to smile. Sure, Turkish men stare too much. And no matter what I’m wearing, there’s always some guy who yells or sings or stutters something profane. But I admire their audacity. While shooting this video, a handsome young kid came up to me in Eminönü with a totally fabricated story about how his English teacher gave him an “assignment” to speak to native English speakers. The fictional assignment was to ask us, “What will make my English graduate?” “What will make your English improve?” I asked. He nodded, unsure. “Practice,” I said. “Practice,” he repeated with a knowing look and a slight, nearly imperceptible raise of his eyebrows. Then I walked away. Empathy ends where knowledge begins, eh? Add realism to my compulsive ism addiction.

But / Then / Maria / Comes / With her basket / She chooses / An artichoke, / She's not afraid of it. / She examines it, she observes it / Up against the light like it was an egg, / She buys it, / She mixes it up / In her handbag / With a pair of shoes / With a cabbage head and a / Bottle / Of vinegar / Until / She enters the kitchen / And submerges it in a pot.

I have to admit that I’m pleased to discover the place that Neruda’s “Ode to an Artichoke” has taken in my life. It’s sort of an odd poem, that I’ve peeled apart in a series of uninspired literature classes. And, somehow, I’ve always been drawn to it. I remember my father’s stories about his teenage years at the Presidio in California. These stories always involved skipping school, diving off of cliffs, buses into the city (San Francisco), and stolen crops. Artichokes always seemed so… Californian. Which is to say, foreign. Eating artichokes is so… complicated. Eat this, but not that. And so on.

Then / Scale by scale, / We strip off / The delicacy / And eat / The peaceful mush / Of its green heart.

Istanbul continues its enchantment. This summer I will finally learn how to cook and eat an artichoke, I promise. Thank you for sharing my journey. I want to hear how you are. Write to me. Send recipes. Much love,

Emily

—the poem is “Ode to an Artichoke” by Pablo Neruda.

INDEX TO IMAGES, “ISTANBUL ESSENTIALS: GETTING BY”:

Birds, Yeni Camii
Kid carrying tea, Egyptian Bazaar
Man collecting paper, İstiklal Caddesi
Man selling flags, in front of Yeni Camii
Men selling electronics, bottom of Voyvoda Sokak, Karaköy
Cart of bananas, Egyptian Bazaar
Man selling tobacco, Egyptian Bazaar
Rom/Gypsy woman selling flowers, Siraselviler Caddesi
Boy carrying stuffed clams, Galip Dede Caddesi
Man washing windows, İstiklal Caddesi
Man selling perfume, Siraselviler Caddesi
Man selling toys, Galata Bridge passage
Woman selling bird food, in front of Yeni Camii
Men selling jewelry, Galip Dede Caddesi
Girl selling tissues, Eminönü
Man offering lamination, Galip Dede Caddesi
Man carrying food, Egyptian Bazaar
Boys selling jeans, Eminönü
Man selling tobacco, Galata Bridge passage
Man selling belts, Galata Bridge passage
Taxi drivers / man delivering tea, Eminönü
Artichoke man, Siraselviler Caddesi
Man selling screwdrivers, Eminönü
Boy selling coloring books, Egyptian Bazaar
Woman selling bird food, in front of Yeni Camii
Man selling corn on the cob, Eminönü
Porters, Eminönü
Man delivering tea to fishermen / men selling fishing supplies, Galata Bridge
Man selling huge clock, Galata Bridge
Man selling reading glasses, Galata Bridge
Man selling pants, Egyptian Bazaar
Man selling simit (pretzel/bagel type thing), fish market in Karaköy
Boy playing recorder, İstiklal Caddesi
Man making and selling prayer beads, Eminönü
Man selling lottery tickets, Galata Bridge passage
Man selling shoes, Eminönü
Shoe shine man, Eminönü
Man selling toy, Eminönü

P.S. For those of you who still reluctantly patronize the RIAA-evil-spawn-legal-downloading-empire, check out "Emily's Spring Playlist" on iTunes. Right now I’m completely loving Jehro (anybody heard of him?), Menomena (fun to say!) and the new Patti Griffin and Lucinda Williams albums (girls so rock). Indulgent download of the week: Robin Thicke—how great is that song?

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=250750429

Habemus Papam

2006-12-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

This week Pope Benedict has come for a visit. The streets are lined with police and gendarme—begging the question of whether more Turkish security actually makes one more secure. The Pope’s visit comes at a time when Turkey is in the midst of circular, fruitless negotiations with the European Union regarding the opening of ports to ships from Greek Cyprus (that country that doesn’t exist). Yesterday we heard that the Pope reversed his previous position on Turkey’s entry to the European Union and now supports their bid.

Super. If only

Turkey

wanted to join the EU, then we’d really have a deal. In August 2005, 60% of people in Turkey had a positive view of the EU and 50% had “trust” in the EU and its policies. One year later, only 43% supported the EU and 35% had “trust” in the union. With Europe currently spewing 31 flavors of xenophobia, it’s little wonder.

I had two recent visitors to Istanbul and, interestingly, both had very different points of view about Turkey’s accession into the European Union. One visitor said she couldn’t believe that there was any argument about the matter, since Istanbul is obviously so European, in character. The other saw the city as much less developed than he expected and was shocked that the country was even being considered so soon. Of course, Istanbul is not representative of the country as a whole and the real fear of Europeans is our eastern hinterlands; chock-a-block with unemployable men and head scarves and barefoot children (Eee! Gasp).

One of the many, many issues surrounding

Turkey

these days is the human rights situation here and, tangentially, religious freedom. The freedom to worship in Turkey is a complex legal and social web. According to the government,

Turkey

is 99% Muslim. Nearly all of that percentage is Sunni Muslims. Although a secular state, the country is now led by a moderate Islamic party.

A brief review (courtesy of the BBC) of the Islamist newspaper headlines is both funny and enlightening… the most entertaining coming from Vakit, an overtly sensational newspaper that changes its name whenever it gets in trouble with the law.

Yeni Safak

“What to do to the pope”
“Is the Pope as Powerful as He is Believed To Be?”

Milli Gazete

“This Is Istanbul, Not Konstantin”
“Do Not Let the Pope Come”

Bügün

“A Guest Forced on us”

Vakit

“Is pope not human?”
“Democratization: Should We Continue With It or Suspend It?”
“You are not Wanted; Do not Come, Do Not Cause Tension”
“Pope Will Come, Everybody Will Be Happy”
“Will Not The Chief Priest Be Ashamed To Come Here?”
“Has Dialogue Between Religions Failed?”
“You May Come Even If You Have Insulted Us Thousand Times”
“Pope turns Turkist [i.e. Turkish Nationalist] all of a sudden”
“Like Pollyanna”

The word on the street is more conspiratorial. Theories have surfaced that the Pope is in Turkey to “Christianize” the country (good luck with that). Others were busy buying up the new, hit novel, Plot Against the Pope: Who will kill the pope in Istanbul?, which suggests the Pope will be killed in Turkey by a joint CIA-Opus Dei-Italian Mason operation aimed at the attack of Iran. The Globe and Mail reports, “The book's cover features the Pope in front of a burning cross with a bearded gunman taking aim at him.” Subtlety is not a Turkish strong point.

Although the security situation this week has been terrible for cars, it is a pedestrian’s dream. Taksim Square is now, finally, a square worth spending time in. The air feels cleaner, the car-dodging kill-or-be-killed atmosphere has evaporated… it’s lovely for a person who has almost nowhere to go. Reports say that security is much higher for the Pope than it was for the U.S. President, which makes sense, since the last guy who shot a Pope was Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turk. After a momentary parole (!) this year, he’s now behind bars again in Turkey.

The “real” reason for the Pope being here (you know, besides, as Vakit put it, the “Pollyanna”-esque Muslim-Christian bonding) is to help mend the relationship between the Eastern Orthodoxy and the Catholic church. Herein lies the sort of centuries-long historical dispute that causes this secular American’s eyes to cross—the key dates being, 38, 330, 1054, 1204 and 1453 AD. As Gore Vidal says, it ought to be called, “the United States of Amnesia,” but kudos to you if those dates mean something.

Basically, although the Turks have intimidated and forcibly removed most of the Christians from the country, Istanbul is still home to the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. Which means that here, in this little city of ours, lots of important decisions are made that affect the entire Orthodox church. The Ecumenical Patriarch is sometimes called the “spiritual leader” of the Orthodoxy, but its more like a pan-religious mediator between all forms of Orthodoxy and other forms of Christianity. It has “canonical jurisdiction” over Turkey, the Dodecanese (some Greek Islands), Mount Athos, Crete and the Western hemisphere, including the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

“That's some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It's the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

—Joseph Heller

The last century has been a horror show for minorities. Since the state is secular, but obviously Muslim, they came up with this hybrid plan, in which religion is controlled by the government. The “Diyanet” regulates the 77,500+ Sunni mosques in Turkey and employs, as civil servants, its imams. The government pays the utility bills for these mosques. Other religious organizations, called “community foundations,” are under the jurisdiction of the General Directorate for Foundations (GDF), which also looks after hospitals, orphanages, schools, etc.

Estimates say there are now 65,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians, 23,000 Jews, and less than 2,500 Greek Orthodox Christians in

Turkey

. This Is Istanbul, Not Konstantin; indeed. It’s a far cry from the 1924 population of 200,000 Greeks, most of whom left after two days’ deportation notice in 1955, or more dramatically, the population of 2 million Armenians in 1914, who were massacred between 1915 and 1917. Armenians state that 1.5 million were killed.

The so-called “community foundations” collectively own very few “sites”: Greek Orthodox foundations, about 70 sites; Armenian Orthodox foundations, about 50 sites, and Jewish foundations with 20 sites. The so-called sites are primarily limited to places of worship. Turkish law allows specifically for freedom of worship, but does not guarantee community foundations the right to organize freely, directly own property, train their personnel or have legal recognition.

In 1936 and, again, in 1974, the majority of properties owned by community foundations were seized by the Turkish government. Most of these were the financial support structure for the community—schools and hospitals. They now sit empty, or are being used by the government.

Of the 364 sites in the country that are recognized, the government reserves the right to seize this property if the population of a minority in any given community dramatically decreases. Furthermore, many of these few properties are now called “ancient,” a handy loophole that prohibits community foundations from doing repair work on their properties without permission. It’s a nice little one-two (three-four, five-six...) punch, don’t you think?

In sum: You can own anything you want, but you have to apply (even if you want to fix the roof) and in case you didn’t own it in 1936, best wishes and good luck paying for it, oh! and we may intimidate everyone in the neighborhood to leave, in which case, it’s ours. And did I mention its illegal for anyone except a Turkish-born citizen to be in charge? But, on the off-chance that you do find a leader and you want to train him in a religious facility, those are illegal too.

For the Ecumenical Patriarchate, this amounts to a death sentence. The guy in charge now is a Turk, but since there’s only a few thousand Greek Turks left, who will be next? PLUS, the government (in keeping with the whole secular education slash that-looks-like-really-valuable-real-estate thing), shut down the seminary, the Orthodox Theological School of Halki on Heybeli Island.

In fact, the Turkish government does not officially recognize the ecumenical role of the Patriarch, but instead, says Bartholomew I is the head of the Greek community in Turkey. Which makes it seem odd that the Pope would want to visit him…

So back to the Pope, the EU. It’s all a bit more complicated now, isn’t it? The Pope called the schism between the Orthodox church and the Catholic church a “scandal to the world,” but I, for one, find it awfully hard to get riled up about a fight that started in 1054. It’s little wonder that the primary goal of the pontiff’s trip was transported into the timelier and deeper-felt issues of this political moment.

Despite the Pope’s efforts (if that’s what they can be called), Turkish officials held the line on their non-recognition of the patriarch. Other minor results include Prime Minister Erdoğan’s brief political boost by seeming to change the Pope’s mind on the issue of EU accession, as well as the conservative Islamists’ momentary front page pandering to the masses by insisting, once again, that Hagia Sophia be turned back into a mosque (dream away, my friends).

In my opinion, the real issue at hand is how to define religious freedom and allow true diversity in a Muslim country precariously lodged between the inflexible ideals of democracy, militant secularism and the narrow intentions of minority Islamists. The threats seem to be coming from all sides. But perhaps I have painted the scenario with broad strokes.

At the end of the day, my neighborhood is just one of many that is dotted with the un-reclaimable property of Jews and Christians. To me, an empty lot or a beautiful building in ruins feels like a failed state—each one, a silent but fertile home for humanity’s worst flaws: our capacity for hate, our stubbornness and our insular quest for power at any cost. I use the word “our” with intention; these are the weaknesses within all of us, writ large for the world to see. The question here—as in Darfur and Iraq, and Rwanda and

Afghanistan

, before them—is do we see?

Living for the City

2006-11-22T00:32:00.000-08:00

Since I’ve been in Istanbul about a year now (and more, and less), I thought it was high time for a review. At this age, it’s hard to say if a year means anything at all. These aren’t the milestone years between 15 and 16, when a girl’s world suddenly transforms from dull & impossible to magic & illicit. Or 18 and 19, when it just as suddenly, switches back.

I ran into a lovely writerly friend at a party last week. And when I asked (wanting to know the truth, but hardly expecting it) how he was, he said, “Progress is occurring at a glacial pace.” And then for emphasis, “Glacial, Emily.” Thank god for truth-tellers.

I see now that choosing where to live is not so much choosing a life, but rather, choosing which fantasy life to forsake. If the lesson of our college years was that all things are possible, then certainly, the lesson of our 20’s and 30’s is that all things are possible, at a cost. (I have a sneaking suspicion that my 40’s and 50’s will teach me that some things are impossible… Nonetheless. I’ve decided to spin with the room.)

After wandering through the cobblestone for a while, I've come to believe that the expat dream is not unique or foreign, it is just one more incarnation of the American dream, to position a life around my truest self and not around my fate. To find a life which is at once, wholly separate and wholly interconnected. To feel that I am riding the margins of my greatest aspirations, and in so doing, finding a way to coordinate my livable and unlivable dreams.

I once had a friend who was studying astronomy at a state school in New Hampshire. One day, after extemporizing on his infamous and genius professor, he said, “Well, anyway, he got famous back when all you had to do was discover a new star.”

What does it mean to be successful today? And what does success take from us? Our generation lives in a hyper-network of information. None of us will ride the coattails of Alpha 116 into tenure. The really useful people will undoubtedly discover new and exciting ways to store and process data. For the rest of us, our careers are a complex form of entertainment—a way to buy more music.

Emily, you say, where is your signature naïveté? One word: ISTANBUL. Living in the third world inspires a life philosophy that I’m cleverly calling, “Cynicism.” The foremost lesson you learn in Istanbul is this: You cannot save all the cats.

When kitten season first arrives, you hypothetically entertain taking home that cute gray cat. Then the one with orange spots. Then the black one. Then you suddenly realize that there are thousands of cats. And, hypothetically, you’ve just adopted a kaleidoscope of kittens. You are the crazy cat lady.

Slowly, you cease to imagine taking home the kittens. And then, you can hardly bear to look at them because you know you are just one person. In the rain and cold, you learn how to pocket your pain about the inevitability of their death and suffering. You hear two cats trying to kill each other in the garden. You see a kid kicking them. A cat walks past you without a tail, with one eye, three legs. Eventually, you learn to accept that you are not a veterinarian, or Bob Barker, or even, Brangelina. You decide that the government is incapable of solving this problem, and worse, indifferent to it.

And the cats are just the beginning. Cynicism is born. But there are bright spots. Developing countries are full of fun ironies.

The road to my neighborhood is called Siraselviler, a mostly unremarkable street anchored between three hospitals. During the day, it is filled with crippled beggars and entrepreneurial business people, selling hospital room slippers off of carts. At night, it is a nest of dark, windowless bars, the type where the wide-shouldered bouncers inspire more fear than safety. Since Siraselviler leads to the nightlife of Taksim, it is often lined with bright yellow taxis and flashy cars out for a cruise. The sidewalks are narrow.

The other night, while walking home from the metro, I spotted a very dirty, very drunk old man in front of me, spinning his way into stopped traffic. And just as I was cursing him, and all such ordinary dangers, he did a beautiful thing.

He stopped his drunken careening, as if on a pin, right in front of a brand-new 6 Series BMW. With a lit cigarette in one hand and the other one poised like a ballerina’s, he threw his arms out and stood like a cross before the gleaming black car. Then, with the kind of precision that any yoga practitioner would admire, he closed his eyes, bent cleanly at the waist and began gently to kiss the hood, over and over, his arms outspread like wings.

Meanwhile, the guy in the driver’s seat was barely visible through his tinted windows. He looked like a man who tweezes his eyebrows in the rear view mirror at stop lights. I saw him throw up his hands and mutter something about Allah. But in the end, how could he object? He bought the car to be admired, after all. Stuck in traffic, not wanting to get out and confront an old, drunk man, the driver watched, resigned. I suspect he reconsidered the car. I reconsidered the drunk man.

Such is life in Istanbul. Every day is another opportunity to unravel our own limitations and also, to peel back the shiny outer layers of our dreams. This year in Istanbul has taught me how to do two things: to recognize my limitations and to honor them. I am only one person in a city of 20 million people.

In middle school, I knew a little girl whose fifth grade class became obsessed with the idea of one million. They wanted to know what a million of something looked like and so their teacher had each child bring in the plastic lids off their families’ milk containers—they made it to a thousand.

People who are drawn to Istanbul, or cities like this one, are also drawn to the incomprehensible grandeur of life. They are the kids who are desperate and curious enough to understand one million—to allow themselves to be impressed by it. Istanbul is exasperating, exhausting and unrelenting. But it is also funny, complicated, surprising and awe inspiring.

In this life, there is very little room for big dreams. Istanbul offers something else, something America resists, which is the diminution of our overblown identities in the quest for real solace. I often feel pushed, as if there were no more space in the city for me. But when I do find a place—a small table for tea, a spot to sit and look at the ships—I feel as if I’ve conquered the world, and in so doing, I have also found a compromise between that which I can control and that which controls me. We are all alone together, as we whisper to the neighborhood cat, as we stumble into traffic, as we suddenly realize; it will be snowing again soon and there are so many things we meant to accomplish.

What does 20 million feel like? Perhaps my neighbors can spot their house in Cihangir. Look for the landmarks, Galata Sarayı (top left) and Kabataş (bottom right).

Look for the cruise ship in these two pictures to understand the scale/perspective. The cruise ship is located in the bottom right of the picture above and directly in the middle of the picture below.

The geographically curious are welcome to email me for the complete Google Earth file (.kmz).

Uganda

2006-08-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

The abiding philosophy here is that vacations without vaccinations are no fun at all. Enjoy.

YouTube tips for the uninitiated:

This file is big. The best thing to do is click on the video, turn down the volume and then walk away for fifteen minutes. If you let the video play all the way through once, then you can go back and push play again without that annoying start/stop thing.

For those of you with dial-up, in 3^rd world countries, etc., my apologies… but it’s totally worth the wait… probably worth the wait.

The songs here are “Pata Pata,” “Nomeva,” and “Mbube” by the fabulous South African singer, Miriam Makeba. She rocks.

Cheers. Or as the Ugandans might say, “You are welcome…”

Love It or Leave It?

2006-04-13T04:21:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I’ve taken up the “Murphy’s Law” approach to life in Istanbul. Feel free to fire your spiritual gurus: when things go wrong, instead of fighting reality, I just say, “Of course.” Repaving Istiklal with different tiles next year? Of course, they are. A metro system that takes you from Almost Somewhere to Basically Nowhere? Of course, it does. Toxins in our drinking water? Of course, there are. Intermittent electricity?… Well, you get it.

So this was the refrain I quietly repeated to myself (with no shortage of irony) when, on what was supposed to be a quick border run, the Turkish officials let me walk into Greece, then refused to let me walk back into Turkey. My friend Ladin and I stood wide-eyed and baffled on either side of a traffic barrier; inches apart, in two different countries.

It all started simply enough… People, like me, who live in Turkey without a resident’s permit, have to leave the country every three months when their tourist visa expires, in order to get a new one. It’s definitely illegal and word-on-the-street is that they are starting to crack down on our little system.

Nonetheless, when Ladin suggested that she just drive me to the Greek border (a three hour trip from Istanbul), I couldn’t refuse. How American of me… why fly somewhere when we could drive? My only thought was, “ROAD TRIP!!!” Two girls in a little car, good tunes, the open road.

As it turns out, even the road to Greece is paved with good intentions. The further we traveled from Istanbul, the higher my blood pressure rose. I said to Ladin, “I have this irrational fear that the car’s going to break down and I’m going to end up in one of these dead end industrial towns for the rest of my life.” I imagined trying to convince some Turkish farmer to drive me back to Istanbul on his homemade tractor—my hair blowing in the wind, cars passing us, when we finally reached the city it would be like when Dorothy stumbled upon Oz. A more intuitive person than myself would have seen these fantasies for what they were, a grand foreshadowing.

When we reached the border, we spoke with a border control person who had seen dozens like me come and go. Accordingly, he called up a taxi driver from Greece, whose only job is to drive people from Turkey to Greece and then back to Turkey. Ladin and I laughed hysterically when the Turkish guy started yelling into his phone, “Merhaba abi. Alo? Pavlos? Pavlos! Buraya gel! Pavlos?” Five minutes pass.

Enter, Pavlos Papadopoulos. He walked me to his taxi:

I looked at the car and then I looked at him, “So this must be one of those EU taxis, huh?” He smiled. Without any trouble, I left Turkey, I entered Greece, I went to Duty Free, I left Greece.

Then the dumbass at the Turkish border refused to let me back into Turkey. He said it was obvious I live here; I’m abusing the system, blah blah. And then suddenly, he flips the pages of my passport, spins it around to face me and plants his finger on page 8: Iraq. “You went to Kurdistan. What is Kurdistan?”

Ahhaaa. The plot thickens. The political climate is tense right now and, I wonder, if this is the price one pays for a “Kurdistan” stamp, what must it be like to actually be Kurdish? I flipped the pages of the passport. I said, “I’ve been to Turkey three times since I went to Iraq, why now? What’s the problem?” His response? He tilts his head back, closes his eyes briefly and gives me a “tssk.” I don’t speak much Turkish, but this I understood. Case closed.

I arranged for the taxi to take me to the airport in Alexandroupolis, where I could catch a flight to Athens, then fly back to Istanbul the next day. Pavlos scanned me briefly for the tell-tale marks of an infidel, and then started laughing when I smoothly told Murat, by cell phone, “So, I’m taking a holiday in Athens.” Things went wrong at the border? Of course, they did.

Screw Turkey. Five miles from the Turkish border and we’re flying along on smooth, EU-funded highways. Instead of mosques and gecekondus (shanties); the Greeks have roadside altars, clean sidewalks, well-dressed children.

A week from my run-in at the border and I’ve finally realized what happened. My relationship with Turkey is not unlike a love affair. When the border officials refused to let me back in, Turkey and I had our first fight; and now, I’m sorry to say, the honeymoon is definitely over.

There’s always a month, in the beginning of a relationship, when nothing bothers you about the guy. You know, he’s chewing with his mouth open, and you’re thinking, “Wow, his eyes are soooo blue.” Two weeks later and you’re criticizing his relationship with his mother, rearranging his furniture, thinking to yourself, “If he chews with his mouth open one more time, I might smack him.”

I’ve found a whole range of flaws to pick apart in men. There’s a sliding scale: quirks, foibles, imperfections, defects and, of course, deal-breakers. Some of them are clear: no car, no job, speaks different language, etc. But the most difficult to deal with are the characteristics that you simultaneously love and hate.

He has lots of friends.

Reality: he has lots of female friends.

He’s successful.

Reality: he's married to his job.

He’s so different from other guys.

Reality: he's kinda weird.

It goes without saying that the things I love about Turkey are, in a sense, only possible because of the things I also hate about Turkey. I like the feeling of being fundamentally disassociated from the culture. The old songs mean nothing to me, the symbols mean nothing to me, the rules don’t apply. It’s the same way I feel in church, like, “Isn’t all this lovely?” The Priest starts talking and I think, “Morality. Neat idea. Where are we having lunch?”

Being “foreign” affords you the unique freedom to watch, to listen, to walk closer, or to walk away. It also means that this country, like a live-in boyfriend, can walk away from me.

A brief trip to the Museum of Modern Art reveals an entire generation of Communist artists who, when not in jail, were painting ethereal and stirring images of mosques on the horizon. There are so many things that should change in this country, but then I start worrying. If it changes, will I fall out of love with Istanbul? The first week I moved here, I took a trip to the local grocery store, Gima. As I browsed the aisles, I realized the place was full of foreigners. And, as Staton shrewdly noted, a bunch of foreigners who act like they speak Turkish and are all pretending not to notice each other.

I flashed forward: I saw us all snubbing each other at a Dean & DeLuca’s, complaining that the brioche is too flat and the organic apples are improperly labeled. Before we know it, will the gypsy flower sellers be gone? Will the corner stores turn into Costcos? Will my pharmacist refuse to deliver?

The worst part, naturally, is that I have absolutely no right to grumble about imminent globalization and the death of local culture when I am a foreigner. They have salsa in the grocery store for me, afterall. My friend Volkan recently mentioned that he and his friends once rented a flat in this neighborhood for half of what I pay. “Sure,” I said. “But if you wanted to have a glass of wine, you had to drink it with that old guy and his family of wild dogs.” His reply, “Well, yeah.”

My friends who haven’t visited Cihangir in the past five years are likely to mention that they used to score drugs in this neighborhood. My landlord’s wife, on the other hand, talks about the glory days in Taksim. “What are all those young people doing on Istiklal? They’re just walking from one end to the other! Just looking at each other! And drinking! Aren’t there bars anywhere else in this city?” She adds, “In the old days, if you wanted to go to Istiklal, you had to wear a suit. Women wore hats.”

While revealing, Istanbul is definitely a skewed lens through which to view Turkey, as a whole. After a few years of relative silence, the situation with Kurds in the Southeast is once again front page news. Everyday, the Turkish government is committing a huge, humiliating affront to human rights. Forget the EU rhetoric. This is about Turkey’s relationship with its own people and the cultural legacy of rampant racism via Nationalism in the name of modernization. As for the Kurds, well, they clearly learned a thing or two from the Palestinians.

In the end, I made it back to Istanbul without any problems. As I approached the Customs desk at Ataturk International Airport, I tensed up a little. But it was all for naught:

“İyi akşamlar (Good evening),” I say to the Customs official. He is adorable, looks no older than 16. He immediately blushes madly. “İyi akşamlar,” he whispers. Stamp.

I guess it’s an imperfect love affair. Turkey and I were seeing each other, then, you know, it got serious. We moved in together. I’m still waiting to meet his family (he’s a bit secretive). And yeah, the neighborhood is weird: Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Syria. I’m a realist about these things. I can accept that there is no foible-free man on Earth, just as I can accept that every country has its own struggles to balance human rights in the face of complex political realities.

The trick, with countries, as with relationships, I guess, is to find the flaws you can live with. And to avoid unrealistic expectations.

Turkey promises it can change. Of course.

xo em

me and ladin

me and my housemate, staton

89. 412. 7.

2006-01-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

"I was simply restless, quite likely because of a dissatisfaction with the recent trajectory of my life, and if there is a better, more compelling reason for dropping everything and moving to the end of the world, I don't know what it is."

—J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2004)

Just at the moment I start to believe I have, in fact, reached the far end of the world, my deeply surly taxi driver pulls up to that familiar blue and yellow box, Ikea. No matter that I moved to Istanbul for the charming cobblestone and neighborhood bakkals, when it comes to furniture, I am irreparably enchanted by the calm, glassy sameness of Swedish design.

What names they have for things! The “Aspelund” bedroom set. The “Lillehammer” desk. I straighten my scarf. I start thinking I might need a better wardrobe to go with this furniture. Ikea is a welcome respite because it promises exactly the kind of lifestyle that Istanbul casually rejects—a life that is categorized, catalogued and coordinating. How could I simultaneously love both Ikea and Istanbul ? No surprise that I instantly began a long tumble into self-doubt.

I suppose I came to Istanbul for all the wrong reasons, which is to say, only one real, orderly reason—I like it here. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of reason I feel silly saying out loud and when people ask me how I ended up here, I futilely search my mind for something more urgent. No failed marriage with a controlling, but passionate political figure. No simmering obsessions with Iznik tiles or obscure poets. I am, simply put, happy here. Even on the days I am most unhappy.

My friends who spent time in New York City have a habit of calling it, “the city.” As if there were no other teeming metropolis on Earth. “This one time,” they say. “We were at a club in the city and…” I imagine interrupting them, “And which city do you mean?... Ahh, right. New York. Never heard of it.” Spending a few youthful years in New York City is exactly the kind of accomplishment Americans revere. Living in “the city” signifies one’s irrepressible strength of character and, also, a dangerously open-minded willingness to avoid an ordinary life.

…

No one—and I mean absolutely no one—refers to Istanbul as, “the city.” Try to say, “This one time we were at a club in Istanbul…” and the conversation is guaranteed to come to a dead stop. I am on a journey that will never produce knowing nods at Christmas dinner—it will always raise eyebrows. The world cannot make up its mind about Turkey. Maps alternately categorize it as Europe, Asia, or the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, I let my mother believe it’s Europe. (“Oh, it’s really wonderful here. Hop on a flight, and boom—you’re in Milan.”) With my father, it’s Asia, and, by implication, more interesting than it has turned out to be. (“They were all nomads, originally.”) My contemporaries want to believe it’s the Middle East and that their visit here will yield adventure. (“There were a couple of bombings this summer, but they were super small.”)

My opinion? This is Purgatory—the in-between land, a corkscrew of misunderstandings and indictments. Is Turkey on its way up or still reeling from one of the greatest descents ever? The problem is that the people who know anything about Turkey are, generally speaking, the same people who think the Economist is a hopelessly dumbed-down tabloid. Maybe the world will never understand Turkey as long as Turks don’t understand themselves.

Do you live on the Asian side? Or the Anatolian side? What does your name say about your parents? Çağdas? Bariş? Dicle? (Socialists? Peaceniks? Pro-Kurd?) The simplest things have a way of politicizing themselves and wedging small divides. The biggest divides, of course, don’t make it into the public discourse. Probably because there is no public discourse.

On Friday I spent hours and hours at the bank. Everyone takes a number and waits their turn. The very best part was that numbers were assigned and called in a completely arbitrary order. 89. 412. 7. Meanwhile, a few people walked into the bank, didn’t take a number, marched right up to the counter and were served immediately. I just kept thinking, “Is anyone else here as angry as I am?” The obvious answer is, no.

People keep telling me that Turks are deeply insecure, and it’s no wonder when the world treats this country like their fall-back girl. The European Union will reconsider Turkey in 2015? I know this game. Might as well send a text message, “not sure what i’m up 2. will call you l8r if i’m around.” Expect a call at 2 a.m. Sorry Turkey, you’re pretty enough for a booty call, but no one’s going to hold hands with you in the middle of the bar.

…

In Istanbul, there is a very close-knit group of ex-pats. I think we are close because we all consider ourselves to be in on the same joke. The joke is that Istanbul isn’t nearly as dangerous, or interesting, or far away as some people seem to believe. On the other hand, it is as far away and dangerous and interesting as it needs to be in order for the universe to confirm that we are both special and, a little bit, weird. We have faith in this place. We have faith in its contradictions, in a sense, because they mirror our own.

By choosing Turkey, I realize I've forsaken all the glamorous destinations and will never be able to verify the authenticity of croissants or a good rioja. People will naturally assume I have an unhealthy interest in Turkish men or the tenets of Islam. At the very least, my decision to live in Istanbul has a tendency to confuse people. As one old classmate from Baltimore said to me last month, “Turkey, huh? You mean the country, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The country.”

Despite my naïve conviction as I wandered the glimmering aisles of Ikea, I’m starting to accept that there is no way to construct (or purchase) a life in Turkey that is either coordinating or easy-to-assemble. And this is a small relief... it will never be my fault. I like Istanbul because it is constantly surprising, constantly changing. It’s very alive and it makes me feel alive.

A few days ago, I met a couple of journalists who have been here for decades. I asked them how long it would take for me to become bitter. One replied, “That depends on two things—your landlord and your water supply.” Somehow, every journey has a way of simplifying itself.

...

write to me. tell me about your latest tumbles into self-doubt... em

ps. it's snowing here. which is to say, it snows here.

...

Directions to Ikea? Or Dante Alighieri's map of the underworld? You be the judge.

This weekend my lives collided, as they often do. Left to right, Özgay, me, Özer (a former classmate from College of the Atlantic) and Giancarlo (a friend from Minnesota). Özer and I have been catching up and reminiscing about the good old days in Bar Harbor, Maine, when vegetarian cuisine meant tofu and tempeh, not chicken and fish.

6.5 Ways of Looking at a Blinking Cursor

2005-12-06T05:51:00.000-08:00

1.

I haven’t concentrated on writing something creative and emotional in years, so it should come as no surprise to all my writer-ly friends that I am totally shocked by how traumatically difficult it is. The last time I wrote this much was during a fellowship I did in college. I worked with the wonderful (and wonderfully eccentric) American poet, Carolyn Kizer. One evening that summer, as we sat out on someone’s front porch drinking red wine, she told us what the writing world needs is less students and more bohemians.

She flips her wildly curly hair and with wine wantonly swirling in her glass says, “What you need to do is, you need to get a typewriter. And go rent a room in Greece.” She looks around at the over-eager students surrounding her and barks at us, “You should all be living out of beat up suitcases!” What I did was just the opposite—I got good internships, I worked in publishing, I decided to save the world and then I got a couple of marginally useful degrees.

So… I am now renting a room in Istanbul (sorry Nopulos family, nothing personal) and regularly staring at the blinking cursor of my friend cum confidante: my laptop. Welcome to the new Bohemia. We are over-educated, under-employed or mis-employed, and decidedly not lugging around typewriters. Today the most creative people I know are either 1. lawyers, 2. hapless PhD students or 3. waxing eyebrows.

2.

Mete’s advice this week… After I sent him a desperate text message: “Please tell me we can start drinking soon. This book is going to kill me.”

He calls me back, “Listen, just stop writing. Just stop. You know, when the sun explodes, you know what’s going to happen? All the paper in all the books is going to be the first thing to burn up. So don’t worry about it. You and Kant will finally have something in common.” He laughs.

Okay, I had that coming.

3.

I just read Bird by Bird, a book about writing by the very funny Anne Lamott. I’m sure you’ve all read it and I have no idea why it took me so long to get to it. I probably shouldn’t steal lines from my ex (a man who also had a completely irrational hatred of Florida), but alas, it’s the best excuse I have for avoiding the book: once we were in a women’s literature course in college and he was asked (as one of the token men) to explain why he doesn’t read much women’s lit. With his standard slouch and unblinking cynicism he replies, “I don’t know. I don’t really dig books with birds on the cover.”

So there you have it. A woman slaves away to record her most valuable thoughts about writing and the editor puts a bird on the cover.

4.

I was totally engrossed in Bird by Bird when I arrived at Volkan’s house. Some friends of his are filming a short movie in his apartment. It was surreal. Suddenly his average apartment was a “set”, a place where important, recordable events can take place. I’m sitting there reading, Volkan and a friend are playing video games and meanwhile, three marginally sketchy guys are buzzing around discussing the best angles, where to put the lights, how to rearrange the furniture. Filming was planned to begin the next day.

As I watched them and pretended not to feel like a misplaced prop, I thought, “Oh shit, this is my life.” Here is my new image of God, this director: chain-smoking, sweaty, an earring in his left ear, snooping around my life with a haphazard, but apparently loyal staff. I imagine him saying, “Is there any way we can make this place darker? How about some rain? And somebody get the narcissistic ex-boyfriend on the phone! I’m ready to shoot her break-down.”

For all but a few of my most well-adjusted friends, this is a perfect metaphor for their lives and the universally terrifying experience of stumbling through our 20’s and 30’s. I feel like I’ve just become the unwitting star of a low-budget foreign film. As per my usual arrangement with God, I can’t seem to tell if it’s a comedy or a tragedy. Most of the time, I’m not even sure I’m in the right movie.

I laughed when they finally sat down to smoke and the director exclaims, in perfect English, “Where are the fucking scripts?” Yes, I thought. Where are the fucking scripts?

5.

Once upon a time, I worked as an intern for a small publisher of literature and spent all day reading through stacks of unsolicited manuscripts. They were always accompanied by letters with desperate and melodramatic opening lines, “Dear Editor, Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if Elvis had never died? This is the book for you!” As a result of this experience, I have an acute sense of how many people in the world are writing.

My in-box was always full. I began to see manuscripts everywhere. I dreamt of them—falling out of kitchen cupboards, stacked in front of televisions, in every pocket and briefcase and purse across America. Unfortunately, knowing how many people are writing has done little to dissuade me from my own work. To the contrary, I find it perversely heartening.

As my friend John often says, here’s the thing. Some people can’t seem to stop writing. I am one of them. In my mind, every letter of rejection that I sent was a cosmic stamp-of-approval. I wanted the letter to say, “I know it doesn’t matter how many times we say, ‘No.’ You couldn’t stop writing even if you wanted to. Send more.” I imagined people posting my note above their typewriters; the physical actualization of a life spent willfully following their bliss, futile or not.

Lamott says, “Take the attitude that what you’re thinking and feeling is valuable stuff, and then be naïve enough to get it all down on paper.” Well, when you put it that way…

6.

Whenever my own neuroses begin to seem both unique and insurmountable, or I forget which airport I’m in (a surprisingly similar feeling), I think of this one-act play by Dorothy Parker:

It’s 1940-something and a young newlywed couple boards a train, presumably on their way to their honeymoon. They hang their coats. She adjusts her hat. He looks at her and she looks back. Some minutes pass. Finally, the silence is broken.

“Well, here we are,” she says.
“Yes. Here we are, aren’t we?” he replies.

6.5

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

Yeah, well, we can’t all be Wallace Stevens, now can we?

Next week: my mother and my sister are in Istanbul. Yup. More than one friend has generously suggested my sister can stay at his place. Right. Believe me guys, I’ve never even seen Midnight Express… I will hurt you.

Sending love (and impolite threats of violence), em

B'more

2005-11-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

Right now I’m sitting at the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV seems like the perfect space in which to write the quasi-nostalgic, ambiguously bitter commentary about “home” that’s been bouncing around my head this month.

About five years ago, I had an epic falling-out with my family; the sorts of which you’ve either lived or only seen in movies. As a result, I stopped coming home—I spent Christmas with friends, I embraced my generation’s distinction between “family” and “family of origin,” I pursued the education of my mind and the re-education of my heart. My geographic relocation was nothing more than a physical manifestation of the psychic distance I always felt from my family.

Now I’m back… in Baltimore. And wondering about that funny phrase, “Home is where the heart is.” This is the most time I’ve spent here since I was 18 years old and it’s so fascinating to look at the complex architecture of “home” with new eyes. It’s not the kind of thing that everyone understands. But it is wonderful to be here, reconnecting with old, old friends and finally bearing witness to the progress that the bravest among us have made, as well as the virtual stasis of so many others.

.....

The town, in which I grew up, Catonsville, is a mixed up place. It is a little Petri dish of the best and worst qualities that urban and suburban life has to offer. Only a mile or less from the city, Catonsville is dotted with huge oak trees and a fair number of upper-middle class colonial homes. No surprise that it is also a huge market for coke and heroin. Addiction is an epidemic and those of us who managed to dodge the bullet don’t consider ourselves special or smarter; just lucky.

But this weekend’s Halloween party really blew my mind. I was shocked to see how many people dressed as coke whores or junkies. Is this our east-coast, tongue-in-cheek, ironic way of dealing with the fact that some of the people we know have actually died from drug overdoses? Or are we still a little bit naïve to our own reality? Are we in a blissful, if futile, state of denial? For how long will we glamorize the thing that is killing us? For how long will we hold on to this ridiculous myth of our own suburban superiority? Green grass and 4th of July parades will only get you so far.

Often now I find myself asking, “What can I do for my home?” instead of, “What can my home do for me?” The classic dilemma of how, and with whom, to expend energy is a much easier decision for people who come from happy homes… why would you ever leave? For that matter, why not leave? Everyone will be fine with or without you. (Personally, I’m wondering if my family is too old to put up for adoption…)

All of us, regardless of where we came from, are now trapped in what I’m convinced is the Western world’s most complex moral question: Where should I live? I don’t at all regret my time spent away. Probably you know that little metaphor for self-care: when on an airplane, if the pressure in the cabin drops, they always tell parents to put on their own oxygen mask first—you can’t help anyone until you help yourself.

.....

For Americans, our sense of self is almost entirely based in our own individual ability to succeed. In my opinion, the definition of success in this country is boring and surprisingly narrow. It involves ownership of property, retirement investment, stable partners, consistent and consistently fulfilling work. But there is a more subtle message which comes from every direction. The message is: Move Out! Move Up! and Move On!... wherever and however you can.

America is not only telling us we can be anything we want, it is telling us we must be. And we must do it alone. If we don't succeed enough, it is because we don’t believe in ourselves enough. It is our own sad, psychological flaw. At the very least, our culture tells us that those of us who are not panting toward some mythic career probably lack creativity.

Since I’ve been back in Maryland, I’ve hung out with a lot of people living with their parents. This phenomenon never happened with our parents’ generation and many people are chalking it up to higher education, with it’s propensity to extend adolescence and increase the economic pressure on young people. I wonder which life lessons my friends are learning that I will never have the opportunity to learn in just that way—abiding by someone else’s rules, seeing the people who raised you every day and getting to know them as a grown up, watching your parents get to know you. Their situation calls for exactly the kind of tolerance and patience to which we all aspire—so then, why are we critical of people who live at home?

In developing countries, people don’t have to choose between their individual life path and the path of their families—most of them can’t. In Turkey, I’ve often felt like my friends were in a safer place at this age because their decisions were essentially made for them. On the other hand, it can become a terrible situation if their family is not a safe place to land.

For people who do leave Turkey, there are ways in which their home country will never welcome them again. They speak the language with the wrong accent. The smells of the city start to make them crazy. Their country can’t support their professional aspirations. Do we really have to choose the life we want to live? I think we do. But as a very wise Turkish friend of mine once said, sometimes our lives just choose us.

.....

My friends here are taking care of each other. And now I can see how they have taken care of me as I roamed the world… how I wore them around my shoulders for years without knowing it. How they were visiting each other at the hospital and fixing each other’s flat tires, while I was learning how to make new friends and forget about the past.

I don’t mean to imply that one path is better than another, but it’s now easy for me to see that where we decide to live has everything to do with the kind of person we become, the education we receive from life, and ultimately what and how we give back to the world.

My parents kept very few friends from their youth, and I never really learned how fulfilling it can be to keep on loving the people you hate… To keep driving the same drunk back to his house from the party… To watch your friends get in the same fights… To laugh at that same stupid thing you did a hundred years ago that no one else remembers… To watch your best friends destroy themselves in the same ways they always have… To hike the same narrow path… To turn the same damn corners you turned on your bikes…

I never imagined my friends and me caring for each other when we got old. Mostly because I never imagined we’d get old. But here we are… well on our way to an incomprehensible future. Some of us are right in the thick of it, and I am incredibly inspired by the ways in which you manage to take the very best parts of your past into the present.

.....

Right now, a lot of you who read this blog are making this decision, “How important is it to marry someone with the same accent?” What a silly question. I think it epitomizes the heart of this complex dilemma—where and with whom we choose to live will not only define how we give back to the world, but also how we will be known by it. The Minnesotan guy and the Maryland girl. The Nebraskan and the New Yorker. The Argentinean and the Dutchwoman. The Turk and the American.

You all know that I, as much as anyone, believe in the idea that two hearts raised a zillion miles away from each other can be more compatible than old neighbors’. But we should honor the sacrifices and compromises we make for our relationships. We should honor the fact that no matter where you live, you can’t go home again. And furthermore, you probably won’t. Home is the song you sing to yourself when you can’t find anything on the radio. It’s the space you never know you’re in.

I remember the day they tore down the McCormick spice factory in downtown Baltimore City and how, for months, the streets smelled like oregano, cinnamon and celery seed. I remember the tree next to the Post Office on Frederick Road has the best autumn colors. I remember our eccentric English teacher and the ridiculous story he told about a television being tossed out a window at a party. I remember how Annie and I always dated the same boys. For better or worse, I remember everything.

What do you remember? What do you want to remember about our unwritten futures?

best, emily

The 12 Point Plan to Peace

2005-09-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

1

I came home this week to find my twelve year old cousin is really suffering. Part of it is just seventh grade (you couldn’t get me to go back for ANY amount of money), but I believe the depth of her suffering is due to us—you and me. From our indiscriminately superficial consumer culture to the miserably soulless educational system where we shuffle kids off to learn and then walk away... we can be certain that, if we leave it up to the state, children today have almost no hope for the education of their hearts.

2

The other day, Dr. Phil gave the gift of a weekend spa retreat to a sympathetic teacher who helped two of her students deal with their parents’ vicious divorce. I’d like to know what the kids got. What do we have to give the profoundly brave children of the world? Does anyone else see how this moment could come to symbolize the depth of the crisis which faces children today?

3

As I write this, I am laying in the sun on the vast green lawn of a public school. Before the bell rings, teachers walk out to the buses with the school’s most challenged children. One child—his backpack so big it nearly drags on the ground—manages to sing a song in sign language as he precariously walks down each step of the school’s tall front entrance.

Another child walks by with a full helmet and face shield; presumably to protect himself from all the uncompromising edges that surround him. It’s a bittersweet metaphor for how powerless we are to change the fundamental nature of the world.

Can I turn concrete into grass for him? Can I walk in front of him and tear down the buildings in his path? How can I not?

4

In the city I heard a homeless man mutter, “Stand up to her! Stand up to her!” It was a whole phrase among what had been, up to that point, a typhoon of profanities and maybe that’s why it caught my attention. But since then, the phrase keeps bouncing around my head.

What intrigues me about it, I guess, is the phrase’s simple universality. Who hasn’t, at some point in their lives, thought that very thought? Stand up to her. Stand up to her.

And yet, this terrifying man with his filthy fingernails, uncut beard and general inapproachability, is stuck in that moment.

Who is she? Who was she? More importantly, if he had stood up to her, would he be here now? Would he be sitting at this Baltimore coffee shop knowing the cobblestone streets and the picturesque sailboats as most of us have never known them?

5

I hate politics. But I adore people.

Our aim must be the re-conception of politics as the practice of a conscious life. In the simplest terms, we must embrace compassion, humility, action and love.

We must abandon the empiricism of suffering and the calculation of its value relative to anything except itself.

6

Why are we so desperate for the cost-benefit analyses and statistics to prove real need? We know the need exists: we know it like we know our own pain.

The third-leading cause of death among children aged 15-18 is suicide. Are you shocked? Is anyone stepping away from the computer to begin a campaign to reclaim our children? Hell, no. Because we don’t truly need any more analyses of our problems.

What we need is the audacity to push past our egos and our fears in order to heal ourselves—to begin the really hard work of becoming the kind of people who hear each other when we speak.

7

I know I’m preaching to the choir. And that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to officially Ordain all of you. If you get what I’m saying (and I know you do) then you are an Ordained Minister/Minstress in the newly-formed Church of Let’s Get Real.

You are fully-qualified to preach to other choirs and I hope you will because here’s the reality:

My 12 year old cousin has never heard of the hippies or the Civil Rights movement or Women’s Lib. The number 1969 means absolutely nothing to her.

8

Our generation is crippled by the false belief that the energy put forth by our parents’ generation in the 1950’s and 60’s could somehow survive their cold surrender. Not only have we witnessed the complete disintegration of our parents’ core values, we also watched their apathy permeate their children.

Although I concede that America’s social movements in the 1960’s were only instigated and deeply felt by a small minority, that minority was instrumental in the eventual establishment of their ideas into the mainstream. The economic and social conditions of the country were ripe for their radical sentiments. But let’s face it, conditional justice isn’t really justice at all.

I’m not saying every baby boomer is a sell-out. To the contrary, I know there is a reemerging interest among our parents to connect with the positivism of their younger years. But the manner in which they are doing it is fundamentally different from the previous era of rebellion.

Adults who are healing the world today are adults who healed themselves. There’s a lesson here, folks.

Without our commitment, we cannot sustain the world vision they engendered—it was lovely. Peace, equity, equality, meaning. We can no longer afford to assume people will remember history.

9

Without knowing it, as you read this blog, you are tuned into a network of young people who are already engaged in the transformative power of change:

Annie is receiving her Master’s in Social Work and changing the world from the outside-in with her fiance, Sandor, by rebuilding a dilapidated Baltimore row house.

Kirk is helping to promote and develop technology which allows disabled people to use computers.

Matt L., Loren, Jessica, Matt M., Christina, and a slew of others are adding their infinite insight and energy to the process of holding America “accountable” at the official agency of accountability. A gorgeous concept.

Angie is working with FEMA. Need we say more?

Lauren, Daniel, Loren and Wendy are all on their way to fighting terrorism and hopefully, bringing some sanity to these agencies. We all pray they’re in charge in twenty years.

Josie is healing her family, and the rest of us, through poetry. Without her, who would tell us who we are?

Baris and Volkan are taking honest pictures of the war in Iraq and the conflict in Palestine—pictures we hope will be adopted in the next Michael Moore film.

Lori is learning how to respond to disasters with the Red Cross.

Arash, Lily and Ryan are learning to be doctors while Carolyn, Ian and Burak are learning to be lawyers. I know these folks. They have good hearts. We need more good hearts in medicine and law.

Owen and Mandy are figuring out how we can better communicate with the people of the Middle East. They have a novel technique to accomplish this—traveling there, listening honestly, keeping their minds open, speaking truth to power.

Gideon is helping Chinese students articulate themselves and he’s doing it all through literature. Gotta love that brave individual who attempts to teach literature in a Communist country.

Tawar is telling the truth about how it feels to grow up in war. And he’s praying, with other Iraqis, for the end of all wars, for children to know peace.

Laura, Cory, Kayce and Janet are living in the city with the country in their hearts. They are defining their own politics, without their parents. No small task, truly.

Becky is advocating for women’s rights as an ironically named “fellow” in a non-profit organization.

10

I forgot YOU????? Of course I did. Everyone who reads this blog is insanely smart, fascinating and committed to a better now. Your collective power is in these very words—as your eyes scroll across them you can imagine your peers doing the same and know that you are joining each other.

I am desperate to congratulate you.

I want you to know that I have complete faith in your ability to do more than you think you can, give more than you ever gave, sacrifice the things you always thought you wanted, and love yourselves and other people more.

I also have faith that you will stop waiting for that mythical moment of social change to sweep you away and instead, start telling everyone you know that it is has already arrived. The world is waiting for us.

11

This could be a small break-down on my part. I’m willing to accept we sometimes have to go to the edge of insanity and humiliation in order to say what matters most.

Think it’s hippie nonsense? Just remember, children today have never heard of hippies.

12

lots of love, em

Emily's Top Indications that it May Be Time for You to Leave the Middle East, From Istanbul to Iraq (5)

2005-02-12T16:25:00.000-08:00

EMILY’S TOP INDICATIONS THAT IT MAY BE TIME FOR YOU TO LEAVE THE MIDDLE EAST

+ Your taxi driver’s smoking with the windows up and you don’t notice.
+ The traffic light turns red and you think, “We’re not really going to stop, are we?”
+ You’re pondering the best ways to make money from a cart... fruits? roasted chestnuts? t-shirts? random scrap metal?
+ You start buying prom dresses in anticipation of the next wedding you’ll attend.
+ You refuse to buy a bottle of liquor because, “It’s so much cheaper in Iraq.”
+ People greet you by saying, “You’re alive!”
+ When your language skills fail, everything translates to “Inshallah”. “It’s just a matter of time”...Inshallah. “I hope so”...Inshallah. “We’ll see”...Inshallah. “I’m not sure”...Inshallah.
+ Your criteria for a “good” city were limited to “clean and safe” when suddenly they become “good fruit and cheap coffee.”
+ You’re either sending or waiting for a text message ALL THE TIME.
+ You have a favorite picture of King Abdullah / Saddam / Ataturk / Che Guevara.
+ Instead of repeating yourself with proper English, you just say things wrong the first time. As in, “Why you didn’t call last night?” and “For me, is no problem.”
+ You light-up directly underneath the NO SMOKING sign.
+ You stop learning people’s names because “habibi” is so much easier.
+ You start singing along to the song played by the propane delivery truck.
+ It’s been four days since the last major holiday and you’re already looking forward to the one next week.
+ You begin to assume all countries use dollars.
+ You refer to the Bush administration as “the regime.”
+ You stop carrying Kleenex to the bathroom.

From Istanbul to Iraq (2), Jan. to Feb. 2005

2005-01-15T16:16:00.000-08:00

viva iraq

Dear everybody,

Hey! Thanks so much for checking out my pics from Istanbul. The last two weeks have been unbelievable and there’s tons to say, much more than can be communicated in an email, but here it is... (be sure to check out my new pictures, if you forgot your password, they will send you a new one)

I decided to leave town just as I was getting used to things in Amman, Jordan. Or as the ex-pats like to call it, “the Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom”. I ended up making a ton of friends, which was easy since there’s about two cool places to hang out. Amman is, at best, livable and serviceable. Even though I didn’t pack my high-heels, Arab countries without glamour are mostly just Arab. It’s a cool enough place, but not so great for women to wander around in... you know how I like to wander.

All the money in Amman is wrapped up in the homes of rich people. Since I was staying at a well-known cultural Center, I was able to meet a prince (you can practically spit and hit one) and took at least one ride in a pimped out BMW.... occupational hazard in this part of the world.

Now I’m in Iraq. Which is to say, Kurdistan. (I can hear the Turks among you cringing.) I received an invitation from an independent consultant, named Esteban, and his girlfriend to come out here to Erbil and talk to the people on the ground. So after some fancy footwork, I finally made it. It was a crazy trip.

First, I had to find an NGO to sponsor my flight on the humanitarian airline, AirServ. This is a non-profit airline which flies humanitarian workers into dangerous places around the world. In order to avoid getting shot down, they use really small planes and a “corkscrew” technique for landing. Essentially, they stay thousands of feet above the airport and then descend really quickly in a spiral.

After I found an organization to help me get on the plane and get a Visa, I got to experience the corkscrew landing for myself. I flew among the clichés of the humanitarian world: every brand of Vietnam veteran, Priests, Imams, and chain smoking loners. You could probably guess I was the only woman among them.

The flight from Amman took off just after dawn into Baghdad. The poet in me was deeply satisfied to sail across a vast desert in a tiny propeller plane. For future reference: there is no better place for a nap. Whenever I travel and end up in potentially anxious situations, I like to tell myself I’m just headed down to the pharmacy. Propeller flights into war zones? Sure. Wrong neighborhood in a foreign country at 3am? Well, I’m just out for aspirin.

The descent was insane. It felt like someone crazy had actually taken control of the plane. We were miles above the airport when we started a sharp spiral into Baghdad International. After we spun for 10 seconds clockwise, the plane would veer off straight into the opposite direction and spin counterclockwise. We lost altitude so quickly that moving my body was like walking through mud. I picked up my ipod and it seemed to weigh ten pounds.

It was really surreal to taxi across the runway and see the sign which read, “Baghdad International Airport.” Naturally--as I seem to be losing my mind--I just laughed. I was supposed to hop off the plane, get a visa, then hop back on to another flight north into Erbil. Instead, I faced a dilemma at the visa “office.” It’s easy enough to visualize: walk off the plane, guy points to a doorway, inside the doorway a small room with two empty desks, a chain-smoking man with a mustache and a sign scrawled in magic-marker taped above him which says, “VISA”. Uh huh. So you’re pretty much ready for whatever at that point.

The Iraqis are running the airport. As everyone is quick to tell you, the Iraqis run everything in the country. Security is being operated under consultation from an international contractor called Global. And the US military uses the airport. But when it comes to everything else: the knowledge, authority, employees, closing time, tower, etc.... it’s Iraqis.

My problem at the visa office was that the letter of sponsorship I had was from an Islamic organization. The first question the guy asked was, “Are you Muslim?” So, not wanting to get caught in a web of lies, I said, “No.” He told me I needed some different forms, which I didn’t have, and then barked emphatically, “Go back to Amman. Next!!”

After everyone realized that the American girl had a problem, the security people from Global helped me figure out what to do. They asked one of the US soldiers passing through if I could use his cell phone. I quickly tried to reach my contacts in Amman and they agreed to call Baghdad to see if someone could get the paperwork to me.

Amazingly, they did. Baghdad International Airport has no phones, no internet, no faxes. So someone had to receive a fax for me in Baghdad, travel to the checkpoint nearest to the airport, and then pass the papers to the security staff to bring to me.

In the meantime, the weather turned really bad and the airport lost electricity and closed. All the lights went out and everybody started heading home. It was so funny. I was hanging out with the security people and they were trying to figure out what would happen for the airplanes currently trying to land. This is their c.b. radio conversation:

Security 1: Ten thirteen.... Do you know if the tower is open? We lost electricity. Over.
Security 2: Ten twelve... Where are you? Over.
Security 1: We’re in the terminal. Over.
Security 2: You have no electricity? (laughs) Over.
Security 1: No. Over.
Security 2: We’re contacting the tower. We’re not sure if they’re open. Over.
Security 1: Do you think they will land the planes in the air? Over.
Security 2: We cannot determine if the tower is open. (Laugh). It may be a language issue. Over.
Security 1: That’ll happen. (Laugh). Over.

It’s hard to believe. These guys really have their work cut out for them. When the paperwork finally made it to me, the visa “office” was closed. I decided that since the issue with my visa was obviously bullshit, that I would skip the last flight to Amman, stay at the airport, and try again in the morning.

The guys with Global took me in to their “camp” and we spent the evening watching DVD’s in their tiny trailer park right next to the runway. They smuggled me some steak out of their mess hall, and thanks to the earplugs I always travel with, I managed to sleep a few hours in spite of the planes landing next to me and the wind, which threatened to blow us all back into the desert.

Armed with all the unnecessary paperwork, I went back to the Visa office in the morning. The guy behind the desk just looks at me, “Why didn’t you go back to Amman?” He finally admitted that he didn’t believe I was really associated with the organization who sponsored me because it was Islamic and “Americans have a big problem with Islam.” After consulting with the Global people, I decided to offer the Visa guy a hundred dollars in cash but he just said, “Put your money away.”

He asked me to wait and put me in a chair between the two desks in their 8ft x 10ft office. At this point, I finally understood I was meant to serve penitence. So I played along, and for about two hours, sat quietly staring at the floor while people came in and out off the office. If what they wanted was to demonstrate their power to all the other Westerners coming through, so be it. The Europeans looked at me nervously, but I just never looked up. It’s a winning strategy around here.

When I got to Erbil, I was so relieved to meet Esteban and Marinka at the airport. Erbil (which Europeans cleverly spell, “Arbil”) is a peaceful state in northern Iraq and is a big location for NGO’s. The airport is teeny tiny and safe enough not to warrant the spiral descent.

The place where I’m staying is awesome. Esteban and Marinka rent about three houses on a little block for whatever foreign consultants or contractors might visit. The road is blocked on one side and we have a couple guys with machine guns out in front all the time. We also live off American money and someone actually makes my coffee and my bed every morning.

The house is just a few blocks away from “the compound”--a six block by six block gated neighborhood filled with NGO’s. My first night here, we went to “The Edge”, which is the only bar on the compound. Naturally, I met everyone I needed to meet in just a few minutes. For an elections geek like me, it was the who’s who of reconstruction acronyms... RTI, NDI, IFES, USAID...

Anyone I want to speak to is accessible to me here. I’ve had some wonderful conversations. These people are actually trapped inside the compound and, due to the nature of their work and US liability laws, unable to leave without armor plated vehicles and about ten huge guys. Needlesstosay, it makes setting up appointments inside the compound really, really easy.

The population inside the compound is dominated by guys we call “PSDs,” or Private Security Detail. There are probably 5 PSDs to every one NGO person in the compound. It’s a sea of guns. Handguns, machine guns, AK-47’s.....you name it. The PSDs make between $500-1000 per day. Which explains why $3 billion of funds dedicated to reconstruction were recently reallocated to security. These guys mostly hang-out and watch D.V.D.’s all day and only move when whoever they’re guarding travels outside of the compound. It’s incredibly sobering to know the US is footing the bill for everything.

I’m talking to Iraqis too. Yesterday I went to a press conference held by a Kurdish politician who will be on the combined Kurdish ticket for Congress. The two parties, the PUK and the KDP, historically came together in order to demonstrate the Kurdish unity in this election. His message was pretty run-of-the-mill, as one official with the State Department told me, “You can talk to one Kurdish guy and you never need to talk to another one.” This is an exaggeration, but it’s true that their message is unbelievably well-wrought.

The funniest thing was later in the evening when my housemate Maria said, “I just saw you on television.” Sure enough, they were broadcasting the press conference. I snapped a photo of myself on Kurdish television because, really, how often does that happen? I told Maria I can’t wait to show everyone this picture, but on the other hand, my family might begin to suspect I’m not exactly keeping a low profile.....

Anyway, rest assured that things in Erbil are cool. If there is violence in the North, it will continue in spots like Mosul and Kirkuk. I don’t expect to see anything happen here. There will be curfews and most movement will stop, so we’ll just be watching the elections on t.v. too. Albeit, with a slightly better view.

Take good care, Em

Amman

traffic in amman

a small girl in a village outside amman. it was fun to speak arabic with the children in this village. they're at about the same vocab level as me.

gotta love those missing teeth.

what culture gap??

this photo illuminates my fascination with the appearance of plastic picnic furniture around the world. china is selling this stuff everywhere. for some reason, it seems to epitomize the global economy for me.

the front door/gate to a home in amman.

the new advertisement for GapKidsJordan. this is the rich neighborhood.

there is a law in amman that all buildings must be made of sandstone. that's why everything looks the same. sooo booorring.

friends in jordan.

an ancient village in jordan where people were living up until about a year ago. now it's a historic site.

i took this photo during the eid festival. on this day of the year, muslims wake up at about dawn and slaughter a sheep. it's customary to keep half, give one quarter to your family, and one quarter to the poor. this is actually at a slaughterhouse where many many sheep were being distributed by an Islamic charity organization. the sheep skins are also resold to make money for next year's charity.

the West Bank is just on the other side of this water, and Israel is also visible. the water belongs to Israel.

the soil is filled with rocks. this is a rocky country with almost no assets. no oil, very little water. understandably, jordan is extremely impoverished.

Iraq

the kind of plane on which i flew to erbil

this is the guy from Global who saved me by taking me into the company's "camp", a bunch of trailers in a mud puddle.

baghdad international airport at dawn. the place is like a ghost town. you know, it's operational, but not actually working. it's as if you've arrived in a deserted bar and found a bartender-- who manages to serve drinks despite the cobwebs. seriously spooky.

in iraq, my housemate Maria on the way to work in a "flak" jacket, a bulletproof vest. most people travel in caravans of SUV's. in this case, one security guard was driving us and another was sitting in the front seat with a machine gun. this is considered very low security.

these are iraqi security guards, kurds. obviously, they're not paid like an American or International security guard. most security teams include Iraqis to a certain extent. but lots of people view them as a liability b/c of their supposed lack of loyalty.

inside the compound. bikes are a popular mode of transit.

kurdish lunch. i never ask what the meat is anymore. that's a recipe for disaster. actually, this was a pretty delicious meal.

me on Kurdish television... second row, on the right. go figure. the top script is in turkish, the bottom, in arabic.

at the press conference of Hosyar Zebari, who is now the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as he was at the time of the conference.

Top Indications You've Left the Middle East (Beirut 11)

2004-08-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

Aug 18, 2004

Friends in the Twin Cities: I'm home now so please remember to put me back on your speed dial and give me a call this week.... just to make sure I'm not curled up in some corner, singing the Call to Prayer and cradling a bottle of raki. I can't wait to see you! What do you think about The Local on Friday night? An Irish pub seems like a good welcome back to Western Civilization. Call me, 651.307.2332. em

*********

On arrival in Chicago I took a short tram from the International Gate to Domestic and overheard a young girl say to her father, "Isn't this fun?" I wanted to say, "Yes. This is what the world calls 'PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.' It's for people without cars." Naturally, this family was also on my flight to Minnesota, which explains her wonder and amazement...
_________________________________________________

Other Indications that You Have Left the Middle East
and May Be in an English Speaking Country
_________________________________________________

bagels

construction sites where more than half the men visible are actually working

very loud women

credit cards

parking meters

disinterested, disdainful shopkeepers

grass

the pilot suddenly forgets his French/Arabic/Spanish/German/Etc.

fat people

safety lights, safety rails, saftey stripes, safety instructions, safety lids, safety warnings...

drip coffee

baseball caps

large groups of 10 to 14-year-old girls

"No Smoking" signs

XXL

the sudden reappearance of "maam"

drinkable water

wheelchair ramps

most lights or lighted signs are in working order

public clocks appear correct

soy milk

children in very large tennis shoes, rolling miniature suitcases with wheels

$6 sandwiches

"Back to School" sales

no men touching

business women

Customs is divided into "areas," "sectors," and "access points"

no machine guns

coffee to-go

people talking without moving their hands

single-file lines

blondes

soccer moms

pork

gadgets

absence of bread carts, in fact, no carts at all

private cars

sugar packets with only 1/2 a teaspoon

black men in very fine suits

baby carriages

mountain bikes

very fast-walking people (where are they going?)

long, wide and straight roads

minivans

older women in shorts

muffins, huge muffins