Good night elktown

Well, we've had some laughs; we've had some tears. A few lessons have been learned, though probably not very many.

It's time to close up shop for a while. I've been surprised and thrilled by the traffic and the continuing positive response that elktown has gotten, but I never intended the site to be permanent. The blog was conceived as part travelogue, part personal diary, and it was compelling to me so long as it was about something. Now that my Middle East adventure has come to an end, I've started to lose interest in writing elktown, and I figure… if it doesn't interest me, what hope does it have to amuse anyone else?

Life is returning to normal for me – at least, as normal as it has ever been in the ten bounding years since I left home. In my experience, blogs about normal life are like balloons without enough air. One elktown correspondent put her finger on it: Normal life is eating at the local Applebee's. A blog about eating at Applebee's would absolutely suck. I want elktown to go out on top, while it still has some life in it.

The website will stay on the web, if you ever feel like browsing the archives. And if I ever have another grand adventure, I'll pick right up where I left off. I don't foresee such a thing, though. I have a dim sense that elktown's likelier future is less as travelogue and more as diary – specifically, I can envision it serving one day as a clearinghouse for my family life, one day when I have a family of my own to write about and photograph.

Maybe by then, blogs will seem as anachronistic and outdated as hula-hoops. Or maybe elktown will be a holoblog or a blogobot or something futuristic like that. Who the hell knew what a blog was a year ago? And who knows what's coming?

Thanks for reading. I could only be a writer because you were readers, and I've always so wanted to be a writer. So from my heart, thank you and thank you again. Please stay in touch.

Eric

PS One more photo. This was an apartment building in my neighborhood, and it sums up the duality and bizarreness of Dubai about as well as anything, I guess…

Turkey roundup

A few last photos that didn't fit into any other category.


A really wide view of the Bosphorus, with Istanbul Asia visible on the far bank. Click on the photo and expand it for full effect.


You might have heard that Turkish rug merchants can be aggressive. I'm here to tell you: Believe everything you hear. These guys are persistent to the point of deviousness. This was a rug show we had after our tour – one guy made a speech while his little rug trainees ran around throwing carpets into a pile on the floor. The carpets really were quite beautiful, but the salesmen who gripped my arm afterwards seemed not to understand quite how little money is in my rug budget. He thought I was playing coy as a bargaining position, but I'm not coy – just poor. I think the guy finally got the point that negotiations were doomed after he opened with an offer of $12,000 and I countered with $15.


I love this photo for its after-school-special quality. We were inside the Sulemaniyeh mosque – our third grand mosque of the day – and everybody was a little bit sick of our tour guide's droning, repetitive spiel, and of mosques in general. ("This is a mosque. The religion is called Is-lam. Is-lam. The people are called Mus-lims. Mus-lims.")

So this little Muslim baby and this Asian tourist woman really took a liking to each other. It was all very multi-cultural and cute.


One small view of the Topkapı Palace. The palace is huge, famous for its luscious harem chambers and its precious artifacts and jewels. But the harem chambers were closed for repair and the jewels were ho-hum, or maybe I was just burned out on touring. So Julia and I sat outside on a terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, and I made fun of her English accent, and she made fun of all Americans, and particularly the ones on our tour bus. The wide-angle photo of the Bosphorus, above, was taken from the terrace at Topkapı Palace.

Just for the record, the Americans on our tour were indeed a couple of jackasses.


The entrance to the Grand Bazaar in Izmir. This was personally satisfying to me, as I've long argued we should put a giant sign saying "GOD" above the entrance to Pentagon City Mall.


A family on a buggy rides to the airport. I'm sure a lot of buggy jokes are possible here, but I'm just going to leave it.


I explained the rules of American football to a couple of Turkish guys using this chessboard. The queens were the quarterbacks, knights and bishops were running backs, and pawns were linemen. A small sugar cube represented the ball. I demonstrated some basic plays. Even after my excellent show, they persisted – bizarrely, in my view – in their belief that soccer is just as good a sport as football.


A protest in Istanbul against Coca Cola. These men yelled and shouted violently and we left just as the police in riot gear were arriving. I don't know what they were so mad about. Coke is a delicious and refreshing beverage.


A statue in Izmir. This guy was a journalist. But look at the way he's pointing that gun! The Turks thought this guy was a bad ass! Now there's a culture that respects good journalism.

I'm a journalist, by the way. To my great disappointment and frustration, I was not issued a gun at my last job covering the Medicare bureaucracy.


A re-creation of traditional Turkish life, from a museum I saw. I took the photo because this is the life I want. Seriously, this man has got it made. The wife is looking after the baby while the dude just chills, wearing a kick-ass hat and smoking a shisha.


For those that complained that I didn't take enough pictures of myself, here's the second one. This is me (in a mirror) after the Turkish bath. You strip down nekkid and they swaddle you in these towels.

A few words about the Turkish bath. You lay there on this heated marble slab, cooking like a fish in a pan. Your sweat puddles around you and tries to boil away. Then the Turkish guy comes and beats you and cracks your bones. You grunt and moan and try not to cry. Then he puts a ferocious mitt on his hand and grates away at your skin like it's a moldy old cheese that he's trying to salvage. When most of your skin is rubbed away, he beats you again with a giant soap stick, then asks for a tip.

It's awesome.

The synagogue hunt

One throwaway line in my Turkey guidebook about the "Jewish heritage" of Izmir sparked my quest to track down the city's ancient synagogues. According to that one tantalizing sentence, a number of old, old synagogues still existed somewhere in the city – just where was not clear – and I was determined to find them. I don't know whether my ancestors prayed at those particular temples. But even if not, they prayed somewhere similar, and nearby. Those rumored synagogues felt like a link to my past and I wanted to see just one. 

The guidebook suggested the name of the neighborhood to start the hunt – Kemeraltı. So I did the only smart thing: I misread the name and spent an entire day wandering in the wrong area. I saw a sign for "Kadifekale" – hey, it starts with K, so it must be the same! – and I followed it. I followed it up, and up, and up, and up. And up and up. I climbed for hours and hours. I silently cursed my ancestors for building their temples in such a shitty, inaccessible place. It would have been so hard to have a temple a little closer to the beach, for God's sake? 

But Kadifekale turns out to be the name of an ancient fortress, built by Alexander the Great at the very top of the tallest hill in the city. When the phantom temples turned out to be this giant fortress, and I stood there in the late afternoon, covered in sweat, fuming at my own stupidity, looking again at the guidebook and realizing that my people did, in fact, build their temples near the water – well, I yelled out some words that do not bear repeating. Let's just say that some wild cats nearby seemed startled and ran away. 

Truth be told – that's a bit of an exaggeration. I was plenty pissed off, but it was very short-lived, because the neighborhoods I climbed through were beautiful and fascinating. Those were most of the pictures I posted yesterday, and the photos don't do justice to the style of that area. I'm not sure I would have had the heart to do all that vertical exploration without the phantom temples motivating me. 

So, early the next morning, I plunged into the real Kemeraltı. This is the oldest part of Izmir, and just like in Paris (and New York), the oldest neighborhoods are the most labyrinthine. Tiny streets interconnected at every strange angle, built hundreds of years before Toyota Land Cruisers and other whale-sized vehicles were first dreamed of. 

Now those mazed streets are the perfect hosts for Izmir's central bazaar. Again I wandered around and around. I asked countless strangers about the synagogues and received countless blank stares. At one point I bought some lemonade from a guy, but it turned out to be pickle juice and I came this close to spitting it out explosively right in front of him. I choked it down and nearly cried, it was so nasty. Then I plunged on. 

And right around the corner, there it was, Bet Ilel synagogue. I was elated – for three seconds. Then I looked closer –  

It was a long-abandoned ruin piled high inside with every kind of garbage imaginable. But now I knew I was on the right track. And I knew the word for synagogue in Turkish, which sped up the search process considerably. 

I found three more synagogues in quick succession. I had finally located Havra Street, the street of the ancient temples, buried deep inside the bazaar. All three synagogues… 

  

…were closed. The Shalom synagogue was tucked in next to a shoe shop. My hopes shot up when the shoe man unlocked the door and scurried inside, but he blocked me when I tried to follow. The courtyard of the temple was filled with shoes.  

I reluctantly left Kemeraltı. I had a lead on one more place – the Beth Israel temple on Mithatpaşa boulevard, in Karataş. I was less enthused about this place, because it is a 20th century temple, brand-new just when my great-grandparents were leaving the country. Again I wandered off in the wrong direction, and again I uselessly walked uphill for hours. And again, I walked through beautiful neighborhoods and saw many interesting things, and again, my stupidity proved worthwhile. 

I saw a giant elevator that they built back in 1907, when elevators were new and cool. 

I rode it up and had a beer at the top. The view was lovely – that's Mithatpaşa boulevard down below. 

And voila, there's the temple, right at the foot of the elevator. They probably built it so the Jews who lived at the top of the cliffs had no excuse to miss shul down below. I zipped back down and found the temple in short order.

 

This one was bigger, more beautiful, and even more spectacularly locked and barricaded away.

I asked to come in, and the guard literally slammed the door in my face. The day was sliding away from me, my last day in Izmir. The quest to see the inside of an ancient synagogue verged on failure. In desperation, I headed back to Kemeraltı for one last try. (This time, I took a cab). 

And wouldn't you know it – the door of the Sinyora stood open.

I entered the courtyard. It was breathtakingly beautiful in the late afternoon light.

Izmir

Izmir is Turkey's third-largest city, tucked into the hills against the Aegean sea on the country's west coast. I rode a ferry and then a bus for ten hours to get there.

All the guidebooks advise against spending much time there. Izmir is Turkey's Cleveland – a pleasant enough city, industrial at its heart, lacking touristy qualities of any kind. There's just nothing special to see there – and that's why it's the ideal place to see what a Turkish city is really like. I wandered around for two days without visiting one "attraction," and it was completely, totally absorbing.

But Izmir wasn't just a random choice, either, and my time spent there was far from a meaningless diversion. Izmir was my family's ancestral stomping grounds.

My mother's father was born into this region in the early 20th century, when this was still the Ottoman empire and a haven for Jewish families who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition a few centuries back. My great-grandfather must have sensed World War I brewing – a war that, in the event, brought much upheaval to Turkey and its Jews – because he escaped to America shortly before the war broke out. His wife and baby joined him a few years later. The baby grew up to be my grandfather – "Papou" is the word for "grandpa" that they used in this small part of the world, which we still use in Atlanta today. My great-grandmother lived until recently. She was 99 years old, saying wise things and cracking jokes in ten languages until the very end. Their origins lay in these narrow streets.

Izmir's industrial and commercial districts are packed into a small, flat valley opening into a busy Aegean harbor. The residential neighborhoods rise into the steep hills that ring the valley like a horseshoe. Here was my first view of the city – downtown – with the hilly neighborhoods visible in the background.



Even more than Istanbul, Izmir is a city of trees and vines and green spaces.





As I wandered through downtown, the surrounding hills were always a presence, and I couldn't seem to take my eyes off them.



Finally I gave up and started climbing.





I climbed and climbed.



The neighborhoods above the city were home to all manner of interesting things.




A strange buggy and a small society of wild cats.


A small sculpture of a boy and his dog, on a cupola overlooking the harbor.


A shop selling naked mannequins. Actually there was a street with about seven of these shops. It is more than possible that the entire Middle East buys its naked mannequins from this one street in Izmir.


Everywhere, on every corner, in every cafe, men sat around playing strange board games.


Kids play in a fountain in the shadow of a lovely mosque…


… while other kids waste a perfectly good basketball court.


It turns out Turkish rugs aren't just for tourists. Even the tiniest, ricketiest old apartments were hanging lush rugs out to dry in the sun.

I ducked behind an old building and came unexpectedly into a clearing:



A bit further up, I ran across something I never expected to see – the abandoned ruin of a mosque.










"1301 – 1885"… Clearly there's a story here. Erdem, can you translate this?

I climbed up higher and got one more view. This one needs to be viewed in full-screen mode… click below, then let the mouse pointer rest on the photo for a second. Click on the "expander" button that pops up in the lower right-hand corner.

How bazaar

Turkish bazaars have it all – shoes, guitars, glittery bling-bling. During my hunt for the synagogues of Izmir, I explored every corner of the city's central bazaar. I particularly liked the food street, where everything was set out in such inviting heaps and piles.

This is how people actually purchase food in the Middle East. This is the alternative to Safeway. Way, way cooler. You can buy…


Fruit!


Nuts!


Olives!


Spices!


Panties!

Wait, how did that get in there?


Hogs!


Kebab!


Cow heads and other mystery parts!


And, of course, fish. Look closer at the fish table.


See the Evil Eye peeking out from under the fishies? That's a Turkish good luck charm, and it's everywhere. They really believe in that thing. It supposedly wards off the real Evil Eye by reflecting it back upon its evil owner. I don't know if there are similar charms to ward off Stink Eye and Crook Eye.