leaving (a lament of sorts)

Tomorrow I'm leaving İstanbul. I'd planned to stay longer, but my circumstances have changed, and so I'm now headed back to the States, via a week in Oxford. I'm not yet sure where I'll end up, although New York is the likeliest (job applications are pending). Working on a volunteer basis at Bianet has been wonderful, but is not a sustainable long-term proposition. The universe sadly failed to provide me with a trust fund, and although I can survive on the freelance work I'm doing, circumstances dictate that I get a real job, one with health insurance, as soon as possible. The only way to do that here would be to work long hours for some tiresome private sector financial group; I got as far as the interview for one, and rapidly decided that would I hate the job and that the hours would make it impossible to do the things I wanted to do here in the first place. So I'm going home (and what a strange thought that is...I've spent most of my adult life abroad, now, and to contemplate returning to the US on a somewhat permanent basis is almost unsettling). Also, after three years of tearing my hair out from afar in frustration with American politics, I'm wanting to go back and fight for a year--if any of the organizations I've applied to (think tanks, policy centers, advocacy groups) will have me. My goal is a job related to Middle East policy (i.e., fighting to change the shitty-ass one we've got) although I'm casting the net fairly wide. As for my work in İstanbul, activism and research alike, it makes more sense to wait and apply for a Fulbright or start a doctoral program or something, and then return when I have the support necessary to do the things I want to do here. This time I've only scratched the surface.

But this is my last night, and I am, as ever, having second thoughts. I stopped working last Friday in order to make the most of my remaining time, and the week that has followed has been extraordinary. I know my decision is the right one, but the last three days, especially, have made the prospect of departure so difficult--nights with friends and flatmates in little Asmalimescit mahallesi bars, drinking and smoking and dancing to flamenco music, or Turkish traditional tunes on ney and violin and drums, or to the band of the Iraqi-French oudist who is currently sleeping on our couch. Days spent at modern art museums and Biennial exhibitions, riding ferries from Karaköy to Kadıköy and back, or bargaining for Uzbek textiles in Yeni Han, followed by evenings wandering the Ramazan fair in the shadow of Sultanahmet mosque, eating roast chestnuts and drinking sahlep and listening to mehter. There have been several extraordinary meals, and some rather reckless bookstore sprees, and many hours just sitting drinking tea and watching the rain fall on the Bosphorus. I've gathered a lot of material to write about, and taken many photos, and the resulting essays will be posted here slowly over the next few months: my own parallel İstanbul-in-exile, of sorts. I'll be continuing with some academic work/writing on Turkey, and will follow the local press and be in close contact with all my friends here--so no matter where I end up, verbal privilege will keep returning to the City.* And I'll be back, later this year, or surely the next. Leaving İstanbul is always possible because I know--and have known, ever since I first set foot here a week shy of my nineteenth birthday--that sooner or later I'll be coming back.

* İstanbul (according to one etymology), from the Greek eis ten Polin, "to the City," because Constantinople never needed to be specified by name.