envy, gratitude, pistachio nuts
My best friend is in Morocco, one of my close colleagues just returned from Syria, and another (RA) is off to Damascus and Aleppo later this month. I am consumed by a wistful sort of envy: how I'd love to be bound back to the Middle East now, even on a work errand. I'm rattling against the walls, and longing to take flight.
I've been unhappy in my life lately. I'm doing what I can to change that. But surely this ardent desire to travel again is related to my unease: I miss absconding, the convenient old habit of evasion: the way all of the burdens on my shoulders suddenly lift when I walk into a train station or departure lounge. The freedom of no duties or expectations, merely long stretches of solitude; no company but my own, my notebook, and errant strangers befriended and bid goodbye on the road.
Work, strangely enough, has proved a balm of sorts. I am filled with gratitude for the privilege of being able to earn a living doing work I care about, in the company of talented and dedicated people. It's been an exhausting few weeks: recent professional preoccupations include the situation in Zimbabwe; the morass of Israel/Palestine and American extensions thereof; EU extradition policy; and certain failures of justice closer to home. I'm glad for all that I'm learning, and for the chance to contribute what I can.
The colleague who just returned from Damascus fell in love with the city, as I'd thought she would. Before she left I'd scrawled down notes: walk through this street, that square, eat fattoush in a particular courtyard of the Old City, listen to the hakawiti at an-Nafura coffeehouse. Her stories tell me how much has changed since my last visit in 2004, before the war in Iraq had driven more than a handful into exile: now there are a million Iraqi refugees in Damascus alone, and their presence--along with other political developments--has wrought change. But much remains the same, bitter and sweet alike, in a city where people make music in cellars where they have made music since Christ's time. She went shopping for olive oil soap, and brought me back a fragrant block: deceptive as ever, a drab khaki exterior with an Arabic seal, hiding the jade-color inside. (Once, somewhere around the age of twenty, I dragged two and a half kilos of this stuff from Aleppo to Seattle, to distribute amongst friends.)
She also brought a kilo of pistachios, and left the sack on the shelf near my cubicle that serves as the usual place for departmental shared treats. I've had the best pistachios California can offer--bought straight off the side of the road in the San Joaquin valley. But there's no comparison to the Turkish, Syrian, Iranian sort--they're more fragrant, sweet and nutty and complex. These had been dipped (in a mixture of vinegar and grape molasses, I'm guessing), giving the hulls an enameled gloss, and salted: so good that I put the empty shells into my mouth and sucked on them until the salt and sour were gone. All week long people stood near my desk, talking and cracking pistachios with their thumbs, and giving the faint impression that we were in an office far away, in a warmer country than this one.
I've been unhappy in my life lately. I'm doing what I can to change that. But surely this ardent desire to travel again is related to my unease: I miss absconding, the convenient old habit of evasion: the way all of the burdens on my shoulders suddenly lift when I walk into a train station or departure lounge. The freedom of no duties or expectations, merely long stretches of solitude; no company but my own, my notebook, and errant strangers befriended and bid goodbye on the road.
Work, strangely enough, has proved a balm of sorts. I am filled with gratitude for the privilege of being able to earn a living doing work I care about, in the company of talented and dedicated people. It's been an exhausting few weeks: recent professional preoccupations include the situation in Zimbabwe; the morass of Israel/Palestine and American extensions thereof; EU extradition policy; and certain failures of justice closer to home. I'm glad for all that I'm learning, and for the chance to contribute what I can.
The colleague who just returned from Damascus fell in love with the city, as I'd thought she would. Before she left I'd scrawled down notes: walk through this street, that square, eat fattoush in a particular courtyard of the Old City, listen to the hakawiti at an-Nafura coffeehouse. Her stories tell me how much has changed since my last visit in 2004, before the war in Iraq had driven more than a handful into exile: now there are a million Iraqi refugees in Damascus alone, and their presence--along with other political developments--has wrought change. But much remains the same, bitter and sweet alike, in a city where people make music in cellars where they have made music since Christ's time. She went shopping for olive oil soap, and brought me back a fragrant block: deceptive as ever, a drab khaki exterior with an Arabic seal, hiding the jade-color inside. (Once, somewhere around the age of twenty, I dragged two and a half kilos of this stuff from Aleppo to Seattle, to distribute amongst friends.)
She also brought a kilo of pistachios, and left the sack on the shelf near my cubicle that serves as the usual place for departmental shared treats. I've had the best pistachios California can offer--bought straight off the side of the road in the San Joaquin valley. But there's no comparison to the Turkish, Syrian, Iranian sort--they're more fragrant, sweet and nutty and complex. These had been dipped (in a mixture of vinegar and grape molasses, I'm guessing), giving the hulls an enameled gloss, and salted: so good that I put the empty shells into my mouth and sucked on them until the salt and sour were gone. All week long people stood near my desk, talking and cracking pistachios with their thumbs, and giving the faint impression that we were in an office far away, in a warmer country than this one.
posted by kitabet at 11:40 PM
5 Comments:
Sigh. This post was just so apt. I have so much travel to do - Cambodia and Vitenam in a couple of weeks. I have to go to Europe in June and am adamant I reach Istanbul this time. This is my last term and I really do want to travel after I am done with school. But there's always this nagging at the the back of my mind that I haven't gotten a a job yet and as a result everything is so undecided. But the desire to go wandering is so strong! I am reading Salonica: City of Ghosts and keep day dreaming about reaching Istanbul over land from Thessaloniki. And then reality comes calling and my plans go back to being tentative :(
Btw, did you like Benim Adim Kirmizi?
thanks for your beautiful prose--as if I weren't already nostalgic enough for my Fulbright (which doesn't even end until August)!
dear szerelem: i've taken the train from Istanbul to Salonika once (isn't the Mazower book wonderful? I saw him in person last week, and had to stop myself from gushing); and another time traveled overland all the way from Germany to Turkey (via Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria)--which was a wonderful experience, especially coming into Istanbul at dawn, by train, on the tracks that wrap around the edge of the Sea of Marmara and into Sirkeci station. And here I am no doubt suggesting irresponsibility in travel. By the way, re: your passport woes, two Indian friends who came to visit me in Turkey one summer had quite an easy time gaining visas (via the Turkish embassy in London). If you want more details contact via email.
Benim Adim Kirmizi: I have only read fragments in the original, but Erdag Goknar's translation is one of my favorite novels, and my increasingly dogeared copy bears the author's autograph. It's one of the very few books I won't generally loan out anymore.
constructivist: why thank you. where are you on the fulbright?
Elizabeth - Just mailed you.
The train journey from Germany sounds so wonderful and I wish I had the time to be able to plan that - just the thought of the visa's I would need is scary! But I do hope to do that someday.
Am also very jealous that you have an autographed copy of what is one of my favourite books as well. I have stopped lending out my Pamuks as well. They are too precious :)
Catching up on missed posts...this was wonderful, about my father-in-law's city of birth. And you are so right about the pistachios! I love sucking on the shells too, they are a delicacy. if you run out, tell me - we can get them like this in Montreal - and I wonder if maybe you can find them on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn?
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