I have enjoyed writing to you over the last year from Istanbul, Turkey. I apologize that I have not posted more on this site over the past few weeks. I have been a bit preoccupied, having come back to the United States for a short time. The bad news is that I will not be returning to teach in Istanbul. Therefore, this may very well be the last post on this website. The good news is, I will be moving to Jeju Island, South Korea. This new job, new location and new adventure will surely continue to fuel my writer’s mind. And, with the new location will come a new website: Northwest to Far East. Of course, some of the same subjects will be covered such as the benefits of travel, world events and expatriate life in general. I will, I’m sure, be linking between the two sites often. So, if you’d like to continue to journey around the world with me, check in with Northwest to Far East from time to time, bookmark it, or subscribe to the updates. I have already added some helpful links, began a simple beginners guide to teaching English abroad, and tried to expand the idea of the Ministry of Travel. Check it out at http://nwtofareast.wordpress.com

Thank you to all of you who continue to read and support this website!

Matt

The twilight of Tarlabasi, seen from our terrace.

With the impending move, this much has become clear. Organizing your things will always correspond with organizing your life. On my floor now, I am looking at two pieces of luggage to bring home, a black rolling suitcase and a gray backpack. That means all my possessions fall into two categories. The first category is reserved for items that are both important – or, I suppose, useful – as well as meeting the space restrictions. The second, things that are either not important enough to warrant space, or things that are too heavy or large to fit into the bags. Frantically and sometimes hastily making these decisions was once unnerving for me as a young traveler. Now, it’s a carnival of clarity.

This process is as black and white as it gets. There is very little room for debate. It’s either worth the trouble, or its wasting space. Computer and camera must come, if only so I can continue give you something to read. Guitar must come. Clothes, for the most part, have been donated to the neighborhood. As this process goes on, things get put in their place. Literally. Important things get the room, little things get consolidated or tossed away. Space equals importance, it’s the first law of travel dynamics.

As you pack your bag and give each item its due attention and room, it’s inevitable that your mind clears along with your apartment. As you assemble your suitcase, you are making a physical representation of what you are, the essential you. You are dividing the suitcase, and your life, subconsciously. Your suitcase will tell your story.

As I again narrow my life to a few bags carefully kept under the 23 kg airline limit, some things about myself become clearer. I am, it seems, sentimental. Space that could have gone to keeping that useful and stylish winter jacket, has gone to things with a story. Gifts from students whom I will never forget have found room. Shirts reserved for events I would never want to go to have lost out. I am a bibliophile, I must keep books, they are the giver of knowledge. Yet, jackets and scarves, the giver of warmth, can be left behind. Replaceable upon necessity. I am a writer and a reporter at heart. I need every piece of paper and napkin I’ve ever written a note, phone number, name, or rough draft on. Every thought, sketch and half-brained idea for a column, story, or book I’ve ever had should come, lest I lose out on discovering gold amongst them later. But, one pair of jeans and two pairs of socks will undoubtedly get me through.

And there it sits. My life, in two suitcases. Staring back at me, showing me what is important, and what is superfluous. What I value, and what I can toss. A pie chart of my priorities, divided up and revealed to me.

Read it here, Why we travel.

One of his last lines reads, “we travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.”

As I head home for the first time in nearly a year, I’m guessing this is right on the money.

Here are some of my students, who taught me about their lives while I was only able to teach them about my language.

Some students from my first class in Istanbul, left to right: Hacer, myself, Firat, Esra and Kezban.

The survivors of Level 2 with Matt and Jonathon, left to right: Ali, Burhan, Gamze, Hasibe, me, Gurcan, Gulcan and in the front, Yunus Emre.

Taylor and I with my former student Sencer and his girlfriend Elif at Bab-i-Ali cafe.

Taylor and I having breakfast with Halil, former student and contributor to this blog, having breakfast in Emirgan Grove.

Taylor and I with one of our favorite classes, which we were both fortunate to teach. From left to right: unknown, Gulcan, Saime, Nuray, Esra, Me, Taylor, Fatih, Ayfer, Fahad and Mustafa.

With two weeks left before Taylor and I leave Istanbul, I find myself spending more and more time on our terrace overlooking Tarlabasi. One reason for this is that spring has come, providing warmth outside from the moment I wake up until well into the night.

Another reason, though, is that from this terrace, my little corner of the city, I can experience some of my favorite things about Istanbul. I can soak in the little things that I will miss most.

I am going to miss the sounds of the city, the calls of the simitci and eskici. The jingle of the propane truck. Even the squaking of seagulls on our roof in the morning and the sexual exploits of our neighborhood cats at night.

From here, you can hear all 5 calls to prayer. The first one rolls over the terrace and through our open door finding its way into my dreams every morning at dawn. The last one comes late, after 10 pm during this part of the year prompting reflection of the past day.

At sunset, the horizon takes the shape of building roofs and minarets silhouetted against the oriental orange sky. For the last few nights the clear night’s sky has allowed us to see the crescent moon align with the brightest star in the sky to mirror the flag of the republic.

During the day, the faint construction noise reminds me that this neighborhood with bad reputation and good people is trying to rebuild itself from the bottom up. The same could be said of the entire country.

The packs of children running wild through the streets remind me that this country is young and nothing if not hopeful for its future.

I can see clearly up here, what Turkey has taught me: simplicity. A food basket descends from a neighbor’s window, filled by the corner store owner and lifted up for the family breakfast. A doner delivery boy waves as he leaves another building. A fruit cart and tea seller bustle below me as I write. They are the symbols of our lifestyle here: Relationships are more important than convenience, and we should not take more than we need. When we buy food, it is for the next meal we will cook. We visit and chat with a butcher, a vegetable stand, a spice man, a wine guy, and on the way home with bags in hand, we stop and have tea with our neighbors. Oh, and we walk to get that food too, because you can’t buy what you can’t carry. We are not ascetics, but we have become minimalists compared to ourselves a year ago. A supermarket will never be the same again.

Mostly, though, I sit on this terrace because I can. Here, I can read, write, study and think in peace. Not peace from the outside world, but peace from within. Turkey, if anything, has given me a different perspective. It’s given me wider view of time through its long history and rapid modernization. A different vision of success through the disparity between its lush opulence and tragic poverty. I have seen a better vision of a community and culture through hospitality and friendship. But, I have also learned that my place in Istanbul is not to judge it or to try and fix it. My place is to enjoy it and celebrate it.

This, is why for the first time in my life, momentary inner peace has come without hurry or worry about the future. I found it in Istanbul. My worst fear about turning back to the states, is that I will lose this. I hope the cultural white noise of billboards and television, of materialism and fear-mongering, of us and them and Armageddon will not strip me of what I have found.

So for now, while I still have them both, I will enjoy this city in peace.

Read the post here before continuing. Link will open a new window.

Now, I like what he has to say. I just disagree on two points. One, the term elite. It sounds too much like a victorian aristocracy to me, when what he describes are mostly benevolent and grassroots progressive innovators.

The second point is that he doesn’t believe that people who are not already “elite” can become it. I, however, believe that they can. Moreover, I believe that they will. On one condition that is. They must travel. I’m sure that there are many other ways to open people’s hearts and minds, but the one path I’m sure of is travel. And not tourism. Not the big bus, big tour group bullshit. I’m talking about the real substantive connection that comes from trying to learn about and enjoy another culture, another way of life, even for only a few days.

I’ve said it many times on this blog, but I won’t stop saying it until the day I die: Travel can change our world for the better. It can change you for the better. When you see that the paradigm you knew, the comfort zone you left, doesn’t correspond to the world around you, you can’t help but be, as Godin says, “actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change [and] actively engaging.”

Villages

Kherbit Tana (December 11, 2009)

The shared taxi dropped off our group of eight foreigners in a little village called Beit Foureek (pop. 7000), about seven kilometers outside of Nablus. We had all woken up early to visit somewhere (we hadn’t exactly been told) because something (we knew involving tractors) had happened this week. After a few minutes, a representative, the General Secretary of the Municipality, Ahmad, arrived and courted us into a small bus. “The road is rough,” he told us, “so we must rent a high car.” Ahmad, well dressed, with clothes fitted snugly about him and impeccably clean and donning polished dress shoes, provided affable handshakes as we boarded then announced, “One of your friends wants tea, so we will wait.” Tea was delivered to everyone, and payment refused.

Outside the village, the road turned to dirt and stone with little regard for suspensions or comfort. The way the bus rattled suggested it would be better to not be holding scalding cups of tea. Our destination turned out to be a yet smaller village, Kherbit Tana (pop. “35 families”), some nine kilometers down this baroque stretch of highway. Dusty hills dotted with green patches of grass and brush, and not long after passing two shepherds tending to flocks of sheep, Ahmad pointed out a small cubical building to right of the road: the mosque.

The mosque was only three hundred years old (a baby amongst others in this area), but the building merited pointing out because it is the only surviving structure from the original village. In 2005, Israeli troops came to Kherbit Tana and destroyed all of the homes, citing that the land had been designated as a military training site. Now, new cinderblock habitats poke up from the remnants of where old stone buildings used to stand. Ahmad suggested we walk.

The road, while a horror to drive, proved to be fantastic for a stroll. The sun shone, warming the December crispness to an inviting temperature. The air smelt sweet and clean the way only nature can. Birds twittered, cockerels crowed, and sheep baa-ed. An old man riding a donkey stopped for a chat and told us that, on Thursday morning, three or four jeeps of soldiers had come and taken all of Kherbit Tana’s tractors, a number totaling at four. This is why we were here. We continued, the bus trembling behind us.

Kherbit Tana is just thirty-five families and around three thousand sheep. However, it supplies all the cheese and milk for the bigger village of Beit Foureek and much of the cheese found in the city of Nablus. It gives sustenance to the few people that live and work there. Nonetheless, the village is beyond humble. The nice houses (and tiny school), rebuilt with the assistance of Italian and Israeli NGOs after the 2005 razing, are little more than four concrete walls with scraps of tin splayed across the top. We also passed a tent-like dwelling constructed of burlap sacks sewn together, and our ultimate destination, the home of one of the families minus a tractor, is but a glorified lean-to made from eclectic panels of metal pinned against scruffy shafts of wood.

The family brought well-worn chairs from the house and fashioned them into a sort of powwow circle, using blankets as cushions and insisting that each chair be properly padded. The matriarch of the family, a small woman with a blue headscarf, a worn gray robe with fading floral patterns, began telling us what happened but shied when someone asked to video her. Instead, a young man, sternly sat on a stone within our circle, hands interlaced and fingers twiddling in and out of each other, spoke:

Thursday morning, three jeeps arrived and, without asking any questions, went directly to the tractors. The tractors are needed to transport a large water tank to and from the nearby well, to carry heavy sacks of feed for the goats. The soldiers took the water tank and food, too. The family cried and sang for them to stop. When the father asked if the house was safe, the soldiers promised that the buildings in the area would be destroyed again. Official papers were given to the family, citing that the High Court of Israel had made a final decision that the land would be used for training. The family, and each family that lost a tractor, must appear in a nearby Israeli settlement next Sunday in an attempt to reclaim their property.

Regardless of the outcome, the problems go beyond just tractors. In 1986, Israelis settled in Maghora, just east of Kherbit Tana. The settlers have since taunted the villagers and even managed to kill three men, including a grandfather who was simply harvesting olives. In addition, people from Maghora routinely come over the mountain peak into Kherbit Tana in order to swim in their spring, which supplies the village’s only drinking water. Still, what most concerned our hosts, whose tractor had been stolen, who were living in a shamble of what had been, was losing their home.

As the man finished his story and answered our questions, the family served hot cups of sweetened tea and a large platter (half a meter wide) of equally large pita bread, several blocks of fresh cheese (made just the day before), and bowls of olive oil (expensive this year due to little rain). Conversation reverted back to things less hopeless. The grandmother took the women to see her oven (trash bags stretched over a stack of stones) much the way Westerners would show off a refurbished kitchen.

We visited the spring on our way out of the village. The well has now been covered over with a concrete roof, a hole no bigger than that of an attic door to let people at the water, blocking off all sunshine to the spring itself. The Israeli settlers, no matter, now lower themselves into the enclosure. We sat on the roof for some time, taken with the winter warmth and the brays of donkeys, soft calling of birds all around us. Beneath the spring, a beautiful tree, much fuller than others around us, rustled in the sunlight, long and dusty-green leaves soaking up the sun. Ahmad, in his fine clothes, reclined along the rim of where the roof opened and told us about coming there to camp as a child.

A month later, the students of one my classes in Nablus told me that the Israeli soldiers had razed twenty-eight houses in Kherbit Tana. The farmers have lost their land and presumably moved to Beit Foureek in hopes of finding some means of livelihood. From the deadpanned expressions of my students, it’s apparent that this is just business as usual.

Jonathon on Checkpoints:

CHECKPOINTS

Trenches and walls, blocks and barriers and gates, or Hummers parked askew across the road—almost three-quarters of the roadways inside the West Bank render travelers victims of the dreaded Israeli checkpoints. A seemingly short trip between cities can often take up to two hours, and other times people are simply refused entry and sent home, usually without explanation. For tourists daring enough to visit the Palestinian Territory, the checkpoints are an eerie and unfortunate inconvenience in an otherwise pleasant place, but for residence, the ever-present Israeli army is a complete life-changer.

Checkpoints are typically a duo of lookout towers, shacks with hordes of teenaged soldiers lazily wielding AK-47s and a hell of a lot of power, and line of cars hoping that this time they get through. Over 600 separate checks currently infest the highways, lives, and businesses of Palestinians. A commuter can wait in line for hours, be questioned about their destination (within the West Bank, not Israel), and/or removed from their car to be frisked, scanned, searched, and many times, following all of this, denied passage for no discernible reason. Consequently, maintaining appointments, going to classes, or just visiting one’s family can be an ordeal that makes LAX airport look vanilla.

Aside from the mass artillery, the unpredictability of checkpoints is probably the most troublesome quandary. A simple drive from Nablus to Ramallah, two of the West Bank’s most bustling cities, could yield seven different checkpoints along the thirty-five kilometer route, or one check every five kilometers. On the other hand, the Israeli soldiers may just wave on lines of cars as that idly chat their shift away. The problem is that you just never know. Scheduling anything with any sense of certainty is ridiculous.

The issue furthers when emergencies are taken into consideration, or more accurately, because emergencies aren’t taken into consideration. Ambulances garner no special amnesty from the rigors of the checkpoints, and each year a dozen or more babies are delivered while awaiting permission to pass through to hospitals. Almost half of these children have died due to this complication, not to mention the suffering that mothers, would-have-been mothers, and families have undergone as a result. Let us not forget run-of-the-mill heart attacks, farming accidents, strokes, and broken bones.

Generally, checkpoints open at six a.m. and close at eight p.m., making travel outside these times forbidden. However, the points can be closed for various reasons—to find “wanted” people, Christmas, Jewish holidays, an Israeli or Palestinian death—and pedestrians, cars, taxis, buses, and emergency vehicles are then blocked completely from their destinations. Without warning, roads can be inoperable for days at a time and, in times of intense political strife, have been shut for years.

These checkpoints are not crossing international boundaries or even passage from the West Bank to Israel, but in fact, these are blockades inside the boundaries granted to Palestine from international authorities and various “peace” agreements. In other words, what is being done is completely illegal and against UN sanctions. This issue isn’t a debatable entity like that of the U.S.-Mexico border, but more so, they are an all out occupation. It would be as if the U.S. sent troops into Guadalajara to monitor every person that came in, went out, or traveled across it.

As an impermanent resident, I have found myself fearful of going to the communities around Nablus because the checkpoints loom on all roads in and out. Most likely the worst that would happen to me is a few hours of interrogation followed by deportation and the infamous “red stamp”, denying any possibility of returning to Israel or the West Bank for a term no less than five years. For being in the West Bank (a completely legal right) and taking a taxi ride, I could wind up tagged as a security risk. But, that’s me, and I’m an American with some clout pinned to by passport and the means to go elsewhere. Palestinians risk a lot more:

–One student told me a story of being taken off a public transport bus, along with all of the other young men, being forced to stand in a line to nowhere in the rain for three hours, until the whole group was ultimately sent home without explanation.

–A student from a nearby village smiled as he explained that the road from his home, nine kilometers from Nablus, to the city had been closed for six years (2000-2006), and people who needed to get to the city had to do so over a mountain by foot, donkey, or horse.

–A woman experienced a similar, more recent blockade, when the road from her house to the city was closed for three days due to a “bomb scare” that, of course, never culminated.

–Personally, I watched my taxi driver’s license be taken by a soldier who was upset that we had gone in the wrong line and sent us back with the stipulation that the license would be returned when we did, which it was, after a new, more amiable soldier (mandatory military service) asked his angry colleague for it.

These are but a drop in a massive well of worries. Ask any resident of the West Bank, and the tales will flow forth and amass into a book of horror stories to massive to ever recite them all: a brother arrested, blows to the head, held at gunpoint, grandfather dead in an ambulance . . . all for moving inside a land, a territory, that has rightly, wrongly, or however you see it been given to them.

Consequently, living in the West Bank is not unlike what I imagine a prison to be. You are granted rights, not inalienably given them. Moving from one place to the next involves lock and key and assault rifles. You can be sequestered in or out of a village at the whim of the guards who surround it. Of course, in a prison, guards can’t prevent food from reaching the inmates—that would be illegal.