Jan 06

He went for a computer

(I went to Gülyazi this week, one of the villages in the Uludere district where 35 villagers got killed in an airstrike of the Turkish army. Read this news agency article I wrote about it here, and a blog post here.)

In the old days, says one of the smugglers, there were no …

Dec 04

Two coats that don’t fit

And there I found myself, in a café in Istanbul with a book in my hands and tears in my eyes. It was the banned book by Ahmet Şık. I just bought it and really, really wanted to read it. But the first two pages not only took me an hour, they also drove me nuts: …

Aug 02

Desperate in a hazelnut train

‘One more hour?’, I asked in despair. ‘Are you sure? This can’t be! I need to get out of this train! I boarded in Diyarbakir, please, it’s enough!’

The train was going very slow, and almost arriving at a station, but again not the station of Adapazari, the destination I had in mind. The time: 1am. I desperately wanted to get …

Jun 30

The most difficult thing about living abroad

Of course people often ask me if I miss my home country the Netherlands. No, not the country, but I do miss people. Not the Dutch people in general (even less since I’ve come to know them better from a distance), but the people close to me. My family, who has known me for fourty years. Friends since my teenage …

May 17

Language mate

‘Are there any tea wanters?’ That’s the example sentence I often use when explaining how different the structure of Turkish sentences is from West Germanic languages, like Dutch. The sentence is a literal translation of how Turks ask whether anybody wants tea. Years ago I didn’t know that and would build some rudimentary sentence myself in such a situation. Turks …

Mar 28

Fire

‘Spring has started, you don’t need wood for the heater anymore, do you?’ I asked my neighbour when I saw her chopping wood. I knew what she was chopping it for, I just needed to start the conversation. ‘It’s for the barbecue, why don’t you come and join us!’

The first real spring weekend in Istanbul seemed a good occasion to …

Jan 10

The cleaner I deserved

‘Now please, stop talking and listen to me!’ I can hardly believe this is me talking. To my cleaning lady! But I have reached a limit. The paintings are still very dusty, she didn’t take the hair out of the shower drain, the windows haven’t been cleaned properly, there is still a huge stain on the small table and she …

Dec 18

Crunch

‘In this hall’ – and the muscled guy switches on the lights – ‘you can follow crunch classes, or yoga, or pilates, or aerobics.’ I don’t want aerobics, yoga or pilates, and what the hell is crunch? Something with muscles, I understand. I ask where the swimming pool is. ‘There is no pool, but we are the biggest sports centre …

Nov 16

The train’s old-fashionedness

It’s not the train that is old fashioned. The train itself is modern and comfortable, and the seats spacious. Nevertheless, travelling by train gives me an old-fashioned feeling. The sound of the wheels on the iron tracks! The noisy and always a little bit scary passages between the wagons! The view of the front of the train when it takes …

Oct 02

Watching the moon

I was exhausted after travelling, after talking Turkish the whole day and after meeting too many people. The last visit Rosarin and I paid was to yet another village family. The TV was too loud, the coffee too bad, the talk too long – and for a big part in Kurdish so I didn’t understand a word. I know it’s …

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