Drink, Drank, Drunk.

Thurdsay 26th January. Afternoon.

Two more interviews with local companies, hawking our educational vapourware product. It was only on leaving the second company's office we realised: We have absolutely no clue what they do.

Just a bare white cube of an office, with the standard belaptopped understatedly plush desk in one corner, a suited man behind it with the regulation ultra-neatly trimmed five-day beard...and the equally regulation office boy in immaculate jeans and leather jacket to bring tea.

I'm thinking management consultants. One company (them) managing outsourcing of another company (us) to employ a third company (me) to teach managers of a fourth company to, er, manage.

And then...we downed half a bottle of red wine each. Followed by several hours of Jamal's slightly eratic driving, and me being violently ill. Must remember not to do that again. Ever.

I have to admit, I really do enjoy arabic daytime soap operas. The plot beats are so clearly signposted, and the characters so broadly drawn, you can follow it without knowing a word of the language.

There's the overprotective mother, and her gaggle of saccharine young children. The mean older sister, and the lachrymose younger one. The nieve young buck, and the scheming businessman - complete with twirlable moustache.

All played with total sincerity, with not a hint of self-parody, yet instantly self-parodying. You can't have a concept of camp without one of kitsch, and kitsch is a product of class warfare. But on TV, everyone is a decent struggling worker, living in an aristocratic mansion, doing a vague middle-class, middle management job.

...because a cup is more stylish than a syringe.

The Bullshit Economy

Wednesday 25th January. Afternoon.

The unfeasibly sexy Mustafa is going away to study in Sparta. Which, in open defiance of what I learned in Classical Civilisation classes, is no longer in Greece. Shocking.

Ah well. I should see him again in about three months, and maybe feel like a giddy schoolgirl again. Or a slightly dodgy old perv. I always get those two confused.

Meanwhile, an impromptu interview/presentation with, well, a businessman. The Montgolfier brothers were baloonist-papermakers. Benedictus Spinoza was a heretic-lensgrinder. This fellow is a cisconetwork-manager-coffeeshop-owner. Meaning, he wears a suit to give orders to young employees in stylishly ripped jeans to solve technical problems he doesn't understand, and they don't bother explaining the reality to him.

But, like all people who like to pretend they understand computers, he thinks matters like photoshop layering and database management are incredibly arcane and difficult to learn.

Actually, they can be, but not if all you want is a company logo or a payroll record.

And so, the fifteen point list of "things Kapitano can teach apart from English", which constitutes our company's mission statement, has to be translated into English, for purely legal reasons, for no one to read.

This list started life as my notes on the back of an envelope, which got translated into Arabic pseudo-legalese. So now we feed the result into google translate, and I edit the resulting mess into English pseudo-legalese.

Here's our first three promises:

1) Provide training in modern video conferencing and webinar presentation techniques, in both English and Arabic languages.

2) Facilitate effective communication with western charitable organisations, to present the client business organisation effectively, thus enabling smooth project development.

3) Contribute actively to sourcing of a suitable environment, to assist the client organisation in legally performing its activities in the United Kingdom, to remove obstacles to success in business.

Aren't you glad no one's ever going to read it?

Part of our well-deserved reward for writing the above.

A Puzzle

Wednesday 25th January. Morning.

What looks a bit like autism in a 3 year old boy? What does it mean when he's skilled with iphone and laptop...but has no words at all, and doesn't know his name? Loves to be hugged, especially by father. We think we have an answer.

It's the first world problem of children raised by television. From as soon as he could sit, his mother left him sat in front of the TV - leaving him calm, happy, and seemingly engaged and learning.

Result: A 3 year old boy with the mind of an 18 month old baby. Not slow, in fact very quick, but delayed. The treatment seems obvious - lots of interaction with lots of familiar people. Basically, an extended loving family. Which is exactly what he's got.

But is it actually possible for him to catch up? With this delayed start, how far can he even run? I don't know, and the research seems uncertain.

What happens when you introduce the electric light bulb to a culture that lives in tents? You get storytelling, debate and gossip that can extend into the night, instead of finishing when the sun goes down.

What happens when you introduce iPhones and internet? You get families sitting around a tray of fingerfood in the evening, each eating their fill...and then wordlessly browsing facebook for their storytelling, debate and gossip.

What happens when you introduce 24-hour multi-channel TV? The elderly can stay mentally active and entertained, without being a burden. The debate and gossip is about world events, not just the latest family scandel. You just also get boys like Wasaam.

Though to be fair, if I were a mother tasked with non-stop shopping, cooking, cleaning and care for five children, I'd be tempted to outsource the childcare to the magic window in the corner too.

He decided I was a soft and comfortable mattress. And he really didn't want to wake up.

Shoed Out

Tuesday January 24th. Evening.

The first charity we spoke to promised to get back to us in four days. They didn't. We emailed and called. They didn't answer. Which is rather an insult in islamic culture. We decided we didn't want them, not least because their overtly islamic image seemed to be, shall we say, trying a little too hard. Then they email to say they didn't want us. Because...we're not Islamic enough for them.

Your shoes are shiny. They're shinier than you can imagine.

Church, and State Rooms

Tuesday January 24th. Afternoon.

Antioch! Which isn't actually called Antioch! And is dirt poor but has a small industry in christian tourism because it's got a very early christian church, built into a natural cave and viewable for 15 lira...!

I'm fairly sure the early, oppressed and illegal christian church couldn't afford solid stone alters with nicely carved symbolic alphas and omegas. Or improbably kitsch statues of Saint Paul. Or an escape route with a neat square doorway. So there may  be a little artistic licence, to go with the souvenir shop.

Which has mosaics and statues showing christian themes. And islamic themes. And hindu themes. And hybrids of the above. Because why not.

I'd like to try Door Number 1, please Monty.

But nearby...

The Savon Hotel. Very high class. How high class? Most hotels in Turkey have the word "Otel" in illuminated letters on the front. This one is too posh for illuminations, and transliterates the english correctly.

Inside, rooms that boast showers...and hairdryers, according to the prospectus, with the sales pitch given in seven languages. Two rooms have jaccuzis, and the foyer has spotless white ceilings designed like church spandrels, tables of finely carved dark wood with polished glass tops, and seat-covers that would make William Morris say, "It's a little too ornate."

It also has a particular smell. "Savon" is Turkish for "Soap" - the Arabic equilvalent is "Sabon", cognate to "Saponification". The place was a soap factory from 1850 - or as I was first told, a "Soup Factory" - and since its refurbishment as a hotel in 2001, this little fact has become central to the sales literature.

The smell...is the scent of scented soap, without the soap. The pretence being that naturally odourless soap naturally has this smell, and it survives over decades and extensive building work. "Sound and perfume swirl in the evening air" wrote Baudalaire, and here the sound is the most hideously inoffensive piano-and-saxaphone smooth jazz.

Except I recognised one of the tunes. "Comment te dir adieu". Whose lyrics are about anal sex.

The best teabag I've ever encountered. Never been teabagged like it before.

Which I listened to while drinking my 7-lira "Herbs Tea". I mean I listened to the muzak, not...anyway. The tea was praeternaturally excellent, but didn't quite compare to...

The Ottoman Hotel. A hotel so grand it doesn't even need to show its name on the front. 100 lira will get you entry to the ground floor swimming baths, which, we are proudly told several times, are kept at exactly 42 degrees celsius. For maximum effectiveness at...something.

These apparently are phosphate baths, like the ones I frolicked in recently. As to which phosphate, or even if it's the same one, we still don't know.

An actual dunk may cost you dear, but a bit of charm will get you a free guided tour. So we got to see what made cubic spaces of blue cholorinated water so special, apart from the rich elderly men in blue trunks floating in them.

Deep carpeting in the corridors, chrome handrails polished to a high sheen...and pseudo-medieval paintings with vaguely virtuous implied meanings on the walls. If you can't justify the price by improving the product, you can add window dressing.

Everything says quality, but quality what, exactly?

Bonk

Monday January 23rd. Afternoon.

It's Paul Smith - the name of the bar that's named after the apparantly high-fashion clothing line. The one I've never heard of.

And the owner is, equally apparently, a Kurdish Turk, who isn't German after all but spent some formative years in Germany. And who thinks it's a jolly good idea to install an english language school as an additional side-attraction in his bar, to counterbalance the shisha-smoking section. And who's confident my teenager-friendly, video based method of teaching would fit right in. Which I think is bonkers, but, well, what the bleep do I know?

But. Buuuuuut...he isn't sure about planning permission to build partitions. Or rather, isn't sure the relavent local buraucrats can be persuaded. Or rather, isn't sure what their bribe level is.

He's Plan B - the fallback position of Plan A, which is to work with local charities to use a language school to raise money to maintain shelters for syrian refugees. Which is, IMHO, slightly less bonkers.

But...there's a Plan C! Which is the use the existing multi-purpose business to set up an additional charity which will raise some of its funds by running a language school, staffed by the same guy who does all the IT stuff, after he spends a few weeks back in england putting together all the materials for both. Which is...averagely bonkers for Turkey.

Oh yes, I've asked a fair few Syrians to explain the war to me. Like, how many factions are there, and who could form a provisional government, and how can people be so gullible as to kill members of their own close family over hairline differences created by a few weeks of propaganda broadcasts. And the answer is, everyone gave up guesssing a long time ago. So the situation could be described as...yes.

Tea...with all the trimmings.

Living in a Material World

Monday January 23rd. Morning.

If you build a house halfway up a mountain, what are your preferred building materials? There are a lot of mountains in Turkey, so a lot of halfways, and quite a lot of houses. And they're all bloody freezing.

Why use blocks of stone when you could use blocks of breezeblock? Because stone is cheap and local, while breezeblocks are seemingly so-far not. Why use marble for the staircases when you could use textured concrete that (a) you don't frelling slip on and (b) can at least be fitted easier with carpet, so it's not cold as, well, marble? So far as I can tell: Tradition.

So why make all the doors out of cold, heavy, clanging sheet steel? The same reason you fit the windows with bars. Thieves Operate In This Area. And even if they don't, the fear of thieves does.

There's no shortage of wood for doors, windowframes etc. I've been watching a house get built, and the scaffolding is wood, not steel. But wood is too fragile, and quite possibly too quiet, to deter thieves with crowbars.

The other view from my tent. Showcasing other building materials.

Hanging Out at the Mall

Sunday, January 22nd. Afternoon.

What do bustling middle eastern metropolises (metropoliti? metropoles?) have in common with sleepy english villages? To travel between them, you need a private car, and the patience to drive for hours at a time.

So, after two hours on the road, I got to (a) see the incredibly expensive Sherrington hotel, and (b) walk around the nearby incredibly expensive shopping mall. Which is exactly like every other shopping mall in the world, in that it's rows of over-specialist shops set into a stark white background whith insipid muzak and weak perfume everywhere.

Oh, and (c) I met with two of Jamal's endless supply of cousins. One's an engineer, and the other...is a human rights lawyer, with an extensive collection of evidenced atrocities committed by the Assad regime. Which is probably why his family were kidnapped and imprisoned. Though probably not the reason why a missile struck a meter in front of his car, nearly killing him.

He wanted to know the best way to get accepted into the UK. I said economic refugees get the lowest preference, with political ones slightly higher. But if you don't want to be an illegal migrant doing all the horrible jobs while being invisible and defenceless, universities love high paying foreign students, especially in highly skilled areas that natives don't do so well in.

The same in America of course, but more so.

It may be true that an expert is an ordinary person, far from home. But I'm not sure I'm ordinary enough to be an expert.

If spectacle is a by-product of industry, you can imply industry by creating spectacle.

My Cup Runneth Over

Sunday January 22nd. Morning.

I've been woken up by banging on my door before. But not so my room can be used as an impromptu surgery. And certainly not for witchdoctoring.

I sleep, and mostly live, in a tent that combines functions of guest room, spare bedroom, and communal lounge. So today I was woken up at the crack of 10:30 by hammering on the canvass door. Over the next half hour, I watched The Valeyard, a trained lawyer, remember...perform the "full cupping" ritual.

He took a set of small tea glasses, placed a piece of burning paper in each to create a partial vacuum inside, and stuck them at various point on another man's bare back. Eventually, this led to bleeding into the cups. The idea being that "bad" or "dead" or "infected" blood would be drawn out, leaving only the good, uninfected blood behind.

The patient then sheepishly tucked a 20 lira note under the mattress - the only shame being the giving of payment.

Just what is the function of folk medicine? Certainly not to cure - if that were the purpose, it would long ago have developed into real medicine. To reassure? To provide a trigger for the placebo effect? To give the reassuring impression that something can be done, when it can't?

You'd have to ask an actual medical doctor. So I did, and got answers that flitted between "The placebo effect is powerful" and "Maybe it works in some way we don't know".

You've heard of big pharma? This is little pharma.

Nth World Problems

Saturday January 21st. Afternoon.

Some oddities of living like this:

Imagine you're a 15 year old girl or boy. You're living in a single tent with parents, grandparents, and siblings. How do you masturbate?

This is a culture simultaneously obsessed with and terrified of sex. One man's question on first meeting me was "How many women have you had sex with?". Another wanted to know "Do girls masturbate too?". A third advised me "Never talk about your private life."

We have our hypocrisies, they have theirs.

So, you're 15, physically fit and healthy because of all the exercise and organic food, full of surging hormones, and probably bored quite a lot of the time. Where do you wank?

Well, you're surrounded by rolling fields and countryside as far as the eye can see. So that's where you go. The most private place for the most private acts...is the most public place. Except without any public.

The other things people do with their normally covered body parts. You can (a) join the orderly queue for the single official toilet. Or (b) schedule your leakage and dumpage for when most other people are asleep, braving the late night cold. Or (c) ... take a walk into those rolling hills I mentioned.

I'm privileged, so I've got an option (d) - when your business takes you into town, use the facilities of cafes, houses of friends, and offices of clients. Which requires its own form of scheduling.

The view from my tent. Rolling countryside, or infertile fields given because no one else wants them. You can decide.

Quiet Day

Saturday January 21st.

I appear to be having a day off. The thing about holidays is, if you don't know in advance that you're having them, they're just days with unexpectedly nothing to do.

I count 18 open access wifi points available to this laptop - all of them too weak to connect to. On the one hand, the "developing" world can jump from no-tech to high-tech very rapidly, because it takes the "first" world decades to painfully get there, and when they've done it, we here in the "global south" can just pick up the finished product.

That's why this tent, up a mountain with the most basic sanitation, has a satellite dish outside, and plasma TV inside, next to the water cooler, fan, iron and hot plate - implying a constant, reliable and plentiful electricity supply.

But...the TV signal breaks up all the time, the tea is hot but all the meals are cold, and wifi is more trouble that it's worth. Which is why I'm writing this in the expectation that I'll be able to post it...at some point in the future.

My marxist friends call this "combined and uneven development", showcasing their habit of taking terms coined by Lenin or Trotsky a century ago, and translating them literally from the Russian. Hence "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and "Permanant Revolution" - both terms meaning something different from what you'd expect in English.

Referred to, half jokingly, as a "Gadaffi Tent".

Full English

Friday January 20th. Evening.

Did I mention today's pleasant but pointless meeting? Well, did I mention today's other pleasant but pointless meeting.

Here's the pitch: You're the owner of an english-themed bar in turkey. The front door is that of a phone box. The name is a refernce to a london-based fashion house that actually I've never heard of. Something Smith. You play sort-of english pop music, and serve more-or-less english style food and drink, to customers sitting at englishy looking chairs and tables. Englishy circa 1985, during an internationally transplanted Mardi Gras.

So, how about partitioning off part of your english bar, to make a classroom to teach...guess what language?

Here's the response from the owner - who is German, by the way: What an interesting idea. Though it would take a lot of building work. And I'm not sure about sound proofing. Or building permits. And I'm retiring soon, so it's not entirely my call. And did I mention I'm not exactly the owner as such, just a stand in for someone who can't be here, and he'd have to decide.

Ah well, there was a pleasant resteraunt on the way, situated right next to the ocean, and I got to ride there in the back seat, touching legs with the unfeasibly sexy Mustafa, who helped me grow my arabic. And no, that's not a euphemism.

Mustafa, who listened carefully to my advice to wait a year until deciding whether to get married. And promptly proposed to his very nice-sounding girlfriend the next day.

And after making me promise not to tell anyone about our conversation, and himself promising not to tell anyone Kapitano isn't entirely heterosexual...he went and told.

Was I that unreliable when I was 25? Probably, yes.

My beach has sand and pebbles. Their beach has great big wavebreaking stone blocks...and mountains with snow.

The Charity Business

Friday January 20th. Afternoon.

Another interview, another charity, another complementary glass of tea with three sugar cubes served with the daintiest stirring spoon in the world. And another complete waste of time. Though this time they sort of had a point.

"Hand-in-Hand" are looking forward to the end of the syrian war, and to a projected 20 year rebuilding process, which will require trained electricians, plumbers and builders - but, they say, not IT experts or english speakers.

At least that's their story. The rather literal word on the street is, they're a bunch of thieves who help no one. Either way, the tea was good, the personnel pleasant, the office plush, and the whole thing a wild goose chase.

And so, a small break to watch Turkish TV cover the inauguration of Donald Trump as POTUS. Or rather, to watch a retrospective of Barack Obama's failure to do anything to stop the syrian war, and coverage of angry protesters calling Trump a fascist.

So far as I can see, Trump himself is a useful idiot, backed by christian reconstructionists, dominionists, climate change deniers, vaccine deniers, AIDS deniers, sex-phobes, gun fondlers and end-of-the-world fantasisers. Useless idiots, in other words.

Except the usefulness of idiots lies in the constancy of control. And with all those controllers, each trying to monopolise the same 30-second attention span...here's someone who can declare war over a twitter spat, and then forget they've done it.

Children who've seen their house on fire...can still be shy in front of the camera.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Thursday January 19th. Morning and Afternoon.

More clothes shopping, for another interview with another charity.

Jamal has two wives, four daughters, and one son. The son is three years old and has...something that isn't quite autism. What would you call a happy, energetic child who loves exploring and solving puzzles, but doesn't seem to understand that people aren't machines?

He doesn't know anyone's name, including his own. He shows no fear of - or interest in - strangers. He won't meet anyone's gaze, takes random but unchangable dislikes to familiar people, including his mother, but he operates electronic devices with ease.

Most days, he spends a few hours at the local center for autistic children, encouraged to play with educational toys by women with endless patience and boundless love - in the hope that some social skills will emerge as a by-product.

There's almost no funding, and what there is goes into equipping the classroom. The broken-down syrian expatriots who run the place suggested we approach the "Saad" charity for possible employment.

So, a round of shopping for "impressive" clothes in the second hand street market, where the stock display is a table piled with unsorted shirts, then one for shoes, etc.

These places are also run by syrian refuges - one's who've climbed the latter from destitution to riches by one rung. It may be that there are small businesses in Turkey run by actual turks - instead of syrians, kuwaitis, iraqis, saudis, and even greeks. But I'm not sure I've seen any yet.

And so on to meet the head of the Saad charity to help syrians learn IT and people skills. And english. According to both his business cards, he's called Dr Asaad Asaad. I was at school with a Leo Lyons, and I suppose if we brits can have Magnus Magnussesn and Jerome K Jerome, Turkey can have something similar.

I like him, on a purely personal level. I'd be happy to work for him. Small detail though: He has exactly zero interest in spending any of the money his charity raises in doing anything. Except possibly adding even more shiny black leather upholstry to his office. I think all the workers are volunteers.

So yes, it's that kind of fundraising.

The least movement blurred picture I could get of Wassam. He doesn't seem to mind.

Milk and Cream

Wednesday, January 18th, Afternoon and Evening.

I have a minor skin complaint. Just a matter of diabetic immune weakness, combined with the difficulty in taking a hot soapy shower when you're (a) in a refugee camp and (b) up a mountain in the freezing cold.

Today's solution to this came in three parts. (1) Get a tube of hydrocortisone cream. (2) Mention it to your host who will actually get his family to build you a freaking shower stall. So, future guests will have one more mod con, in addition to air conditioning, water coolers, smartphones with translation apps, and satellite TV.

Yes, these folk may be dirt poor and fleeing from an incomprehensible war, but this is still the 21st century.

Edit: In the event, no stall got built. Add to the list of things which don't happen because instructions get lost and people get distracted. No worries.

Oh yes, and (3): Take a trip to a health spa. A turkish bath with gender-segregated sulphate swimming pools. Iron sulphate? Copper sulphate? Iririum sulphate? No idea - and the attendants didn't know either. But it's definitely a sulphate of some kind, and it definitely cures all known skin conditions, because it's from 1000 meters underground. Or possibly 1000 feet. Because biology works by magic.

And you know it's genuine because there's only two places in the world which have this sulphate. Another supposed selling point.

But in any case, it was a very pleasant hour, spent wading in milky warm water with half a dozen men, including the inevitable obese giant who liked to dive bomb. There's always one, by law.

Then an hour of watching men smoke shisha and argue about politics. Followed by half an unbelievably good resteraunt meal - the other half is wrapped up in a plastic bag next to me for later, something known by the english word "Bucket".

Oh yes, and then another hour of watching men smoke shisha and argue about politics. This seems to happen quite a lot in the arab world. Imagine a youtube comment thread, but worth reading.

I know what this corridor leading to the toilet needs! Sartorially implausible miniturised stone milkmaids! It'll set off the tastefully understated fake marble walls and fake al-hambra floor.

Om Nom Nom

Wednesday, January 18th. Morning.

I've no idea what the word is for "Brunch", but I woke up after midday and had some. In the company of...well, assorted relatives of each other.

Arabic family trees are extensive and complex, with distinctions we don't bother with in English. Yesterday I was asked if english has a special word for "the sister of my wife", and it took a minute to work out the answer is "no". Unless there is and I missed it. I'm not absolutely sure what a second cousin is, or how a third cousin can be removed four times.

So, I munched brunch, learning some words for what I was munching. Green olives are /zaituun/, but black ones are (I think) /atuun/. There a thick, black, sweet and syrupy dip called.../dips/ (or /dubz/, depending on who's pronouncing it). A glass container is a /kaasa/, and my /kaasa tSai/ (petite little tea glass) was replaced with a /kaasa biira/ (sensible sized beer glass). /okuul/ is "eat", /aakel/ is "food", and seemingly the generic word for footwear is, very usefully, /but/.

"Chicken" (and/or possibly) "Turkey" is /dadZaadZ/, conjouring images of a rooster in a courtroom, banging his gavel as "Da Judge".

A shirt is a /kamiiz/, which is nice and simple and Spanish corellated. Except it also works for a light pullover/sweater/jumper...but not for a fleece, of which there are at least two finely distingished varieties.

After that, I converted to Islam. And they videoed me doing it. Twice.

Which is to say, we played a game where I tried to repeat sung arabic phrases - including the oath you recite when you convert. I'm fairly sure my soul hasn't been saved from /dZahaanam/ (hell) though, on the technicality that it's hard to mean words you don't understand. Even though that's how most religious ceremonies work.

Luxury is having more than enough good things. Do not confuse this with having more expensive things than you'll ever use.

Plugged In

Tuesday, January 17th, Evening.

When travelling, you always forget to bring the little things. Towel, headache pills, phone charger, nail clippers, and in this case, one of those devices which convert the mains electricity socket from two-pin to three-pin, without which you can't plug in your laptop.

To solve this problem, you need an unfeasibly sexy young man - perferably called Mustafa - to guide you to an electrical hardware store. Thanks to which, I can power my laptop to tell you how I played agony uncle, providing sympathetic ear and wise suggestions about something that was worrying him.

Except I won't, because he asked me not to. Yes, I can pretend to be mature, sometimes.

"Doctor, I feel like a dog on a motorway...."

The Big Four-Five

Tuesday, January 17th, Morning

How do you celebrate your forty fifth birthday? I went to an interview which was both highly important and deeply pointless, got the most amazing indigestion from too much /kaabsa/, played agony uncle...and had bits start to break off one of my molars. So, in all, a full day.

Now, I am, at least on paper, self employed. My friend and host Jamal has set up a Turkish company which teaches english, runs courses in IT and "people skills"...

So, his general purpose company employs my company. There's a Turkish charity, run by a Jordanian businessman, taking care of Syrian refugees. And this charity needs to be ratified by, er, someone. Seemingly "The U.N.". And to be ratified, it needs to offer a range of services. So it subcontracts the promise of future services to my host's company, which subcontracts the English-teaching and knowing-about-IT parts to my company, who is me.

And my role in the negotiations to enable the promise of future education to Syrian refugees and thus enable ratification and open up legal channels of funding...is to dress in extremely uncomfortable and overheated formal clothes, and sit in someone else's over-plush office, as evidence that english-teaching can indeed occur. Because they've got a real live english english teacher.

Yes, it's nice to have a purpose in life.

Paperwork is being put in motion, options are being considered, alternatives are being weighed, passive voices are being used...and in a few days results will be made clear. Or at least less unclear.

The sanitation facilities at the camp. And yes, those are roosters. So...cocks on display in the toilet.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Monday, January 16th.

A trip to a waterfall, for myself, my host and friend Jamal, and the unfeasibly sexy Mustafa.

This particular waterfall was (a) a tourist attraction (b) in the dark because the we got there late, and (c) about half a meter high. Not quite what I was expecting, but there was a resteraunt attached. A part of it ankle deep in water. Deliberately and on purpose.

It seems that, in the height of summer, some people like to drink their coffee sitting at tables placed in the path of an artificial stream, with bare feet cooled in naturally cold, running water.

There was also...a duck pond. That peculiar english tradition of taking bread to the pond to feed to ducks? Turks have it too.

Taking Turkish Tea at Ten, we proceeded to have The Conversation About Religion, which in abbreviated form goes like this:

Theist: Why don't you believe in god?
Atheist: Because there's no reason to.
Theist: But who made the universe?
Atheist: You've given a name to a cause you can't define. Is that an explanation?
Theist: I guess not.

The Unfeasibly Sexy Mustafa. I finally get him alone. In the dark. And, er, next to a duck pond.

Trial

Sunday January 15th. Evening.

Meeting the family. Never a quick process in the middle east. There's the Syrian uncle who's a Doctor of Law - yes, an actual Valeyard - his father, and two eldest sons - who really are called Muhammed and Ali.

Another uncle, who seems to only wear track suits, and at least two of his young daughters - who greet visitors with handshakes and air kisses. An uncertain number of boys aged between 5 (always laughing and climbing on things) and 13 (being surly and stopping them doing it, because they think that's what being grown up is about).

And...the entire point of writing this section, the unfeasibly sexy Mustafa. 25, training to be a doctor, worried that his incredibly good english isn't good enough, cynical about humanity and romantic that is can be bettered, and...well, unfeasibly sexy.

And non-halal pigs might fly.