Harry

One of our dogs died today.

Harry, a six year old Maltese who was happy so long as he had a human to lie down next to. Or on. If you lay down, he liked to climb on top of your chest and...plonk down. A small dog, but solid, with heavy muscle.

Or if you were sitting up, he'd settle for wedging himself against you...and turning upside down, legs and nose in the air, mouth open. He could manage to do this if you were sitting in an armchair.

Two weeks ago, he developed constipation. We gave him cod liver oil but it didn't help. Whenever he tried to take a dump, he howled in pain and nothing came out. His rear end was swollen, but all the pain was on the inside.

One week ago, the vet said he had a colonic hernia - viscera protruding through muscle, blocking the passage.

Four days ago, he had an operation to correct it. He was happier, not in pain, but refused to eat anything. We managed to get him to swallow his medicines by squirting them into his mouth - and he actually seemed to enjoy it.

He drank plenty of water, but then always brought it up again. Yesterday he was lethargic and weak, barely able to walk, but starting to be able to crouch and defacate in the garden - without obvious discomfort.

Then this evening...he just didn't wake up from a nap.

Another vet is storing the body until we can have him cremated.

These are the facts. And that's the easy part.

Maybe the truma of the surgery was too much, maybe there was just too much wrong to fix. There's no easy way to tell, and that's...okay.

I'm 45. My father is 82. I don't think I've ever seen him cry before. What am I supposed to make of this?

Checking for a pulse, feeling for slight breathing, noting how the flesh was turning cold. A slightly uncomfortable sensation, but nothing difficult to cope with. Seeing how rigour mortis had stiffened his legs when we moved him - that was deeply unsettling.

The other dogs - sometimes they barked or growled when Harry was wolfing down food from their plates, or splayed on their favourite cushion - no one could splay like Harry. But when confronted with his body, it was as if they couldn't see it. It wasn't him to them.

So I'm left with a scattering of mundane memories, that suddenly have an extra colouring. That time we sent him to have his coat trimmed, and he came back almost with a buzzcut, which seemed to puzzle him. The time our youngest dog Rosie was in season, and Harry followed her around, wagging frantically.

And the ritual every night when Harry recognised the signs that we were preparing to sleep, and he got over excited, running around and barking, trying to decide whose bed he would sleep on.

Yes, I'll miss that. Goodnight Harry.

Inventory

Monday 6th February. Morning.

If all goes well, I leave today.

So apparently I'm supposed to reflect, and draw out life lessons from my recent experiences.

I came here with a cold in the head, and I'm leaving with a different one.

I came knowing exactly one word of Turkish, and I leave having learned I was mispronouncing it.

I came expecting to work for a charitable business, and I leave expecting to work for a business disguised as a charity.

I came with luggage full of casual clothes, and GBP200 in lira. Anything I don't spend or especially want to wear can go to my hosts - they can probably find a better use for the running shoes that always chafed.

I've managed to aquire three jackets, five pairs of trousers, seven shirts and a tie - which can all stay right here in storage.

The fashion is like the TV. 40 years out of date, and the reason you can enjoy it ironically is that it's incapable of grasping irony.

The food is simple fare, expertly prepared. And I have a curious yearning for fish and chips.

The people...I've barely met any actual turks in Turkey. Everyone's been kurdish, syrian, russian etc. But turks seem parochial rather than xenophobic. If you like heavily built men with a casual attitude to sex but a horror of admitting it, this could be the holiday destination for you.

I'll be back.

Inside, looking out. Away, looking back.

Rapping Up

Saturday 4th February. Night.

Plans for amateur child psychology scuppered by visit from a Turkish businessman and offspring. He speaks Arabic and French in addition to native Turkish, and wanted some English vocabulary.

So I got to eat Kabsa with a man who finds the words "Food" and "Belly" hilarious. Foooood. Be...ellleeeee.

There's so many things I want to get on with when I get back home. But that's not quite the same as being glad to leave.

I suppose the point of a holiday is to rest, recuperate, recharge, renew, revivify, and maybe other approximate synonyms beginning with R.

As well as review, recapitulate, reconsider, ratiocinate and reconnoitre with relish. No, really.

Red Cabbage.

Something else beginning with R.

I Do Linguistics

Saturday 4th February. Morning.

I took the opportunity during a hour of internet access to download some Arabic tutorials - including "Arabic for Dummies". And I've never read such a load of smug, inaccurate bollocks outside of, well, muslim apologetics.

It claims to use an internationally recognised system of transcription - one that mixes up several sounds, misdescribes others, and doesn't even try to indicate syllable stress or vowel length. Oh, and I've never seen it used outside this book, which gives the word for "Student" as not "taalib" but "tilmiidh" which it then says is pronounced "teel-mee-zah".

Arabic is bonkers enough without frauds presenting themselves as experts. Grammatical gender and adjectival agreement are minor inconveniences, but when the numbers 13-19, and 11 but not 12 must have gender disagreement, then we're dealing with a language designed by drunken committee.

Oh yes, the word for "drunk" is /sekre:n/. I learned that last night, for the price of a whisky and coke. And a headache later.

My absolute favourite culinary discovery in Turkey. And it's not Turkish. From, Syria, Makdous. Eggplant, stuffed with pulverised walnuts, red pepper and garlic. It may look like a larval form of Cthulu, but until I can get somewhere with the Unfeasibly Sexy Mustafa, this is the best thing I put in my mouth.

Kooky

Friday 3rd February.

Wassam has excellent fine motor control, shows problem solving intelligence, seems to understand a small range of gestures, and enjoys being picked up and cuddled.

He also never makes eye contact, and appears to have no spoken language at all. What kind of environment or neurological disorder could lead to both complete aphasia and prosopagnosia?

Yesterday he bit me - simply as though curious what I tasted like. He gets distressed - and placated - easily enough, but seems incapable of aggression.

What could lead to a three year old child (1) being able to work out that an adult pointing to a particular part of a toy-puzzle is a hint that this peg and not that is the one the orange but not the green or purple hoop should next go over, but (2) not grasping that spoken words refer to things.

And how could spending the first two years of life watching kids music television lead to this?

And how do you fix it?

I've been asked to spend the weekend with Wassam, to try to gather some clues.

"Khookh". Imagine apricot jam, with fatally large amounts of added sugar.

Olive/Branch

Thursday 2nd February.

That first charity we interviewed with. The one for who we were insufficiently islamic. Turns out they've decided they do want something from us after all.

They want to spread overseas, including the UK. Which means they want someone to take care of all the confusing, non-quran inspired paperwork in the UK...so they can send three of their people over to run it.

In return for which, they'll give a lump sum equivalent to one half of the running costs of this here refugee camp, for one year.

So basically, my job is to do some google searches, memorise and summarise UK charity law, act as their agent...and find some cheap premises to rent.

After which, their people will need some english lessons. But they haven't thought that far ahead.

Oh, and I'm to advise them on how to get accredited with "OUTSCHA" - a UN run authority that's the Better Business Bureau of charities. Except according to google, there's no such organisation. Another small detail to work out.

Edit: It turns out to be OCHA. And it seems to be easier for some companies to employ another company to employ an english-speaking researcher to read the english-language version of the relavent UN documents and summarise them in english to be translated into arabic...than to do a bit of reading in their own native language.

Spot...

...the difference.

Kinda

Wednesday February 1st. Afternoon.

Two small acts of kindness. Compare and contrast.

IHH are a Benevolent foundation. That's with a capital B, meaning they have an enormous heap of money, which they donate to various charities.

To apply for a donation, go to their high-tech, military-style complex. To get in, you must surrender your citizenship card, passport, or equivalent documentation. This gets you past the guarded turnstile, and into a large prefabricated building, where you plead your worthiness.

In this case, after half an hour of mission-statement regurgitation (in which I spoke five words), we were told it would take a long time to process and consider our application. That's code for "Piss off, you're not prestigious enough for us."

After retrieving our documents from IHH border control, we drove disconsolately away.

Now, before all this, we stopped at a coffeeshop, where I was gently but persistently pestered by a girl of about seven. Homeless, and begging for cash. I gave her the contents of my pocket - five lira in coins. That was act number one.

So, my tent is cold. In fact, bloody cold because the air conditioning broke. In fact, abolutely fucking freezing. But last night I was warm because the families occupying the next tent along donated their heater.

Leaving them absolutely fucking freezing.

So today I bought them a new heater - 90 lira.

Five lira to make a beggar go away, versus 90 so I don't feel like quite such an imperial colonialist bastard. For the next three days.

Samboukas. Which are not the same as Samosas, apparently. Simple home pleasures are better if you can save some for a midnight snack.

I Do Politics

Wednesday February 1st. Morning.

Apparently I'm only fun to be around when I'm drunk. Possibly unsurprising, as painting and sculpture only speak to me in the same condition.

I'm also the unofficially official (or vice versa) local expert on such vexed political matter as:

* Why did Britain brexit? (Possibly, they didn't want to support Greece and Italy, now the european economy was failing. Or they hoped to silence the movement to leave by holding a referendum, with an unexpected result. Or...something else.)

* Is a third world war coming? (More like dozens of small wars.)

* Will Donald Trump cause it? (Only if his handlers lose control completely, and he really is that stupid and insane.)

* Why did America support Saddam Hussein? (He was useful at the time, particularly against Iran.)

* Why does America support Assad? (They're split, but enough think he's useful for now.)

* Is it true Hitler respected Muslims? (He used them, but planned to destroy them later.)

* What do you think of Isreal? (Even if its role and funding disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't disappear any time soon.)

(My marxist friends used to hold debates on "Does Isreal Have The Right To Exist", to which I think the answer is: "The right as conferred by which power?")

Maybe I should drink more.

A foaming flagon of cool, crisp, refreshing...thin yoghurt.

Jobby

Tuesday January 31st. Morning.

On the other hand, sometimes your semi-paranoid imaginings can be prophetic. For instance, one thought was that a charity would offer a "probationary period" of, say, one month, during which I would do my job free of charge, after which they'd look and see whether there was a chance of paid employment.

To which my considered response would be "Fuck off, did you think I was born yesterday?".

Well, guess what happened.

It looks like I'm here till Saturday, which apart from the suddenly broken air conditioning and consequent need for me to type this wearing three thick layers of clothing...is fine.

Imagine eggplant, stuffed with spicy, crunchy peanut butter. Now imagine flat bread, dipped in olive oil, and coated in a powder of pungent herbs. Or the same bread, dipped in sweet oil of dates. All washed down with a strong, dark tea.

That's my breakfast. Now imagine a meal where you fill up with a first course of a dozen varieties of salad - finely chopped onion and leutice with a dusting of paprika, black and green olives, leafy kale coated in lemon juice, goat's cheese, hummous...each on its own little plate, for you to mix and try as you wish.

Then the main course, lamb or sometimes beef, grilled with peppers. Or, a plate of spicy chicken wings. Rice is an expensive option, as is pasta. It's a small stroke of genius that your actual hunger is taken care of by extensive starters, so the literal meat of the meal is a leasurely self-indulgence - much as a dessert course is for us.

You can finish off with sweet tea or a dose of caffine in the form of almost viscous coffee.

This is a typical resteraunt meal. I think one reason we get obese in the west is that we don't actually like our food very much.

Cornflakes, baked beans, sausage and mashed potato - convenience food. But also...boring. So we eat more, hoping the pleasure hit will come on the next bite.

Here, living in a cold tent in a Syrian refugee camp, breakfast is something to look forward to. As opposed to something you unthinkingly do while watching the breakfast TV news.

Yellow Soup.

Red Soup.

Decisions, Decisions

Monday January 30th.

Today was supposed to be the day we decide what to do for the next year. The options are:

1) Finish negotiations with an already existing charity. Arrange accommodation, transport and teaching space for me, start immediately, and at some point visit England to fetch all the hardware, software and data needed to upgrade teaching from basic.

2) Strike out on our own. I go home to get my stuff, Jamal squeezes business types in Saudi for funding, and when we're both done, get back to Turkey. My preferred option.

3) Give up the whole thing as a bad idea.

But, seeing as this is not just the middle east where nothing runs on schedule, but Turkey, where all meetings are a delicate dance of finding out what the terms of a verbal contract even mean...we've still got no idea what we're doing.

I don't like uncertainty, and I've got a very bad habit in uncertain situations. I tend to pace up and down, imagining scenarios where everyone else is being the most incompetent assholes in the world. And me coming up with strategies to deal with them.

Unfortunately, if you could reason with an asshole, they wouldn't be an asshole, by definition. That's why, however charitable your view on human nature, the only way to deal with bullies is to bully them. You deal with obstructive bureaucrats by obstructing them. And you defeat trolls by humiliating them - though whether that's best done by ignoring them is another matter.

That's why shouting works when pleading doesn't. It's why you deflate pomposity with ridicule, not debate. It's why blackmail, an appeal to the least enlightened form of self-interest, works better than appeals to, well, enlightened self-interest.

But pacing and fuming only leads to more pacing and fuming.

Unless you're debating creationists, flat earthers, or Trump supporters in the real world, obviously. Swivel-eyed loons can't be de-programmed, only smashed.

Taking afternoon tea on the lawn.

Eeey, Meeny...

Saturday 28th January, Sunday 29th January

If you've ever wondered how muslims know which way to face when praying, wonder no more. How do they know which direction is Mecca? They guess.

Another of life's little mysteries solved, when the most obvious answer turns out to be the right one.

Apart from that, a decidedly uneventful weekend. Most of it spent trying to figure out the rules of which vowels go where in arabic words. And once again the obvious answer is true: there aren't any rules.

Which means, on the principle that the long vowel or diphthong is in the emphasised syllable, and if there isn't a long vowel, the emphsais is on the first syllable of di- or tri-syllables, and the ante-penultimate syllable if there's more than three...

...this means there aren't any rules for determining word stress from the written form either, and the above principle is therefore meaningless.

So, why don't arabic dictionaries and wordlists aimed at the beginners include vowel points? Children's books do it. The quran does it. Inspiring messages spelled out in sequins on cushions do it.

"Hot" is /ha:r/. "Cold" is /ba:rd/. Or /ba:rad/, or /ba:rid/, or /ba:rud/, or possibly even /ba:raid/ or /ba:raud/. But my list of 1000 most useful arabic words won't tell me which.

Could the most obvious explanation be right, that professional teachers of arabic are just as useless as professional teachers of english when it comes to knowing what students need? Probably.

Is this the reason Arabic disco sounds different to western glitchcore?

I May Be Some Time

Friday 27th January

It took a day of hangover to get over the evening of drinking. Then we got stuck in a snowdrift. And then the car could only manage to drive halfway home. And so we walked, in the freezing cold, through 25cm thick snow, up a mountain.

Left to my own devices, I'd have stayed in the car, slept there in the warm, and seen if things looked better in the morning. But instead we walked. And left to my own devices, I'd probably have died.

You see, I'm not very good with pain. And I'm especially not good with exhaustion, even when not combined with cold. And I do get exhausted quite easily. So I was tempted, really tempted many times, to just lie down in the snow and...what? Sleep through it? Give up? I don't know.

After a great deal of stress and shouting, we finally got to the house I'm calling home for the moment. It was probably only a half hour journey, but it felt timeless. Then I stepped in through the front door, and promptly slipped on the ice, nearly braining myself against the wall.

A bit more stress and a bit more shouting, and another half hour of lying on the floor of the living room, gasping to get breath back, slowly recovering in front of the heater.

Multiple cups of hot sweet tea, and a change out of cold wet clothes. And then, somewhat inevitably, a blackout. All electricity gone, and, it turned out, water too. No more heater, no more lights.

But at least plenty of wooly, fleecy blankets to sleep under.

In the morning, power restored, sun shining, and almost all the snow magically melted away.

Hot days, cold nights, hot summers, cold winters - that's the middle east climate. I'm writing this at 8pm on Saturday, with thermal underwear, a hoodie, socks folded on my feet for double thickness, and air conditioning on full hot blast. There's four thick blankets available, and I'm thinking of making the bed and crawling under them, just to be comfortable.

What I hallucinated from the cold. Or the alcohol. Either that, or art galleries with surrealist Happenings have nothing on tacky hotel lobbies. Which do you think is more likely?

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.