Disturbed by Daybreak

"His career was a demonstration of the fact that, in certain circumstances, crawling is a more effective means of locomotion than walking upright, and that the best crawlers are also the deadliest biters."

In Sicily, on a ferry, I read a book by a Polish journalist in which he undertakes to visit all the former Soviet republics. At some point, he finds himself in the city of Samarkand, and I didn't know where that was. What I found when I researched it made we want to go there. I began planning a trip to Uzbekistan.

This meant, of course, I fell in love with what I read about the surrounding countries, and soon my intended ten days on the Silk Road would require a month to see the birthplace of apples and the cafes where they drink fermented mare's milk, and much more. I looked for an opportunity to take that month, and... this is it. Hot on the heels of the closing of a successful play, I boarded a plane for Istanbul.

At this writing, the plan is to spend some time in Istanbul, make my way to Almaty, Kazakhstan, over to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, leftward to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and... Samarkand and the rest some time after that.

These places aren't close to Seattle, so it involved a flight to Dublin and a connection to Istanbul.

On the Dublin-bound flight, the pilot asked everyone with a window seat to please keep the shade lowered so no passengers were "disturbed by daybreak." I thought Disturbed by Daybreak sounded like a great name for a punk album or poetry collection.

The time passed easily. I read a book about a guy trying to recreate his childhood record collection and another about a woman whose father was a priest. The latter was fantastic. The hours in the economy seat melted away. I was disturbed only by the frequent feedings.

The primary meal included a side dish called "colcannon," which was mashed potatoes with scraps of cabbage in it. People were asking lots of questions, since the dish wasn't described on the menu. The flight attendant had to say what it was many times.

"What is colcannon? I can't have any gunpowder on this diet! Do you have any side dishes not named after fossil fuels?"

"Not to worry. 'Tis just potatoes with a bit o' green."

There was a heavy push to buy duty free products. We were told "the most popular items bought by people coming from America are the personal fragrances. Highly recommended." I wasn't sure this was true, but who am I to question their marketing strategy.

The flight from Dublin to Istanbul was delayed, the attendants said, by protesters on the runway in Istanbul. Turkey has pushed into North Syria to do battle with the Kurds.

This is viewed in the US as a criminal act against people who made the largest contribution to the destruction of "the Caliphate" in Syria. The newspapers offered by the Turkish airline, however, showed sexy pilots next to their warplanes with headlines like "At Last We Strike the Terrorists!"

I will not pretend to understand the intricacies of their politics, and I do not have a full grasp of the history. My inner sense is that the protesters are on the proper side, and I did not resent the delay. My being temporarily delayed on vacation is not the same as a violent airstrike against a much-persecuted ethnicity.

By the time we took off, the Irish football hooligans who made up the bulk of the passengers had had time to oil themselves to an emerald gleam. Songs and roaring throughout the flight, paeans to the "boys in green." Sleep was not possible. The line for the restroom was like that at a stadium. I have not before seen this on a flight. Never fewer than twelve men standing in the aisle, awaiting their turn. I'd swear some got right back in the queue after flushing.

This airline has an open bar. Free wine, whiskey, gin, vodka, and all the mixers. There's a limit per passenger, but it was not enforceable. They had trouble keeping track of who had had two already.

"Wasn't me that had the second, lass, was me mate. I'm still due one."

They also asked teetotalers to order for them.

"It'll just go to waste if you don't. They stocked the place expectin' yis ta order. Don't let that whiskey be an orphan when I'm willing to adopt it right now. There's parents waiting for that gin."

Order could not be maintained. They ignored all requests to be seated, mocked the pilot, played their music without headphones. It was like a flying booze-cruise. The safe landing was a renewed occasion to sing about "the boys in green."

I changed some Euro into lira at the airport. The exchange rate is usually poor, but the convenience, my god, the convenience of it! The bill I gave them had a tiny tear in it, and they asked me if I had another. I did, but I told them I didn't. So they took it. I figured if this well-manicured place was going to reject it, I'd never be able to trade it elsewhere. So I pushed, and they blinked.

This part of the world is really fussy about wrinkles and tears in bills. In the US, we'll tape together a shredded $20, put it in a rottweiler's mouth, and trade it for lottery tickets and a six-pack with no problem.

A driver had been prearranged, but he was a little difficult to find. I ended up having to send him a tired-looking selfie from the little bread place where my bags and I had collapsed. He found me, and we raced through the Istanbul night.

I was met at the end of the drive by Mamati, described by my host as "a person of staff." Dark little tour of a magnificent hotel and sleep. The journey had taken about 23 hours.

I was disturbed by daybreak in the form of the call to prayer.  Followed by the call of nature, and eventually a call to breakfast.

There was an early knock. Mamati asked me not to take a shower, since the boiler was being replaced. He suggested I enjoy breakfast on the terrace instead. I took a copy of Aldous Huxley's "The Devils of Loudon" and followed him upstairs. The building had an unknown number of stories, and at the landing of each staircase, Mamati urged my further up by saying, "Super! Super!"

He used it to mean, "Keep going! Wonders await!"

Wonders awaited. Gorgeously shabby little rooftop with a marvelous view of the shambly roofs and ancient towers of Istanbul. Cool air and the soft sound of distant rain. I was served tomato slices, a selection of hard cheeses, olives, and something I thought was shakshuka but learned later was most decidedly not. Tea, and lots of warm, fresh bread.

A gentleman from Cape Town joined me but chose not to eat. He told me the previous day he had stumbled into a "mole's hole" and "grimed up" his camera. He said he had to decide whether or not to clean it or buy a new one. He was pleasant enough, and it wasn't fair of me, but my thoughts went back to the Kurds, who not very far from here had much bigger problems than whether or not to spend a thousand dollars to avoid having to spend ten minutes with a wet cloth.

He left and I turned to Huxley. There was a funny scene where a student makes mistakes translating Ovid on purpose, because she knows it will make the priest whip her. This was her desired outcome.

I am in a neighborhood called Balat, and I went out without a map to just see what I could find. I like to do this on the first day, to try and get my bearings and take notes without any pressure to see anything in particular. There were a million cats, so it was good I didn't bring my camera, or I would have grimed it trying to capture them all. Each one melted my heart.

I'm in an older part of the city, and it's all hills and cobblestones and endless, effortless charm. The city seemed both leisurely and busy at once, men with shadow-beards hurrying to coffee shops, women in head-scarves hurrying to orange groves, children hurrying to school, holding soccer balls and shouting. Perhaps it was a warning to the "boys in green."

Turns out Balat is a kind of art-district with antique shops, furniture-restoration factories, and hundreds of cafes. Many of the antique shops were ALSO cafes. It was very interesting, the front area of the thrift shops all served coffee and bread rings. Many had carts in front offering "coffee in sand" which is something I first saw in The Caucasus.

Many of the younger people had t-shirts with English phrases on them. My favorites were:

I Am A Caffeine Lady
Allow Me to Talk
Your Ego is My Lego

I wandered slowly and happily through a vibrant, eclectic neighborhood of shops and bakeries. A newish place advertised "ice coffee" so I felt compelled to reward them with my custom. They ordinarily see iced coffee as an abomination in this part of the world. Asking for it is equivalent to saying something like, "Hello. May I have a bib, a ladle, and ten minutes alone in your septic tank?"

I sat and read and sipped the coffee. In the street men told stories I couldn't understand, but I took great pleasure in their manner of telling. Arms outstretched, exaggerated expressions, captivated audiences. "You won't believe what happened to me. So, there I was! Well, I wasn't going to take that laying down, so I..."

I loved it.

Paid and left. A little market sold fish. Strangely, in a display of smelt (probably) was a single shrimp covered in flies, writhing with flies. It was fascinating. The flies did not land on the fish at all. Was the shrimp there for that purpose? Is that... a technique to keep them off? You catch more flies with shrimp than with smelt, as they say.

Many of the places had older men sitting on the curb in front of them sipping little thimbles of coffee, and many of the places had a kind of self-awareness that they were destined for Instagram, so they fully embraced it with brightly colored staircases and windows full of succulents.

One had a display of vintage soda bottles with a sign in English reading: "Nostalgic Gas Drinks." That may be an even better band name than Disturbed by Daybreak.

Right, we're the Nostalgic Gas Drinks, and we're going to rock your face off with the hits of yesteryear!

I was full of breakfast and coffee, and exploring is different when you're full. I usually like to poke around with a sort of hungry edge pushing me. Well-fed, I was feeling sort of dull and slow. So I headed back to the hotel.

I was met there by Joyce, who manages the place during the day. She invited me into her art studio for coffee and told me she was a trans-woman from Italy who had moved to Turkey where she can be a little more free. That was how she introduced herself, "I am Joyce, a trans-woman from Italy."

"My body is at war right now," she said. "I am blocking the testosterone and adding the estrogen, and there is war inside me." She moved her hands chaotically in front of herself to illustrate the turmoil within.

She showed me her paintings, which were of dogs in gas masks, dogs without gas masks fucking other dogs, and insects fucking doggy-style.

In my mind, Turkey would be more oppressive than Italy, but she said that being a foreigner already made you an outsider, so you could get away with "piling other things on top."

She was in the mood to talk and to make coffee, so I sat with her and she told me about her life, "I want to be open with you. You have smile-energy, and it makes me want to tell you things. Also, it is my life. You must stop me to correct if my English is ever bad."

I drank the coffee and she told me how much she resented the rigidity of the Italian school system.

"In Italy, they show you a picture of water, a picture of a glass, a picture of a plane, and a picture of a dog. They say, 'which go with the water?' If you say the glass, you get the ten points, but if you put the plane or the dog, you get the failure. A dog can swim! A plane can land in water! But they only take the glass!"

I said it seemed a lot like the "black and white" thinking related to gender. "Yes!" she said, "Yes! Is  same!"

We were joined by an Iraqi traveler named Zouad. He took video of Joyce making coffee. He said he loved Turkish coffee, and she told him it was Italian. "Oh," he said, "Eat, Pray, Love."

She asked what he meant, and he said it was "A book from America where woman travels to Italy and learns about herself. She also goes to India." I loved this, of course. It was very funny to me that his first association with Italy was that ridiculous, privileged memoir.

Joyce asked him if he was an artist, and he said, "My country is at war. It is not possible."

He makes a living managing social media for hostels around Turkey.

Mamati showed up, and the little studio was getting crowded. I thanked him again for breakfast. Zouad asked what I had eaten. I said "shakshuka" and everyone cracked up. "That is Arabic!" said Zouad, "you will not find it here." Mamati told me what it was, but... I can't remember. Three more days of it, and I'll have it down.

Then the guy fixing the boiler showed up, and we were at max capacity. Joyce kicked us out. "The rest of you have already Eat, Pray, Loved today, and it is my turn."

So, I went back to the room to spend more time with Huxley and plan my assault on the Bosporus for the morning. A very fine first day. With dinner yet to come!