We'll be fine!!

Just to show you how fine we'll be, here are
a few final pics of our final days. You'll
see the blue mosque and the cistern.
And me and melo-turk.
We're packing and then a little nap time
before we hit the Istanbul Airport at
3:00am. The good news is that we arrive in
SF at noon tomorrow.

Check us out....

Farwell to Istanbul

The Turk-a-thon is over....

This just in...Melody and I rolled the dice, and we lost.
While there's still a teeny, tiny chance we could still make
it to Libya, it's highly unlikely. So, we'll be landing back
in SF on Thursday afternoon. As we say here in Turkey,
Al-hamdu-lellah. Being here has made me appreciate my life
so much. While Istanbul is modern and thriving, there's still
alot of struggle and poverty. Just to know that I can go home with
nothing and get a job and an apartment has made it worth
losing everything to know that I have all that i need to survive.
I've been trying to make a list of all the things I love about Turkey,
and here it goes.

First and foremost, the Turks, or Turkos as we've grown to call them
love many of the same things I do.

Those things are: Pasterires, beer, coffee and meat.
Mmmm...i give my highest honor to the fresh eclairs, and the
grilled kebob meat platter. And happily there are pastry and kebob
shops on every corner. We've also fallen in love with a little
place we call "clam alley". There are tons of fish vendors, and the
specialties are deep fried clams on a stick and calamari, both
served with this creamy lemon sauce, It's so good, so fresh,
and so cheap it's crazy.
Crazy delicious!
You can also watch a million cats perform death defying
acrobatic attemptsto attack the fish stands.
From above and bellow, the frisky feline adventures
risk paw and tail for one piece of that fishy goodness.

They also love canoodling. Everywhere you look there's a cute
turko couples of all ages nuzzling, smooching, and staring into each
others eyes. Very romantic.

They take care of stray cats and dogs. Stray cats are everywhere, and
we've learned to keep wipes in our purses because no matter how
nasty and scraggly the animal, i must pet it, and then take it's picture.
We actually adopted a kitten at our favorite bar.
We named his EFES Shithead Turko Junior.
Efes because we're always drinking there and he's the color of
beer, shithead because he's a little shithead that claws me,
and then climbs me like a tree, digging
his little kitten claws into my flesh, and
turko because he's a turko of course!
I'll post his portrait for you to see.

Men never let Melody light her own cigarette. But, I have a love/hate
with these Turko men. They're really aggressive.
Seriously, we neverget a moments peace.
What's your name, where are you from, what's your
number? This guy chased me down the street, and then gave
me his picture with his phone number on the back.
Really cute, but weird!

That's it for now. I'm going to post some pixs so you can see a little more of Istanbul.

Fiqh (Deep Understanding)

Each day over our boiled egg, tomato, olives and Nescafe, Melody and I discuss the dreams we had the night before. Lately, they’re reflecting homesickness and a sincere desire to return to San Francisco. Most days my first waking thought has been “I want to go home.” But then I think about it, and I tell myself that I’m tough, I can take it, and I’m going to stick this out to the end. But in the night, I wake up and my mind is going full throttle, turning things over, worrying, and basically denying me sleep until I think about this or that. In my weakest moments I ask myself why I left a city and people I love, both old and new, to move to Libya. Several nights ago, I was so exhausted that for safe measure, I took a Tylenol PM. That night, I had sweet, sweet dreams of San Francisco. I swear to god that I dreamed I was on a slip-n-slide in Golden Gate Park, joyfully playing in the California sun. Next, I met Deb and Rebecca to go downtown to do something. Probably drink beer. Rebecca calls out that the N Judah is coming and if we run, we can make it. Since it’s a dream, the N Judah is coming down Haight Street, and the stop is in front on McDonald’s. When we approach the train, the doors open, and with only a row of cars and the sidewalk lay between the train and me, the N Judah blows up. I dive to the ground, and despite the fact that the cars I’m hiding behind blow up with the train and a wall of fire comes rushing towards me, I’m fine. I look down and I see Deb and Rebecca and they’re okay. Deb is crying and she says, ‘Oh my god, we’ve had a suicide bombing in San Francisco’. It was around 5am when I jolted awake from this dream; heart pounding and I thought to myself, this…this is why I’m moving to Libya. It was a weird moment of half wake, half sleep that I thought this. One day there will be a suicide bomber in San Francisco. I think so.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but it doesn’t seem like the conditions that create people that are willing to blow themselves up for a cause have been eliminated. “The War on Terror” has only created more death, more poverty, ruined more families, and created more hatred than before. Islam has replaced Communism as the “threat to our way of life.”
The grouping of billions of Muslims into one entity that is out to destroy America is not only wrong and devastating, but it also keeps us hopelessly alienated from one another.
Divide and conquer has a long-standing tradition in keeping people apart and repressed by pitting them against each other instead of looking at the power structure that hoards resources for itself and makes the rest of us compete for access.
Now with the riots in Australia that started with white Australian youths attacking and beating anyone that looked Middle Eastern or Greek and the possibility of an invasion of Iran, I’m fearful for the future.
Perhaps it’s that I’m here in Istanbul with an Iranian that I’m feeling the terror that is happening in Iran, and the fear that millions of Iranian lives will be lost to punish Iranian President Ahmadinejad for his statements about the Holocaust.
The way the future is shaping up, it’ll be in our hands to stop the end of the world from happening. Human beings around the planet will need to stand up and say enough is enough. I will no longer agree to the power structure murdering and enslaving anyone, be they in my own country or another and especially not in my name. And for that to happen, we must have a clear understanding of cultures outside of the West, and Islamic countries in particular. I’m going to Libya to understand this cultural divide, and to share it with you. If we understand places like Libya, it’s less likely that we can be convinced that it’s necessary to kill them someday. The majority of Muslims don’t want to kill you anymore than you want to kill them.

I think the reason Osama bin Laden chooses militant action against civilians is to bring about Armageddon. I think he doesn’t care how many men, women and children of all religions that will die to bring this about. And the ideological war that has been waged in America against those under the massive umbrella term of “Muslim World” plays right into his hands. By pitting “Muslim” against American as a threat to our way of life, as a force that leaves no other course of action but violence, we are all surely approaching our doom. In times that we call enlightened, we find ourselves seeing the creation of policy that uses endless and greater force.
We must refuse to continue to let ourselves be fooled into thinking that “the Muslim world” is out to destroy America, that there’s even a collective Muslim world with a single, maniacal agenda to begin with. Currently, many of us, including myself, are human beings turning a blind eye to the torture and destruction of millions of people, and there will be more that will die for a political agenda that we do not support. This thinking is partially enabled by creating idea that Muslims want to kill us, and that we must kill or be killed. In academic theory it’s called the Savage Myth, and in America it dates back to policy around building America on an occupied land.
It’s not that we must deny the fact that there are individuals that are also Muslim that have performed acts of violence against people in America. I think we as individuals can see that those people are not representative of all Muslims, or even a small percentage of Muslims. But we stand by as our government takes action that supports that very theory.
I think when you travel abroad, especially in this part of the world, you find that people are much different than you expect. Gentler, more kind, and more forgiving than we as Americans are lead to believe. Also, unlike the stereotype, most people separate the individual from the government. The questions they are asking is why do the American people do nothing if they don’t support the war, or the actions of the government? If you are free, unlike Iran for example, why do you do nothing? It’s a good question. And it’s the key to changing the patterns that have developed since the Vietnam War protests of the 60’s and 70’s. How do we change the pattern of apathy that has developed and allowed those in power to cheat us, to lie to us, to kill in our name? Look at what we’ve accepted and adapted to; the 2000 an d 2004 elections, corporate greed like that at Enron, the war in Iraq and the deaths of nearly 1 million Iraqi, the near end to stable work and benefits in lieu of free lance positions, globalization policy that enslaves developing nations and ensures they’ll remain a cheap labor force for Western nations and aggressive foreign intervention that has cost millions of lives around the globe.
It’s not that I’m anti-America. I love America…I just think we could be a lot better, and to do that, we must ask ourselves some tough questions. In the coming years, what can we expect to accept and adapt to? Who will take the reigns to change things? As confident as I am in myself these days, I certainly don’t think it will be me, but I could be part of a massive social movement that says no more. No more greed, no more acceptance of policies that deny people around the world the right to live happily and safely; to fall in love, raise families, to hopefully die of old age instead of by missile attack. Understanding one another in the first step.