BobHarris.com - Selcuk, Turkey: Sm*l*ng, sm*l*ng

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Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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Main

Selcuk, Turkey: Sm*l*ng, sm*l*ng

Tag it now -

Thursday, 16 December 2004

As we careen once more between GOP hell and personal notes from odd chunks of the world... many thanks for your patronage thus far.

(By the way, you may detect a small reluctance to use one common vowel here and below -- "eye," actually. Let's enjoy the challenge, caused by my current locale: Canakkale, Turkey, just up the road from the legendary Troy. Keyboards are not the same across all languages. The computers here reflect the local tongue, of course, and thus offer several types of the above-named vowel. None seem to work. Thus the word adventure you see. A key vowel cannot be typed. How fun.)

Today began at Selcuk, a small but extremely pleasant town near Efes, better known to readers of the New Testament as Ephesus. A once-great temple stands there -- more accurately, one lone column looms over a swamp -- and so we have yet another head-prod about the dangers of ego. And check off another of the Seven Wonders. Four down, three to go.

My book notes now read across the top: Almost Seven Wonders. Necessary to compose a proper proposal soon. So much to tell.

But the real wonder of the journey so far has been the people along the way. Every town and stop has been much the same: the Turks have been spectacularly warm. Expect more on same when cafe keyboards allow.

Granted, there are Kurds on the wrong end of the deal here, and the currency plummets as a matter of course, and problem problem problem, sure. But the actual regular folks on the street are the subject here. And a common phrase of goodbye says a great deal about what almost everyone here seems to be about.

The translated call and response goes: "Allah watch over you" and then, as the last phrase (untypeable vowel as * here): "sm*l*ng, sm*l*ng."

Sweet, yes?

And very much how the treatment has been. Much to adore. Sm*l*ng, sm*l*ng *s the ma*n th*ng *'m do*ng of late.

Except about the keyboards here...