A Tight Wide-open Space: Finding love in a Muslim land
In 2003, when the shockwaves of 9/11 still echoed through the US and the country was fighting two wars in Muslim countries, Matt met a beautiful woman on an airplane and decided to follow her to Turkey. This is the story of what happened there.
I could take bus #139 or 139A from Istanbul to Sile, but today I am in a car. In fact, I have always taken a car up to the Black Sea, because in a car I am better able to feel the gentle, wavelike rhythms, the sweeping curves and the swells and dips of this [...]
I am vacationing in a tiny village on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Less than a hundred people live in this town, perched on a narrow shelf at the bottom of a cliff that from the top looks like it drops straight into the sea. The town is so small, its cobblestone streets so narrow, no one [...]
Back in 2003, shortly after I arrived in Turkey, I went with some of my Turkish friends to the countryside northeast of Istanbul, up near the Black Sea. We went for a walk along a dirt road, and we passed by a farmer clearing litter from a pathway next to one of his fields. There [...]
Years ago, for dinner on the evening of my first full day in Turkey, I went to a cafe on Istanbul’s Istiklal Caddesi. Istiklal is the busy outdoor pedestrian mall that anchors the city’s nightlife. I had spent the day touring the city’s headliner tourist sites — the Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, the Kapali [...]
On a warm summer night the plaza outside the Ortakoy mosque is one of my favorite places to watch Istanbul kick back and relax. The plaza is only 3 miles from Taksim and Istiklal, the stars of Istanbul’s nightlife, but it’s a different kind of place. Taksim and Istiklal easily overwhelm me with their busy [...]
My Grandpa Hofer passed away in 1999, when I was 29 years old. He died of pancreatic cancer. At the time of his diagnosis the doctor said he had 3 months to live. The doctor was about right. My grandpa was a retired music teacher. I never met any of his students, so sometimes I [...]
I have a neighbor who likes to call black people coons in private. He won’t call them coons in public though. Instead, he will stop mid-sentence, smirk and wink, and say, “I have a word in mind, but I’m afraid to use it in public.” The social pressure on him does not keep him from [...]
I never saw him until I moved into that place on 13th Avenue Southwest, and then I began seeing him regularly. He would appear in the dim light before dawn or after dusk. Unsure if my momentary glimpses of him were just my eyes playing tricks on me, I would quickly look away and then [...]
Coolness is a detachment from yourself and therefore an insult to the gifts god gave you. Do not ever be cool again, not for one moment, not for the rest of your life. Spill your blood onto the floor.
When I was 5 years old my family lived in Oakland, California. We didn’t live in Oakland anymore when I was 6, so I only have a few memories of that place, some random, disjointed mental pictures. A scary German Shepherd loose on the street. A teacher pinning a strip of green construction paper onto [...]
Under my feet I can feel twigs and rocks too small for the eye to see. A discoloration on the pavement is a thin layer of dust, not a stain. In one fluid, uninterrupted motion I hop sideways onto the street, a move I’ve made because I want to bypass the pavement in the crosswalk [...]
I pull into a no-name truck stop north of Sacramento. I step out of the car, flick the door shut, and pause to soak up the sun’s warm rays. I know from experience the locals see the bright sun as a harbinger of the oppressive heat that will begin stifling the Valley in a few [...]
I lift the egg from the stove and slide it onto cheese melted over wheat toast. A favorite breakfast of mine. Break the egg’s yolk and it becomes a lazy man’s Eggs Benedict. Where is the Canadian bacon, you might ask, suggesting that perhaps you do not understand what I mean when I call it [...]
A couple weeks ago I went in for a haircut. The barber, not my usual one, smelled like he had just recently emerged from a pool of that aftershave favored by elderly terminal alcoholics, the kind of aftershave their own dads wore, whether their own dads were alcoholics or not, the kind they must think [...]
I wake up in a cold sweat. Mr. Dickson was just telling me I would not be graduating. I had signed up for a class and then forgotten about it. I had failed. Wait a minute, why is the room dark? Where’s Mr. Dickson, wasn’t I just talking to him? I stagger to my feet [...]
When I was about 15 years old, I was really into bicycle road racing. It was my life, my main activity. I spent almost every single hour of every single day either doing it, training for it, or learning how to train for it. The thing was, I wasn’t very good at it. In my [...]
I recently started running barefoot. Up until a few months ago, I never liked running. In fact, for years, when people asked me if I ran, I would answer, “Only when chased.” Instead, to get my exercise, I’d head for the nearest hill. By hiking up nice steep hills, I could work myself into a [...]
The sad thing about this photo isn’t the unemployed people. It’s not even the factory or the town going downhill. The sad thing about this photo is the guys who wrote the sign were basically telling the world, “We are such bad businessmen, such unimaginative people, that even if someone came up to us who [...]
I went to Walmart to pick up some groceries today. When I had everything I needed, I went to the checkout lane, and the cashier started ringing up my stuff. I was off in my own little world, caught up in my own little self-pity party. It had been kind of a rough week for [...]
