It’s a big day today, as Rize-Artvin airport opens. Not only for the convenience of bringing a regional airport closer to our second home — now just 50km away — but because it liberates our kids from my perpetual obsession, checking YouTube twice weekly for the latest progress update.
Building a house, overseas, in the midst of a global pandemic? Are you crazy? Well, yes… and possibly no. Given the state of the Turkish economy right now, with the inflation rate soaring, if we were to embark on the project today, we wouldn’t be able to afford it at all. With recent changes to …
On numerous Muslim news sites in Turkey and now on social media, the document below is being celebrated as evidence of a timeworn relationship of solidarity between the Turkish people and the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar.
Everyone comments that Istanbul is so beautiful. Well, the parts that tourists visit are. As for the other 98% of it. Well it’s just your average sprawling modern metropolis. And not at all my cup of tea.
It rains a lot in the Black Sea region of Turkey — that’s what makes it so suitable for the cultivation of its two biggest exports, black tea and hazelnuts — but this year’s precipitation was unmatched. Neither I nor the locals had ever seen anything like it; some were calling it a one in …
The problem is that we believers have become tribal people, exhibiting the characteristics of a Chosen People that our religion so strongly opposed. Instead of standing for justice, we stand for our tribe (our supporters, friends, family). However our religion tells us to do the opposite: to stand up for truth and justice — even …
Two weeks ago the big news was that Turkey had paid off its IMF debt and had pledged a $5 billion loan to the IMF to help alleviate the European debt crisis. Turkey seemed to have an air of confidence. And yet today the Prime Minister, democratically elected with 49.83% of the Popular Vote in …
Last year we were fortunate enough to be able to go to the Black Sea in Ramadan and take in the sights, sounds and scents of the harvest.
At the end of the summer last year, we spent our days between visits to a clinic in Jihangir, Istanbul. While its views over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn beyond were stunning, I was not too keen on those streets. In this secular quarter and haunt of expats, wine shops outnumbered grocery stores. In …
On Tuesday 9 July 1996, we flew from Dodoma at about 7.30 in the morning to Musoma, with a stop at Arusha to pick two other passengers up. Taking off from Arusha the surrounding landscape was filled with lush vegetation, including Banana Palms. Houses were round with cone-shaped thatched roofs, grouped in twos and threes …
My journey to Tanzania on 1 June 1996 was the first time I had travelled abroad alone and I was apprehensive about the journey. When my plane touched down in Darussalam on a very warm winter’s evening there was some sense of relief, although I suffered from nerves which made my passage through customs uncomfortable. …
Ten years ago I spent forty-one days in Tanzania. Some memories… Darussalam at sunset. The road out of the college where I was staying in June 1996: Kongwa, Dodoma province. Elephants on the plain at sunrise. Kongwa at sun down.
Whilst sitting at my desk composing my last post a minute ago, two computers on in front of me (my book is on the laptop, but I had writers block, so I switched on my ancient whining monster to check my emails), I was just thrust back to Istanbul. On both computers I have Islamasoft’s …
There is nothing like the sound of the call to prayer from Istanbul’s mosques – comfort, despite ourselves.
The past has been exercising me over the last few days and I have been thinking about old friends and acquaintances I have left behind along the way. Perhaps it is because we have been visiting my wife’s extended family while in Turkey and catching up with a few of her old friends. I tried …
