My beloved is in her childhood village with her sick mother for the week. Our daughter went with her and has spent the day hanging with her old friends.
Your truly (front left) doing my very small part harvesting our tea crop.
After three days unpacking our things, arranging, cleaning and tidying the house, I finally got outside to have a proper look around. Those who think these things are easily won should note what came before. For a decade we stayed in the little house next door. Adequate for summer holidays with young children, akin to …
Much of Friday afternoon was spent organising that modern easential, internet access. It became much more complicated than in needed to be; perhaps that’s because we’re foreigners, or maybe it’s just how it is. Eventually we left with a data contract, of the kind we have always had, suitable for remote working and staying in …
Mashallah.
I don’t recall the reasoning, back in February, that convinced us flying through the night would be a sensible course of action. Perhaps those were just connections that worked without us having to part with stupendous amounts of money. Or perhaps we just mistook ourselves for twenty-somethings, well-used to discomfort and inconvenience.
I’m not sure if I have any readers left who still recall a post I wrote sixteen years ago, in which I remembered: Throughout my teenage years I was something of an eccentric. While my friends were interested in mountain bikes, football, Nintendo and Baywatch, I was a dreamer. I yearned after a romantic past, …
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 …
Even after nearly twenty-one years of marriage, my Turkish is extremely lamentable. To date, I have only been able to manage small talk and enough to cover essential shopping. But there’s a Turkish proverb that springs to mind these days: something about a clean conscience. About making amends to move forward. To lift a weight …
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.
