Turkey

Sevgili Dostlar, My piece on the Mesut Özil and modern Turkish-Germans aired on The World yesterday. In it, I interview Prof. Dr. Claudia Riehl of the University of Cologne, Susanne von Würzen (thanks, Courtney!), Mehmet Aydan (thanks, Begum!), and Cem Özdemir. Also, don’t forget my editor Patrick Cox’ language podcast, The World in Words! [audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/062820105.mp3]

Pico Iyer on Orhan Pamuk: Pamuk has two enduring loves: books and Istanbul. Often they converge as his journeys through his hometown come to resemble excursions through memory itself. Like Proust, Pamuk has spent decades of his life — 15,300 days, he calculates — in the same room in his beloved birthplace, alone with his books and thoughts. Yet his window is always open to catch the sound of the sandwich vendors in the street, the men in the teahouse,…

I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this prize. As he wrote in the International Herald Tribune earlier this year: It is because all writers have a deep desire to be authentic that even after all these years I still love to be asked for whom I write. But while a writer’s authenticity does depend on his ability to open his heart to the world in which he lives, it depends just as much on his ability to understand…

These are some photos from the first few days in Istanbul. More coming soon.

My buddy, the badass printer/artist Noah Breuer has one of his works on the home page of the Frank Bette Center for the Arts. He’s now getting his MFA at Columbia. If you’re in NYC, go check out his stuff. (Previous post on Noah’s work.) Jim Higdon, my Columbia j-school classmate, got a bookdeal with Putnam for his book “The Cornbread Mafia”, the story of how one rural county in Kentucky became a national center of drug-dealing and how it…

Turkey is awesome. Especially awesome to see it with a couple of Columbia buddies of mine who have set up shop as journos in Istanbul — one at the Turkish Daily News and one at the Associated Press. Quick recap before I hit the sack (I leave Paris in about 12 hours for DC and then onto Oakland). Turkey is a European country trapped in a Middle Eastern country’s body — or at least it wants to be. Most obvious…

I’m in neveshir in central turkey. We arrived in ankara by train and then a 3 hr bus further. We’re staying with the uncle of a co-worker of a friend of a co-worker of my aunt heidi’s. Go figure, huh? they don’t speak much english but we’re doing our best and there is a neighbor 20 year old guy who’s english is pretty good. We saw some amazing 2000 year old caves here, where early christians fled from roman attacks.…

So I made it. Rebekah and I found Engin, (my aunt’s colleague’s best friend), who is an Istanbul native. He graciously picked us up from the airport, took us to his house a few miles from the airport and brought us to his family’s apartment. They served us a wonderful meal of kofte, rice, salad, french fries, Turkish cola, and something resembling Persian doogh. At the end of the meal, following five rounds of tea, two tangerines and a pear…