Month: November 2008

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Mali photo

Thanksgiving Special – For What Am I Thankful?

We’re not that big on holidays. Maybe it’s because I grew up in an immigrant household, in the awkward place of not really being able to fully appreciate the holidays of our origin, for lack of public acknowledgement and others with whom to celebrate, nor those of our new home, which were foreign and unfamiliar to us (I think every immigrant family must have a story involving its first Halloween). Or maybe it’s because from college to law school to clerkship to working abroad, we’ve moved around so much, and often been far from our family and friends with whom we would wish to commemorate a special day. Whatever the cause, routinely we see holidays come and go, marked only by an office function, perhaps, or a day off and an excuse to get out of town. Thanksgiving for us for a few years meant a time to go up to Canada for the weekend, where things would be open. This year, the time of Thanksgiving dinner passes on a bus, bound from the Malian border with Senegal to Mali’s capital, Bamako.

Thanksgiving on the road

Our Thanksgiving lunch (no Thanksgiving dinner)

For what am I thankful? However contemptible I feel for feeling it, and however nonsensical it is, while traveling in Sub-saharan Africa, it’s easy to feel a sense of relief for not having been born here. The conditions on this continent can be so challenging, that to my spoiled first world eyes, they seem almost impossible to endure. To live in 40 degree Celsius weather with no accessible place air-conditioned, to be constantly pestered by flies and mosquitoes that in addition to causing the usual itchiness carry disease, to have to keep myself and my clothes clean without water much less hot water on demand, to have to work so hard for so little and be appreciative for having any job at all… Of course, had I been born here, or were I really forced to live it, I am sure that I would adapt and make do. But I was not, and I am not.

Backpacking is, from the most cynical perspective, a voyeuristic “slumming it.” Backpackers travel to countries that are, generally, cheaper and poorer than the places we come from. In doing so, we sleep in airports and train stations, in hotel-cum-brothels, in dorms with shared bath; ride in minibuses, share-taxis and boats crammed full with freight and humanity; grow disheveled, with scruffy faces, patched and dirty clothes and grungy backpacks; exert ourselves, carrying our loads on our backs, taking 24-hour bus rides and hiking hours between villages. Why do we do this? Why not just travel in the developed world? In part it’s cost, but it’s also because we want to see the less developed world, in part because it is less developed, to see things that no longer exist (never existed?) back home. The contrast between places such as Africa or India and the world we come from, whether New York or Hong Kong or Paris, is so great that it is almost unbelievable that such disparate places exist at the same time in the same world.

So I am thankful for the incredible privilege of seeing it all. For the ability to travel from Venice to Dakar in 24 hours, at an expense that is manageable for me. For having a job back home that allows me sufficient money, and time, to do what I am doing. At no point in the history of the world has travel been so easy, so accessible, to so many (though of course still only a tiny sliver of the world population). With the advent of discount airlines, the proliferation of guidebooks, the rise of English as an international lingua franca and the ubiquity of the internet and ATM machines, with a bit of money and time almost no destination is beyond reach. And despite the homogenization and globalization of the last fifty years, fascinating differences, truly exotic (to us) locales, still exist. To experience more than it seems one person has a right to experience, for that I am thankful today.

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Laos photo religion Senegal

Religious Education in West Africa

An African notebook, to be wiped and reused

Islam, like the other great religions of the world, has a long and rich tradition of teaching and learning. Universities in the Islamic world, such as those of Fez and Cairo, are among the earliest anywhere, and Muslim scientists contributed much to many disciplines, especially during Europe’s so-called dark ages (see post of 6.13). In addition to general learning in the Islamic world, however, there is of course also Islamic education–religious education–which takes place in the madrasa, or Islamic religious school. A prejudiced western mind might imagine that the Islamic world is full of madrasas, of mullahs and imams and eager bearded students. Well, it’s possible that Islamic religious education in the east is more popular than Christian religious education in the west (one reads that seminaries are gravely empty these days), but, in this modern age, it is most definitely secondary in prevalence to secular education, to the fields and disciplines, from the humanities to the sciences, that are more likely to contribute to someone’s livelihood. Even as tourists who seek out mosques, it was not that common an occurrence for us to run into crowds of madrasa students in the Middle East. Which is why, traveling through Senegal, we have been astonished by the visibility of large numbers of religious students, called talibes, in the country.

Talibes are an interesting phenomenon. For the most part, they seem to be quite young children who come from all over the countryside to learn from religious leaders called marabouts. The students finance their education–feed themselves and pass along money for their upkeep to their teachers–by begging for alms, which in addition to being their only possible source of income, given that most come from poor families and are too young to do most kinds of work, is intended to teach them humility and give fellow citizens an opportunity to fulfill their religious requirement of charity. In a city such as St. Louis, the old French colonial capital where we are now, the little kids can be found by the dozens, carrying around their characteristic empty tin cans or plastic buckets and begging for money and food.

The easiest comparison, and a very apt one, is to the boy monks of Laos. Just like the Buddhist monasteries of Laos, the madrasas of Senegal provide kids who may not otherwise be able to afford much of an education with essentially free lodging and tuition, and the system of begging and almsgiving provides a way for the community (and generous tourists) to support their schooling. The kids beg, yes, because they are poor and have no other source of money, but the religiously-sanctioned nature of the begging is intended to give the process a dignity and meaning that keep from turning the kids into mere beggars.

Almsgiving, Laos

This comparison, however, reveals the strengths of the Laotian system over the West African one. While I recognize that giving alms is one of the five pillars of Islam, it is problematic that the talibes are begging in countries where extreme poverty and reliance on begging are all too common. In Laos, there is almost no begging, and so there is no mistaking the boy monks, clad in saffron robes, for homeless beggar children. In Senegal, talibes are poorly clothed and often dirty, indistinguishable from child beggars found in Senegal or other poor countries around the world. In Laos, almsgiving is ritualized to an extent (performed at certain times of the day, in a regular procession, with regular donors) that there is no mistaking it for “regular” begging. The citizens and tourists giving alms kneel to place themselves lower than the monks, showing that the almsgiving is not an indication of greater wealth or status on the part of the giver, but an offering recognizing the higher spiritual status of the receiver. In Senegal, there little of this ritual, and it is all too easy (especially to the casual tourist) to mistake the student children as mere homeless street urchins, and one wonders how the begging might affect their sense of dignity.

A further concern I have is the type of education that the West African talibes receive. While Laotian monasteries are extremely basic, with the teaching done largely by the older students, the curriculum consists of a wide range of subjects, from English to mathematics. Visiting Laos, it is hard not to be surprised by the apparent ambition of the monks, many of whom come from extremely poor rural families, and their hunger to learn English by practicing with tourists (some monasteries set up regular chatting hours to encourage such language practice) or to gain experience using computers by visiting the local internet cafes where owners give them discounts or even free usage. One particularly adorable little monk in Luang Prabang explained to us that he wanted to be a computer programmer, which seemed to us sadly unlikely given local resources, but epitomizes the drive and hope of secular success that these students have, and that they hope their monastery educations will make possible for them.

In Senegal? Admittedly we did not converse much with these children (who speak no English and little French), but the curriculum seems to consist mainly of Islamic studies and Arabic. What of their futures? For what jobs is such an education suitable? It is hard for me to say with the little background that I have, but we were told by a Peace Corps volunteer from West Africa that, in their village, young people study in madrasas to become imams, because imams make good money attending births, circumcisions and other life-cycle ceremonies, uninvited, and receiving honoraria for their religious guidance. According to the Peace Corp volunteer, the local youth saw it as a good career choice, a way to make a decent living in an impoverished African village. (Meanwhile, the villagers complain that there are too many imams, too many people to pay off come ceremony time.)

Waiting outside of the mosque at sunrise

A typical secular liberal viewpoint, and one that one may be skeptical of for its commonness, is that lack of education and economic opportunity drives people toward religion–this argument is tested true from our experience and learning about madrasas in West Africa. If the public school system were more effective or better financed, perhaps children would have more opportunities to get an education outside of the madrasa. If French- and English-learning opportunities were more readily available, perhaps Arabic would not be as appealing a second language (although I do acknowledge that, to Muslims, some knowledge of Arabic should be considered essential and that learning Arabic could open some opportunities in North Africa or the Middle East). If there were more jobs in the public or private sectors, more economic opportunity, young people might not be dreaming of becoming imams (nearly no-one in the west these days wishes to become a Christian cleric, as the churches’ recruiting problems show–indeed, first world countries now import Christian priests from Africa and Latin America, showing that the same phenomenon plays out with the Christian faith and seminaries as with Islam and madrasas).

Most West Africans certainly don’t look like fundamentalists, and I do not doubt that the brand of Islam being taught in these madrasas is quite moderate. And, no doubt, along with the Quran and Arabic come a valuable education in literature, philosophy, ethics and so forth, which would b
e valuable in any field. But religious education and the religious life, even if sometimes called a vocation, is a choice. In the west, particularly in Europe, it is a choice that fewer and fewer people are making, because there are so many other (more appealing) life choices. This in turn is making much of the western world less and less religious, and less driven by religion. In West Africa, it seems, the trend may be in the opposite direction.

Inside a madrasa in Dakar

NOTE: I have left out of this post the fact that many of the talibes are in fact receiving little to no education at all, but simply being used by their so-called marabouts as a source of income–a troop of semi-enslaved children to go begging for them, with beatings for children who do not bring home specified amounts. This is of course appalling, but I have left it out of my discussion above to focus on more general thoughts.

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Italy photo Senegal

Traveling Rich and Poor, or From Venice to Dakar

Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Street scene, Senegal

Travel is not only about transporting yourself across space, from one set of latitude and longitude coordinates to another. At its most magical, travel simulates movement in other dimensions as well. One of the most intoxicating examples is time. Whether crossing the moat of Angkor Wat, inspecting remnants of a Christian fresco at a Crusader castle in Syria, watching rural life in an ancient Chinese village, walking the alleys of Quebec City’s basse-ville or admiring Shanghai’s Pudong skyline, travel allows us to transport ourselves, if only in our minds, to a different century. Another example is personal freedoms. When an Iranian woman boards a plane to France, or a young lesbian leaves Kansas for the lights of the big city, she sees before herself a world of different possibilities, new horizons unrestrained (see also posts of 6.08 and 11.08).

In this post, I wanted to share some thoughts on another dimension along which people travel: in socioeconomic class and material comfort.

We are by no means rich, but any first world traveler, by going to a poor, developing country, becomes richer, at least relative to his surroundings. I can afford more and better goods and services in, say, Indonesia than I can in the U.S. In Bali, I can easily eat in some of the best restaurants or pay for spa services–every day if I wanted. Even if traveling in more expensive, developed countries, some people, knowing that travel time is a limited resource, may choose to “live it up,” spending what it takes to buy comforts that they might not usually allow themselves at home–eating in top restaurants in Paris or staying at an extravagant resort hotel. All of this, I would term traveling “rich.”

There is also traveling “poor.” No matter how cheap things may be in some countries, that they are less developed will often mean that standards or comforts will not be at the levels a first-world traveler is used to back home. I may be able to hire a car and driver in India, but the vehicle is certain to be much older and in many ways less comfortable than what Avis would give me at LAX. Almost regardless of what one spends, there can be hardship with travel. But budget is also a critical consideration. As a long-term traveler, I am without an income, and have to be careful about expenses. Back in the “real world,” I might enjoy a big evening out, and know that my next paycheck will be able to cover the credit card bill. If I had such special nights frequently while on this extended trip–it’s not like I have to work the next day–I would eat up vast sums of money. Were I on a vacation from my job, I could stay in comfortable hotels, knowing that it’s just a matter of maximizing my enjoyment of limited free time. For 365 nights? I cannot prudently afford it. Every day, I have to pay for a hotel room and two or three meals, in addition to transportation and numerous other expenses. Given the constant choices I have in expenditures, I have to budget wisely, and this sometimes means having less comfort than I would have back home, or even spending less than I can realistically afford, in anticipation of future expenses. Traveling “poor.”

The way we travel, and the way that many others travel these days, involves frequent transitions between traveling rich and traveling poor. We get off business class plane seats (redeemed with miles) to cram into minibuses for the ride into town from the airport. Surprisingly often, we’ll eat a meal that costs more than the hotel room we happen to be staying in that night. We’ll opt for a $15 room instead of a $25 room one night, for sake of cost, to spend hundreds of dollars on an eco-resort the next.

This topic came to my mind because we experienced in the last 48 hours or so a particularly dramatic example of travel in this dimension. Yesterday, we left our Venice inn overlooking the Accademia Bridge to travel by express train to Milan’s Teatro alla Scala for an opera. After the opera? We suffered into the wee hours outside in the cold at Milano Centrale train station waiting for our 4:15 AM bus to Malpensa airport, and after our flight we are now settled into a hotel-cum-brothel in Dakar, Senegal. After such a dramatic shift, from Venice to Dakar, from sitting at a box in La Scala to huddling for heat on top of a subway grate, from a charming Grand Canal-side inn to an African brothel, we could only look at each other and ask what went wrong in the last 48 hours for us to end up where we are. But of course, it was all deliberate, each choice thought out. In the case of Milan, we didn’t want to miss an opportunity to see an opera at La Scala, but we also didn’t want to pay for a full night’s lodging (much less at euro-denominated, first world big city rates) for the few hours between our show and our flight. In the case of Dakar, we just found local hotel rooms to be such poor value that we decided to stay in the cheapest acceptable option–which apparently also rents by the hour.

We could be criticized for “slumming.” But it’s not some sort of morbid curiosity that drives us to travel poor sometimes. (As a matter of fact, there are actual “slum tours” that tourists can take–and I must disclose that I’ve been on such a tour, of a Rio de Janeiro favela–but even these I would argue are healthy and valuable, a unique way to see a neighborhood that you could not visit on your own.) Nor do we consider ourselves to be “rough” or “hardcore” travelers on the basis of a few nights at a cheap hotel when we know that we can eventually retreat into a more comfortable one if and when we need it. But just as traveling rich has its obvious advantages–such as comfort–traveling poor often has its advantages. One American tourist (one of few we’ve come across on our trip) suggested to us over a (relatively fancy) hotel breakfast that we “get to meet more people” by traveling poor. But it’s much more than that. If you wake up every day in a comfortable hotel on a hill or in a ritzy suburb, you miss out on a lot of things, including experiencing or sometimes even realizing the hardships of the local people that you see around you. Your air conditioning and sealed windows keep out the swarms of mosquitos and the sweltering heat, or your heater allows you to forget how cold it is outside. You’re more likely to eat bland tourist food with other tourists. You could come to have little idea of how people in the country that you’ve come to see really live, how they get from place to place, what they eat.

But, generally, when we travel rich and when we travel poor, we’re not moving between rich and poor for the sake of doing so, but doing what feels right in the circumstances and what our budget permits. We are just trying to find the best value and make optimal use of our resources while getting as much out of the experience as possible. In some places, that is “rich” travel–one would be a fool to pass up a body scrub in Ubud–in others, lower end.

Travel is not only about the jets that whisk us from the rarefied relics of Venice to the markets of Dakar, within a space of hours. Just as it’s hard to believe that it only takes a few hours to travel from Hong Kong’s frenetic urban lifestyle to the watery floating markets of Vietnam’s Mekong delta, traveling rich and poor in quick succession, experiencing that shift in class and economic development–it brings to the fore the magic of travel. Travel, to us, is a mode of living in which we can seamlessly transition, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, from sitting down in a Venetian restaurant for dinner with wine to eating from a street vendor in Senegal; from sharing a box at the opera at 9 p.m. with a wealthy couple in formal dress to chatting outside the train station at 3 a.m. with African immigrants warning us about drug dealers nearby; from taking vaporettos on the Grand Canal to walking across downtown Dakar, backpacks fully loaded.

La Scala *and* a Dakar brothel? In some sense, it would be surprising that those two experiences were available at all to a particular person over his entire lifetime–but we experience them in a matter of hours, in sequence, almost in the blink of an eye. Seeing the highs and lows of the world, from both high and low vantage points, all of this is afforded to us by travel.

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Italy photo

Venice, Entrepot of the East

When traveling in the more exotic parts of the world, such as India or Bali, we sometimes arrogantly wonder how people could want to travel to places like Western Europe–how bourgeois, how boring, we think. We know of course that some of the world’s greatest travel destinations are in the developed first world, but we tell ourselves that we’ll save them for when we’re sixty. We figure that they’re unlikely to change very much between now and then (unlike, say, China), and so we may as visit them later, when we might be less keen on enduring the hardships of traveling as backpackers in the developing world. In traveling to Milan to catch our cheap flight out to Senegal, however, we found ourselves passing through Venice, and couldn’t resist. We’d never been, and, well, it’s Venice. Not only did we expect that it would be beautiful, but our historical curiosity was also piqued, for the city-state’s role as Europe and the western world’s connection to the Levant and the East, from the time of the Crusades to Marco Polo and beyond. We knew Venice was known as something of a tourist trap–a city often with more tourists than residents and in some ways more of a museum than a real living place–but having visited New Orleans just months before Hurricane Katrina, we also reasoned that Venice is not one of those places we can wait to visit when we’re old–it could cease to exist. And so, weather warnings aside (late fall/early winter is supposed to be Venice’s dreariest season), we booked ourselves at the Hotel Galleria and spent three days in Venice.

It did not disappoint.

Part of the pleasure of Venice is the pleasure of traveling anywhere in Italy, such as eating well and drinking coffee and wine (both, even with an expensive euro, much cheaper than at home). But mostly, the pleasure of Venice is for its sheer beauty and the uniqueness of it all, and the feat of human creativity and determination, and apparently power and wealth, that led to the construction of such a city on water. Within minutes of our arrival we understood the cause of the city’s fame, why so many canal cities around the world would want to think of themselves as “the Venice of” whatever, why the Las Vegas Sands Corporation modeled casinos on the city, why, when a character was near death in the Simpsons Movie, he would say, “But I haven’t seen Venice!”

Venice captivates: Macau’s Venetian.

We cannot imagine anybody disliking Venice, although the unseasonably beautiful weather (blue skies, no heat, no canal stench) and relative lack of tourists must have weighed in our favor. So do yourself the great favor and go.

But this post isn’t just “Venice appreciation.” In my first post of this trip, I noted that places are generally by their nature connected. And so it is with Venice. We are traveling through Venice because it currently lies, by rail, between Istanbul and Milan, but one could generalize Venice’s historical role to state that it has always lain between the Muslim east and the Christian west, making it in some ways an essential stop on our Islamic journey.

First and foremost, Venice was a commercial power, using its location on the Adriatic, easternmost in the Latin world, to become the primary entrepot for goods from the east, which during the period of Venice’s height meant the Islamic world. Venetian traders and ships operated all over the eastern Mediterranean, and Venetian (along with other Italian) traders were very active in the Levant. In Aleppo, a city that has come to be known in the west through the obviously Italian form of its name (in Arabic the city’s name is Haleb), we saw a caravanserai that once housed the Venetian consulate. Marco Polo, one of the most famous Venetians of all time, purportedly traveled through Bukhara as far as Beijing.

Secondly, Venice became an important military power, from the time of the Crusades on. Venice led the campaigns of the Fourth Crusade, an invasion by Latin Roman Catholics of Greek Orthodox Constantinople, and looted the city, in the thirteenth century. During Venice’s height Crete and Cyprus were among its Mediterranean possessions, although it would eventually lose both to its greatest adversary, the Ottoman Empire. Venetian advisors could be found as far east as Esfahan, where they were helping the Persian Safavids harass the Ottoman Empire’s eastern border.

Tomb of Henricus Dandolo, the Venetian commander of the Fourth Crusade, in Istanbul’s Ayasofya

Some of the loot from the Fourth Crusade, now found outside St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice

Note the similarity of the cross carvings at the base of the columns above to the carvings in the photograph below from Istanbul’s Ayasofya.

Venetian bridge built to facilitate caravan trade, Cyprus

Venetian walls built in a failed attempt to protect Nicosia, Cyprus, from Ottoman conquest

But Venice’s relationship to the Muslim East was not always a hostile one. Back during the Christian Crusades, the Venetians continued trade with the Islamic world, until prohibited by the Pope. Although the Ottomans were in many ways the Venetians’ greatest foes, they were also their greatest trading partner, and at most times the two governments were at peace. There are numerous examples of economic and cultural interchange between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, including many tangible examples to be found in Venice.

The Fondaco dei Turchi, the commercial center of the Ottomans in Venice

Mosaic from St. Mark’s Cathedral depicting the theft of the relics of St. Mark from the city of Alexandria in now Egypt, then part of the Arab Empire. The remains were supposedly smuggled out in a basket filled with pork–the Muslim examiners, disgusted by the pork (see post of 11.12), did not bother to examine the basket too thoroughly, and the relics of the evangelist were successfully brought to Venice. Though acquired by deceit, the relics were held by the Venetians to enhance the city’s religious prestige.

The history of the Campo dei Mori (Field of Moors) is unknown, but sculptures outside a nearby palazzo point to the residents’ extensive dealings with the Islamic world.


Of course, with trade also comes ideas. The decorative motif on the top of the Doge’s Palce (first picture below) is said to have been inspired by the modified merlons on Cairo’s Ibn Tulun Mosque (second picture below).

The windows in many Venetian palazzos and the second floor of the Doge’s Palace (see the first picture in the post) are identical to those found on the Koutoubia minaret of Marrakesh, Morocco (below).

After a treaty signed with Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, the Doge of Venice sent artist Bellini to paint the Sultan’s now-famous portrait.

PS. Soon after we left, Venice had some of the worst flooding ever. November is supposed to be one of the worst months to travel to Venice, but we were lucky with almost completely blue and clear skies, pleasant cool temperatures and crowds reduced from summertime highs. But I guess the flooding that’s supposed to happen in early winter sometimes does. Link to BBC Article

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Egypt Italy Jordan photo Slovenia Syria United States of America

Persistence of Iconography

It’s amazing how some images persist through the centuries and are reused again and again, sometimes in entirely different contexts and with totally changed meanings. In this post, I thought I would show you some symbols we have run into on this trip, repeatedly and unexpectedly.

Caduceus of Hermes

The caduceus (or wand) of Hermes is a symbol of somewhat uncertain origin of the Greek god, and it is still used as the astronomical symbol for the planet Mercury (and sometimes mistakenly in place of the rod of Asclepius as a symbol for medicine). We saw this image in two odd places on our trip.

The first, the Roman-era catacombs in Alexandria. Alexandria, founded centuries earlier by Alexander the Great, remained a great center of Greek culture for many centuries. This tomb complex is believed to have been built by the resident Greeks; however, it was built largely in Egyptian style, showing that local Greeks had to some extent adopted Egyptian art and forms. Here, the caduceus is shown (on left) with a snake wearing the pharaonic crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The second, Mount Nebo, Jordan. Mount Nebo is an important pilgrimage site for Christians (and presumably Jews, although we did not see any Jewish pilgrims), who believe that it was the spot from which Moses saw the Promised Land (and passed away). On this spectacular vantage point are located ruins of Byzantine churches and an active Franciscan complex of worship. Why a caduceus? No clue.

Four Evangelists

It is believed by some that the popular depiction of the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, John and Luke) as four “animals” (bird, bull, bear and human, respectively) is derived from ancient Egyptian funerary tradition, in which bodily organs were placed in four canopic jars of which the lids depicted four Egyptian gods (Imsety, Hapi, Duamutef and Qebehsenuef) in four animal forms (human, baboon, jackal and falcon, respectively). If so, Egyptian Coptic depictions of the four Evangelists in animal form–here they even look like canopic jars–must be some of the earliest.

Chapel, Monastery of St. Paul, on the Red Sea, Egypt

An illustration of the animal forms of the four Evangelists from the medieval Irish Book of Kells

All-seeing Eye

The “all-seeing eye” or “eye of providence,” the cyclopean eye at the apex of a truncated pyramid, is one of the best known of icons and features prominently in some of the most persistent conspiracy theories. Here is the all-seeing eye on the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation in Ljubljana, Slovenia and the U.S. one dollar bill.


Pyramid

Part of the all-seeing eye is of course the pyramid. The pyramid form has been used as tombs from the 26th c. BC on, as other examples from the 4th c. AD and 19th c. AD below show.

Red Pyramid of Dahshur, the first true Egyptian pyramid

Pyramidal Byzantine Christine tomb at al Bara, one of the Dead Cities of Syria

Tomb of sculptor Antonio Canova inside the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, Italy

Why are these images and forms used again and again? In part, I think it’s becuase they’re what artists know how to draw and are used to drawing (or, in the case of the pyramid, a shape of simplicity of stability to which architects may be attracted). But mainly I think it’s because the new tradition (whether the Franciscan priests in Jordan or the Catholic Church in Slovenia looking to ornament their place of worship or the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing brainstorming designs) wants to latch on to the talismanic power that such icons have derived over centuries of use, to base their images on ones that are accepted or believed to be powerful, the grafting of a new idea on an older tree, the same reason that religious sites are so often re-used (see post of 11.10) and ancient stories (from Isis to Mary and the flood of Gilgamesh to the flood of Noah) are incorporated into newer faiths.

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photo

Sarajevo

What phrase comes to mind when you hear “Bosnia”? Sadly, it is likely to be “war-torn.” But when you hear “Sarajevo?” Perhaps, provided that you are in at least your 30s, it’s “Winter Olympics.” Yes, the city of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Hercegovina, went from hosting the Olympics in 1984 to becoming a war-ravaged city under siege within 10 years. Oh, such a sad turn for such a beautiful little town!

Bosnia has an ancient history going back to Roman times, but really came to be something akin to a discrete “nation” in the medieval era, when it was briefly an independent monarchy with its own Christian sect. It was during the later period when it was part of the Ottoman Empire, however, from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, that Bosnia developed into the unique fusion of east and west that it is today. The Ottoman Turks not only brought Turkish culture and Islam to the region, but founded the city of Sarajevo as a seat for the local governor.

The monuments from the Ottoman era are many and to a large extent define the historical core of Sarajevo, known as the Bascarsija district.

Gazi-Husreybey Mosque, built in 1531 by Sinan, the Ottoman Empire’s greatest architect

Domes of the Bedestan, or covered market, like the mosque essentially identical to its Turkish equivalent

Inside the Svrzo House, an Ottoman home on the hill rising behind the Old City

Buildings are not the only remnants of the Ottoman era. The Ottoman Empire may have lost control over Bosnia in the nineteenth century but myriad aspects of its Turkish culture persist. Especially considering that few people of Turkish ethnic or linguistic identity remain in Bosnia today, it’s surprising how many Turkish traces exist in Bosnian lifestyles. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in Bosnian cuisine.

In order, doner kebap, baklava and Turkish coffee, found all over Sarajevo.


Borek is also common, although it is substantially different from the Turkish variety. We also found borek all the way north to Ljubljana, including in a delicious pizza variety that leaves people lining up nightly to wait tens of minutes at the most popular shops. Oh, borek! When will you jump across the Atlantic?

The “national dish” of Sarajevo–the food that locals will tell you to try while visiting town–is cevapcici, which seems to be just a Slavic rendering of the Turkish “shish kebap,” although the dish itself is more similar to izgara kofte. Admittedly the flavor and presentation are somewhat different from kofte served in Turkey, but it’s still funny that locals consider something that can be found so readily throughout the Turkish world as a uniquely local specialty. I should note that Bosnian bread, pictured here, has a wonderful airy and chewy texture akin to good sourdough. Cevapcici is often eaten with a yogurt beverage, though one fairly dissimilar from ayran.

Another popular local dish, a plate of stuffed vegetables refered to as Sarajevski sahan. Known outside of Bosnia as Greek or Turkish dolma.

But the greatest legacy of the Ottoman Empire, of course, is in the area of religion.

Islamic cemetery at the Emperor’s Mosque, built to commemorate the rule of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent

Austrian Air advertising flights to Dubai and Jeddah, respectively the economic and religious (the latter for its proximity to Mecca) centers of the Islamic world. Showing how connected Bosnia is to the rest of the Islamic world, we even saw some Malaysians (working at the Malaysian embassy) while we were in town. Last September in Cairo, we also met some Bosnians studying at Al Azhar.

And by religion I do not mean just the Islamic faith that to an extent defines Bosnia and sets it apart (in the recent past, with tragic consequences) from some of its neighbors, but, more broadly, religious pluralism. The Ottoman Empire was a pluralistic and imperial power in which lived a wide variety of ethnic and religious groups, most of which had a ready and accepted place (if not always equal) within society–in comparison to Western Europe during the same period, a model of religious tolerance, diversity and healthy coexistence. Under Ottoman control, Sarajevo became, at least in religion, quite a cosmopolitan metropolis, with a significant Muslim population of Turks and converts, Catholic Christians (now called Croats), Orthodox Christians (now called Serbs) and Sephardic Jews invited into the Ottoman Empire by the Turks after the Jews’ expulsion from Iberia. [post on historical relationships between Muslims and Jews hopefully to come]

Catholic church

Synagogue

Orthodox church

Mosque

With a synogogue, an orthodox church, a catholic church and mosques just blocks apart, Sarajevo became, as it is sometimes called, a mini-Jerusalem, in the density and divergence of religious practice. It was also, until the 1990s, a model of religious harmony. It is important to keep in mind that, other than the Jewish population, which could be distinguished to a certain extent by culture (in the earlier years many of the Sephardic Jews preserved a Spanish-language culture), the religious divides in Bosnia are not “ethnic.” Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim Bosnians all look the same and speak the same language. During the communist years in particular, we were reminded, religion was simply a non-issue, as everyone considered him/herself an atheist.

Derek was struck by the appearance of some of the worshippers at a local mosque. The very caucasian young men with crewcuts and sturdy builds looked more to him like employees of Blackwater, the mercenary security force employed by the US in Iraq than like the observant Muslims that they are.

Sarajevo, the city of interfaith peace, the city of the Winter Olympics, came to a screeching halt in the 1990s with the dissolution of the Yugoslav Republic. For most of the twentieth century, the ethnic groups known as the Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians had been joined in a union called the Yugoslav Republic. With the end of the Cold War the country disintegrated into various ethnic states, with first Slovenia and then Croatia holding referenda declaring their independence. The Serbs, who formed the largest group within the union, did not want to accept the independence of the state known as Bosnia and Hercegovina, which contained a significant Orthodox Christian (=”Serbian”) minority, and so helped organize the Orthodox Christian residents of Bosnia into their own quasi-state, which boycotted and refused to accept the referendum on independence.
Bosnia and Hercegovina, newly independent after the internationally accepted referendum vote but with no real military of its own (the Yugoslav army was essentially bequeathed to Serbia), was essentially defenseless when the Serbs attacked, quickly taking much of the territory of Bosnia and Hercegovina and totally surrounding its capital of Sarajevo.

Sarajevo was no stranger to conflict–the Latin Bridge, at which the assassination of Franz Ferdinand sparked World War One

The Siege of Sarajevo lasted 47 months, from April 1992 to February 1996. During that time, constant artillery and sniper fire by the Serbs, who occupied hills surrounding the city with vantage points into all of the key areas of downtown Sarajevo, killed over 12,000 people and injured tens of thousands more, the Sarajevans’ suffering eased slightly by international humanitarian assistance and monitoring by the United Nations.

Many damaged and ruined buildings still stand in downtown Sarajevo

Eventually, after the Serbian atrocities of genocide and mass rape became too much for the international community to stomach, the war was ended by NATO bombing of Serbian forces, and a peace was reached. [At times during our visit it was easy to wonder how the world could have let this happen, but then one is reminded that similar things are still going on today, with the world still standing by. Even in the case of Bosnia, where moral issues were fairly clear, U.S. involvement was controversial. It seems that ethnic cleansing is exactly the sort of conflict we should involve ourselves in–how different would support for the U.S. intervention have been if it had been the Muslims slaughtering the Christians?]

Markale Market, the site of two massacres that drew international forces into the war

The Sarajevo Tunnel, which helped ferry much-needed supplies into the city during the siege

Peace was reached in 1995, soon after the NATO bombing, but the peace is not a pretty one. International affairs being what they are, the conclusion was pragmatic, an effort to build a sustainable compromise rather than strict deserts. Serbian might, and the reality that Serbia and Serbian Bosnians had in fact succeeded in ethnically cleansing vast areas of their Muslim populations, was recognized with the grant of some 49% of the territory of Bosnia and Hercegovina to a so-called Republika Srpska, a Serb-ethnic Orthodox Christian autonomous state within Bosnia and Hercegovina. The Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats meanwhile occupy the remaining 51%, the so-called Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Like Jerusalem, Sarajevo is also divided, with the historical center of the city belonging to Catholic/Muslim federation but the Serbs occupying an “East Sarajevo.” (Like the Israelis in the West Bank (and perhaps some would argue the Turks in Northern Cyprus), the Serbians with their malfeasance succeeded in creating “facts on the ground” that had to be internationally recognized in the Dayton Agreement. Must we really reward such ill behavior?)

We were told that the Serbs do their best to make the Dayton Agreement compromise not function. From their position of economic and military advantage (not least due to the assistance of their sponsor, the country of Serbia next door), the Serbians seem to thumb their nose at the country into which they ostensibly signed up, even within the Republika Srpska flying the Serbian flag instead of that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, perhaps looking forward to a day when they can join their co-religious kinsmen next door.

But perhaps the greatest tragedy is not a matter of right or wrong, or who was at fault, but the sad conclusion: a people that once lived together in harmony, as so clearly evidence by the religious architecture of downtown Sarajevo, is now divided; populations that were throughly integrated, geographically and socially, are now (as in Cyprus), segregated into enclaves and inimical.

Categories
Bosnia faces photo religion Serbia

Faces of Muslim Balkans

Just a few pictures from our few days among Muslims in the Balkans. The first picture below is of the Albanian-ethnic attendant of a mosque in Belgrade, Serbia; the rest are of Bosnians in Sarajevo. At an “ethnic” level, the story of Bosnia and Hercegovina is remarkably similar to the story of Cyprus (see posts of 10.27 and 10.28). Before the recent conflict, we were told, Muslim and Christian Bosnians thought of each other as people of the same “nationality” but merely different religions. Since the disintegration of the Yugoslav Republic and the subsequent conflicts, Christian Bosnians have been restyled as Serbs or Croats, with the “Serbian” Bosnians in particular identifying themselves with the Serbs of Serbia (even flying the Serbian flag within their semi-autonomous breakaway Republika Srpska) rather than the Muslim Bosnians, or Bosniaks, with whom they had lived together for hundreds of years. We were told that it is not possible to tell Christian and Muslim Bosnians apart, just as with Christian and Muslim Cypriots, but as all of the pictures of Bosnians below were taken within the city of Sarajevo, the subjects are most likely Muslim. As you can see, Muslims Bosnians look typically Slavic–they are genetically no different from their Christian neighbors. Few Bosnian women wear headscarves and few Bosnian men beards.





Categories
Bosnia Bulgaria photo religion Serbia Slovenia Turkey

Islam in the Balkans

We didn’t really set out to travel at all in the Balkans. Outside of southern Spain, for its historical importance as a major outpost of Islamic culture, Europe was not to play a big role in our trip. But as it turned out, the cheapest flight from Europe to Dakar departed from Milan, and we figured, what better way to get from Istanbul to Milan than by train? And so, through Sofia (Bulgaria), Belgrade (Serbia), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Hercegovina), Zagreb (Croatia), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Venice (Italy) we traveled to Milan, mostly on overnight trains.

In keeping with the theme of our year’s travels, we thought that we would use this opportunity to seek out historical and current Islam and Islamic culture in the Balkans. I knew that some of the countries in the Balkans had substantial Muslim populations (and detoured to Sarajevo to visit Bosnia in particular, post to come), but did not know how much Islamic influence we would see generally in the region. Given how extremely brief and superficial our travels in the region were, I was surprised to so easily find substantial remnants of Islam in the Balkans.

Islam came to the Balkans through the Ottoman Empire’s advances in the 15th century. From then until the 19th century, much of the Balkan peninsula was a part of that Turkish Muslim empire, and therefore subject to Turkish cultural and religious influence, as well as Turkish migration. We first saw evidence of the Ottoman and Turkish presence in the Balkans before we even left Turkey, at the Balkan Turks Foundation on Istanbul’s Divan Yolu (the sort of “main street” of the historical part of Istanbul), a cultural foundation similar to the East Turkistan Foundation for western China (see post of 11.05). It is unclear to me how many Turkish speakers remain in the Balkan countries now–given that some seem to have moved to Turkey–but in the period of Turkish advance before and during Ottoman rule, Turks must have moved into the Balkan peninsula just as they moved into Cyprus (see post of 10.27). Ataturk himself (see post of 11.02) was born in now Greece.

But Islam in the Balkans was not just a matter of Turkish-speaking Muslim migrants into the region, which seems to have been the primary phenomenon in Cyprus, but also of the gradual conversion of local populations. Just as there may not be any “Mughals” left in South Asia, but hundreds of millions of Muslims, there are far more Muslims in the Balkans than people of Turkish descent. As in other regions controlled by Islamic rulers, there was to some extent conversion in the local, originally non-Muslim population. There is one question, I have, however, about the spread of Islam in the Balkans, and that is why the Muslim populations seem so geographically concentrated today, in the more heavily Muslim republics of the Western Balkans (further from Turkey than the overwhelmingly Christian Eastern Balkans). I know that some of this has been exaggerated by recent conflicts, but it seems that the penetration of Islam was in fact greater in the west, perhaps due to greater/more direct/longer imperial presence/control in those regions. I would certainly appreciate clarification on this point from my readers!

Some photos and thoughts tracing Islam in the Balkans, from Bulgaria to Slovenia.

Ottoman-era mosque, Sofia, Bulgaria. The Banya Bashi Mosque, located a couple blocks away from the Sofia Synagogue, was built by none other than Sinan, the Ottoman Empire’s greatest architect, in the 16th century. Bulgaria is one of two European countries bordering Turkey, but it is, as is Greece (and, to the north, Romania), overwhelmingly Christian, despite nearly five centuries under Ottoman rule. The mosque seemed primarily for use by the Turkish minority (around 10% of the total population of Bulgaria) and perhaps Turks in transit, as it had Turkish language signs and prayer timetables in Turkish.

Bayrakli Mosque, Belgrade, Serbia. The Serbs, who have pride of place as a nation that engaged in a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign in such recent history (though some of the glory should be shared with Greek volunteers who took part in some of the worst atrocities), destroyed most of Belgrade’s at one time many mosques during the 1990s conflicts. Perhaps the current authorities believe that there is still a possibility of anti-Muslim mob violence, as this mosque had its own police box. The only other conspicuously Ottoman building we saw in Belgrade was a tomb of a pasha inside Kalemegdan Citadel. Much more so, modern Serbia identifies itself as a part of the Slavic world, with two of downtown’s most prominent landmarks being the Moscow Hotel and the Russian Tsar Restaurant (see Derek’s post of 11.12).

Bosnia and Hercegovina, despite very significant Christian populations (particularly in the semi-autonomous breakaway Republika Srpska), is very much a part of the Islamic world, and the most significant and northwesternmost bastion of Islam (if one does not count the large Muslim minorities within Western Europe). I will cover our visit to Sarajevo in a separate post to come.

Slovenia. Once you head into Croatia and Slovenia you leave the former Ottoman Empire for the former Austro-Hungarian, and traces of Islam disappear quickly. One small and depressing anecdote, however. Slovenia is by far the most financially successful of the former Yugoslav republics, now not only a member of the European Union but within the Eurozone as well. Slovenes are wealthy enough to be members of the international backpacker fraternity (we’ve run into them in Ethiopia and Kenya), and Ljubljana has a first world sheen that, say, Sarajevo does not. I asked a Slovene in Ljubljana what accounted for his nation’s success, and was told that the area that is now Slovenia has always been economically more developed than the rest of the former Yugoslavia, and as a sovereign state Slovenia was able to take better advantage of this lead. Another factor, I was told, was that the “southern people” of the other Yugoslav republics had a different mentality, in part because there were “many Muslims” and they “think differently” and were lazy and didn’t want to work. I had thought that Slovenes deserved credit for somehow staying out of the fray of the wars that entangled the other former Yugoslav republics, that Slovenes were perhaps less likely to think the sort of dangerous ethnic nationalism that their neighbors to the south seemed enamored with. Perhaps I was wrong.

Categories
food photo Serbia

Breakfast in Belgrade

You might wonder why I’m coming out of obscurity to post for only the second time in these many months.  I’m doing it to dispel any myths anyone might have that traveling in Muslim countries is all joyful bliss, without any drawbacks.

While in Ethiopia in 2005, we met a Japanese couple that had been in the Sudan the month before.  They spoke of how hot and dusty it was and how exasperated they were that at the end of each hard day they “couldn’t even have a cold beer” because the Sudan, as with several other Islamic countries following the prescripts of the Quran, is dry.

For those into women, the site of female flesh can be a very limited commodity in Islamic countries.  In some, women are socially or culturally restricted to the home and you won’t even see them.  In others, most or all will have their heads covered and leave nothing exposed other than *maybe* their face and hands.

Taking pictures of women can be difficult in any country but in Islamic countries it can be much harder and even dangerous.  In parts of Pakistan, taking a picture of a woman can become life threatening when nearby men spot you doing it.  After showing some of my photos to men in some of the more restrictive countries, I think I know why.  Many of these men focus almost exclusively or entirely on the women in the photos, in a sexual manner and often accompanied by impolite, sexist or lewd comments, sometimes without regard for age, race or even beauty.  They just assume that others too will use photographs of women in this way.

So, given that I rarely drink, don’t care to look at women and manage to get the photos I need, what makes me write, here and now in Serbia?  

Breakfast.

Our first experience with breakfast in an Islamic country was during our 2001 visit to Turkey.  I actually enjoy Turkish breakfast.  Olives, tomatoes, cheese, cucumber, boiled eggs, bread–tasty and even fun, really.  It turns out the Turks have the best of Islamic breakfasts.  It only gets slimmer and worse after that.  In some, a cup of tea with maybe a bit of bread.  In others, a limited version of the meal enjoyed in Turkey.

Over the last many months, this has worn on me.  Breakfast has always been my favorite meal and time of day.  Fried eggs, omelettes, eggs benedict and most importantly bacon and sausage are among the things I miss most.  Sure I’ve found a half-assed omelette here and there, or an egg that has been almost deep fried because of the amount of grease it was drenched in, but they just don’t suffice.  I’m not sure exactly what the Quran has to say about pork but I will say that any religion that restricts its consumption is a cruel one that cannot possibly be on the right track.  What sort of god would create such a meat and then forbid followers from eating it?  I know, forbidden fruit and all that but come on!  No apple has ever come even close to a strip of bacon.  

The Russian Tzar Restaurant, established 1890 and recently reopened after remodeling, is a place not to be missed on a swing through the Balkans.  This is what we had:

Breakfast “Russian Tzar”

eggs, crispy bacon, njegus smoked ham, and pancakes with forest strawberries all for a mere 330 dinars or roughly $6 USD

Paul was drawn in by the description of the

Omelette “Chef”

eggs, turkey fillet, mozzarella and njegus smoked ham for 300 dinars or less than $6 USD

The cappuccino was tasty and not expensive, and just to be friendly, they gave us a couple of berry muffins.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Belgrade.

Categories
food photo Turkey

Food in Turkey

To start the day, the Turkish breakfast. Breakfast is usually included with the room rate in Turkish hotels–this one is a particularly fine spread. Almost always provided are boiled eggs, some sort of processed meat product (the one pictured is quite common), cheese (not usually four different kinds, as pictured), olives, cucumbers and tomatoes, and butter, jam and honey. All is eaten with bread (not pictured).

Another way to start the day, a pretzel-like bread called simit, often sold on the street.

A third way to start the day, and perhaps the tastiest: the borek. Most often filled with egg, spinach or cheese, the layers of cooked dough end up having a consistency more similar to egg noodles than to flaky pastry, which somehow makes it all the more delicious. Here, behind a glass of tea in a traditional Turkish tea glass.

For lunch (or dinner), what you eat will often depend on the kind of restaurant you go to. Three common choices: a pide salonu, a kebap salonu or a lokanta.

At the first, you will be served pide, which is described fairly as Turkish pizza. Pide is shaped like a flat football, made to order and generally quite cheap and tasty.

More common than the pide salonu is the kebap salonu. Kebap in Turkey comes in numerous forms, suggesting to me that the country is in fact the origin of that category of food. Far from kebap fatigue, which some travelers develop, I found myself gaining a greater and greater affinity to the food, including especially…

The doner kebap. Possibly the single greatest export of Turkish cuisine, the doner kebap, eaten as a sandwich or on a plate, is also one of the most common foods in Turkey. I want to note that Turks still cut their doner using real knives, as Syrians and Jordanians do with their shawarma, which I believe is the only way that the chef can properly select the most optimally cooked segments. Shame on you, Palestinians, for using an electric shaving carver! What laziness!!

It also comes in chicken, the tavuk doner.

One important variant of doner on a plate is the Iskender kebap, otherwise known as Paul’s favorite Turkish dish. Iskender is doner with tomato sauce and yoghurt, served over a plate of chunks of bread. The bread soaks up the greasy, creamy, tomato-y sauce–yummy!

Other kebaps are cooked on individual skewers. Kebaps made of chunks of meat, as opposed to the more common kebaps made of ground meat, are generally called shish.

Chicken shish sandwich. As with (other) middle eastern cuisines, ordering kebap in sandwich form costs a fraction of what appears to be the same components–the meat, salad and bread–laid out separately on a plate. This sandwich/platter price disparity mystery lives on in middle eastern restaurants in the United States, although to a lesser extent.

The Adana kebap is perhaps the kebap most similar to the Iranian kubideh, although the seasoning is in fact different, as an Iranian-American friend of mine commented on an earlier post (see post of 5.25).

Kofte is a general name for kebap made with ground meat. Izgara kofte, shaped like half smoked cigars (or meat turds, as we called them), is one of its most common forms.

You can also add some vegetables to the mix, as we in non-Turkey are fond of doing with our shish kebabs. Here, mantarli kebap with mushrooms, served at a rather good Ankara restaurant.

Kokorec is frequently spotted rotating on sidewalk grills. It smells inviting–surprisingly like grilled pork–but is made of sheep guts. As I’m just not that into innards, as food goes, I haven’t tried it.

The third category of restaurant, in my lunch list, is the lokanta, which is what I like to call a “bin food restaurant.” I hold bin food restaurants, any doubts about food safety notwithstanding, to be among the traveler’s greatest friends, for they offer those unfamiliar with a cuisine the opportunity to try a wide variety of dishes, with no ordering difficulties. In Turkey and in other countries as well, bin food restaurants also offer great variety, including home-style cooking that is usually unavailable in other types of restaurants (particularly upmarket ones that specialize in grilled meat). Caribbean and Mexican bin food restaurants are among our favorite restaurants back in New York. There is one caveat, however, about Turkish lokantas–while bin food restaurants in other countries are often quite cheap, your bill at a Turkish lokanta, especially if you want to try many dishes (portions can be small), will likely end up being quite a bit higher than if you had just eaten kebap.

An Istanbul special: the fish sandwich, prepared on the shores of the Golden Horn.

The most Turkish beverage is of course chay, served in tulip-shaped glasses. Tea is drunk sweet with plenty of sugar.

The second most Turkish drink, ayran. Whatever Derek may say about ayran being more a sauce than a beverage, it is one of my favorites, and it indisputably goes great with kebap. A particularly frothy, freshly-made version–more common is factory-produced ayran in plastic containers.

Some Turkish desserts:

My favorite Turkish dessert, indeed one of my favorite desserts of any cuisine, firin sutlac. Firin sutlac is like rice pudding (more pudding than rice) baked in an oven and then cooled, so that it develops a delicious tough caramel-y skin on top. The Turks and the Indians tie for first place, in my opinion, in rice puddings. This sutlac is from Ozsut, a coffee and desserts chain in Turkey.

The most famous Turkish desert, baklava. Who knows whether baklava is originally Turkish, or Greek, or Syrian/Lebanese? Best when dripping with syrup.

Turkish delight, or lokum, at Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir, the Istanbul shop that invented it.

Ashure, or Noah’s pudding, of oh-so-many ingredients

Sahlep was one of the great discoveries of our first Turkey trip, and it remains one of our favorites. Although a bit expensive at Mado (first picture below), this cinnamon-ny, super-thick milky “drink” is wonderful in winter (playing the same role as hot chocolate or egg nog). In the second picture below, an itinerant sahlep vendor at the old book bazaar near the Grand Bazaar.

I must admit that I’ve left an entire category of Turkish meal, the meze meal, out of this post, mainly because mez
e are usually eaten at night, in challenging photography conditions. The meze culture of Turkey is similar to that of Greece or Syria/Lebanon (see post of 4.27), although the dishes themselves vary some. In our 2001 trip to Turkey, we had great difficulty understanding how a meze meal worked–how much cold meze (usually brought out to you on a platter) to select and eat, if and when to order how much hot meze, and if and when to order grill items after the meze. Almost all that we knew for sure was that meze was usually accompanied by raki, the national anise-flavored liqueur, which should be cut with water to produce its cloudy form. I have since 2001 had the Turkish meze meal explained to me: Eat as much cold meze (salads, pickles, etc.) as you’d like, usually with raki. The cold meze phase of the meal, with conversation and drinking, can take a great deal of time, and it’s not essential to have hot meze at all, or even to get to main courses. And whatever you do, there’s no real reason to sweat it, as the meal is not so ritualized that you can somehow commit a faux pas.