Turkish, Coffee, and its discontents

It has been an interesting week here in the egregious mold pit wherein I labor for my daily bread.  Since Monday, I have been an unwilling participant in an ongoing argument with an elderly and more than a little loony Puerto Rican gentleman about the proper conjugation of Turkish verbs.  I am an unwilling participant in this brouhaha because, as I have told him numerous times, I do not speak Turkish, I have never spoken Turkish, and it is entirely unlikely that I will be trying to learn Turkish any time in the immediate future.  Given this state of absolute ignorance concerning all things concerning the Turkish language, I am not in a position to debate the proper conjugation of verbs in the future dubitative tense with this gentleman.  In fact, however, I should mention that the gentleman I am having this one-sided argument with is in no position to argue the facts of Turkish verb conjugation either—possession of a small and incredibly ratty Turkish dictionary  bought for a quarter at the second hand bookstore down the street from us does not make one an expert on the Turkish language, Turkish culture, or the long-term ramifications of current Turkish foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean region and beyond, a position, I feel, is something that Turks  of all political persuasions can agree with. If not, please let me know.  After he finished lecturing me on how wrong I was in all matters concerning Turkish verb conjugation and grammar, our Puerto Rican gentleman asked for the address and phone number of a Spanish botanica in the city, saying that he wanted to go there in order to find something to help alleviate his loneliness.  No one at his group home wants to talk to him, he said, and he did not understand why not.  I must admit that I was about to snicker when he said this, but then the chuckle died aborning; it struck me that it must indeed be a lonely life for a mentally ill elderly man without a family when even his fellow crazies think he’s nuts.

Television advertising constantly reminds the American public these days that America runs on the baked goods and coffee of a large chain of restaurants that will remain unnamed here. If you are an American, you know which chain I am talking about; if you are not, then there is no point in bringing the matter up; and if you are an advertising executive for this chain who wants to do some product placement I should point out that the advertising rates for such placement are very reasonable here.  Getting back to the facts, I was sitting at the red light waiting to make my right onto the highway that leads into the heart of our happy little burg.  Unlike many red lights, which simply serve as a device to justify cops handing out traffic tickets, this particular red light does serve a practical function. While it is possible to make the right on red at this particular red light, it is not advisable.  The lay of the land and the curvature of the road are such that in order to see if anything is coming down the highway, the hurried motorist must inch out almost halfway out onto the highway, thereby increasing the risk of having the front end of his car sheared off by some impatient doofus hurtling through the intersection before the yellow light turns red.  Needless to say, I have, over the years, been the subject of so many near-misses at this light that I no longer go inching out onto the highway; being an extra minute early for work is simply not worth risking my neck for.  This attitude, however, is not widespread hereabouts, as demonstrated this morning when the incredibly angry obese woman with a face like a cross between a Vietnamese fat-bellied pig and a rusty fire hydrant in the car behind me began leaning on the horn in order to move me along.  I was not going to move, for the reasons aforementioned, and because that moving along is not a big deal at this light. This light, unlike so many traffic lights, actually goes through its green—yellow—red cycle quickly, so motorists in a hurry are never left sitting there wondering, when is this damn light ever going to change, for long.  

In any case, after one prolonged and very unnecessary horn blast, the woman opened her window and began screaming at me. I did not shout back at her; I simply adjusted my rear-view mirror in such a way that she could see what I was saying and used a short but definite phrase to let her know that I was not going to move until the light was green.  Our automotive Brunnhilde saw what I said, and promptly backed up and went around me even as the light was changing and went roaring out onto the highway without looking to see if there was anything coming. Now, if life was fair, this avoirdupois ass would have had her avoirdupois ass smeared all over the road by a tractor-trailer, but alas, Nemesis would not have Her way with this gelatinous dolt today.  She roared off down the highway like a Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon in a high wind even as the light turned green. I went out onto the highway a moment later and without worrying about the oncoming traffic.

I saw her only a few minutes later.  She was in the parking lot of the unnamed coffee and baked goods chain whose products keep America running, trying to hoist her very substantial and circumferential self out of the driver’s seat of her car.  I laughed out loud, a not terribly polite reaction on my part, I know, but one I could not help at the time—the idea of charging blindly out onto a highway without checking to see if there was anything coming was just so stupid to me I could not believe it, as was knowing that the object of this stupidity was because this onnazumo manqué could not bear someone keeping her from her doughnuts and coffee for an extra twenty seconds.  Those guys must make a damn fine cup of Joe.  

STATING THE OBVIOUS: You might have missed this—I know I did the first time around—but the Israeli Cabinet, as wise and statesmanlike a group of pols who ever truckled for a vote, has declared the Gaza Strip hostile. When I first read this bit of news, I immediately thought that there’s a bunch of guys with a firm grasp of the obvious. I might be wrong about this, but after years of shelling, airplane hijackings, suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and cross border raids, along with various and sundry other mayhem along the way designed to give newspaper reporters something to do with their time other than sit around the bar at the Tel Aviv Hilton drinking whatever the Israeli version of a Cuba Libre is and thinking of new ways to pad their expense accounts, you would think that the governing body of the State of Israel would have noticed a certain ongoing ambivalence on the part of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip towards Zionism as a political ideology in general and to its practical application in the Middle East in particular. Having made this exhaustive leap in logic, I fully expect that the Israeli Cabinet will now, after extensive consultations with the Israeli military, the Opposition in the Knesset, the United States government, any number of learned scientists, and the chief rabbis of both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities, declare that Israel will support, in general principles and without in any way prejudicing the right of the Jewish state to exist, the proposition that the Mediterranean Sea is now and has always been wet.

This is a controversial opinion, to be sure, and not one that will gain Israel friends in either the region or in the wider world. Questions as to the alleged wetness of the Mediterranean have circulated for years, with many of the front-line Arab states claiming that the Mediterranean has never been totally wet, only a little damp around the edges, and that any claims to the Mediterranean’s complete wetness are nothing more than the fevered imaginings of Zionists and Crusaders with imperialist designs on their buttocks. Other Mediterranean states, such as Italy and Spain, have vehemently disputed this Arab claim . Both governments have spent millions on advertising in the United States and the European Union showing happy vacationers getting thoroughly wet in their respective parts of the Mediterranean and see no reason why the never-ending Arab-Israeli dispute should effect their nonaligned tourist industries. In order to prevent any sort of tourist backlash, the two governments have now appealed to the United Nations Security Council for a resolution conceding the complete wetness of the Mediterranean from one end to the other, a resolution many other Mediterranean states say they will back, if the governments involved can agree upon the wording of the text. The Greek government, however, which promised at first to support the resolution, reneged when it learned that the Turks wanted to support the resolution as well. A Greek amendment to the resolution, claiming that the Mediterranean was wetter on the Greek side of the sea than on the Turkish side, caused riots in Istanbul and a score of other Turkish cities; in Ankara, Turkish nationalists tried to set fire to the Greek Embassy in protest. Failing that, the furious mob then attacked the local Blockbusters and other video rental outlets, smashing every copy of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Zorba the Greek they could find, and stealing all the copies of Big Blondes Do Greek I through XXIX. This would seem to put an end to any Turkish involvement in this matter, although it is still possible that the Turkish military may compel the government sign the agreement if the Greeks respond to American and EU pressure and remove the offending amendment. The Turks may want to get into the European Union, but not at the expense of its national pride.

Other nations, however, are examining the Mediterranean issue with great care, seeing the Arab claim of less that complete wetness as a wedge issue wherein other powers can make claims on their national sovereignty. Saudi Arabia, for example, usually an absolute backer of the Arab frontline states, is privately less than supportive of the move to declare the Mediterranean merely very damp. In this case, the Saudis are looking at the Iranian claim that the Persian Gulf is not very wet, either, and so Iran goes all the way across the Gulf to the Saudi side, a claim the Saudis are obviously not willing to countenance in any way. The Saudis are, of course, blaming the Israelis for causing all of this trouble; if they had not declared the Mediterranean wet, the frontline Arab states would not have felt compelled to say otherwise, and thereby open issues better left unopened. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t; well, it’s not like the Israelis haven’t been there before, is it?