Since we last checked in, I have been to Turkey. The country was rife with busts of Atatürk on the 85th anniversary of modern Turkish statehood.
I also ran a 15 km race (part of the Istanbul Eurasia marathon, which boasts the distinction of being the only marathon to cover both Asia and Europe) in chilly torrential rain. It was an absurd experience, but being sopping wet and imagining the hot shower to come probably made me run faster than usual. I made reasonably good time and was done by 10 AM.
I visited Aya Sofia and the Sultanahmet (Blue) Mosque.
I met the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Istanbul and in Eskishehir, where the director rounded up a crowd for an evening of socializing, music and dance. I passed around photographs from Crimea, where most of these people have never been.
They sang Ey Guzel Kirim, a deportation era anthem, as their first song.
We took photographs and I was gifted plaques.
We visited Crimean Tatar villages near Eskishehir, where people invited us into their homes,
and told their stories of immigration to Turkey, usually shortly after the Crimean War in the mid-19th century.
It was difficult for me to tell apart Crimean Tatar and Turkish, but people say that Crimean Tatar is very well preserved in these villages.
These guys were out for a stroll.
These women wanted us to have coffee, but we were on our way back to town.
We visited an instrument maker in Eskishehir, where a PhD candidate in musicology sang gorgeous songs from the Ottoman Empire, accompanying himself on the oud, and a young instrument maker described the process of making the perfect instrument:
It was an incredible trip with a lot of information collected and many strong impressions formed in just a week. Next... the Romanian Crimean Tatar diaspora? Alison and I have been invited to come and present in mid-December on Crimean Tatar day in Romania. I hope it happens.
(So....I know, I know; it's been a long time since you last heard from me. Thank you to those of you who write to remind me to post. Believe me, it's been on my mind. But so many things have been happening - a visit from my uncle, interviews, a visit from my boyfriend, interviews, an attempt to follow American politics and Ukrainian politics, a visit to Lviv, interviews, a visit to Turkey, interviews - and no internet at home. Right now, I'm planted in the corner of a hip cafe on fashionable Pushkina vul. quickly uploading some photos in feverish time to the ambient eurotechno favored by this cafe to assuage my pangs of conscience over not being a more proactive blogger. A warning that things might get worse before they get better: I'm leaving my Simferopol home today for Bakhchisaray, which may make my internet accessibility even more limited, but maybe I'll get there and discover a signal. Ada Helbig was recently telling me about opening up her laptop in a Roma village near Uzhgorod and discovering that the village had provided free WiFi for anyone with a computer in the area.... Anyway, blog or not, one day, there will be a fat book.)
