Via Prague

I stopped by the university this morning. Having gone to half time following last week's announcement, I had the day off, but having nothing better to do, decided to drop by, check email and get the day's gossip (working in Istanbul, I've discovered, being privvy to the daily dish is an essential, since things can change so quickly).
Not much was up. Two of the girls, Bengü and Pinar, are having a joint birthday bash at a club called Balans in the center on Saturday night, and yes, I received the Facebook invitation. Chatted with Ralph, a cool guy from San Diego, about his plans for the weekend, said hello to a few students.
"Excuse me, James!" It was Michael, our EF coordinator. "Sorry, I didn't expect you to be here today. I was going to talk to you on Monday. Can we have a word?"
Something dropped in me as I followed him down to his office. After all, it has been a rather extraordinary week already.
I haven't really had a chance so far to say much about Michael, the guy who recruited me from Prague earlier this year. Actually we initially talked via Skype last fall when the EF branch in Istanbul was looking for teachers. That job eventually fell through due to the financial crisis. But our interview had gone well and Michael had promised to keep me in mind for positions in the future.
When I arrived at Beykent University, with which EF had secured a long-term contract, I finally had a chance to meet Michael face to face. An Englishman in his late thirties or early forties, Michael presents a polished, professional, if somewhat hurried, demeanor. He's always dressed in a suit and tie, and wears his brown hair clipped and combed back. Despite his almost perpetually busy expression, behind a pair of wire spectacles, one perceives a kind, sympathetic face, but as most quickly learn, the sympathy can harden into worldly toughness when necessity required.
Knowing this, I steeled myself for what very well could be more bad news.
"How are things at the lodgement, by the way?" Michael asked, as we entered his office. His assistant, Esin, was there. Esin warrants a word; a general all-around fixer with a shrewd hold on dollars and sense machinery, Esin has a kind smile and helpful eyes, but she can also be a tough article. She greeted me warmly, which did not lessen my apprehension.
"Yes, actually James, that's what we're here to talk about," Michael said, pulling his chair around from his desk to sit by me. "You're the only one up there, right?"
I was. Despite its cheap price and proximity to the university, all the other teachers had settled for being closer to the action in the center of Istanbul. After last week's announcement, I thought I would have company, but so far that hadn't happened.
"Right," Michael said, listening. "So, listen, what we've been thinking," he met his eyes with Esin, "is that it doesn't really make good financial sense to hang on to the lodgement."
Ah, so this is what it is, I thought, and readied for the cards. Michael gave me a sympathetic appraisal.
"So we're going to put in our month's notice. Of course, we know you've been having some financial problems, we know what kind of a position this puts you in. But as you know, we still have a full-time position available in Ankara, as well as another one in Bursa, and we've been thinking, well, that you might want to consider taking one of these positions."
I listened. Already I could see Istanbul receding, me on a bus or train, being shipped off into the hinterlands. It was like passing through a tunnel.
Some of this must have registered in my expression, for Michael proceded on a more reassuring note.
"Of course, this would by no means be permanent. This would give you a chance for a full-time position, and time to get on your feet financially, and when things pick up again here -- and they will pick up -- you can come back. As you know, Corey has already taken a position there -- and, well, we're trying right now to look at the teachers who are in the most difficult position and see if we can't get you to accept these positions."
We talked a while longer. I asked about accommodation. It was free, he said. Salary? He didn't have the details to hand, but he understood it was a good salary, with a chance at perhaps rising to management. Michael said it would perhaps be good for me, seeing as I was an experienced teacher, and a guy who "seems pretty flexible."
As he had planned on informing me on Monday, Michael concluded by saying I could take the weekend to think about it. Esin said she would schedule a meeting on Monday where I could talk to some of the people who were involved with the Ankara branch.
I left and, without saying goodbye to my colleagues, went out into Ayazağa and caught a bus to the metro. It was a gorgeous morning; even the normally hellish Istanbul traffic was light. At Taksim I got out and headed for Istiklal Caddesi, and found my favorite sandwich shop where you can order a tost burger, served in a paper wrap. As I ate, I thought about the deal Michael had proposed. Really, it was not a bad deal at all. Except I would have to move to Ankara. Well, after all it is the capital city. Perhaps it lacks the majesty of Istanbul, but it also lacks the high prices. I had asked Michael how far it was from Istanbul; by train about four hours. Not so bad. Still, my stomach felt as though I had suddenly dropped ten stories. My prime motivation for accepting this offer originally was Istanbul. Imagine if you were offered a job in Paris and then suddenly farmed out to Dijon.
But then I realized: come on, this is not a bad deal. A full-time position. And Ankara, OK, maybe it's a bit provincial but it's still a city, the capital even. Maybe you need this, a chance to get on your feet. Sure you could stay in Istanbul, perhaps crash on somebody's couch, but then what? How are you going to get ahead on half-salary? And think of Michael and Esin. It was pretty clear that yes, they are trying to weed a few teachers out at Beykent, encourage those who could leave to leave, which would free up some hours for the core who stayed, people like Ralph, who has a wife and child and cannot pack up so easily.
Yes, it was not a bad deal. And Michael did say that it did not mean forever; surely things will pick back up again, perhaps by spring ...
After lunch I found an Internet cafe and sent Michael an email accepting the offer, and then went to look into tickets to Ankara.

Posted by James Tressler at 03:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (725)

Fifty percent salary cut. Well, basically an across-the-board 50 percent.
That's what came out of the meeting today at the EF branch in Levent.
I suppose I -- ney, we -- should be happy. Personally I woke up this morning thinking I'd be out of a job by the end of the day. Or rather, in a foreign country halfway around the world out of a job. A slightly important distinction.
But no, it's not as bad as we thought. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. Others, like Ralph, have a wife and kid, or else 1,000 lira rent payments, or both. With me it's just me. I can live on half a month's salary, at least for a while, say, half a month. Save? Oh, who needs to save? I never have.
It was in reality the best, or at least in the ballpark, deal that our bosses at EF could have cut. After all, they didn't change the law that dropped the English requirement for many majors, a change that overnight dropped our English enrollement from 54 classes to 38, a loss of several hundred students.
Contracts? Sure, we had contracts that stated that we were to be informed at least 30 days in advance of any pending changes to said contracts. We got exactly one day's notice that our old contracts were null and void and the new ones, with those dazzling salaries, will go into effect immediately. Not only will we have half salary, but we all will have larger classes! Explanations were demanded.
'Apparently contracts in Turkey are worthless,' several teachers noted. Perhaps, we were informed, or it could be that in this country things are done just a little bit differently.
Bad faith?
'It could be that if that's what you decide it is,' our bosses said (it should be noted they took several body blows, in a metaphorical sense).
Another teacher observed that 'in a court of law' such an apparant breach of contract would not stand.
'Of course, I'm only speaking hypothetically.'
İn fairness, our bosses explained up front that they had been left with two choices: either the present deal, or layoffs. They acknowledged it was a shit sandwich, but went on to say that the university, with which EF itself had had a contract, had given same. Shit rolls downhill.
Nobody was happy. Several teachers were outright livid.
'Fifty percent,' one said, visibly pissed. 'So I guess I cut my daughter's food in half. ı wonder if anybody above us has taken any of the pain?'
Other teachers wondered about this as well. Our bosses insisted they only knew what they were telling us.
'We of course realize the position this puts most of you in,' they said. 'And we realize you may at this point choose to leave, or at least look for other work. We have thought about all these things already.'
'And will you tell our landlords to accept a half-month's rent?' one woman asked.
'Of course we can write letters for you. Whether anyone listens to them is of course quite another matter...'
Other questions came. If the new contract goes into effect on Monday, will we still get full pay for the first half of the month? If some teachers choose to leave, will their hours be passed on to those who choose to remain? And how would the new schedule be split up?
'Obviously the university doesn't care about the quality of education it's giving its students, but still ...'
Actually the university's hands were tied in a legal sense. Since the new mandate was from the national government, private universities that chose to flout the new law did so at their own legal peril. Also, as one teacher conceded, in some ways the university's decision to enforce the law made good business sense. That is, the university stood to lose even more students by sticking with the old English requirements if students realized they could just enroll at another university.
The meeting gradually came to an end. Most people were still unsatisfied. Grim faces stared into space, or else out at the gray Friday afternoon outside the windows. It had been raining since lunch.
As for myself, I was a bit relieved. Becoming unemployed at this particular juncture would have been highly convenient. I raised my hand and thanked the bosses for at least saving us from layoffs, figuring it would give all of us some wiggle room to look for work on the side.
A few others agreed.
'But check your tires when you leave,' one teacher joked.
'Oh don't worry,' our boss said, returning the joke. 'In fact, I'm moving this weekend.'
Outside, a few of us had a cigarette while others headed for the Metro. Some were heading to so-and-so's later for drinks, invitations were tossed out in the rain. One of the teachers, a friend of mine, one of the guys with a wife and kid, looked at me like I was Judas.
'You can shove that 'Thank You' up your ass!' he said. 'I thought I was gonna puke when you said that.'
Later I caught the Metro and headed to Taksim. The Beer House was open, so I went in and upstairs to the terrace. It was almost deserted, but I settled into a seat at the far end. It was ironic, remembering that exactly one week before everyone had been there, we were all happy and having a great time. A waiter brought me a beer and I sat and looked out at the ships in the Bosphorous. It was still raining. It began to rain harder, but oddly, the sun began to come out and even (swear to God!) a rainbow, which stretched out across the grey sky and down over the jumble of buildings. I felt depressed, but not too bad. What was the headline in the Turkish Daily News this morning? 'Unemployment at 12.8 percent.' Does it make me a sell-out for being happy to have a job, even at 50 percent? Well, for one I'm not happy. And two, there are a lot of people who don't --
I finished one beer and had another. The waiter offered to go down the street and get me a pack of cigarettes. I told him no thanks and asked for the bill. It was 18 lira. I didn't leave a tip, rationalizing that I could have bought the same beers at another cafe down the street for only 12 lira.
I went out to Istiklal Caddesi and went for a walk. It was raining but no too badly. I've always liked the rain.

Posted by James Tressler at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (189)

It was back in the days when I covered Humboldt County government, when year after year the county faced budget 'shortfalls,' that I first came across the phrase 'cautiously optimistic.'
This was back in the early days of the millennium, just after the energy crisis, the dot-com burst, and in the days after 9/11, a trinity of calamities that together signalled the end of the bullish, surplus-happy Nineties and the beginning of a decade of deficits, cuts and general all-around woe on the homefront.
But in those days it didn't seem all that bad. Well, OK, it was bad, but each day as I checked in with county officials, my journalistic tendency to see the sky falling was checked by munificent doses of the term 'cautıously optimistıc.'
'So you got the governor's proposed budget today?' I'd ask, putting in a call to county officials at the courthouse.
'Hm-hm,' they would say, with a grim falling inflection.
'How bad is it?' I'd ask, of course having already read in AP reports that the governor was calling for billions in cuts, or else threatening to swipe local revenues to make up for state 'short falls.'
'Well, of course we're worried. But at the same time, we're not giving up. The California Association of Counties is meeting with the governor later this week and we're cautiously optimistic that ...'
Over the next few years I came to know this particular adverb-adjective couple very well. You'll agree it rolls off the tongue nicely. Like 'slightly inebriated' or 'occasionally psychotic.' Sometimes that cautious optimism bore fruit; more often it didn't.
Having gotten to know many county employees -- clerks, sheriff's department deputies, public defenders, district attorney prosecutors, animal control, librarians and so on -- I couldn't help but feel badly when people inevitably were laid off or saw their pay reduced, and of course I felt bad for residents, who would see vital services go away.
But I always was able to comfort myself knowing my own job was secure. I could feel 'cautiously optimistic' at a safe distance: vicariously optimistic, more preciseiy. The sky may or may not be falling but in my case it only affected how large a type-set I used in the headline. At the end of the day, I went home, or, having thrown caution and optimism to the wind, proceded directly to the Shanty.
To a certain extent this same feeling of remote comfort continued when I moved to Prague. From the glorious heart of Europe I watched (and read) as the economic crisis bit deeply into the economy back home, and in many places. People I knew well -- good people, educated people -- were lining up for unemployment. Reports from the family front in Pittsburgh were not bad but terse. 'Money REALLY TİGHT right now,' the emails went.
Again, I was worried, but detached. Teaching English may not be everything I want in a job, but at least it's a job, I told myself. And in Prague. Millions of good people -- better people, perhaps -- were not so lucky.
So it has been quite an experience the past few days here in Istanbul, where I recently accepted a university position. Good pay, benefits, and of course life in the 'diamond between two emeralds,' the former Constantinople.
Everything has been going well. Good colleagues, great experiences, everything is looking up.
And then?
This week we got news that a new Turkish law has gone into effect. University students in a variety of majors, such as law, sciences, etc. -- are now, effective this week, not required to take English to graduate. That means that not only will fewer students be taking the classes, but that scores, hundreds perhaps, of teachers could lose work. Not only hours but jobs, understand. Imagine being recruited to a foreign country only to find out after a month that the job could possiby vanish.
Most teachers here at the university -- many have already become good friends -- have been anxious. We meet in the mornings in the teacher's room, or between classes, or at lunch. It's the topic everybody wants to avoid and yet cannot avoid. Emails from our coordinators the past few days have been 'cautiously optimistic.'
'So that means we're screwed,' says one colleague. Some nod in agreement. Others sip their coffee. Still others politely excuse themselves and go for a walk.
But wait -- things can't be so bad, can they? After all, 'cautious optimism' right?
'What am I going to do?' asks Maria, one of my closer colleagues. 'I mean, I just got settled here, and am finally getting with the program, and doing what I came here to do (she has Greek and Turkish roots and what she came here to do is write a travel book , a not ignoble pursuit) ... and then this happens! What about you? What are you going to do?'
What could I say? After all, I was in the same position.
'What I can't understand,' I said, 'Is how can a law go into effect three weeks into the school year --?
'--Because it's Turkey,' Maria said, with finality.
'Let's wait a few days, see how things shake out,' I said, lamely uttering the hated curse: 'Cautiously optimistic.'
'Oh, why do you have to say that!' she cried.
I remembered my horoscope, which that morning had advised me to be 'intensely nonchalant about everything.'
'How about, 'intensely nonchalant?' I offered.
'Oh, that's even worse!'
The truth is I don't know how I feel. The dust always settles slowly around me. Perhaps denial has always been a crucial tool in my survival kit. I've been reading 'A History of Constantinople: 1453-1924' and have just finished dealing with the Crimean War and am up to the Young Turks. One thing I have learned, perusing all this history, is that Istanbul from the very beginning has always been a contested city, a place where one day you are the Sultan and the next your strangled, dog-devoured corpse is being hung from the city gates.
Perhaps I can content myself with the words of one Sultan, who once said to a foreign visitor: 'It is true that Constantinope has many problems, but we must be a very fine place to live because everyone is always fighting us to get control of Constantinople.'
Well, they haven't hung us teachers from the city gates yet. That's reason for optimism, cautious or otherwise. It could be in the next few days they'll ship us out to Anatolia, or perhaps come up with a band-aid solution that will keep us on here at least until the end of the first term. Or we'll just get a short and sweet 'Sorry, folks.'
But in the meantime I resolve to enjoy the city, to enjoy the time I've got. Tonight I think I will take the ferry across the Bosphorous to the old Topkapı Palace and Aya Sofya mosque, and afterward head over to Taksim for dinner and several glasses of wine. At any rate, I intend to feel happy and contented this evening. A little worried, yes. Uncertain, slightly. Slightly inebriated, most definitely.
Cautiously optimistic? Never!

Posted by James Tressler at 03:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (721)

The Beer House, just off Taksim Square, is aptly but somehow misleadingly named. Sure, you can order beer -- I recommend the giant-sized two pint glass of Efes -- but with its elegant smooth wood interior and pulsating dance music, and most of all, for the dazzling nightime view of the Bosphorous, Beer House afterward sounds too conventional.
But anyway. Not that it matters. A group of us from the university all met there on Friday night. The journey there was remarkable for just about everyone. I know when I left Ayazğa at six and caught the bus, the traffic was more than usually horrific. It was the kind of traffic you see in films where the end of the world is coming. One bus beside my bus actually broke down or ran out of gas, and streams of people -- with horns blaring from behind -- poured out, some of them getting onto my bus, and when it was full the driver ruthlessly shut the doors and left some people standing by the roadside for one of the other buses.
It was early evening but still warm and humid. Sweat poured off everyone's faces on the bus; the windows were open but they just let in the smell of car exhaust. After about thirty minutes we had moved about a quarter mile and when I looked ahead at an endless sea of buses and cars and taxis, and, more to the point, scores of people beginning to get off the buses and walk, I knew it was hopeless. So I jumped off and joined them.
It was a great feeling actually! There on the highway, walking with all these strangers past increasingly empty buses (I passed one where the driver was taking a nap, can't blame him), and meanwhile all the people in cars were stuck (poor suckers!). Of course arriving at the Metro station was a relief but naturally the trains were face-stuck-to-the window jammed.
As I found out later, everyone was stuck in the traffic. We were supposed to meet at the Beer House at 8 and most people didn't arrive until nearly ten. By then us early starters were on our third or fourth Efes or third or fourth glass of Rakı (a liquorish-like drink similar to pernod).
We finally learned that, yes, there had been an accident. Where? Up on the bridge, someone said.
One of the British teachers, I forget his name, wiped perspiratıon from his forehead.
Are we getting a beer? Right then, I think I need it, he says. We all need it. Not just for the traffic, but because week two at the university, the students,, have been put to bed.
And then it's all marvelous. Everyone has arrived. Some of the girls are up on the dance floor, they invite you to join and you do. And there's the music and beyond the tables, the lights of Asia, and lights of ships in the Bosphorous, wink back at us from far below. The conversation is beery and varied. With one girl we talk about Mehmed II and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and how it has been written that Istanbul was a city made from the beginning for greatness and division. Then I am talking with one of the American teachers who was once bitten by a dog in Turkey and had to get rabies shots. He advised: If bitten by a dog in Turkey go to the doctor immediately.
And then there was dancing and more drinking.
Suddenly it was nearly one. There are twenty of us, maybe more. Fortunately they have given us separate tabs. My waiter remembers me. James, right? We pay and then everyone gathers outside and we walk down several sidestreets, settling on just anywhere really, an outdoor stretch of sidestreet with tables and warm night air and more drinks and talk. I have seen endless streets like this in and around Taksim, tucked away little corners of the city drinks with familiar strangers and remote friends, exotic silences and unexpected attractions, and lots of laughter. But by then it's suddenly all too much. Something snaps, and with it the fragrant magic dissolves. A face registers surprise, anger. No no it's OK, just the beer, it's late ...
And you are soon on the way back toward the square. The Metro is closed and the buses stopped but there are more than enough taxis. The driver says he doesn't know Beykent. But he knows Ayazağa. We get out onto the highway and he talks to his dispatcher in Turkish, getting directions.
We end up sharing navigating duties, passing the lit-up new skyscrapers in the Levent and Malsak financial districts. He asks where I'm from and if I like Turkey. Yes I say but not the traffic.
Oh yes, he says. Traffic! Very bad, he says, speeding along his eyes flicking back to the road. Oh yes, that's right. Speeding along. The traffic actually isn't that bad now -- at 2 am, really, it's not bad at all.

Posted by James Tressler at 03:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (747)

İstanbul is a city of scents; an unfinished city, as though the workmen had left early, leaving stacks of debris and half-constructed, half-demolished buildings and tenements. Actually that's no mere comparison: judging from a lot of the construction in my neighborhood, workmen here have made an art of leaving things till tomorrow, or whenever.
You get used to crowds everywhere, traffic, the smell of exhaust on the main thoroughfares, the humidity that lends an overripe air to the surroundings. Walking on Istiklal Cadessi, with its French-influenced architecture, the endless shops and embassys and cafes, you smell the corn on the cob and chestnuts roasting on grills tended in the streets by men, a smoky scent that drifts among the people and is carried along by the sounds of an ever-changing soundtrack, Madonna pulsates from one shop and standing outside the next a group of young men, one with a guitar, another a kind of sitar and the other a drum, play traditional songs, and further on a young girl bleats melancholy melodies on a reed, while a passerby drops a half-lira coin in her box.
"Turkish time," as many foreigners (ylbanci, as we are called) who live here moan about, is no joke. "If a Turk tells you something will take 30 minutes it really means an hour," one friend tells me. " If he says an hour it might be this afternoon. If he says this afternoon he really means tomorrow. If he says tomorrow forget it!" Of course there is a kind of skewed logic to this. There really aren't bus schedules, for example. But with this traffic, how could there be? You wait and the bus arrives when it arrives. And to the bus driver's credit, you can be sure that he won't shilly-shally once he gets going: Turkish drivers use horns, not brakes.
But all of this, the feeling of congestion, of being submerged in the city, finds some relief when you walk down the hill from Istiklal to the waterfront. There you find the Bosphorous Strait lapping against the piers at Karaköy, and the ferry boats lined up to take passengers past the Golden Horn to the Asian side (the "Old City"). The Galata Bridge, built in the 1970s, and which also connects the two continents, is decidedly unimpressive, a flat, wide rather dismal looking affair that those who have crossed the Golden Gate, the Charles, the Brooklyn and other famous bridges find aesthetically underwhelming.
Still the Galata is worth crossing, for there you come across a sight that arrests you: fishermen, literally hundreds of them, are lined on both sides of the bridge, and on the adjoining piers, their poles waving like so many flags in the gray morning.
"What are they fishing for?" I asked a man who was selling bottled water nearby.
He waved his hand dismissively.
"Only little fish," he said.
The fishermen use anchovies as bait and the smell of raw spoiled fish is everywhere. The bridge is littered everywhere with refuse from the fishermen, discarded bits of fish bones, newspapers, shreds of cardboard. Several men also offer city maps for sale to tourists, they all ask where you are from. "America? Ah. Welcome," one of them says to me.
Later we got on the ferry at Karaköy pier and set off for Kadiköy, across the Bosphorous. The waters were choppy and grey. We went out to the deck and watched as the ferry made its way around the Golden Horn, where on proud hills the miniarets of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque rose toward the clouds. Further on we looked past the breakers out at the Sea of Marmara, where huge tankers and ships waited in line to enter the Strait. It is here, the waters of the ferry churning behind, you have a salt-sprayed, windy panoramic view.
It has been often said that Istanbul is a city best seen from above, and I don't argue with that, but at times I would put my money here, on a ferry steaming up the Bosphorous, the fishermen at the bridge growing fainter and fainter, and you feel as though you were on a journey anywhere, into the Orient, which to some extent you are -- Asia Minor, as it is also called. But for the moment, as the ferry slows and waits for clearance to dock, you are suspended between worlds, and that suspension, that unfinished quality, resolves into -- into what? Into a vast murky mosaic, an overgrown jungle that seems to have sprung up from the hills. Of course that is somewhat myopic and valentine way of putting it. If my Prague journals are any indication, I am sure in a few days, weeks, months, that portrait will be revised.
After all, I'm still getting used to Turkish time.

Posted by James Tressler at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (715)