breakfast during the month of reflection

i'm going to start all over- i had begun with a long, boring introduction about how easy it was to get to my nice apartment and how this trip, as a research trip rather than even partially a pleasure trip deserves a different kind of blog. i had a little bit on how Ramadan was the perfect month for reflection and for a blog which tries to focus more on how my academic interests intersect with the current situation in the region and world. it's not that such an introduction would be irrelevant, it's more that i just did it in two sentences because yesterday was already full of exactly those things on which i hope to focus. and having already decided on the title for the blog on the plane, i was surprised by how appropriate the title became. so, let me jump right in:

"and how is it in california, is there a revolution there?"
says one of the 3 syrians living with me in the apartment where i am renting a room. thinking about the 'debt ceiling crisis,' unemployment in my home county, attacks on (public) education, and a host of other events and circumstances that deserve a more radical response, hell any kind of response, i am forced to admit, that, no, there is nothing of the sort. but, but, i respond, we did have a little excitement in wisconsin, where the governor abused his power during a union-busting attempt. but 'from tahrir to madison' lost its steam quite some time ago, and while the so-called 'arab spring' has mostly faded from public attention in the united states, i was to spend my evening with 5 syrians who would occasionally translate dark humor about the state of affairs in their country from arabic to english for my benefit.

"in half an hour we will have breakfast, and you will join us."
"breakfast?"
"well, since we are fasting it is the first meal of the day, so we call it breakfast"
used to spending my time with westerners and leftie-type young secular turks, i hadn't really expected the title of my blog to be quite so accurate. Ramadan (Ramazan in turkish), began on August 1st, the day of my plane trip, and ends on August 29th, just a couple days before i return to new york. so while i found it an appropriate title for my blog, especially given that various turkish politicians have used Ramadan as part of the rhetoric against syria's attacks on its own citizens, i can't say i actually planned on breaking fast with practicing Muslims, let alone from syria. in the back of my mind, i thought about the possibility of a trip to the southeast which i knew i wouldn't actually take. instead, i found myself in an apartment in istanbul with 5 syrians who were breaking the fast.

"one of my friends was just killed in syria."
"...i'm sorry..."
"he's not the first i've lost."
and how does one respond to this? the use of such a level of force against protesters by the united states government is virtually unthinkable. sure, there are beatings, and more subtle types of violence, but hundreds dead? and the idealistic leftist from california falls silent. even listening is hard. the 5 syrians sit around the table telling stories and joking. what does one do? what does one so removed do? what kind of stories move us? what does it mean to joke in the face of death and violence? later that evening, the same young man mentioned that he had seen not only others deaths, but his own, as bullets buzzed past his head. democratic ideals and protests on the street which have faded from us news sources... and death.

"i met a turkish journalist yesterday, and asked her why the turkish media wasn't covering the events in syria. she told me there weren't any syrians around to talk to."
the media seems to play such a huge role in the way we view events, so what happens when the media chooses not to cover certain events? is mobilization the point of covering such events? the young woman was convinced there was a 'political' point to the lack of coverage in turkish media. i am reminded of the ban against publishing photos of dead soldiers and caskets in the us.

so, with a few statements from those i have met, i begin mostly with questions. my historical and theoretical readings with come to bear on my further posts. i am in no way an expert, certainly not on the regional events and politics which will motivate many of my posts. i hope those who i know and who know more than i will correct my misinterpretations and wrongheaded ideas about those things i will touch upon.
i look forward to anyone's comments as i attempt to write about some of the questions i have posed and further questions to come, and to frame some of them in the context of my own work. as the comments about syrian violence during Ramadan suggest, my own narrow expertise should be of some use in thinking about the current situation. while what i experience here in istanbul will be the impetus for many of these posts and reflections, i expect that this blog will look fundamentally different from my older travel blogs. and i hope that some will join me in thinking about my experiences and the events at large.

oh, i began reading through the Qur'an today, although fasting when there is so much manti to be eaten sounds much more difficult.

"God desires your well-being, not your discomfort. He desires you to fast the whole month so that you may magnify God and render thanks to Him for giving you His guidance."
-from the Qur'an, Sura Al-Baqara, 'The Calf'

welcome to "ramazan in istanbul, after the spring"