Sun. Feb. 5  4:30 pm    TRT is airing their Tadim program which features moi and Molly’s Cafe. I hope you can catch it. If they send me a clip I will put it on Facebook.

Fri. Feb. 10   7:30 pm   Get warm from the inside out with another Sri Lanka curry night. Ranit will prepare a variety of curries, rice, and dessert. If you missed the last one, get in on this, as it has been very popular. 40 lira, of which 10 lira goes to Ranit. Reservation only.

Sat. Feb. 11   9 to 11 pm   Ali Agca and Yesim Pekiner will offer us mellow jazz. 10 lira for the music.

Ali Agca is a jazz guitarist who discovered his personal style while earning his diploma in Professional Music from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.  He has lived and performed in Germany, England, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and the United States.  His delicate style and fretboard strumming techniques are influenced by jazz guitar greats like Pat Martino, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall, to name a few.  Ali’s music has echoes of classical Turkish music, with blues and rock overtones.  In Turkey, Ali launched the Turkish branch of the Berklee Alumni Group and is the coordinator, hosting international jazz musicians and jazz students from the U.S. who come to perform in Turkey. He is one of the coordinators of Berklee’s audition program in Turkey.  He has been a guitar soloist at the Movenpick and Ritz Carlton Hotels in Istanbul, and his guitar-bass duo performed regularly at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sultanahmet.  His jazz groups perform numerous gigs in Istanbul’s jazz clubs, including Nardis, Naima, Alt, 60 Square Meters, and Atolye.  

Yeşim Pekiner is a jazz vocalist who performs in Istanbul’s top jazz clubs, including the Istanbul Jazz Center (JC’s), Nardis Jazz Club, Taksim Eliteworld Hotel (Jazz Company), Santral Istanbul Tamirane, Indigo Alt, Eylül Bar and more.  Performing with leading Turkish jazz musicians such as Emre Tukur, Kürşad Deniz, Nilüfer Verdi, İmer Demirer, Baran Say, Erdal Akyol, Sarp Maden, Uraz Kıvaner, Eylül Biçer, Siney Yılmaz, Volkan Topakoğlu, Meriç Demirkol, Selim Selçuk, Ahmet Türkmenoğlu, Onur Alatan, Derin Bayhan. She recently joined Ali Ağca’s jazz group, which is known for bluesy jazz, Ali’s original compositions, along with Yeşim’s favorite romantic jazz standards.  Yesim’s colorful and lively voice extends from lower to higher tunes expressing her “joie de vivre” in swing, cha cha and samba as well as softness and romance in ballad and bossa songs.

Tues. Feb. 14    7 to 10 pm   Singles Valentineless Evening. No Valentine? Stop by for red drinks and food and perhaps you will meet someone…

Sat. Feb. 18   4:30 pm   Poetry! Rebecca Farivar and Julie Doxsee.

Rebecca Farivar is the author of Correct Animal (Octopus Books) and chapbook American Lit (Dancing Girl Press). Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, 6×6, Octopus Magazine, cold-drill, and elsewhere. A California native, she currently lives in Bonn, Germany.

Julie Doxsee is the Canadian-American author of three books of poetry: The Next Monsters (Black Ocean, forthcoming 2013), Objects for a Fog Death (Black Ocean, 2010), and Undersleep (Octopus Books, 2008). She holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver (2007) and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002). After several visits to Turkey over the years, in 2007 she moved to Istanbul, where she teaches academic writing, creative writing, and literature courses at Koç University.

Sat. Feb. 18  9 to 11 pm  Rock ‘n’ Roll and Blues classics unplugged! ‘The Untouchables Project – Goes Acoustic’ Featuring Canadian guitarist George Wabisca on acoustic guitar and vocals accompanied by Baris Buran on percussion and Cihan Guvenc on the upright bass. Your favourite classics from the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. 10 lira for the music.

Fri. Feb. 24  7:30 pm Fondue dinner. Mmm, hot sticky fragrant cheese fondue, accompanied by bread and vegies to dip, as well as salad and dessert. 35 lira, reservation required.

Sat. Feb. 25   9 to 11 pm   Alcala will play acoustic latin, flamenco and jazz. 10 lira for the music. 

See you soon at Molly’s Cafe!

When I first came to Turkey in 1998, inflation was running at about 80%. Prices seemed to go up daily. Inflation is way down now, but prices are still going up, though more slowly. Since I buy in quantities for the café, I can really see how they are increasing. I recently bought filter coffee and was shocked to see that it had gone up yet again. I made me curious to see how other prices had gone up in the past year.

Here are some examples:

coffee almost 25%

eggs 50%

milk almost 70%

cheese 20%

flour 15%

walnuts 30%

cocoa 110%

green peppers 100%

canned tuna 30%

beer 20%

I shop carefully, but even so, local and world events make prices go up. For example, cocoa is very expensive now because of the problems in Ivory Coast. Green peppers are expensive because they no longer come from Syria in the winter. Milk products are generally a little more expensive in the winter, but still they are more expensive than last winter. Some things have higher taxes. And of course now there is an economic crisis and the dollar to the lira is very high.

I shop very carefully and over these past few years I have learned where to get the best prices at my own convenience. I shop every few weeks at Tahtakale for coffee, teas, herbs, cheeses and other things. I order several things from a company that delivers (so much better than hauling things myself!). Some people who have tried to sell things to me are shocked when I tell them that I can find the same thing cheaper at Dia, the local supermarket. Hey, bub, I know the prices! I buy produce from the local seller, which is not always cheaper, but I don’t have time to go to the Sunday market and those savings are wiped out by the taxi ride back anyway.

However, I think when people eat at Molly’s Café, they still get their money’s worth. They get a full plate of home cooked food and don’t leave hungry! I try to keep the prices as low as I can, but little by little they too are creeping up. Let’s hope the world calms down soon!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

This will be short, because for the first month of the new year, there will be no special events at Molly’s Café I am going to visit my kids in Texas for two weeks and then will be dealing with jet lag for a while when I get back, so stay tuned for February!

In the meantime, the café will be open under the able stewardship of my valued helper, Belgin. While I am gone there will be limited hours and a slightly limited menu, but other than that, it will be the warm friendly place that it always is.

I wish you all a very good 2012. I wish everyone peace, happiness, and prosperity.

Some religious people say a man can beat his wife according to the Koran or the Bible or whatever, but of course there are many interpretations of this. Mostly it is a crime and in Turkey women in particular are working on making it much more of a crime.

Many years ago in the U.S. I came across a short guy trying to hit a girl. I am tallish and I was wearing cowboy boots, so I yelled at him, grabbed her, and we locked ourselves in a nearby phone booth. He yelled and threatened me, but finally he went away and we got out of the phone booth.

Last night I was reminded of this because I was awakened at 12:30 am by yelling upstairs. The girl was crying and the man was shouting. I heard running and thumping. I could not just ignore it. It would have been impossible to just try to go back to sleep. Finally, I got up, grabbed my keys, and went upstairs. I leaned on their doorbell and banged on their door. I was furious. Two men came to the door, one a young man with a typical Turkish moustache and the other a sort of nerdy guy with glasses and long hair. He jumped in front of the door and said ‘I am here.’ The whole exchange was in English because I have a hard time being angry in Turkish. I told them they if they did not stop that I would call the fucking police. And more, of course. By then the guy who lives across the hall had opened his door. Why had he not tried to do anything to stop it? He must have heard it all even more than I could. So many neighbours  try to ignore things like this. And really, it is a dilemma, because these are neighbours in their own private space. However, when there is violence, someone must act. It was a risk because the man could have attacked me– although I am sure that the spectre of a tousled large middle-aged woman was not a vision that would incline someone to attack. I went back to my flat and things calmed down. It was very upsetting to me and I am so sorry for the girl, who has had less noisy fights in the past.

What would you have done? Grumble, bitch, mutter? Go upstairs and confront?

One book that came into my hands recently was the Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This is a really thick book– 1500 pages. I have learned that there are three groups of people related to this: those who have never heard of it, those who have read it (a small group), and those who have started it and given up. I am in the last group. I found it really hard to follow and I decided it was too hard work to keep on with it. It’s in the café if you want to be in one of the last two groups.

I also read Married to a Bedouin by Marguerite van Geldermalsen. I have never been to Petra, though it is certainly on my list, and it was interesting to read about it when it was occupied by real people. The book is not scintillating reading and the friend who gave it to me was disappointed that it didn’t get into how they produced their three children, but it was a nice story of intercultural love. It is hard to image how a woman from New Zealand could meet and marry into a Bedouin tribe, as the differences would be immense. However, she did this and loved her husband for the 30 years they were married, until he died.

A customer gave me a copy of Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. It was a combination of love or infatuation, science fiction, and prophecy. He wrote about all the young people who communicated with each other with their apparats with occasional verballing and constant online shopping for see-through clothes, among other things. The story is set in a time when the U.S. is being taken over financially by the Chinese and then is cut up into pieces by other countries as well, including Norway. Part of the story talks about protesters occupying a park in New York City. Sounds familiar? This book was published last year! The protagonist, Lenny, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, falls in love with Eunice, daughter of Christian Korean immigrants. It is told through Lenny’s diaries and Eunice’s email/blogs. I found it amazing because now the U.S. is in financial trouble and it and Europe on going on bended knees to beg the Chinese for bailouts. The man who gave me the book is a banker, and he commented that sometimes novelists are more predictive of the future than economists. Kind of scary! It is a pretty good story but mostly it was interesting for how it presents a possible future of even more limited relationships.

The same person brought me a copy of The Gaze of the the Gazelle by Arash Hejazi. This book has actually not been published yet and this was an uncorrected proof, so the teacher in me wanted to get out my red pen. However, it was a readable piece about growing up in Iran. Now Hejazi is in exile from his beloved country, which the reader understands, as he is very outspoken about the lies and disappointments that occurred and still occur in that country. The story was set off by the death of a young girl, Neda, who died in his arms after being shot by an undercover Islamist revolutionary guard. His friend shot a video of the death even through his horror and they were able to get it out to YouTube, where it went across the world. It was an interesting read and such a pity that someone who loves his country and his people had to leave it.

Tales from the Expat Harem, edited by Anastasia Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen has been around for a few years, but I just recently read it. I found the writing to be rather self-conscious and I really dislike the title. I know it is good for marketing, but it just feeds into the misconceptions that many people have of the harem in Turkey. In fact, the tales are nothing like the misconceptions and often are heartfelt stories. I am acquainted with quite a few of the women in the book and was more interested in the stories for that reason. Especially the stories of cross-cultural relationships are important, as no matter where a couple lives, the difficulties of marriage are affected even more by having to deal with different cultures and possibly religions. It is worth reading, but not a great work of art.

Now I am on a popcorn book phase. One I read recently is Robert Goddard’s Caught in the Light. A photographer, Ian Jarrett, meets a mysterious woman in Vienna and falls in love (or obsession). He goes back to England, gets out of an already rocky marriage, and finds this woman has a convoluted personality which also involves identification with a woman from the early 1800s who actually invented photography. Along the way there are some murders, a lot of clues for a wild goose chase, and a sort of open ending. It’s a good story and satisfying because you don’t have to think about it much– good for bedtime reading.

All the Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson was my next book. It was interesting but not gripping. It involved the murder suicide of a gay couple. It turned out that the man who was murdered was a spy and so MI6 was involved in all their sneaky ways. It was a good story but it didn’t make me hungry to read more by this author.

A book that I started some time ago and then lent out came back to me, so I finally finished it. This was Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. It was published in 1990, so some of the recent references are a little dated, but as usual Bryson takes a complete and somewhat humourous approach to various issues of language, including swearing and word play. I like reading about language, so I enjoyed it, and I think that teachers of English should also read it to give more background to why English is the way it is.

Finally for now, I read The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. I had read a couple of other books by her, and this one has quite a different topic and a different format. An American woman is asked to write a report for a publisher about a book and is pulled into the book by its topic and by its writer. Shafak’s book alternates between various characters in the book within the book and Ella. It was an interesting look at the Sufi dervish Shams of Tabriz, who became the companion of Rumi but was killed by jealous people. The whole thing makes Ella look at love in her life as a wife and mother. The friend who gave me the book said she could not get into it, but I really enjoyed the stories in it and highly recommend it.

That’s all for now folks! Come by and get some books for your winter reading.

For days there were news reports, telethons, and calls for donations. Then there was another 5.2 earthquake, which killed more people who had stayed in buildings that were supposedly safe, including a couple of hotels housing aid workers and journalists. More people died.

At first the Turkish government did not accept offers of help from other countries, but soon it was clear that they could not deal with the disaster themselves. At one point the government was accused of not accepting aid from Israel because of the recent political conflicts, but the government denied this, as at that moment they were not accepting aid from any countries. Finally the government accepted tents and prefab buildings, among other kinds of help. People who had been staying on the streets at least had some shelter. Individuals sent clothing and blankets, but even this turned out to be controversial, as some sent sticks to signal their nationalistic prejudices against the Kurds. Much of the clothing was too old to be usable.

Then it started to snow. This has been the coldest November in years and now the people staying in the summer tents are literally freezing. At least one child has died. Others have suffered from poisoning from the coal or kerosene heaters. Those who have money have started to leave Van for other cities, especially Diyarbakir, where many have relatives. However, one person reported that the rents there had gone up 30%, with landlords taking advantage of the demand.

I watched all this wondering how I could help. I don’t send clothing, as years ago I donated clothing after a hurricane hit Florida and then saw on the news a huge mountain of clothing being bulldozed because the people in charge could not deal with it.

Then an old friend sent me a message. He had worked here in Istanbul for several years as a waiter to save money to buy a home for him and his family. In the earthquake they had lost their home and everything in it and of course he had no work. He asked me for help. I sent him some money and when I messaged him to check that it got there, he wrote back to say that yet another earthquake had happened and he was in the hospital. He wants to get his family out of Van, to Ankara or Gaziantep.

I posted on Facebook that people could come to the café to make donations to this real family. At a dinner the other night, the donation box grew by a total of 10 lira and change. Very few people have donated and I am very disappointed. Even my refugee cleaner donated a little something. I have some ideas for making the donation pot grow, but I am sorry that people have sort of forgotten the people who are still suffering from this disaster.

If I have guilted you into giving, please stop by the café and donate!

a kurdish woman, gulsah,  has brought in a lot of her handmade items, including a couple of great prayer rugs, which are actually embroidered on cotton.  she has also brought in some beaded headscarves, many of which have sold, but there are still more.

a friend from cairo brought a couple of huge trays known there as turkish ware.  these are old trays that have been painted over.  this work takes two weeks, so they are not cheap– 1000 lira.  they can be used as tables if you get the under piece (available in eminonu). they are really beautiful pieces, so come check them out. 

in addition, some friends have set up their stands in my shop.  you can buy organic olive oil from batu’s family’s olive orchard.  you can also buy some sweet baby things from margaret rose.  and, cynthia’s handmade pottery is very nice.  

Calendars are hard to find this early, but there are some beautiful calendars for sale here by jennifer scales for 25 lira.

and of course elif and vefa’s old hammam shop has wonderful soaps, peshtemals, kitchen textiles, bedroom textiles, organic food products, and interesting accessories.

these photos don’t do these things justice, so stop by and see for yourself!