KEWDA

It doesn't happen very often but this weekend I was watching Blogger. I was waiting for a piece I wrote to be published on the Kingdom of the Expat Wives Detective Agency. I checked in a Friday afternoon but couldn't get through to Blogger. Didn't think much about it and checked again on Saturday to find that Blogger has been blocked by Diyarbakir Criminal Court. The whole website and all the blogs it hosts including my own. Why it has been blocked has been rumoured to be illegal activities, slander against creationists and even broadcasting live football matches, but nothing is definite.


I've managed to get around the block. It's a DNS ban enforced by TTNet, the main internet provider here in Turkey. Blogger joins RichardDawkins.net, Youtube, and over a thousand other websites. Wordpress was blocked last year thoug it has been reopened now, so moving the blog is not a solution.


Anyway here's the link to the first part of the mystery I wrote Rear Window - Turkish Style

Out of Date

I don't get downtown that regularly but when I do, I inevitably call into the newsagents near the clock tower. He stocks a few English-language newspapers and a small selection of English books. So pausing briefly in the chill wind yesterday I made the snap decision to choose Turkish Daily News over Today's Zaman. TDN is the oldest English language daily in Turkey with 46 years of publishing behind it. They recently published 'Gold Fever in Turkey', my article about the hypocrisy between gold consumption and mining in Turkey.

Once inside I browsed the books, while trying to keep my toddler from pulling everything off the shelves. He took a great liking to 'Galatasaray Destani' and insisted on trying to read three of them at once. I grabbed a book and headed to the counter where I paid, but only after having bought Newsweek too. With them under your hand at the counter, it's impossible to leave without picking one up, especially as you wait while the newsagent carefully puts a bookmark into the book you buy.

So after picking up the preschooler, waiting for DH to finish work, getting home, bringing in the laundry, lighting the fire, fixing the dinner, eating the dinner and making the tea, I finally got to look at the newspaper.

First thing that struck me was the top left corner 'Flat transition from page to big screen', a review of 'Love in the Time of Cholera'; I'm sure I read about that recently. Skimmed the main headline, 'Childhood not Child's Play'; they're always putting headlines about the social make up of the country, only last week there was a poll about the middle-class. Anyway I continued through the paper, skimming here, reading there until I got to David Judson's editorial about the paper's success since they moved their base to Istanbul last year. Half way down the first column I realise he's talking about Nov 20 being the day of their big move. Now very briefly the thought crosses my mind that they've published the editorial on the wrong day; Judson in the paragraph previous admits to publishing a photo of Imran Khan, who turned out not to be. But no, they couldn't make a mistake that big, could they?

No, they couldn't. It took me until page 14 but I finally figured out that I'm reading Tuesday's paper having bought it on Wednesday! Not only that but I had read Tuesday's paper online, hence why that review seemed so familiar. And when I looked at the bookmark the newsagent had given me, it had a calender from 2006 on the back! Talk about feeling the eejit!

So I may stick to reading the paper online from now on, though I can't resist the smell of newspaper ink and cannot quell the hope that one day I'll find a paper like the Irish Times in my local newsagent.

Expats in cyberspace

A few years ago I read an article asking for submissions for 'Tales from the Expat Harem'. It had been written directly to me, regardless of it being published in a national newspaper. Within a week I wrote a piece and sent it in. It was rejected, but Anastasia Ashman suggested I come up with something different.

After several rounds of editing and several months of delays, the book was published in Turkey in September 2005. 'Tales from the Expat Harem - Foreign Women in Modern Turkey' edited by Anastasia Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen was simultaneously published in Turkish by Dogan Kitap. In February 2006 Seal Press published the American edition.

Through the whole process I never met either of the editors or any of the other contributors. I couldn't make it to Istanbul for the book launch or any of the signings for personal reasons. But we still produced a book together!