The first days

I flew in to the city after a brief week of field research in Tbilisi, which formed a transitional bubble of searing heat to finally slough off the long northern winter. It's only the beginning of May, and already the blood is circulating close to the surface of my skin, thickening my fingers. Being too hot is thrumming limbs spatchcocked against cool surfaces, and is infinitely preferable to the dense knotting of the body against the miserable stabbings of cold air. We are not just eyes, but bodies in space, and memories are collected and written here.

So far, of course, the city is fragments -- a blue hotel room, a few streets, a supermarket, an Atatürk frieze, jostling boys, the humiliation of an absolute inability to communicate with anyone without the intervention of a hesitant English speaker. There are not very many of these, as I was warned, and so I wonder about the possibilities of reaching out to, speaking with, and working with communities over the next month. I'm trying to cram phrases in parallel languages.

On my first morning I was taken for a traditional many-plated breakfast in Hasan Paşa Hanı, the only way to mark an entrance to the city.



Alongside delicious bog-thick turkish coffee, an investment in a calm five minute wait, I mourn the contagious ubiquity of Nescafe Red.