I have a new moustache. It's excellent.

With the run up to the Turkish elections and in celebration of the recent opening of the Nationalist Party branch in my neighbourhood, I thought I'd add a touch more style to my look.

Men are winking at me a lot more often out in the street. In broad daylight. And in view of their wives.

Pistachios and sugar and more pistachios and more sugar.

Jen eats more than her fair share of the kadayıf.

My fondest memories of my grandmother, and there are many, revolve around sweet food. Back in the days before some idiot invented nutrition, when most parents understood that a balanced diet was all that was need to spare a child from obesity and dieticians were thought of with the same abhorrence as African dictators, my grandmother would all but force feed me unending sickly sweet chunks of shortbread topped with glistening red glacé cherry. How I never ended up with a higher Body Mass Index score is anyone’s guess but I suppose I’ll have to thank genetics and the people who invented that particular branch of science.

And so we come to Gaziantep, clearly the sweet capital of the world. What a French bakery might require in sugar for a month’s worth of pain au chocolat goes into the making of a single tray of baklava. Dentistry must be profitable in this town.

As with all places in this part of the world, there’s plenty of history to be had. Unfortunately, we weren’t really up for it in the heat and realized that in fact we’d spent the entirety of the previous day mooching about Urfa during the hottest parts of the day. It had taken its toll. We wandered about languidly in the heat, usually in search more of shade and fresh orange juice than the ethnographic museum, at which we conveniently arrived ten minutes after it had closed.

Gaziantep was a break from Urfa’s heat and surliness, and it did feel good to be back in what we felt Turkey ought to be like. The moustaches were friendlier, the heat less draining and the kebabs forever ubiquitous.

Now it was time to leave the planet altogether and head for the wonderful landscapes of Cappadocia.

Not so much fun

The only living creatures in Urfa able to find respite from the heat.

Please, staring like that is just rude.

Şanlıurfa or its shortened form Urfa as most Turks call it, lies several hour’s drive directly west of Mardin. Though as far as the culture spectrometer reads, it’s indeed quite a lot further away. Urfa is Arab, not Turk. Geography and borders confused us into thinking we were holidaying firmly in the Turkish heartland, but only ubiquitous kebabs and lack of vegetarian food remained the same. Urfa, or Şanlıurfa as I insisted on calling it, was a bit disconcerting. Well, not for me, but for Jen, because she’s a woman, and often it’s a man’s world.

Mardin had been as warm as and welcoming as the sun’s rays which enveloped the city. Therefore, upon arrival we were disappointed to be in the territory of people who stare, furrow brows and ruffle bushy moustaches unfavourably in our general direction. Urfa was clearly an Arab town and at times like this I’m glad to be a man, although some of you who know me personally might actually dispute that.

the very latest in safety fencing for wet areas.

For females travelling among the Arabs lands, it can’t be all inane giggles and laughter. Since I love getting attention I often forget that for others there is an unwanted variety of it that makes them feel uncomfortable, out of place, and can push limits of cultural sensitivity. A glance is fine, because yes, we are probably exotic to you because yes, you are certainly exotic to us. Even an extended that’s-the-first-time-I’ve-seen-a-woman
-with-two-legs-since-those-two-blonde-
Dutch-women-rode-through-here-on-bicycles
-wearing-little-else-but-their-jewellery kind of look is not discomforting for me. However, an outright thirteen second stare with fly-entering-mouth expression is, in my opinion, a bit, you know, villager. And more truthfully, it ain’t the staring that concerns me, rather the accompanying body language, as though someone had just swung a Gorgon head through their line of vision. I’d like to think my beauty has that effect on people, that an Arab man with an unkempt eyebrow and incongruously jet-black moustache be so taken aback by my svelte form for a man in his late thirties that he is rendered awestruck. But I think not. Then again, the Arabs do have a reputation for boys, but a boy I no longer am. I simply act like one.

Do you look this good in a tea towel? I doubt it.

So, I’m not really sure how women cope with the lingering, sometimes predatory I’d-like-to-forcibly-exchange-you-for-my-wife look, but I personally recommend you employ the very handy and usually ineffectual stare-off. We’ve all done it. All of us. Truth be known, I like a challenge. I can’t compete in the moustache stakes and Allah has blessed me with two distinctly separate and non-furrowing eyebrows, but I can mimic disdain as well as any South Sydney City Council public servant, or for sheer vehemence, a Woolhara retail sales assistant. (Sydney customer service and the appalling standards of it accepted by the city’s population are a continual bugbear and sense of bitter humour for me, but I digress). Suffice it to say that our time in Urfa was not the Wilkommen Bienvenue and Hoş Geldiniz diagonally stencilled in stark baby blue Comic Sans font (another pet hate) on the side of our ailing inter-city bus.

Urfa is birth place to Abraham, father of the Arabs and devoted vandal of idols. He also tinkered with human sacrifice but as you well know, thought better of it at the last minute, substituting a ram for his son. As the son I actually would’ve been feeling a little rankled. I mean, it’s hardly a gesture of equivalent stature. Ram for son. How about son for ten kilos of gold? How about no sacrifice at all? Maybe just going without dessert for a week? That particular Koranic and Biblical scene will no doubt be familiar to you as every painter worth his mettle from Giotto to Ruben, passing by Caravaggio and countless other have depicted it in oils on canvas. If you haven’t seen it, pop along to your local major European capital city art museum and have a peek. Along with Judith making Holophene into two distinct pieces, it’s a winning combination. Isaac, the goat, Dad and his big sharp knife. Whoever believes video games are violent for children should not at the same time be a literal reader of the Old Testament. If so, your hypocrisy starts here. Maybe time to rework your ideas. Oops, more digression.

Urfa attracts serious pilgrims and though I write like a prat I am respectful and sensitive to other cultures. I’m especially sensitive to woman wearing all-encompassing black shrouds in thirty-seven degree heat. Thank you Saudi Arabia. The sooner you deplete you petroleum sources, the sooner you will be reduced to the pointless cultural backwater that you deserve to be. May your wells run dry that your women may revolt and the world be free of your nefarious cultural influence.

I like the word pilgrimage because the medial syllable is grim. Apt. Pilgrims are thus. People stared and wandered ever so poignantly and unsmilingly about two wonderfully enigmatic pools abundantly brimming with plump carp, the fish apparently the descendents of logs on a pyre built to punish Abraham. Legend dictates to us that King Nimrod, riled by Abraham’s idol-breaking incursion into the temple, broke from the tradition of crucifixion and creatively treated the latter to a Joan of Arc form of death. Extreme heat. Fortunately for Abraham, at the last minute and not unlike his own timing with human sacrifice, God entered the scene turning the logs into fish and scorching flames into water. I like a good legend and I especially like a good piece of architecture that has grown up around it in the following centuries. Jen and I wandered about too in the stifling heat, too seriously for my liking but then this was not a place for mixing fun and worship.

I feel, while we both experienced something unusual, we were glad to be heading out the following day. And with all the thousands of pilgrims in town, how is it you can only get kebabs? I’m a little let down by all of this. All that meat makes you constipated. Perhaps I’ll end here.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Methinks rather spectacular. Checkin' out what the Syrians are up to from high up.

There are very few places left on the planet that allow the imagination to soar, that bedazzle the senses and that truly transport you to another world. I like these kind of places.

Mardin, a hilltop city perched high on a flat-top hill and overlooking Syria, is simply beautiful. If you've visited magical Jaisalmer in India, and even if you haven't, then throw together the pictures that your mind conjures up of the Middle East (or northern India). Swirling arabesques, pointed arches, elegant minarets, shaded tea gardens, moustachioed men, countless children, cobble-stone stairways leading to more cobble-stone stairways, donkeys, wailing Arab music, massive hewn stone, hummus, eggplant, olive oil, the odd madresse or two, and soak the whole in a bath of golden light from a cloudless sky with a cool breeze sweeping across recently reaped wheat fields. And you have Mardin.

Once you veer off from main square of Cumhuriyet Meydanı, you leave behind the already slow pace of a city far from the bustle and grime of Istanbul and fall under the spell of the Middle East proper. Jenny and I spent the entire day strolling aimlessly throughout the town, walking perhaps ten kilometres in no particular direction, backtracking across narrow lanes of walled houses where fig and apricot tress stood listlessly under the burden of ripening fruit, children played among themselves and women sat chatting in doorways.

Kurds are an affable bunch. Like the rest of the people inhabiting the giant swathe of lands from Lahore to Cairo, we were treated to smiling and quizzical looks at every step. These men have the best moustaches in the world and also like most of the Middle East any woman not of those parts invites some general interest. Well, stares actually. Personally, I love getting attention, in fact, I clamour for it, so I was pleased that Jen took it all in her stride and wasn't bothered at the fact I probably could have sold her for a few dozen donkeys. Which I would never have done because who else would listen to my daily monologue?

The newly-opened Antik Tatlıdede Butık Otel. You ought see the view in the other direction too...

We were invited into the home of Memur Bey who introduced us to his family and showed us the vaulted ceiling of his wonderful 400-year-old home while his wife, mother of seventeen children, offered us the perfectly sickly sweet lemonade that I've developed a taste for recently.

Mardin, for the time being, is not on the tourist map. The fighting of the last decade between the fairly angry Turkish government forces and some fairly angry Kurds has all but scared off most intrepid visitors but it's a town that is truly remarkable for the friendliness of it's inhabitants. As the sun sets, Mardin is among a handful of cities that can truly be called gorgeous. As the late afternoon sun descends stone walls glow yellow-orange and fields stretching down the hillside and into Syria turn a golden shade of brown. Nice postcard stuff.

The interior of the very recently restored Sultan Isa Medresesi.

Completely unrelated to this spiel is that Jen called me a chatterbox today. Well, I think that's what she said but I couldn't hear her properly as I was in fact talking at the time. I make no apologies, I have many varied and interesting things to say. Besides, I may talk a lot but she can certainly eat for someone with such a petite frame. A course of action she may later come to regret when we hit the Aegean coast in a week or so, you with me?

Jenny starts to eat everything at once and doesn't seem to care that she clearly ate the greater share of the dishes. Likewise for the dessert. I barely got a bite.

After hours of wandering we settled onto a terrace overlooking the cropped wheat fields and ordered up big. Sebzeli patlıcan salatası, kurtulumuş domates salatası, humus, zeytinyağlı yaprak dolması and muammara, followed by irmik helvası. Just think the best of Mediterranean food with a dash of the Middle East. Eggplant, tomatoes, olive oil... you know the drill.

The stars came out and we got sleepy. It has been a very good day indeed. Jen went to bed with a full stomach and I didn't. Tomorrow we have to catch a bus and I don't like buses.

It's so hot I think I might actually die

Relaxing at home on another gorgeous day in my life, waiting for a terrorist attack. Note the fab new sandals.

According to one of my all-time favourite websites that displays time-zones and 7-day meteorology forecasts for every inhabited village across the globe, it is currently 34 degrees in my fair city. Which, in my fair opinion, is probably misinformation. I am currently on the balcony, trying to stay out of the cleaning lady's way, watching the world go by and wondering how strong the heat actually has to be before it can bleach the colour out of an entire city.

Today, Istanbul is white-hot. I'm dressed in enough clothes to appear modest and I'm drenched in my own sweat. I'm barely even moving and yet a hitherto undiscovered delta is forming at the base of my feet. The clear gain here is weight loss: at current speed I anticipate losing approximately 30% of my body mass between now and three pm, and since you can never be too rich of too thin things are certainly looking up for me in one aspect of my life. Anyway, the sun has changed my city into something reminiscent of a Turner canvas during a particularly abstract and mad painting frenzy. The contour and outlines of buildings and people have morphed into a swirling haze of pastels and if I didn't know already know the difference between the ground and the sky I might well get confused.

Blood suckers, and possibly a young terrorist.

So I'm hot and bothered but extremely excited since in a few hours I will haul myself off to the airport to greet a dear friend from home who I haven't seen in almost two-and-a-half years. And since it's over a year since anyone from Australia came to visit me, I'm feeling mighty joyful. 'Joyful' is a in fact I word whose existence I refuse to accept but that is otherwise over-employed by every Turk learning English. I have absolutely no idea in which module of which chapter of which poorly written English Language text book this particular vocabulary item is to be found but it's not a lexical chunk that I ever choose to use. I mean, call me old-fashioned, but when was the last time you even used the mother-ship word 'joy' in a conversation? Can't remember, can you?

Truth be known, the last time you saw this word was on a Christmas card sent to you by someone you inadvertently forgot to send a Christmas card to and it was already too late to send one without them understanding that in fact you had perhaps intentionally left them off your Christmas card list. So 'joy' and its derivative may be an adequate simile to 'happy' and the less-easy-to-use 'enjoyable', but in my book it a word to be avoided at all cost on the basis that it reminds me of defect Christmas card lists and the overwhelming Catholic guilt I feel on a daily basis as a non-practising Protestant. In another life I might have started an Inquisition against writers of English as a Foreign Language publications who choose to include words in vocabulary lists that no intelligent living English speaker would ever use outside of a church pew.

Anyway, Jenny's arrival will shortly inject an enormous amount of joy into my life and I'm sure she won't be too tired. It'll be thirty-six hours since she passed through Melbourne customs but hey, she's clearly here to see the sights.

I'm allowing ten minutes to collect luggage, another three to acclimatise to intense heat and then the necessary half-day to understand that yes, these people don't drive very carefully.

People who claim to be my friends/harem, but who may well be guerilla leaders.

(Can you believe the woman upstairs just chose this moment to beat the dust out of her rugs over my frickin' head on the balcony upstairs? I feel even better now that a layer of the filthy muck, which according to another interesting website I visit is principally composed of dead human skin, has adhered so quickly to my sweat-streaked skin and given me an appearance of those man might have spent the morning mining chalk. There is also someone making wheezing panting noises upstairs but I've decided he's probably lifting weights because that would be the natural thing to do on such a warm, sunny day).

It must be clear from my rants how much I'm in love with this city and how much I become joyful when showing it to friends, acquaintances and random people I meet on the Internet.

Linda and I waiting for an attack to happen at any moment, anywhere in the city, while joyfully sampling fine summer fare.

Over the last three weeks I've been treated to the company of French, Canadian, Irish and American guests in this here fine city, and if I didn't have enough free time to spend with them, I still had the wonderful opportunity of showing each something special about this city. It was also a practice run for when Jenny arrives this afternoon since we have three weeks to tour as much of this country as the private bus system, our feet and the sweltering heat will allow. Although every one of my private students has advised against going to the south-east of Turkey, terrorist attacks and nothing other than kebaps to eat cannot deter me.

The overzealous souls at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have recently updated their travel advice to my adopted home country:


A caution from people who live in the world's most boring city. In fact, I've seen more verve in graveyards. However, they do know how to format a document well, which is admirable.

" Attacks could occur at any time, anywhere in Turkey." How's that for irresponsibility? Could you actually write anything more vague?

Misinformation and scaremongering at it's best. The last time I visited the Australian Vice-Consul I was struck how relaxed, even comatose the man was. He didn't look like he oversaw the welfare of my nation's interests in a country where your life was on the line every gooddamn minute of the day. Stuff like this makes me less than joyful.

Don't accept it. He's a terrorist and it's a bomb.

I would like to state the that chances of being involved in any kind of unsavoury event in south-east Turkey are minute when compared with the chances of being unfairly harassed a by aggressive inebriated revellers in any given city of my native country at 11:36pm on Friday evening. That is fact. Besides, what is life for if not to make an adventure of it? I don't want to look back in 17 years on my death-bed (according to my most recent fortune teller) and passively watch a life of lawn-mowing and Ikea knick-knacks pass before my eyes. If my last view on this planet is of a bearded man of indeterminable age with an acrimonious grimace brandishing a kebap over my head, so be it. I want my life to be glamorous.

Ok, think I've sweated my way down to 70 kilos. The heat has made my head go a bit funny.