And Now Berlin

Saturday morning in Prezlauer Berg, Berlin. Outside the window it's all green trees and sunflowers, and right downstairs a clean and shiny Farmer's Market where they sell bread, pickles, organic Turkish stuffed pita, and pomegranate juice.

What am I doing here? Outside the kitchen window there's a forest of a Jewish cemetery: when I drink my morning tea I can make out "Rivka" and "Yisrael" on the gravestones. A bee stung my hand while I was sleeping, and after I woke up and applied ice, my tall blond roommate searched the room for more bees (finding another under the blanket) clucking all the while at my lack of common sense -- haven't I ever lived in the country? Don't I know anything about dealing with insects?

My apartment is in a beautiful old remodelled building with high ceilings, lavish moldings, and a smell of history in the stairwell. Apparently the neighborhood had fallen into disrepair during GDR days, and after the fall of the Wall the hipsters moved in and yuppied it up. My roommate says that when she first moved in, in '94, the neighborhood wasn't connected to the phone lines. As I'm locking up one morning a fox tries to run up the tall window, scrambling at the stained glass, and I'm scared to get close enough to open the window for him. I finally manage to get by, but shut him in the building, too scared to get close enough to open a door or a window. He probably lives in the cemetery, or in the overgrown "Judengasse" - Jewish-Alley, where Jews had to walk instead of on the main street, that has been left a long swatch of overgrown grass and wildflowers in back of the house.

Drinks at a temporary Art Gallery at the edge of a huge hole left by the destruction of the "Palace of the Republic," an asbestos filled socialist beast of a building. It is going to be replaced by the replica of the Kaiser's castle that used to be on the spot, but meanwhile, there are artists spinning records and a beautiful open sunset. F., French author, on the run in Berlin from Proust, tells me he is writing a novel about remodeling an apartment. Memory and forgetfulness in microcosm. They need each other like the North and South Pole. F. has transparent skin, fine hands. R., my roommate, says, something about being "very German."
"Very German?" he echoes.
How I love those fucked up Jewish boys. They are the same all over the world, even when everything changes around you.

And for another menagerie of Berliners at an exhibition last night: a tall woman with tattoos all over her back and leg, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman's daughter in Synechdoche, New York, a woman wearing one black stocking and one white stocking, a woman in blue leiderhosen and elaborately arranged hair like an alien princess, and in the exhibit boys, boys, boys everywhere - famous paintings recreated by models with huge erections, an Asian Jesus with an erection inside a purple-sprayed frames, the English translations accompanying the exhibit like some weird abstract quasi German-art language. In the next room a system of giant disco balls in another room gesture toward a dance club and people aren't sure if they should dance or stand quietly in the corners and act artsy. I'm turned around in the darkness, the glimmering red lights, the tall people smoking and drinking -- all my longing has suddenly disappeared.

A note on housekeeping: I think I'll post once or twice more from Berlin, and once when I get back to Berkeley...so I envision the blog lasting till about September. I'm really curious to hear reader's reactions to the blog over the next few weeks, especially the imaginary cities you carry with you through your life, so please post me a post and keep me company through the last few weeks of my journey!

Another Imaginary City!

At the exact spot where Asia kisses Europe there's a heavy cloud of fried mackerel from the fish sandwich stands near the docks: you can smell it even from the ferry or from the windows of the New Mosque across the street. Ah Istanbul! At breakfast the hotel puts out a giant tray of dripping honeycomb to eat with bread. The afternoon sunlight comes through the grating of the mosque windows and four women in brilliant headscarves bow their prayers quietly while outside the women's section a little girl twirls a dance all across the soft carpets. It seems impossible not to romanticize our cousin city where East and West meet just like here, but better: less violently, at least to the naked eye.

In my imaginary city of Istanbul, we walk through the colored lights of the Grand Bazaar and rest our feet on the carpets of the Blue Mosque. The call to prayer across the bridges of the Bosphorus is wrenching and melancholy because of the distance between us and God, and not because of the invisible boundaries which it demarcates: the battle and fear lines.

On the plane from Tel Aviv to Istanbul I run into Yaqub (I'd call him Y. too but there are all too many Y.'s running through this narrative...) the Jewish-American-Israeli-Muslim-Sufi owner of Olam Qatan bookstore in Jerusalem, on his seasonal run to Turkey for Sufi music. He's travelling with an Arab-Israeli poet friend and his son, and for a few moments it seems that in our Istanbuli imagination we can all go on a wild goose chase for live Sufi music together: an American bookstore owner with a hippy beard and cap, a Tel-Avivi hipster, an Arab-Israeli poet, a sulky Arab-Israeli teenager with a muscle T-shirt, gold necklace, and me.

A half a kilo of cherries and a few hours later of eating, walking, googling in Turkish, etc. the Sufis did not reveal themselves and we had to conclude that if the Sufis do not want to be found, you will not find them.

Two nights later in the New City, away from the Disneyland version of Istanbul for tourists, a man twirled in a blue skirt and white crescents painted on his face like clown makeup. Is it just the tourists that are Sufi crazy, or is is the Istanbulis too? Yaqub says that the American obsession with Rumi is what is stopping Iran from attacking the US. Y. says you can love one part of the culture, even fetishize it, and still be enemies. Look at how we Israelis adore our humus, esp. Arab humus.

O for a teaching gig in Istanbul! O ferry rides to mysterious destinations! Oh Haman - you epitome of human civilization! O water borekas! At the airport, the escalator leads us to a special closed of gate where we undergo security twice. Back to Tel Aviv. The plane ride is filled with Palestinian tourists; they've also gone to the mirror land for a vacation.