September 10, 2012
Big Brother is watching: Vize - Edirne
I FORGOT to mention that I am reading Down and Out by George Orwell. He also wrote 1984, you'll remember, in which Britain is reduced to Landing Strip One and in which Big Brother sees everything. There is Thought Crime and there are loudspeakers everywhere.
All that has come back to me in Turkey because here, too, there are loudspeakers in the streets. I don't suppose they insist that whatever changing alliances are in force that 'We are at war with... We have always been at war with...' but that's only because I don't understand. They could be about the Scouts having a fête that afternoon or a reminder that tomorrow is the day to put out rubbish. But it's more fun to picture some Stalin-like figure in Ankara who thinks it time to rave at his people.
In fact this is an excellent country for being shouted at. Starting at 5am, and at five-hourly intervals until evening, the call to prayer booms from mosques.
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This is the westernised side of the country so that, while most people are Muslim by leaning, their reaction to the impressive chanting from loudspeakers is to raise their voice and carry on talking.
This Big Brother analogy goes further because the country is dotted with army camps. I told you, I think, that every man has to do two years' national service. That brings the problem of accommodating them and finding things, preferably time-consuming things, to do.
I passed half a dozen army bases today, almost as many as cement works, and each had bright blue railings but camouflaged sentry boxes ringed by sandbags. The army doesn't mind your knowing where its bases are but it's going to make it darned difficult to find the way in.
The soldiers look as bored as anyone given the job of sitting in a dug-out on the chance that that the local baker or insurance agent decides to open fire and take over the country. I played the game of waving at them today. It's obvious they are under orders to look fierce and not respond. But Turks are second only to Cubans in their wish to smile and wave and it must torment these poor soldiers to fight the Pavlovian twitch that my smile and wave set off. I have just one morning left in the country. I doubt I'll get a wave at the frontier but I shall give it a go.
My only encounter today was with two more Germans, who had been 'sleeping in the woods.' They would have displeased the woman running the camp-site tonight. She has already given a hard time to a French couple who had the audacity to bring a dog, even though though the sign at the entrance says dogs are accepted and, in fact, charged for.
'Dogs shit and piss everywhere,' she told me. She speaks fluent German because she studied in Germany but I can understand her only to the extent of the few dozen words that I know and because there is a half link to Dutch. Curiously, I do know the German for 'shit' and 'piss'. It shows the value of travel, you understand...
She asked where I stayed when there was - as is almost always the case - no camp-site or hotel. I repeated what the Germans had said, that I slept 'in the woods.' And then her unappetising obsession came out.
'But that's illegal.'
Well, yes, I know that but...
'There are heavy fines in Turkey and Bulgaria for doing that, did you know?'
I said I imagined that was the case. But far from minding, those I'd encountered had been charm itself.
She looked disgruntled. Now she could disapprove of them as well as me.
'But it is against the law. It is obvious. People must shit and piss...'
She left the rest to my imagination. And I didn't argue. Birds and bees and sheep and cows all have to shit and piss as well. But doubtless she has already started a protest group...
AFTERTHOUGHT - Edirne, pronounced ED-dear-nay, is home each summer to the national oil-wrestling championship. You think I'm joking but I'm not. There are statues everywhere of bare-chested beefy types grappling each other's oily bodies. I'm told it's the national sport, or at any rate the sport which makes Turkey distinctive. I'm also told that less sensitive competitors are not beyond shoving a hand under their rival’s belt to get a better grip.
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