Sirûş. Revelation.

If I had come into a room and started talking about my fieldwork experiences without explaining who I am, you might have found that a bit rude and you would be right. So why would one begin a blog that way? I think its time for me to backtrack a little. In the simplest terms, this is a space for me to collect together certain experiences I have had while doing anthropological fieldwork/ethnography (two very very close but not identical practices) in a way that people outside the field can understand and even enjoy, free of jargon or the constricted types of communication common in the halls of the academy. This benefits me and it benefits you too: You have the chance to experience very interesting things vicariously and I get to experiment with the border between fiction, nonfiction and ethnographic writing. Most of what you read here is literally a reproduction of what I remember, but we are always fictionalizing to some extent. I also get to enjoy just playing with words rather t...

It was obvious that this little boy was operating within the separate norms of a different world, like eccentric Düldane near the Fatih Mosque or Dobri, the 100 year-old living saint of Sofia. I was in another world reading, of all eccentric things, Gilles Deleuze in a discussion on nomadology and the non-state when suddenly I heard a piercingly enthusiastic and friendly small boy's voice: 'Chauffeur Bey! Does this bus go to Küçük Gümüşhane!!?? 'No, but if you go to Antepliler Mahallesi you can walk there in a few minutes' 'Chauffeur Bey! Does this bus pass by Wolf Village!!!???' 'Yes...' The small take-charge boy, with his smooth tan olive skin, a messy homemade haircut and akward shoes, boarded with his father, or another male relative, behind him. The man had, strangely, allowed this boy to handle the entire procedure, almost as if he did not speak Turkish or had a speaking impairment, or was simply in awe and deferential. The boy stepped ...

"You know a white South African man would not sleep in the same bed with a black man. As soon as he saw the arrangement in this guest house, he would say 'Hey Piet, find me another room to stay in'. But then you are an American and you have Obama. There is hope!" Well I appreciated his optimism, but it may be too early to say much on that front. I stood in the doorway chatting to Reverend Smith wondering when we would set off to Moutouleng. There we were to meet with the local sangomas (traditional healers) and to see a sacred body of water, after which we headed to a holy cave where venerated men and women live or spend much of their time engaged in ritual and prayer, a continuation of ancient religious traditions. Some of these places may be among the earliest continuously ritualized sites on our planet. Here many woke to make their invocations early, in the middle of the night, as soon as they saw the Morning Star, linked in mythos to this site, where I had...

' Çuuuuuuuuuşşşşş !!' she blurted out as I held onto the airplane's steal toilet with all of the strength I could muster. The stewardess couldn't stop herself from a disgusted ejaculation standing on the other side of the door listening to me heave and projectile vomit. I, on the other side of the grateful divide, was retching my guts up into the Pegasus airlines toilet. Just moments after touching down I had rushed to the back, with no paper bag in sight. The change of air pressure at the end had been too much. Such a ride. As I got off the plane after creating such unearthly noises, even a small child looked at me afraid and pointed me out to his parents, revolted. Before I got violently ill and clawed my way step-by-step back from the Ankara of bureaucracy and secularism to the evocative and classical Stamboul, I had been interviewing the first person who I had hoped to classify as a Turkish 'traditional healer' in a piece of work that is still ongoing. She...