A Hiatus for Travels West

-My House is Red will be updated next Sunday on Maria's return from Greece.
Keep an eye out for possible teasers during the coming week.-

The Escape to the North and the Dark Return

  Maria's chance to escape the innards of the city came sooner than she planned. Her school, in its desire to show its students the environs, decided to take all who were willing

to the northern reaches of the city. Maria, not knowing of the places she was to see, took the last guide offered in English on her way to the mosque

reading even in its inner courtyard

and amongst its cemeteries and town buildings.

The former, in its outer space, contained a tomb with a large hat

which must have belonged either to a very important man (for this is the way it goes), she surmised, or to a man who wanted to be remembered as important (for this is also the way it goes).
The school group continued past the town into another cemetery with many writers and citizens buried overlooking the city,

until they reached the summit where they found a cafe which had once been the haunt of the French writer Pierre Loti.

  Maria and her classmates sat for coffee and tea, watching the city, enjoying the peace and the air until their teacher, Eda, took one of the coffee cups and began reading its grinds, first swirling the cup on its saucer before letting it sit to cool. The owner of the cup, a Swiss woman with curly hair, tried to pick up the cup before it was time but Eda stopped her.


  'You must wait until it is cool.'
  When it was, Eda began, noting that her student would find a project she was working on to be easy at first but eventually the work would worsen until finishing seemed impossible. She would struggle. Eventually, however, Eda said, the project would become easy again and she would finish her work. There was an empty space between the demon figure and child fighting in her cup, she said. That was a   good sign.
   Relieved, the student thanked Eda. The class headed back through the cemetery to the main square where they were stopped by an Ottoman military band,

their ears arrested by the noise.

Once free, they re-boarded the bus to ascend another hill further north to view the Byzantine fortress, Yoros Castle.

Of course Maria, not content to see merely the outside, even at the castle's borders,

wandered within

and around

even in her descent to catch up with her class.

She was tempted to stop on seeing a group of couches and a view of the valley

but decided she could wait to rest until she reached home.

  Hours later, a very tired Maria came back to her flat and set about reading letters from friends over dinner before setting herself to work on her narrative for the night. A few sentences in, however, her lights and fan shut off. Odd, was the quick-draw thought before she realized that she was experiencing her first Istanbul blackout, an infamous city power shut-down at near random points during the summer. At first, she tried to work by candle

but found the light too inconstant. She sighed.
  'Guess that blows going to sleep early and not spending any more money today.'
  She exited the flat with the candle. On reaching her door, she blew the light off, scalding her fingers with the beeswax. She could see that her entire block was dark, lit only by candles like her own. Many of the businesses employed a similar coping tactic, even on the main road where Maria plowed through the other pedestrians, angry that the city, in its inability to cope with so much power use, was keeping her from her writing. The streets further on felt eerie in the dark, faces and bodies barely seen, bars shut or empty because they had no light to greet their customers with. Maria traveled past these places off Istiklal Caddesi until she found a suitable cafe over a bookstore.
   For now, she thought, taking her draft and pen from her bag, this will have to do.
  Over the music of the cafe and the spectacle of the street, Maria rewrote her narrative until she could write no more. Spent, she paid her bill and staggered home to sleep.

Maria Listens to an Elder

   One Friday after a few weeks of eating strange crops, being burnt by the sun and sleeping hours infrequent, a nap seemed to be the best cure to being too curious. But when Maria finally shut her eyes after a day of class, traveling to Asia and finding her way to another hidden language school, her phone rang from the futon.
   'Blast it,' she muttered. 'The kids have finally shut up-'
   She felt her way out of bed and answered the call at her desk, hoping to sound more awake upright.
   'Hello?'
   'Hallo? Maria, are you there? How is everything? Are you well?'
   'Hi, Theia. Ah, I'm fine.' Maria yawned.
   'What are you doing tomorrow?'
   'I was planning on taking a ferry up the Bosporus.'
   'Alone?'
   'Well, yeah -'
   'Don't go.'
   'Mm?'
   'Listen. They're opening up St. Demetrios on Pringipos.'
   'Oh.'
   'It's tomorrow. Catch the 8 am ferry to get to the service. Okay, dear?'
   'Yeah. I will. Thanks for telling me. I appreciate it.'
   When the phone disconnected, she said to herself, 'Guess that scratches out the Bosporus again,' and she finally fell asleep for the afternoon.



   The following morning brought itself with Maria still sleepy and scrambling much too late to get the funicular to the ferry station. With her speed and Birkenstocks, she caught the ferry just as it was to leave. Making her way up the second stairwell, she could see the boat was filled with more island-goers than she had seen in prior weekends. The ferry cut into the sea, bringing a breeze she did not have in her second floor flat. She inhaled the air, watching the other islands pass before the ferry finally landed at her father's childhood island, where she alighted for the second time in her life.

The streets were crowded.

Buggies waited at the phaeton station to take holiday-makers round the island

as baskets sat to be brought to the island's ends

and to the nineteenth century sites of the car-less streets.

The path was familiar as Maria had trod it before. The crowds and shops were the same. Yet in her last turn to the church

she knew she had not passed it before.
'Now here,' she thought, 'is a sight

of such people

watching the Patriarch re-consecrate the old structure.

Why, I even see a face familiar to home.'

She left the service pleased with all she had seen, content to be where she was. But on spying a sailboat in the sky hued sea, she once more felt the twitch of travel calling her to find another adventure across the water.

The Introduction

This is the story of a young woman



who went east

to a land where she knew neither the people

nor the crops,^[1]

but where the streets beckoned

and the islands called for exploration.

^[1]Nicholas Matarazzo, The Eliad, Live Performance, 13 June 2009.