RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: Turkish “Religious School” Students Wouldn’t Hesitate to Chop You to Pieces for “Offending” Islam (Orhan Pamuk)

“Those religious high school boys you saw in the cells today have your face permanently etched in their memories. They’ll throw bombs at anyone and anything; they don’t care as long as they are heard. No one who’s even slightly westernized can breathe free in this country unless they have a secular army protecting them, and no one needs this protection more than intellectuals who think they’re better than everyone else and look down on other people. If it weren’t for the army, the fanatics would be turning their rusty knives on the lot of them and their painted women and chopping them all into little pieces. When the day comes, they’ll kill you for just being a little westernized, for being frightened and forgetting the Arabic words of a simple prayer….”

Orhan Pamuk, “Snow”, 2002

RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: Turkish “Religious School” Students Berate Europe (Orhan Pamuk)

But now, no one could hear anything above the booing and catcalls and angry whistles from the religious school boys. Despite the guilty, fearful silence at the front of the auditorium, few could hear what Funda Eser was saying that when the angry girl tore the scarf off her head, she was not just making a statement about people or about national dress, she was talking about our souls, because the scarf, the fez, the turban, and the headdress were symbols of the reactionary darkness in our souls, from which we should liberate ourselves and run to join the modern nations of the West. This provoked a taunt from the back rows that the entire auditorium heard very clearly.,

‘So why not take everything off and run to Europe stark naked.’

Orhan Pamuk, “Snow”, 2002

RKS CANADIAN WINE: PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY CHEATERS?

Approximately 220 kilometres from Toronto and 370 kilometres from Montreal lies Prince Edward County or “the County” as it is affectionately known as. It has its own geographical designation as some of it wines are “VQA Prince Edward County” but many of the wines bottled in the County are made from grapes trucked in from Niagara. So if you are looking to discover the terroir of Prince Edward County in your glass you may be “cheated”. Many tourists “discovering” the wines of Prince Edward County are drinking wine made from Niagara grapes! Many, I suspect, have no idea of the trucked in grapes and many wouldn’t care.

One example is Three Dog Winery’s Dog House Red which is a generic VQA Ontario made from Niagara grapes specifically 44% Merlot, 32 % Cabernet Franc and 24% Cabernet Sauvignon.

Aroma: Black cherry, raspberry, wet stone and milk chocolate.

Palate: Mild tannins and restrained acids. Balanced as they say. Cherry, milk chocolate and a tad of rhubarb. Short finish.

Cellarbility:  I wouldn’t push my luck beyond 2027.

Food Match: Minced pork pappardelle. Or perhaps a pizza from a wood burning oven like they have at the winery.

Price: $18CDN.

RKS CANADIAN WINE Rating 89/100.

(Three Dog Winery 2023 Dog House Red, VQA Ontario, Three Dog Winery, Picton, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%)

RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: The One by One Islamist Clean Up in Turkey (Orhan Pamuk)

The Islamists have embarked in a clean up operation. They’re taking care of us one by one. If you want to save your skin. I would advise you to increase your faith in God at the earliest opportunity. It won’t be long. I fear, before a moderate belief in God will be insufficient to save the skin of an old atheist.

Orhan Pamuk, “Snow”, 2002

RKS Literature: Easy American Victims: Inept and Unflappable Delhi Pickpocket (Salman Rushdie)

India can be a tough country for Americans, who are seen as walking dollar signs and, what as innocents abroad: legitimate targets, easy meat. Within hours of checking in at their five-star South Delhi hotel, they had been importuned, without ,leaving the grounds, by money changers offering them the best black rate in town for their greenbacks, vendors of semi-precious stones which could have been polished pebbles, taxi drivers whose cousins ran a marble factory nearby, by hotel lobby palmists, young men of and women of quality offering serious negotiable currency for their cameras and clothes, older men inquiring of Marco whether Madonna was, in the first place, educated, and in the second place, available, and if so, for what fee; and an elevator pickpocket who was at once incompetent and unflappable, so that when Marco pointed out his hand was in the wrong pocket, the fellow simply extracted the offending limb, smiled broadly and said with a disarming shrug. It is an overcrowded country. What to do, we are used to treating our neighbour’s pocket as our own.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: The United States the Real Victor in Vietnam (Salman Rushdie)

My idea was that the war in Indochina hadn’t ended at the time of the ignominious U.S. withdrawal. They’d left a wooden horse standing at the gates, and when the Indochinese accepted the gift, the real warriors of America-the big corporations, the sports culture of basketball and baseball, and of course rock’n roll-came swinging out of its belly and overran the place. Now in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi too, America stood revealed as the real victor. Indochina became just another consumer-serf of (and supplier of cheap labour to) Americana International. Almost every young Indochinese person wanted to eat, dress, bop and profit in the good old American way: MTV, Nike, McWorld. Where had soldiers had failed, U.S. values-that is greenbacks set to music-had triumphed.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

BEYOND PUPPYDOM: INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, EXPLORATIONS AND MAYHEM: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS: RORY’S TREATMENT PLAN OUTLINED

Dr. Skilos has an aura of trust and perhaps a bit too much garlic fumes! He outlined what he thought would be my treatment plan;

Meditation: To manage the racing thoughts clouding my brain I was to mediate four times a day, two in a learning how to meditate group. I was to learn that the here and now was what counted not what had been. Managing the catastrophe.

Individual counselling lessons: Three a day with Dr. Skilos and one of his colleagues Dr. Jennifer Blintzman. Why was I not acting “normal”. What was eating away at me and why.

Proper nutrition: Who doesn’t love Southeast Asian food but too much of me beloved chicken congee laced with MSG was bound to cause irritability. Simple poached food and plenty of fruits and vegetables. One thing for certain I do not think I could return to eating kibble.

Establishing a proper routine: My wild routine in Southeast Asia might have seemed fun. But irregular hours, parties and high living can be deleterious to a puppy. Three Alpine walks a day. Classical music hour after breakfast and jazz hour after dinner. Lights out at 22:00 hours. Up at 08:00.

One episode of Lassie and The Littlest Hobo each day: There can be inspiration in a quiet canine way without political intrigue and extreme danger.

Confrontational situationality; The final test of recovery would be a return trip to Singapore for a “boring” visit. If I could return to the old haunts of Singapore  frequented with Bobby Fong Jr. and the beautiful Amira and remain cool calm and collected that would mean evidence of improved mental health.

RKS Literature: WHY CAN ANYONE BE UNHAPPY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM? (Salman Rushdie)

They say, sir, that in the U, K. if a man does not have a job, the government gives him money. If he does not have a job, the government gives him money. If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a jopadpatti shack on the pavement but a solid construction. If he or his family is sick, the government pays for the hospital. If he can’t send his children to school, the government sends them free. And when he is old and useless, the government gives the good-for-nothing cash money every week for the rest of his life.

The idea that a government might behave in such a way seemed to offend Gieve’s sense of the natural order. When Darius confirmed the approximate accuracy of the assertions, the butler couldn’t stand it. He smacked his brow, shook his head, couldn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “In this case, sir, why is anyone I the U.K. ever unhappy?”

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: I WANT TO BE IN AMERICA (Salman Rushdie)

I want to be in America, America where everyone’s like me, because everyone comes from somewhere else. All those histories, persecutions, massacres, piracies, slaveries; all those secret ceremonies, hanged witches, weeping wooden virgins and horned unyielding gods; all that yearning, hope, greed, excess, the whole lot adding up to a fabulous noisy historyless self-inventing citizenry of jumbles and confusions; all those variform mangling’s of English adding up to the livingest English in the world; and above everything else, all that smuggled-in music. The drums of Africa that once beat out messages across the giant landscape in which even the trees made music; for example when they absorbed water after a drought, listen and you’ll hear them, yikitaka, yikitaka yikitak. The Polish dances, the Italian weddings, the Zorba slithering Greeks. The drunken rhythm of the salsa saints. The cool heart music that heals our aching souls, and the hot democratic music that leaves a hole in the beat and makes our pants want to get up and dance.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: AN ISLAMIST FANATIC ADMONISHES HIS MURDER VICTIM A “SHAMELESS ATHIEST” (Orhan Pamuk)

Head scarves protect a woman from harassment rape and degradation. It’s the head scarf that gives women respect and a comfortable place in society. We’ve heard this from many women who’ve chosen later in life to cover themselves. Women like the old belly dancer Melhat Sandra. The veil saves women from the animal instincts of men in the street. It saves them the ordeal of entering beauty contests to compete with other women. They don’t have to live like sex objects, they don’t have to wear makeup all day. As the American Black Muslim professor Marvin King has already noted, if the celebrated film star Elizabeth Taylor had spent the last twenty years covered she would not have had to worry so much about being fat. She would not have ended up in a mental hospital.

Orhan Pamuk, “Snow”, 2002