esteem; between him and Chomsky, it’s personal.
At the end of the morning session, Renato raises the question of
where to hold the Third Annual Middle Eastern Conference, since
not every country in the region would be as welcoming to Israelis as
Turkey. Egypt would be great, he says, but the Iranians would not
be able to get visas. Kuwait would be great, too, but here the Israelis
would be odd man out. So, Tunisia? Not exactly a thriving
movement, but it could be done on the cheap, and Renato happens
to know someone there in a Berber village; Renato happens to know
someone everywhere. Murmurs of enthusiasm from the Turks, the
Europeans, the Iranians, the lone American (myself), and the
Israelis, who will head for Jerusalem in a few days to prepare for
Passover. It’s resolved: next year in Tunisia.
But because the Turkish movement wanted to keep up
momentum, the Third Annual Middle Eastern Conference again took
place in Turkey, not Tunisia. A year later, in 2011, the fourth
conference was planned for Karaj, Iran, to the consternation of the
Israelis, who knew they could not attend on an Israeli passport. In
the event, a season of tumult, which quickly acquired the pastoral
name of “Arab Spring,” scotched the plan. Renato and Murat (Eran
had since joined the twenty thousand Israelis living in Berlin) held
out as long as they could before canceling. And although word
travels fast in Esperantujo, a Swiss family apparently entered Iran
unaware that the conference had been canceled. “Ho ve!” wrote a
friend from France, Esperanto for “Oy vey!” For Renato, there was
nothing to be done but post a notice that any Esperantist who
wanted to visit Iran anyway would be warmly welcomed by
samideanoj there. For several days, the Swiss were incommunicado,
until they finally emerged from Iran to blog their adventures.
“Hura!” wrote my French friend, as universal sighs of relief were
heard from Istanbul to New Jersey. It wasn’t until 2015 that the
Middle Eastern Conference took place in Tunisia, ten days after a
massacre of twenty-one visitors to the National Bardo Museum in
Tunis, seventeen of them tourists. Before Renato could contemplate
canceling the conference, there came a torrent of emails from
Esperantists vowing to go to Tunis anyway, “to show Esperantic
solidarity with the people of Tunisia.”
* * *
On the second day of the gathering in Iznik, I met Cemal, a light-
eyed, lanky Turk with a dancer’s grace. For Cemal, Esperanto has
pushed open a heavy door. At twenty, while working on the floor of
an electronics factory, he taught himself Esperanto from a book and
promptly signed on with the Esperanto hosting service, Pasporta
Servo. Thirty years and hundreds of guests—“friends,” as he prefers
to say—later, he’s visited New York, Detroit, Europe, Iran, and
Israel and he’s aiming next for South America; he’s passionate about
Argentine history. He’s divorced, he says, making a gesture even
more universal than Esperanto: two index fingers paralleled, then
skewed apart. He sees his ten-year-old-son, who lives on the other
side of Istanbul, regularly, he says, but not how regularly. When the
fizzy talk about hosting and guesting washes down, there’s an air of
sadness about him. As we drive past a graveyard, I ask whether
Turks visit cemeteries. “Well,” he answers, “it depends on the imam.
If the imam says go, they’ll go, otherwise…” His voice trails off. “But
me, I like to go in the winter”—pause—“to clear the snow off the
names.”
On the way back from Bursa, a city famed for mausolea, mosques,
and Fiat factories, we stop and pile out at an obelisk defaced with
the logo of a football team. The Turks milling about all seem
embarrassed, even the teens, who are “crocodiling”—speaking
Turkish instead of Esperanto—with a tall man in an oversized gray
sweater and a shaved head. He looks like Kojak on the weekend.
Switching back to Esperanto, he tells me he’s a clown who performs
in theaters, in hospitals, and on the street, though to make ends
meet, he also acts and does voice-overs. “In a big country like
America,” he says, gesturing toward me, “there’s so much work, a
person can specialize. But Turkish clowns, well, we have to do it
all.”On the bus, I sit with the three young chemistry students, who
speak a smooth, slangless English. I teach them the phrase “take a
chill pill”; in exchange, they dish about their favorite English author
(Dan Brown), what websites are blocked in Turkey (Richard
Dawkins, for his atheism), and in what situations you have to wash
twice before entering a mosque (if you curse or fart). They want to
know, since I’m a professor at Princeton, what kind of SAT scores
will get them in. At lunch, over the local specialty of kebabs
smothered in tomato sauce and melted butter, I ask them each to
predict what the kid next to him will be doing in ten years. Three
sly, mischievous smiles break out, and they all search one another’s
eyes, as if looking at tea leaves. “Him?” says Turhan, pointing to
slender, serious Altan. “Working for NASA.” Altan points to heavy-
lidded Serkan and says in English: “Business. Big business.” And
Serkan slowly surveys Turhan, who’s forgotten to pack jeans and
has been wearing rolled-up versions of his school uniform since we
left the city. “He’ll be a presenter on television.” Then, to guffaws:
“A weatherman.”
3. The Turk’s Head
By some miracle, the final morning of the conference, Murat has
scrounged up some loaves and fishes: four boxes of maizflokoj
(cornflakes) and three liters of milk. While others crunch away,
Murat and Cemal explain to two Poles, Tadeusz and Marta, how to
catch a bus to the ferry. “You get on the bus,” Murat says, “and
when it’s full it leaves.”
“But when does it leave?” asks Tadeusz.
Cemal, like a good doubles partner, swings at this one: “You get
on the bus,” he says, “and when it’s full it leaves.”
Tadeusz shrugs, tosses it to Marta, who asks, “But when does it
leave?” Cemal looks across to Murat: Your bal .
The final talk, given by a professor of philology from Parma, is
about stereotypes of Turks. It’s a PowerPoint parade of Italian
insults, translated into Esperanto: to smoke like a Turk, think like a
Turk, curse like a Turk; when all falls into chaos, the Italians cry,
“Mamma, i turchi!” (Mama, it’s the Turks!). I feel as I did at an
Episcopalian wedding many years ago, when the bride’s golf-pro
uncle told an anti-Semitic joke, to raucous laughter: “What is the
Jewish housewife’s favorite wine?—‘Taaaake me to Miaaami!’” It
stung like soap in my eye, exactly as these insults do now, as if—
what? As if Esperanto had made me, in Hamlet’s words, “turn
Turk”? As if, after years of touring what the Ottomans had rigged up
or bitten away in their forays to Vienna, Budapest, Rhodes, and
Jerusalem, the world had been remapped with Istanbul’s tulip-ringed