Letters from Vietnam 59

16 January 2007

For my dear friend, I.Y.

I too, breaking out of old ways, had discovered solitude and the melancholy which is at the basis of religion. Religion turns that melancholy into uplifting fear and hope. But I had rejected the ways and comforts of religion; I couldn’t turn to them again, just like that. That melancholy about the world remained something I had to put up with my own. At some times it was sharp; at some times it wasn’t there.

V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, p.125

I have received a strange letter from a friend two days ago. I hope that this blog entry will find my dear friend.

I.Y. is one of my long-time friends since the beginning of university years. We have spent almost five years together in the school. While he left the community for a partial freedom with a few friends in the university, I was still a faithful devotee. Then I graduated ad moved to Thailand. He stayed in the school one more year. After he finished the university, he did his master’s degree in Istanbul. Then he went to Florida for PhD with his wife. In the last seven years I have been away from Turkey, we met twice in Istanbul. As old friends meet and talk, we did the same thing. He came to my brother’s house to visit in 2003. As I remembered it was a cheerful and happy chat. We have sent a few e-mails to each other in these seven years period. Mostly on important days like bayrams or new years…

I called his letter strange because of its content. His style is always the same. His words remind me voice of a desperate man who believes in paradoxes of life and his disbelief in solution is reflected indefinitely on the surfaces of mirrors of his words… His style, as a man of letters, did not change in the last seven years. In his letters, there is always sound of a man who looks for the truth and at the end blames the roads or guides for the failures. Some nostalgia –which I always like to read- and some pieces from the old days’ happy moments fill the beginnings of most of his letters. He always reminds me Kafka for his belief in inconsistencies. The difference between Kafka and him is clear. Kafka has been tortured by external forces and he uses these tortures to create his art. However I.Y. tortures himself with the belief in unhappiness. He seems like a naughty boy lost in the woods. Even though he has been shown the exit, he still insists that it could not be exit. There exists a kind of self-exile in his own world, a kind of desperate mood which does not want to end either because he likes it or because he does not know how to get out. He might need to know that he too deserves to be happy and it is not difficult at all… We don’t have to understand or know anything to be happy. In fact the more we know, the more we might demand and it might cost more trouble.

The content of his letter was strange because it was beyond my expectation. He asks me to return to God and His prophet. I was bewildered! He is the one who studies PhD in Chemistry and he is the one working on scientific experiments for last 10+ years. I even thought that the letter was written by someone else, not by my dear friend I.Y. However, it was written by him and he really asks me to resume to my old days. He is in a kind of psychological trauma or an emotional breakdown. What was he thinking? Going to Florida and having a PhD will make him the happiest man in the world? Or he will be satisfied with knowledge, with science or with other worldly pleasures? It took some time for me to understand his letter. I wrote him a short answer but my letter did not satisfy myself in terms of content. I love this man and I have to help him instead of accepting his offer to help me. I am not the one who is in need of help! I also mentioned this thing in my letter. I expect nothing in this life other than being a good man. I only want to make people around me happy with my presence and leave something worthy behind. I don’t need to believe in the beauties of heaven to be a good person or I don’t need to be scared with the tortures of hell to stay away from evil actions. Why is it so difficult for the believers that nonbelievers can be happy as much as the believers can? And why is so difficult for the believers that a pleasure can still be pleasure even though it is not infinite. Eating might be pleasurable and it is finite. Same as my own life, same as other pleasures! You do it, you enjoy it and you lose it. It is the cycle of life. What is wrong with the people is the belief in infinity. When people believe in infinity, then it becomes harder to make people relish with what they do. As Dawkins mentions in his latest book, why can’t we appreciate the garden without thinking that the garden is not infinite and without considering the gardener?

Another thing I have mentioned in my letter was about the peace of mind. Believers think that nonbelievers are always in the mood of hopelessness. We can not be happy because we do not believe in what they believe. Nonbelievers do not deserve to be happy because they believe in nothingness. Well, to be honest, I am quite happy with being nothing after death. I was nothing and I will be nothing. And I am brave enough to embrace this fact. Those who believe can not accept this fact because it hurts their selfish infinity theories. They want to exist forever. They don’t want to lose their mind and this ambition makes them believe more in what they are told. I think, the world was here before me and it will be continue to exist after me too. I don’t know how long more but people live on this earth without me. What will be left here are our names, our children, our deeds. And this is enough to be satisfied with the life. The more a person believes in infinity, the more he/she becomes its slave. Borges mentions in one of his short essay: There is one concept which troubles and destroys all others. I am not talking about evil, I am talking about infinity.

I don’t want to mention the inconsistencies in the beliefs or other logical/philosophical dilemmas in religions. It is another problem. What I want everyone knows is quite simple. It is very possible to live happily without believing in an omni-potent, omni-scient God and it is also very possible to be a good person without God. There are people who are bad even though they believe in God as many as there are bad people who denied the existence of God. The opposite is true as well. There are good people in both sides. Happiness or peace of mind depends on the expectations in this life. If you expect to find the truth via science or philosophy, you will never be satisfied. However, life is a journey and we live to seek for the truth, not to find it. Life has a meaning since we always feel that we are on the road and getting closer to the truth. The more we dig, the more we will clarify the pieces of jig-saw puzzle. Can we finish the puzzle? As Escher’s “Paint Gallery’ picture shows a signature of the artist at the middle of the square, the truth can never be completed. It is not because we are not able to complete it. It is because we are still at the beginning of the journey. And the more we will learn about ourselves, the realm of unknown will also get bigger. We will never get to the point where we can say this is the end. This is the dynamic which also makes our life goes on. Those who believe that they know the truth and they try to spread it to the others are the ones who are hurting people instead of helping them. Believing that my truth is the truth is a deadly disease. To believe that everyone must believe in my truth is deadlier… Here we can remember the famous words of Kahlil Gibran: Do not say I found the truth, rather say I found a truth.

Believing in an infinite life with other motivating ideas would be nice but I am afraid it will make me lazy. Because religion explains the things simply, once we believe, then there is no need to worry about anything. Everything can be explained by the will of God. Then why should I bother to seek for the truth? Why should I try to understand the book of nature? A religious person can answer this question with a nice twist: We study nature to understand our Lord better. However, what happens is whenever the scientific research shows a truth which contradicts with the God’s words, then science is being sacrificed for the sake of scripture. Isn’t evolution a good example for this?

I hope this blog entry will find my dear friend… I am thankful to his thoughtful care but still it does not change my mind. I left religious dogmas long ago and happened to believe in myself. I am happy with what I have and what I do in this life. I hope he also will find his truth as soon as possible and will leave life of no-solution. Whatever the truth he wants to believe, I respect his choice. As long as he is happy with what he believes and he is respectful to what I believe, he will be my dear friend, same as in the old days of Bogazici University, walking uphill from his house to the school, our arms are tied to each other, singing some old songs while shivering in the cold wind coming from the sea… Same as the days I prepared breakfast for him and his engineer friend and had trouble to wake them up, same as the days we met in the study room and talked about our love stories like my never-starting T-distribution or his enduring lovers, same as the day I have seen him first time carrying an umbrella for a girl and felt happy for him…

Letters from Vietnam 56

7 January 2007 – 10:14

After finishing Richard Dawkins’ last book, “The God Delusion” I wanted to write a review on it. However, the book is too large and it covers so many topics. So I have decided to write about only the parts I like or basically I can not disagree (partly or entirely)

In the page 54, Dawkins starts a subchapter titled NOMA. He uses the acronym NOMA for the phrase “Non-overlapping magisteria”. The original acronym comes from Stephen Jay Gould’s book “Rock of Ages”. In this book, the writer claims that religion and science answer different types of questions and their domains do not overlap. Then the conclusion is there should not be a conflict. Here is the paragraph from Gould’s book. I had a little smile on my face when I read the last line of the following paragraph:

The net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral values. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the old clichés, science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven. (Page 55, Dawkins R., The God Delusion, 2006, Bantam Press)

Dawkins clearly denies this distinction between religion and science. Firstly, he believes that everything can be explained by science and if there are things which can not be explained by science, it must be because either question is asked wrong or science is not capable enough to answer them yet but sure it will be in the future. He also denies the positions of theologians in the modern society. He asks in the page 56 as an answer to Marteen Rees’ words of there is a space for philosophy and religion beyond science: What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists can not?

I guess Dawkins here makes a clear distinction for the type of the question which is supposed to be answered by the theologians. Nobody will ask a theologian questions regarding cosmology or cosmogony. They really answer the questions where science –and not other systematic body of knowledge- can not reach. The reason for this is the difference between the natures of religious knowledge (if we can call it knowledge) and scientific knowledge. “People are credulous animals and they find something stupid to believe if there is no good one to fill the gap” says Russell. Scientific knowledge covers empirical world and for scientist/scientifically thinking people, this is the only type of knowledge beside Mathematical knowledge (I believe even Mathematical knowledge comes from experiment) Then what is religious knowledge? It is not systematic, not based on scientific accuracy, and has many contradictions –even though religious people always find reasons to get around these contradictions-. Here is an example for these contradictions and biblical solution: Before the scientist discovered that earth is around 5 billion years old, people used to believe that all history was 6-7 thousand years, starting with Adam and Eve. Whenever scientist found enough evidence to show that earth is much older than what people thought, religious people first rejected those proofs. Then when the proofs became undeniable, they turned to their bible and tried some ad hoc hypotheses on the principles of bible. They said “the bible is written in a metaphorical language and we should not understand it literally”. Nobody asked them why God needed to send us a poetry book to guide our life. Wouldn’t it be easier just to write the rules of the life as well-defined principles (like in definitions in law or in Mathematics)? Can you imagine a computer guide which is written in a metaphoric language? I think half of the people who buy the computer would return the computer for the problems they have caused because they understand the guide literally!

At the beginning of 20^th century, logical positivism prevailed to almost all Anglo-Saxon philosophical schools. Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer and many more philosophers, mathematicians, physicists joined them because their claim was fitting with the needs of the age. They had one main theory under all structure: A proposition must be verifiable to have a meaning. If I say ‘there is a book on the table’, this proposition can have a meaning if and only if it can be verified by right methodology. By this way, philosophers achieved to discard the questions like “Does God exist?” or “Is there life after death?”. Basically, these questions were not true questions because the possible answers were not scientifically verifiable. I think this development can be thought as a base for NOMA. There are questions which can be answered by scientific experiments and these questions belong to the realm of the real world. There are also questions which can not be answered by scientific experiments, will never be answered by scientists. These questions could be either ignored or attributed to the religion. Dawkins think that these questions are beyond science but not because they can be answered by any other means. If science can not answer, then who can answer? The holy book which was written 2000 years ago? I agree with him in the sense of ‘why we need religious knowledge to answer the questions which can not be answered by science’ but if science is not able to answer, then don’t we have to make people believe in science and the future of the science so that one day science will solve all the mysteries including the existence of God.

I believe there will be always people who believe in a God (or similar supernatural entities) on this earth no matter how advanced science we will have. As I quoted from Russell, man is a credulous animal and needs to believe something. Saint Augustine says “Once we believe there is an omni-potent God, then no contradiction remains in the universe”. It is absolutely true if we also accept that our logic is controlled by the same omni-scient God. Then whenever we can find a contradiction, we can either attribute it to omni-potent God’s wish or our uncontrollable logical inferences. In this sense I agree with NOMA but I also believe that people should be taught to ignore religious dogmas to advance. There are questions which can not be answered by the science but we can not say that these questions can be answered by religion just because there is no answer yet. At the end, religion is not an alternative for science, it does not fill any gap which is left by the science and it does not deserve any respect as knowledge. If we can not answer the question on the existence of God, we can just ignore it. This way we do not have to deal with religious dogmas/explanations on the issues regarding ethics, daily life and the value of science. The questions which are not answerable by science will remain the same because as I gave an example on ad hoc hypotheses for the text in the bible, people who believe in God will definitely find a new way to get around and skip the claims of scientists.

What we have to do is obvious and Dawkins talks about the solution in different parts of the book. We have to educate young people/children in a way that they will believe only what they can find by their own reasoning. They will think with their own heads and they will only be guided by scientific knowledge in the difficult days of life. They will not be cheated by the attractive heaven scenes because they will never have enough evidence to believe that there is a heaven. Education is the main tool to achieve this aim. The students must learn only empirical knowledge as “knowledge” and beyond the limits of proof there is no place for any other belief.

If we can have a world which does not have religion, then I believe there will be less exploitation, less lies, less tears and fewer wars in the world. At least, I have not seen a man kills a man in the name of science but the world is full of murderers in the name of the God they believe. They fight because they believe in different Gods/religions. That is why the wars never end because none of the fighters can prove that their God is right.

Beside this, religious people can ask that if there is no God, how we can possibly set the moral values. This can be seen through Dostoyevsky’s novel character in Karamazov Brothers. “If there is no God, everything is permitted” says one of the characters in the novel. This might reflect the mental confusion of Dostoyevsky. So if we deny God’s rules, we will be in chaos indefinitely and kill each other until finally humankind is extinct on the earth. Not necessarily! We can live in peace without the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament or any other holy scripture of any religion. They worry about the moral values because they can not think of an ethical system which is independent from religion. But it is quite possible to have an ethical code which can also answer modern life’s problems such as genetic cloning, stem cell research, monitoring the unborn babies during pregnancies to avoid future problems, homosexuality, abortion etc… There are millions of people in this world who do not believe in God and live peacefully. They do not believe in moral codes inherited from the ancestors but they use their reasoning to shape their life. Here is an example which is also mentioned in Dawkins’ book: http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/new10c It may not be perfect but it can be a good beginning for a future reference.

Religion creates an easy base for the people who are in need of urgent help. But still this does not make religion true. I have read “Hastalar Risalesi” (Booklet for Patients) written by Said Nursi when I was students at the university. The main question in this booklet was how we can make a patient happy if he/she does not believe in God and Heaven! If the answer is ‘Yes, a patient must believe in a super-natural power to be strong before his/her death” and if we use this as a proof for existence of God, we are making a big logical mistake. Believing in belief and believing in God are not the same things. It might work and the patient can be happy in his/her last days. He/She might enjoy the company of friends praying for him/her beside the bed. However this happiness does not guarantee that his/her friends are right in their belief and he/she will go to heaven after death. It is all believing in the power of belief. It would not be different if the patient believes in Brahma, Allah, God or Buddha!

Unlike religion, scientific knowledge based on the principles of “change” and “leaving the old one behind”. If a new idea prevails the old one, scientists change it after long term careful investigations. Nobody can say that it is easy to leave a theory behind in favour of another one. However, science is ready for the change if it is necessary. It needs patience, hard-work and ambition. If you look at the life stories of great scientists, you can see how their enthusiasm for the knowledge can lead them to the positions they achieved to hold at the end of their lives.

I would like to finish today’s blog with a nice quote from Einstein.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in the nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of personal God is quite alien to me and seems so naïve.

(Page 15, Dawkins R., The God Delusion, 2006, Bantam Press)

Letters from Vietnam 55

6th January 2006

Today, two female students came to me when I enter the building from the cafeteria door. Two girls asked me if they should go to their class because there is nobody else in the room except for the lecturer. First I did not get their point because it seemed to me there is nothing to worry about if the lecturer is in the room. When they repeated the question, I felt the anxiety in their voice. These two girls were afraid of being in the classroom with their teacher! I said “Don’t be ridiculous! Go to your class!” They looked at me one more time as if I am sending them to someone who is untrustable. It was one of the most stupid things I have ever seen in my life. I know their lecturer and he is one of the finest human beings on this earth. He is honest, hard-worker and a very polite person. Nothing was wrong with him. In fact there was definitely something wrong about these two girls. Both of them are very intelligent and very diligent students. But they seem they do not like their teacher either because of his skin color or his technique of teaching. Second one is not an option since they have been to his class for almost one semester and it is not time to complain. Besides this, their midterm grades show that he is a great teacher with good teaching skills. Otherwise, we would have expected some failures. This brings the first option as the real problem. Are these students afraid of being in a classroom with an African-American teacher? If this was not the real concern, then what else can be? What can my friend do to them during the school time, in a classroom where the windows in the both sides of the room leave no privacy for the teacher while he is teaching? And besides all, why would he want to harm his students? I was bewildered but still firm against their wish. I told them go to their class and listen their teacher until the end of the session. I also told them that I am watching both of you until you enter the room. And I did it! In a university environment, it is an unusual thing to do but I did! They even looked back a few times to check whether I was still keeping my eyes on them. When they were sure that I was not going to move away until they entered the room, they reluctantly went to the class. I did this for the sake of my friend who was waiting in the classroom with no student inside. I also did this because the excuse created by these two girls was beyond the boundaries of reason.


Yesterday evening I met with M. Bey from Cambodia. He is one of my friends from the same university. I don’t really remember if we took any course together but we met by means of A. who now works in Australia. He came to Vietnam just to travel together with some other Turkish national teachers. They were all at the dinner with B. Bey. I met two of them together. We sat in front of the Natalia Restaurant and had a long conversation about past and present. Later on the conversation directed towards my stories because B. Bey read some of them. He said “it is our story” when he mentioned “The Divine Joke”. The same reaction I have encountered long ago from another friend in the religious community. In fact, I said to both of them, even though there were years between them, story talks in its voice. I am not supposed to say what it means. I accept that there is no way to separate a story from its writer’s private life. However, this does not allow reader to investigate writer’s inner world rather than enjoying the story only. A story speaks in its own voice and a reader must listen to it. As a very well-known example, after the discovery of psychoanalysis, many literary critics tried to deconstruct and reconstruct great Western novels like Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. What they have found is the sufferings of the writer during his exile in Siberia and his gambling habit. None of these findings helped the reader to understand the story better. Because these methods were created to read the writer and writer’s “writing process”, but not to understand the story for the sake of the story. I usually enjoy reading a novel just because it is written. The private life of the writer can be part of my attention if I like the book. Then I read the biography of the writer.

We talked there for more than one our about the stories, publishing books, writing and the changing religious communities. B. Bey said the community now needs more open-minded people than narrow-minded people. Because the world is too big and they are in need of people who can think wide. However, there is always a limit for the width of this image. How wide is acceptable? Can religious community embrace an agnostic, a social drinker? A free thinker, a writer who might complain about everything he sees wrong? I don’t think so! He himself said that he can not hug an atheist. I don’t blame him for this. This is his choice and I respect that. There is one thing I have learnt in last 6 years is the importance of my freedom. I read what I want to read and I write what I want to write. I also think I want to think, change my mind whenever I feel my old ideas should be thrown away for the new ones to replace. I learnt that nothing is permanent and nothing should be considered as the truth except for there are truths as many as human minds on this earth. Another thing I have learnt after I come to Asia is not to ask someone’s religion/belief. I randomly ask friends their religions just to know them better. Other than this I don’t care who believes what as long as they do not harm each other and they do something for the sake of society. I also believe that someone can be ethically good without the help of religion. It is possible to create a collection of ethical codes which are independent from all religious dogmas and only depends on scientific reasoning and logical excellency.

Beside my distance from the community, they are always warm-hearted towards me. In Thailand and in Vietnam, I always enjoyed their tolerant atmosphere. Since I know this tolerant atmosphere is only for those who are out of the circle, I never wanted to go back and probably will never go back. However, I should always be thankful to the friends from the community for being generous all the time.

I am perhaps one of the few people in this world who can not say what he/she thinks exactly but more inclined to keep the peaceful conversation for the sake of friendship. It is actually more visible in my novel character because I have created a character who regrets two minutes after he says things actually he never wanted to say. Basically, he is opposite of me! I do this thing a lot in my real life. I write harshly but never speak… One of the reasons for this might be my dullness in speaking. I speak quickly and mostly people don’t understand what exactly I am saying. Additionally, speaking is not a good way to discuss serious things because there is no enough time to think. I would rather writing because once I read some opinions, I can digest them first and I can write whenever I feel ready to produce something.

Letters from Vietnam 54

6th January 2007

Whenever I need to buy gifts for children, I start worrying about the child’s gender for a suitable toy. It happened in this Bayram too. I and J went to the hotel for the Bayram Programme prepared by the Turkish community here. One day before bayram, we went to a market to buy toys. As I remembered there were some boys and some girls in the Turkish community here, we bought toys for both genders. However, a catastrophe was waiting for us! There was no one single baby-boy in the party. All the little girls… Hopefully we had enough toys for all girls and finished the event without any regret. Later on, I thought about my attitude towards children. These kids do not know they are girls! Even if they know that they are girls, they may not know that their toys should be pink babies or walking ducks! This is all in adults’ heads. We make them boys and girls while they had no idea of being boy or girl. Boys should play with plastic guns, battery cars and shooting soldiers. Girls should play with pretty barbies, sleeping beauties and cooking utensils. The society starts to use the biological differences as tools for future distinction in genders. Girls will be mothers therefore they have to feel the pleasure of taking care of a baby and cooking. When they become woman, they feel as woman not because they are woman but because the society suppressed their other choices. Simone De Bouveaire mentions this problem in her famous book, Second Sex. Women are raised as servants to either family or child because they are potential wife or mother. If we ask modern people, they might answer in a way “it is natural”. But we must accept that nature is a relative concept and it may vary in different societies. Why can’t they play with cars? Why can’t they enjoy playing with shooting soldiers? This distinction can be explained by evolutionary idea of survival of fittest. Because this is the best way to keep the continuation of the species, Men go to war or hunt, women stay at home and take care of babies! As natural as possible! Because it works, people like it and apply it. And I am part of it. But isn’t it changing in modern countries? The more women becomes economically independent, the more their social roles are having intersection. I believe, the kids will have more unisex toys to play with. Not to choose their gender but to choose their character! A woman can be a soldier and a man can be a nurse. We all know this! Then why do we worry about the discrimination of toys!

The Bayram programme was nice with a few jokes, a lot of photos and big smiles. This is all Bayram about! Being happy with the people around, showing love to children and not leaving elders behind. J met with a few Turkish women so she might enjoy more social life in the coming weeks. Everything was nice as my expectations were not high and being among Turkish-speaking friends was more than enough for me to be happy. But still one thing kept my mind busy while listening young university students’ speeches/poems/songs about themselves, community and being in a foreign country.

I lived in this community for more than ten years before leaving it in 2001 and I know that a few things changed over the years even though many people believe that the community changed a lot. One of the many things did not change is members’ perspective to look at themselves. Most of the time, people in the community look at themselves by the eyes of other people who live outside the circle. It can be considered as a type of narcissism if we think that this also makes them proud of their own compromises. Looking at mirrors and seeing your body growing everyday can make everyone proud and excited. But as a community it can be considered as a problem if you want others to witness it just to use this as a motivation factor. “Who said what about us?”, “Why are we here?” What happened where?” and “How miraculous job we have done so far?” all can be expressed and recited in the community. “We” and “others” are the two main categories. Then “others” also can be categorized by two: Those who sympathize us and those who don’t.

Being away from home is not easy for anyone. It is a kind of torture for young people who really need the support of their parents in the time of their education. I can understand the sacrifices made by the people in this community. But what is the point of mentioning it in every meeting and trying to overfeed the emotional side of the community in every opportunity? If there are sacrifices, there will be awards. Don’t they believe it? Because people believe in something, they do it and they stay in this foreign country. Beside living abroad is hard, we can also say that it is exciting, rewarding and teaching. It is the best way to learn other cultures and languages. They are lucky to be here because they can look at the world from a different perspective. For hundreds of years, Christian missionaries travelled around the world for the same purpose. It was much more difficult I their time. Now, people have internet, telephone, air planes… Travelling is so simple, communication is so simple, living in a foreign country is so simple… Then what sacrifices they are making? It can be mentioned as a benefit more than a burden. I would say many Turkish are coming to Thailand to live. Then can we say that Turkish community in Thailand is sacrificing something to be there? It will be similar for Vietnam as well. Vietnam is a developing country and there are many new business/education opportunities here. There will be more people coming in the future and many will come for worldly reasons like myself.

Using self-whipping as a motivation factor is another thing. It shows immaturity of the people’s heart because when someone makes others cry for his/her sacrifices (or he/she cries for himself/herself only in front of others), then it means that person needs to see other people’s tears to be firm enough. If one can stand only with the support of others, then where is loyalty and faith which are supposed to be in the heart of the believer? From the perspective of Kantian ethics, “good” can not be considered as “good” if it is done for another purpose including a benefit which can be obtained later. One should do “good” only for the sake of “being good”. We may not agree with Kant but there is something important in this principle: What makes these people live in another country? The answer is undoubtedly clear: The love of God. Then isn’t love of God enough to keep them work hard and achieve great things which can not be achieved without love of God?

There was also one discussion about how we can explain the meaning of bayram to Vietnamese people. The problem was how to explain them why we slaughter the animals. It was hard because most of the Vietnamese people are either atheist (no religion) or have an atheist-religious belief (like Buddhism). This makes it harder because then they have to make them understand that this is what God wishes. It went on for a few minutes and disappeared without a conclusion.

After all the program, we left the hotel happily. I have thanked to A. Bey and D. Bey for inviting me. I guess the things I have mentioned above are minor problems and many people even do not see anything wrong with these issues. They might be right. But still this is my observation and my brief criticism.

I will continue writing on other issues later in the night.

Letters from Vietnam 53

2nd January 2006

I haven’t written for long time. Actually because I am writing in Turkish constantly in these days, I have stopped blogging for a month. However I have discovered that keeping my journal, even not as frequent as I used to do will be good to record daily details of life. I should write the seeds of thoughts here so that with time and more energy I will be able to build stories/essays on them. For this purpose I will update the blog at least twice a week. I guess I will have enough things to write for this frequency and writing two-three pages a week in English will not block my writing fiction in Turkish.

The biggest question for a diamond miner is when he has to stop digging. He digs constantly from sunrise to sunset so that he can feed his family. He digs with the hope that everyday is a day for a piece of a diamond which can earn food for a month. The real fear is he never knows when he should give up digging that well and go into another one for a new start. After each strike of the shovel, he says himself “one more” but this is nothing more than supplying a rhythm for the digging. At the bottom of the well, he is all alone and he decides what to do next! In these lonely hours, he hesitates between “this is enough” and “one more”.

I have been digging myself through writing for the last six years. I sometimes feel the same fear and anxiety which make me hesitant between “keep going” and “stop”. It is a knife with two sharp edges. If I stop then I will be unsatisfied with what I have achieved so far. If I keep digging, I will never know whether or not I am going to find out something worthy. It is same as Camus’ character in Sisyphus with a slight difference. He climbs the mountain with a rock on his shoulders. He actually achieves something but he can not keep the rock at the peak so he has to keep shuttling between top and bottom. Then what is the point?

I have read Pamuk’s Nobel Prize lecture twice. There are a few paragraphs I really enjoyed and I wrote on the top of my notebook. Here are those paragraphs:

The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too.

For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, the wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, to own these pains and wounds, and to make them a conscious part of our spirits and our writing.

A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre.

Before reading Pamuk’s speech, I have thought in different way. Years ago, I attended to a writer’s conference in Bangkok. She was a British novelist and it was not difficult to see how she suffers when she could not write. She told us that writing a novel is living under the skins of others. From that time till Pamuk’s speech, I was thinking that her approach was the only one. If you want to create a character, you have to think as if you are that person. But Pamuk’s approach is more affordable in terms of writing. It depends on a childish belief as he says. All people are the same. If I am writing a postman, I have to think that this postman had a childhood same as my childhood and he has similar desires as I do. The only problem with this is the proximity of all characters in different stories. If we talk about only ourselves, then all the characters will be more or less the same. Not necessarily! Writer’s personality can be divided into thousands of different characters in different ways. A soldier and a mother can have similar ambitions but their job and the people around them can lead them to different characters. This process can be achieved in the story automatically because once we have the plot and time, then the rest comes easily with the idea the writer wants to give. If the characters are fed by the writers’ own world, they will be more real and more vivid. If something is real, they can not be more real or basically they do not need to be more real. Life is real and its imitation -novel- can be real if only the imitation is done through a right mirror. Perhaps the clearest mirror is writer's own world and his own window to the reality.

Note: For the whole lecture of Pamuk on the day of receiving Nobel Prize, click on the following link: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture.html

Letters from Vietnam 52

December 3rd 2006 – 19:13 – HCMC

Whenever C enters a room where there are many people sitting inside, his mind gets obsessed with the number of responses he got for his greeting. He usually greets as soon as he enters the room with loud voice to make sure everyone in the room feels his presence. However, the ratio of number of people who respond to his greeting to the number of all people in the room never exceeds a half. This causes a real problem for him even though it seems stupid to think like this. He worries about the people’s thoughts for himself and makes some sequential speculations for the possible reasons.

If everybody responds him, he knows that he is supposed to think as if he is loved and recognized by everyone in the room. However, he still can not stop doubting about people’s real thoughts for him. He thinks that these people in the room might have discussed about him before he arrived and agreed on giving a strong response to his greeting. But should they do such a thing? They might think that C is an important person and he deserves a warm welcome. Or they might worry about making C angry. Or they might be afraid of being blamed with stereotype. Acting all together makes more sense than acting differently. This gives them a kind of solidarity and integrity. They feel the strong spirit of being one and stiff. Since they greet everyone by the same way, nobody can have anything to worry about their second thoughts. The unity in their voice can clears up all the suspicious thoughts. They all seem welcome so there will be more people coming inside to the room to be greeted by the same way. At the end, this might trouble some of them who want to keep the population of the room at a reasonable amount. However, they are not able to determine the level of “enough”. So they continue responding everyone’s greetings by the same way even though they do not want to do that any more. At this point C thinks that wherever people fail to negotiate on the rules, dishonesty and cheating emerge. All of them keep greeting all the guests with the same unity and same integrity.

One day, an individual wants to be more honest than the others in the room. She thinks that people in the room do not have to lie for the sake of integrity because what they do is only to cheat themselves in a way ostriches put their heads in the sand. She wants to make a difference and stops greeting new comers. Although she expects to be praised for her brave idea, others accuse her of being “a deviant from normal”. They ask her not to destroy the unity of the room and keep going with the traditional welcome greetings. However, she believes whoever deviates from honesty can cause many other problems even though he/she does not really mean. She resists in her standing and tries to convince other individuals with her independent ideas. She gets a few friends who support them but still the majority behaves in the traditional way. These few people start their own way and they sometimes do not greet the new comers if they think those are not really welcome. This new way troubles the unity supporters. Because they make up the majority, they start to threaten the minority with “exemption”. “If you continue being different in the room, we will send you away and you will not benefit from the facilities of this room.” But still these a few people who want to show that they are doing the right thing start meeting outside the room to find a solution for the problem. One of them suggests that “Let’s post a paper which reads “No entry” on the door”. This idea creates a festival environment in the meeting. But soon they realize that this also causes a problem because a note which says “no entry” is not selective. It stops everyone who wants to enter the room even though they are welcome by everyone. Another member of this minority suggests adding a few more words to the note: “No entry unless authorized” This looks better others say but still they have to define the specifications of a person who is authorized to enter and who is not! Since they can not find a better solution, they decide to offer the last version of the note to the majority.

The majority rejects all sorts of attempts to post a note on the door. They claim that a paper on the door will isolate the room from the external world and the room residents will be strangers in all other rooms. They repeat asking minority to return to the beginning point and stop causing further problems. If there is a real problem, then majority is the only group which can work on the solution. There is no need for the minorities to worry about the problems of the room because they will never be powerful enough to change the things in the room. Majority passes a new rule for those who do not greet the new comers and causes fractions in the unity of the room.

*** To be continued…

Letters from Vietnam 51

29th November 2006 - HCMC

Is it true that I always feel lonely because I am a writer? U. claimed this last weekend while chatting on Google talk. When I told him that I want to return to Turkey for at least a few years to try Turkey for working and writing, he replied me with this claim. According to him, I will feel lonely wherever I go because I am not interested in external world. This partial truth made me think about my final exodus. I still want to return home for other reasons if my problem of physical loneliness can not be resolved. I want to return home because I miss my family, because I miss speaking Turkish, because I miss browsing bookstores for Turkish books, because I miss Bosporus, because I miss Turkish food… I also told him that a return does not mean an end for anything. Eventually, I have a house in Bangkok and sooner or later I will go back to Bangkok either for working or for vacation. If I can not do in Turkey, there is always an option for other countries. As a teacher of seven years experience, I believe it will not be so hard for me to find a job in any country even though I am Turkish. Being optimistic makes me happy even sometimes I feel as if I am cheating myself. However, one needs to be optimistic to produce regularly. Desperate people create desperate truths and those truths cause only problems for others.

Pope is visiting Turkey now. M asked me to write something about it but I do not see anything special about this event. First, I do not have sympathy for this pope for known reasons. His eyes reminds me a man with different thoughts from the words he uses. He seems like he is scared of something or he wants to scare something/somebody. There is no kindness of previous pope in the present pope’s eyes. Of course, these are my subjective observations. It does not bind anyone and does not provoke any idea. The words he used before becoming pontiff and just after are also supporting me to some extent. His speech about Islam and violence was very unprofessional and he did not apologize for his speech. It might be because Popes are the shadows of God on the earth and they do not apologize since they do not make mistakes by definition. But in a world of globalization, there is no more small mistake! His words are considered as “commands” and people respect him for the sake of the position he holds. He kept saying that he quoted the words of Roman emperor and he did not mean any bad about Islam. But one should ask why he chose to quote those words which are both wrong and provocative. Couldn’t he find a better example? Beside this speech, his previous statements are also not so friendly in terms of religious dialogue and peaceful solutions. Everyone knows that one of the first things he has done after becoming pope is firing or sending away a Vatican scholar who was expert on religious dialogue, especially on the relationship between Islam and Christianity.

In other words, Pope is not visiting Turkey as he visits a Muslim country. He is visiting the head of Orthodox Church who resides in Istanbul for centuries. For long time, Catholic Church and Orthodox Church did not go well together. There are many problems between them and Pope will definitely look for some solution for Istanbul Fener Patriarchal. What amazed me the most is prime minister’s request for a support to Turkey’s EU entry. The government is using this visit for its own purpose. We all know that the negotiations with EU are now slower due to the problems with Cyprus and ports. However, prime minister wants Turkish people to forget this “lack of speed” and try to make people look at something else. What is he going to say after Pope leaves Turkey is quite known: Look! Even pope is supporting us! Firstly, I don’t really believe Pope supports Turkey’s EU bid and secondly I don’t think pope’s support will work for any good. PM of Turkey one more time messed up with religion-politics dilemma and hit the wrong rock. If he wants solution to the ongoing crisis with EU, he has to solve it in political arena, not in the way of religious leaders talk and negotiate. He is using Pope’s visit for coming elections and apparently he lost a lot of vote because of the problems with EU. Many people lost their faith in Turkey’s entry to EU. It seems like the governing party will not last one more term if they can not give the same spirit of EU to the people.

I resumed writing my novel again. I wrote the first three chapters long ago, before coming to Vietnam and I have been writing and editing first four chapters for the last three days. I have installed Turkish keyboard to my school computer so now I can also type Turkish in school. This makes submitting stories to the publish houses much easier. My only concern is the character in the novel looks like me a lot in many senses. I guess in the next few chapters I will spend a lot of effort to make him look different from me and have different environment/hobbies/friends etc. Otherwise, the story will not only look like my personal journal but also reveal my secrets in a way where people will not doubt about their findings.
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I would like to add Allan's thoughts on Pope's Turkey visit here. I enjoyed his thoughts and the humorus style in his article.

I have been gone from Turkey less than two weeks and stay current with on-line news, so I can give you a reasonably well-founded perspective on the Pope's visit there -- not what will actually be, of course, but what some of the "ground" is on which he will be walking.

First and foremost, the Pope missed a tremendous opportunity to score major points with much of Islam world-wide when he failed to use the word "apologize" in some form whenever he has tried to back out of and smooth over the effects of the mideval quote he used that criticized Islam. Muslims were looking for that specific word, and he should have used it several times. When he didn't, people felt slighted, felt as if they were being finessed diplomaticly rather than being treated honestly. The Turks are among this group. If the Pope were to make a clear-cut apology while he is on Turkish soil it will do much to win the hearts of Turks, somewhat less in winning the hearts of Muslims elsewhere.

Second, a few Turks have some tolerance for Christianity and some understanding; many Turks are simply indifferent to Christians and Christianity; and a lesser number are anti-Christian with feelings that usually lie just below the surface, like water that is almost ready to break into a boil. Of the second group, a small part could break into a boil rather easily, as is illustrated by the rally in Istanbul on Sunday. A few of these hot-heads may actually make an attempt on the Pope's life while he is in Turkey.

Third, there is a widely held belief that Christians want to unite and take or re-take lands and nations now held by Muslims, sweeping first across the East from Iraq through Iran and on to the Turkic Republics, finally uniting with Christianity's not too secret effort to capture or control Afghanistan. The Pope's main stated purpose in coming to Turkey is to meet with the head of the Orthodox Church, who lives there, and talk about a rapproachment between the major blocs of Christians they represent. This fans Muslim paranoia.

Fourth (or 3.1), the Pope is expected to urge the release of various Christian properties being held by Turkey, including the headquarters of the Orthodox patriarchate and an old Orthodox seminary, and to urge fair and equitable treatment for all Christians throughout Turkey. Such treatment includes the repeal of a law that says only native born Turkish Christians may serve in any administrative capacity in the Orthodox Church in Turkey. This has strangled the growth and life of the Orthodox Church (intentionally) in the country where it feels strongly that it has its roots. All of these pro-Christian considerations lend fuel to the belief that the Pope wants to unify Christianity, etc.

Fifth, after the Pope met briefly yesterday with Turkey's Prime Minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, Erdogan said the Pope had given his clear support to Turkey's bid for membership in the European Union. Turks know this is a reversal of the Pope's previous position and appreciate it. If Erdogan misunderstood or misstated what the Pope said or intended to say, and the Pope corrects him publicly, rather than letting it go, there will be a tremendous loss of face for Turkey and a corresponding rise in anti-Christian sentiment.

Finally, I am afraid that an attempt will be made on the Pope's life. That would strengthen the divide between Christians and Muslims. If the Pope were to die, he would be a martyr of the first order, the world's most prominent Christian symbol attacked and destroyed, and we would be well on our way to Huntington's "clash of civilizations." Let's all hope the Pope's visit to Turkey is a positive one.

--Allan

Letters from Vietnam 50

26th November 2006 – 11:23 - HCMC

Writing everyday a half page was going well until I ended the story. For the last 4 days, I could not apply the same routine because I could not find a new topic to write about. There are a few ideas to write stories but those are usually either overly metaphoric or frequently used by other writers before. Creating something original is not easy in the sense of writing. First the writer must know what to write and then decide how to write. Moreover, to start a story with a nice beginning is not good enough. The writer should develop the material, create characters and plot and hide the message she/he wants to give to the reader. All together, the process requires the skills of a craftsman and thoughts of an intellectual.

One of the new ideas came to my mind recently when I read Guy Debord’s thoughts on spectacles. I sent the aphorismic seeds of thoughts to A and we had several e-mails on the people, society and living without spectacles. A possible story could be like this: A man loses his way in a city or he also may be kidnapped to somewhere unknown. When he opens his eyes, he sees everyone in the city wearing glasses in different shapes, colours, sizes, specifications etc. He soon realizes that he also wear some glasses which he ha never seen before. When he removes his glasses from his eyes, he realizes that he is not able to see anything. Then the conversations start with a child whose glasses change very frequently and with an adult mother whose glasses are old and rusty. The details can make the story more remarkable but still there is something missing: Conflict! May be he will want to go back to his hometown, or he will look for someone, or a beautiful girl will attract him to another unknown world where he will see more peculiar things. As we know that the conflict is the engine of the story, then without it, the story will be dull and useless. Actually I am a little bit tired of writing stores with full of metaphors. I want to try something more real and more tangible to the real people. Hiding a philosophical truth behind a story may not be so bad but one should be very careful with this because the reader may give up philosophical transformations very easily. I like reading stories like Metamorphoses, Animal Farm, Blindness and Nose etc... And I also like writing these kinds of stories. However, since I have written so many stories similar to this kind, it might be right time to try something different.

Those who follow the news in Turkey must know the last story of “Emperor is Naked”. The story is almost the same. A few months ago, an energy company in Turkey claimed that they have invented a machine which converts nothing to energy, or in more technical terms, the machine’s output energy is much larger than its input energy. You give 1 Watt-hour and get 100 Watt-hour. They also said that it has nothing to do with nuclear energy which is still quite unknown to my country. A reasonable scientist can only laugh at this claim. It actually happens in Turkey by this way now. Scientists from prestigious universities say “it is impossible” but the company spokesman still claims that their invention will change the world. They already spent millions of dollars for advertisement campaigns. The interesting thing is they had a press conference last week. The attendees were mostly retired army generals and ultra-nationalist lawyers/prosecutors. They make the invention as the symbol of “power of Turkish mind”. However, nobody has seen this machine so far. They say because the machine is very important for the future of the world, they hide it. They also said that they have applied to Turkey’s patent institute already. This means their invention will be recognized by an official institution of Turkey. However the patent institute did not approve anything yet and they said the purpose of the machine is not clear. All this mess is caused by a few generals who believe Turkish mind is more powerful than rest of the world and they think by challenging the universal laws of Physics –especially Thermodynamics- they can create new fuse around themselves. The comedy actually starts here. Our generals think that even the Physics laws must be under the control of Turkish army so that nothing can be out of their sights. I laughed a lot when I read the news first and I thought there must be some misunderstanding. There might be a machine which can convert one type of energy to another type of energy. In fact, modern life is based on these converters. But I can not believe that a machine which can create more energy than it takes unless it can be explained by some ad hoc hypothesis by scientists. The retired army general in the press conference said that their invention could not be explained by present Physics laws. That means the whole thing is unscientific and simply rubbish. If he says they have called scientists to investigate the situation and bring some scientific explanation, I would say they might be right. But so far not a single scientist saw the machine or said something in the favour of machine. This company keeps fooling the media and makes people busy with their stupid ultra-nationalist ideas which I still can not find a connection with the machine. The funniest explanation came from another general when he has been asked about the machine. He said the machine works with the principle of inertia. Either he does not know what inertia is or he thinks Turkish people are stupid to understand inertia. First of all, there is no such a thing like “principle of inertia”. There is inertia and it belongs to the shape of the object. Two objects with same mass and same density can have different inertias depending on the distribution of mass around the centre of gravity. That is why when you rotate around your own axis while your hands are open to the both sides your speed is lower comparing with rotating while your hands are sticked to your body (Conservation of Angular Momentum –I1*W1=I2*W2-). When you stick your arms to your body, your inertia becomes smaller and then your angular speed increases. Nothing can be created by inertia because it is not a thing but it is a property which comes with the shape of object. I also read news about some electricians who claimed that the invention belongs to them but the company stole it without paying them. None of these electricians explained how the machine looks like and how it works. This is why I said at the beginning the story reminds me the story of “The emperor is naked”. There is an invisible machine which is supposed to be magnificent in terms of creating new energy and solving our planet’s deadly hunger for new energy sources. Let’s wait and see this invention of 21st century… As the 8th president of Turkey used to repeat frequently: 21st century will be belong to Turks… I hope my people will not be ridiculed by others for such a useless machine which creates energy from energy while losing most of it during the process…

Letters from Vietnam 49

19th November 2006 – 10:05 – Home / HCMC

He jumped out of the bed with the fear of being late to his job but soon he realized that it was Sunday morning. The clock was on the table, faced down! “Did the alarm ring?” he asked himself. There was no sound in the room. He felt as if the power has been cut off abruptly at the middle of a rock concert and a vacuum of nothing to fall into could easily be sensed in the air. He put his hand on his stomach to check if it turned to normal after the heavy drinking session last night. He sat up on the bed to see the clock and took the clock in his hand to check whether it still works. There was no sound coming from the running seconds of the clock but on the large glass screen it was visible that the clock works perfectly. He could not solve the contradiction and put the clock back on the table.

When he entered to the living room, the silence of the room made him confused again. No sound was coming from outside. He opened the windows to hear the honking cars and crying babies but there was nothing in the air. No singing birds, no blowing air, no swinging trees, no beeping motorcycles… It was absolute soundlessness! He thought about last night and the things happened with his friends. One of his friends, the one who is pregnant, told him that there is an alchemist in neighbourhood and he can help everyone to make their wishes true. He barely remembers that he liked the idea of going to an alchemist to solve his everlasting problems. At the end, it was too good to believe that there is someone who can solve the problems without any scientific process which generally needs more attention, more discipline and more money. They went to the alchemist’s house together. On the road, she told him that she was pregnant. He shook her hand to congratulate her and her husband as if they reached to a final point in their long marathon of business negotiations. When he thought of this scene, he chuckled but again not being able to hear any sound from himself, he felt upset. He recalled the house of the alchemist and the garden which was surrounded by all sorts of flowers. It was the most beautiful and colourful garden he had ever seen in his life. They entered to the house to meet the alchemist. Then he remembers nothing about the rest. It was all blank! What was his wish? What did he ask from the alchemist?

He sat on the sofa and tried to think what he can do now. The best thing to do is to contact K and ask her what he wished last night in Alchemist’s house but he could not figure out how! He can not even hear his own voice! He yawned deeply as if the problem itself is something superficial and could be solved if he just stops worrying and keeps calm. If he calls her, then he will learn nothing. He might be able to ask her the problem but not getting a response directly makes the method dull. He thought about going to her house but the absolute silence of the city scared him. Without hearing the sound of the city, it would be so difficult to walk on the streets, to cross the road or even to get on the bus. Then he decided to write an e-mail to her. It was the best way to reach her although it can be considered as slow. He had to wait until she checks her e-mail and he has no idea about how often she checks her inbox at the weekends. He wrote an e-mail without hearing the clicking sound from hitting the keyboard and sent to her immediately. In the letter, he said “I am totally deaf now! It must be something from the alchemist we met last night. I remember nothing about the time after we arrived to the big house. What was my wish?”

Just after sending the letter, he called her as well. On the phone, because he can not hear what she says or even if she answers the phone, he kept repeating, “Good morning, this is S speaking. I have a problem. Please check your e-mail account as soon as possible! Bye!” He repeated the same words ten times in each calling without knowing that what was going on at the other side of the phone. After giving up on the phone, he turned to the computer screen again. Instead of waiting for the e-mail in front of the screen, he went to the kitchen and made a coffee for himself. A few cookies and coffee! Almost every morning starts by the same way he thought. Without hearing his own voice, he was not even able to witness his curses while killing the ants around the sugar container. With the coffee mug and cookie dish in his hand, he went to the chair in the balcony to watch the city which already woke up long ago and running towards life. For him, the city is not an object. It is a living creature same as a human. It has heart, kidneys, lungs and blood vessels. He looked at the tall and thin buildings on the other side of the street. They were colourful buildings with narrow entrances. He thought that this must be the best way to provide the maximum number of people benefit from the mighty business opportunities of the street. Each building has a narrow entrance means they can have more variety of businesses on the same street without letting power imbalances among the shops. While looking at the shops and the motorcycles passing by, he recalled how much he hated the noise coming from this street in the mornings of weekends. Now there was nothing coming but he was still unhappy. This was definitely not my wish, he said to himself. He went into the bedroom and checked the computer screen if there is any e-mail. A bright happiness spread to his face when he saw the little yellow envelope picture at the right-bottom of the screen.

* * * (To be continued)

Letters from Vietnam 48

16th November 2006 – 15:31

The position of my new desk is unique because I am looking at the window while working and all other colleagues in the office are either behind me or beside me. Because there are partitions everywhere in the room, I see nobody when I work. But others can see me easily, even without moving on their chairs. Sometimes I feel as if everybody in the room is watching me when I read news in Turkish. This feeling is not negative. There is no fear in it. Quite the opposite! To imagine that everybody in the room is watching me constantly gives me some sort of “irrational” pleasure. I call it irrational because I could not find a rational explanation for this. It might be the pleasure of “being watched” by others while not knowing that who, when and why! Being watched by strangers and being judged! How many of us can accept the idea of someone watching our dreams? However, this thing simply reminds me “Big Brother” programme on TV. A dozen of young people live in a house and 24 hours of their day are being watched by all TV viewers. They do it for a kind of competition. I am not doing anything to be watched or anything which can attract others’ attention. It is my desk, my computer and my books! I often look at outside from the window. Fu My Hung buildings are just in front of me. They look like five siblings walking hand to hand in an empty land. There are a few trees I can see from this place. Some construction machines are constantly working for the new road. The sky is clear but the white clouds look like splashes of paints on a blue canvas. I used to make pictures from the white spots during my childhood. Mostly the only picture I was getting was an iceberg in Antarctica.

There is also a ruined statue a few kilometres away from the school. It is visible from my window during the day. I can not figure out what it is exactly. It looks like a Buddha statue but why did someone destroy a Buddha statue and leave it in this position? It might also be a statue of a political leader. It is tall and large. There must be some better explanation for its silent stand… It reminds me abandoned historical places in Istanbul or the destroyed Buddha statues in Afghanistan. There is something sad about it because it is so lonely and so big. It can watch everyone and can be watched by everyone. However, no one helps it to recover from the effects of rain or dust. It is definitely old and like many other old things, left to die in its own terms. People rush to life everyday. There is no place for an old statue in the modern life unless it could bring money by attracting tourists. Life in practical sense is also very selective. Those who deserve to live continue the race. Those who are useless are usually left behind.

I started a work routine in recent days. I work until 5 pm and then I write for at least 2 hours. Some evenings J calls me and asks me the time as if she does not know the time. I know I am behaving selfish but this is the only way I can keep going. Beside, she also noticed that I feel more cheerful and happy if I have written a few pages before coming home. I don’t touch computer at home. I try to spend all my evening either talking with her or walking with her in the neighbourhood after the dinner. But in school, I have to force myself very hard to keep going on creative things. Actually, it works quite well. I at least write a half page a day. Next day when I start writing again, I first read previous day’s work and edit it. Then I write another half page. Sometimes it is hard to stop after a half page. In that case I keep writing until I can not write any more.

In the last three days, I even got a new friend. A gecko comes to visit me every evening after 6 pm. On the window, I can see its patties, sometimes falls but then quickly climbs again. It comes to eat the flies and other bugs on the window. Since outside gets darker, bugs stick to the window due to the light inside the room. Then the gecko comes and collects them. Because light inside is so strong and outside it too dark, I can also see my own face on the window as if I am looking at a blurred image. The gecko sometimes seems to walk on my face, climbing my lips, walking on my nose. I even talk with it when I stop writing for a short break. It is a silent but helpful friend. It tells me how I pretend to work while I am actually not working and how I am selfish in terms of my own interests. A silent gecko friend is much better than a talkative human friend sometimes because in the case of gecko I made it talk whenever I need to listen. But in the case of friend, he/she can pull the subject wherever he/he wants and we may end up somewhere I don’t want to go.

By the way, thanks to A., I stopped dreaming about speed publishing of my stories by sending them to a vanity press. A. told me that the money I would pay for the book might be more helpful to buy a little canary and listen to the songs every morning. He was right. I sometimes behave very amateur. I don’t need to beg anyone to get publish my stories because I believe they are good enough to be published in good magazines. The only thing I need is a little bit more patience and enthusiasm to keep myself sending stories to the literary magazines. I already contacted one of the biggest publish houses in Turkey and they gave me an address. After re-editing my stories one last time, I will print them and send to the publish house. I have to do this thing more frequently to increase my chances.

Letters from Vietnam 47

13th November 2006 – HCMC – 07:37

I want to be deaf sometimes. Over the last seven years in South East Asia, I developed a kind of sensitivity for noise and it seems like the process can not be reversed. I became over-sensitive to all kind of sounds, which can easily be considered as superfluous. The beeps of motorcycles, honks of trucks, loudly speaking people, ringing phones, smashing doors, buzzing machines etc are all driving me crazy these days… I react to these noises mostly silently but sometimes I become wild and lose my control. I told my students that if they come to my class late, it is no problem unless they do not smash the door behind and close it neatly by their own hands. I also sent an e-mail to all lecturers in my office to apply the same process when they enter or leave the office. The grumbling of smashing door like a thunder takes my mind away from me and I feel as if I am at the edge of being insane for a short time. Noise itself is a sign of insanity! I remember how B closed the windows and doors of his bedroom to protect himself from overwhelming noises coming constantly from the street. He also put some black boards on his windows to keep the sunlight out of his room in the mornings.

My oversensitivity for the noise did not develop within one day. I think the growing stress and loneliness inside me helped this thing to get bigger and made it an enormous problem for me over the last seven years. Yesterday I shouted to J just because she was dragging the fan on the floor while I was reading. I knew that I was not supposed to shout her because of this but I could not stop myself. The constant sound coming from the objects in the room also makes my nerves out of the border of sanity. When I have noise coming from outside I feel as if I am so helpless in struggling with big waves of the ocean. They come and smash me on my head, roll my body towards any direction possible and the only thing I can do is to curse.

In Vietnam, this oversensitivity reached to its peak point. I can’t imagine somewhere else people make more noise than they do here. Going to the city and getting exposed to the all sorts of noises make me dizzy and I feel nausea as if I am going to throw up all the noises I have just swallowed. Last week I have been to the city twice for my health certificate. I needed it for the work permit process and the HR lady gave me an address of a hospital where there are English-speaking doctors/nurses. First day I went to the hospital and returned to the school around 11 am. I was so exhausted with the noise and fumes from the vehicles that as soon as I got to the school I had lunch. The same thing happened when I went to collect my health certificate too. Again I returned to school a few hours before lunch time but could not wait for 12 am for that. I ate as if I had some kind of feeble body which needs careful protection from noise and fumes.

However there are still some kinds of noises which do not really trouble me. For example, a crying baby in a public bus makes me feel good –not because baby cries desperately but I guess I feel some joy of life in this sound-. I also do not bother seeing students talking loudly around me and making jokes. I take these noises as part of my life or basically part of the whole life. I wonder the day when my own voice starts to be a noise for me. Then I need to be deaf and mute at the same time.

I also wonder why people live in HCMC? What makes them to live here? I can understand the locals who are continuing a life of their parents so for them there is not much choice but what about the foreigners? When I ask friends at school, they usually say the same thing: You will get used to it. But there is nothing special to getting used to the noise. I don’t want to get used to it because it will kill my senses slowly without giving me anything special. There are many foreigners living in this city for long time without having any problem with noise and dirt. People seem as if this is a heaven for easy and inexpensive living. I can admit the word “inexpensive” to some extent but the word “easy” would be an exaggeration for this city. Life here seems like life in a caravan for years. You have to move and make noise to get rid of the trouble in your ears. It may not sound a good idea but it seems to work perfect when it comes to the word “adapt”. Darwin states three rules for evolution: Migrate, Die or Adapt. If you can make your own noise, you will be protected by all other noises coming from outside. I think this is how people live here. Whenever I go to the city the first thing strikes to my attention is the constantly honking motorcycles and cars. Then it is also not difficult to notice people beside the road listening music very loudly. This explains the whole situation. If you don’t want to get troubled by the external noises, then make your own. It is like a mother who does not tolerate the cries of somebody else’s baby but when it comes to her own baby, she becomes a heroine to answer the needs of the baby.

The city lives and grows with noise. There is no way to stop it and there is no point in complaining about it. If I don’t want noise around me, I should not live in the city. People in the city adapt themselves for all kinds of intrusions –mental or physical-. But people like me are less adaptive to new situations. I need a few things with me wherever I go. A few books, a computer to write, a mug to drink coffee/tea and of course my beloved wife are the four indispensable for me. Anything more than these needs to be careful investigation before interrupting my silence. At the end, I believe the silence is the best music human mind can create. The rest is noise!

Letters from Vietnam 46

12th November 2006 - HCMC

Last week I went to the dance club to see if I can learn dancing. As soon as I arrived at the club room, I have been greeted by a few students who are enrolled in my classes. It was good to see some familiar faces at the first time since this way my embarrassment could have chance to turn into fun. When dance teachers came, my nightmare started. Almost everyone in the room was able to do the steps without much problem. A girl from Statistics class tried to help me by showing the steps beside me and repeating the same thing probably tens of times. It seemed easy but soon later I realized that it is as hard as playing an instrument. As a person who learns everything by mental studies –not by observing and imitating-, it was too hard to teach my body how to move after a certain step. She tried very long time to make me feel comfortable at my first day and I tried to be very patient not to leave the room. However, I could not learn a single sequence of steps for the entire session. I left with the feeling that there are certain things in this life I should not try at all. My self-confidence helps me only in certain positions. I am definitely very stable in a Math class and feel well after writing a beautiful paragraph. Playing an instrument, singing and dancing are three of the many things I will never be able to achieve. Of course if I try harder, it will not be a problem but the question is deadly at this point: Do I really want to dance? The answer is definitely “no”. Watching the South American girls dancing on the streets makes everyone envious but this ambition only is not enough to make one a good dancer. After the first lesson I easily gave up dancing classes with a great frustration since I knew that I would not be able to allocate sufficient time or energy for dancing. It requires constant attention, regular exercises and great determination which I do not have for dancing at all. The good thing is, as Nietzsche says, “that which does not kill me makes me stronger”, I learnt one more thing about myself without losing much time and energy. Now I can only enjoy watching dancing couples and appreciate their skills. There is no question of all human accomplishments are results of self-determination and hard-work. When I multiply big numbers in my head or take their squared-roots without using calculator, my students usually ask me how I am doing this very quickly. I told them several times that there is nothing special about this because one can do the things he/she loves. If you love dancing, you can dance very well and make people feel jealous. If you love numbers, then you can play with them as if a magician plays with poker cards. And of course, if you love words, then you can write beautiful poems and amazing stories to be remembered for centuries.

Last week there was another important incident, which happened in virtual world. I am member of Turkey-Thailand group which aims to provide communication among Turkish people who either currently live in Thailand or used to live in Thailand before. Last week, a guy wrote a complaint about his disappointing experience in Embassy of Turkey. His complaint was about the behaviour of the secretary at the front desk and her prompt reaction towards him when he rejected to supply another document for the visa application of a Thai friend. His behaviour towards the secretary of a state institution was not acceptable and seemed unbalanced. However he wrote his complaint to the group and I believe, although he was wrong he deserved a response from the authorized people who are also members –even moderators- of the group. But instead of answering his complaint and telling him where he made a mistake, the moderators ceased his membership and fired him out. He wrote to me next day about the situation. I felt sorry for him but I was also angry for the action taken by the moderators. The group itself is not a state institution; neither exists to protect the state’s rights. If he said something wrong, then whoever has right to answer his comments, has to do it in a way people do in modern times. To ban him from the group and sending him off the group as if a football player is sent off with a red card for his brutal actions is very undemocratic and very primitive in terms of management. The difference in the analogy is obvious. Unlike the well-defined rules of football, our group did not have any rules before this incident. The group was serving for the people and it needs to embrace all diversity in the population regardless of whether the population is small or not. I wrote a condemnation letter to the group mentioning that banning is the action of the managers who are either powerless or not be able to moderate the diverse situations. I got several answers, which were condemning my condemnation. I did not withdraw my letter. Soon later, one of the moderators of the group stated the rules of the group for the future references. Then people turned to write about daily things again. What I understood from this experience is very simple: As Turkish people we all appreciate freedom for ourselves. When it comes to the freedom of others, our love for ourselves passes over all other social responsibilities. We are very weak when it comes to support others’ freedom or search for rights. Another lesson I learnt was about Turkish state institution’s impatience to the criticism. I admit that the guy at the beginning made a great mistake when he wrote the things to the group before he talks with Embassy officials but still this does not justify the action of the moderators. When he called the Embassy for the action against him and told them that “this is against democracy and human rights!!!”, the official at the other end of the telephone line told him this historical sentence: “Who told you there is democracy in the group?”. Those who believe in different democracies for different individuals or using it only for their own benefits are called either fascist or dictator.

I started to write a short story narrating this incident and combining it with my never-ending authentication procedure. I only wrote a page but it already went in a Kafkaesque road in the first page. I will try to get rid of the pessimism of “The Castle” and have some humours to make it a sarcastic criticism.

Letters from Vietnam 45

9th November 2006 – HCMC

After a break of nine days, I am back to writing again. After the last entry to the blog, I only write a letter to C and a half page beginning for a new short story. Yesterday evening I stopped working at 4 pm and started to work on writing in Turkish for almost two hours. I realized that this is the only way I can keep writing since it is almost impossible to write at home. J wants to talk with me once I return home and this is the only right thing I can do. I can not blame her for feeling lonely or loving me. Actually, I must be thankful to her for being so patient with me.

Whenever I start writing a new short story I am having the anxiety of hesitation: what if I can never complete it? I wrote a half page yesterday and stopped writing when time was 6 pm. I re-read my two paragraphs several times and edited them more than twice. Polishing a small piece of story is much easier than working on a whole story. As soon as I stopped writing I went home. On the road I tried to keep thinking about the next half page which I will write today. My mind was clear and fresh in terms of the plot and characters. My only concern was time! The same question again and again attacked to my mind. What if I can not complete it and it stays as an incomplete story like many others. There are more than twenty half-stories in my computer. Some of them are almost finished and if I have enough courage to go through them, they will be complete in a few hours. However I can not return them because I lost the enthusiasm which made me start those stories at the beginning. I believe that a short story must be written in a short time. The longer time it takes the more deviant it becomes. The sparkling idea which gave birth to the story can take the whole process if it is hot and fresh. I think I will delete most of my half stories in coming days. Destroying them can help me to stop being obsessed with old ideas. I am not sure how it can help me to star new stories but leaving something behind and not looking at back always inspire new innovations.

Last weekend we went to Mui Ne again. It was nice to stay away from city even though it was only for one day. We took a morning bus and left the city at 9 am. At 1 pm, we were on the beach, walking barefoot. I took Ben Okri’s short story collection with me. It was an easy read and I have finished it without much trouble. I can not say I really enjoyed his style when he mentions dreams and modern magicians. His other book I have read last week was better in terms of style and technique. It was an essay collection and most of the essays were about poets, story telling and the value of art.

In the evening we went to a restaurant near to our resort. There were French people inside so the TV was speaking French all the time. Soon later I noticed that Vietnamese music comes from behind my table. The music was coming from a Vietnamese man’s cell phone and I guess he tries to impress his girlfriend with either the music or the quality of his phone. It was irritating because the sound was loud and he never stopped it. For more than 30 minutes we have listened to a mechanical sound which is definitely not as beautiful as the sound comes from a stereo. When they left the restaurant, he put his telephone into his bottom pocket and the music was still on. I told J that his bottom sings… We both laughed but still tried not to make it too visible for our music-lover friends J

Whenever we inserted the key holder to the socket of electricity on the wall, the TV in the room automatically turned on. And more surprisingly, whatever the channel we watch, there was a red word at the top of the screen: FACTORY. We both did not understand why TV screen always shows the word FACTORY with big, bold and red letters. It must be some kind of error from the settings of the TV. Unlike the first time, our room was away from the sea this time. There was no way to listen to the voice of the sea while trying to sleep. However, I woke up in the next morning with the noise of the construction. There was an ongoing construction beside our resort and we had he nearest room to the area. I could not sleep in the room so I took my book and went to the beach.

After reading two books from Okri I returned to the biography of Kafka. I don’t want to finish it easily because it is, like Kafka’s own books, a heavy read. There are so many words whose meanings I can not figure out from the context. I use a dictionary to keep going. Today I read 6th chapter in the book and I realized that Kafka also suffered a lot from “not being able to write”. This is a quote from his best friend, Brod’s diary. He writes this paragraph after convincing Kafka to describe the events they have seen during a festival. According to the plan, they will both write about the same thing and then they will compare with each other:

I was pursuing a secret plan. Kafka’s literary art was lying fallow at that time: for months he’d completed nothing and he often complained to me that his talent is obviously leaking away, that he’d totally lost it. He was living for months on end in a kind of lethargy, very depressed; in my diaries I find recurrent entries about his melancholy. Le coeur triste, l’esprit gai… Even when he was in his deepest depressions, the effect he had on other people was stimulating, not depressing, except in moments of closest intimacy.

Letters from Vietnam 44

31 October 2006 – 18:34 – HCMC

What am I supposed to do if I don’t write? I told A that I am giving one-week break to writing in order to listen myself and have a better start after a quiet week but soon later I noticed that it is almost impossible to stop writing? First, I need something else to make myself busy so that I can maintain my distance from writing. I know that what I write on my blog can not be considered as creative writing and I know that all blog entries do not worth more than a single short story. However, my purpose in keeping the blog does not contradict with this insufficiency. Basically, I am keeping the blog just because I can not create fiction. The day I can start writing stories again, probably I will either ignore the blog or quit keeping it totally. I don’t know what keeps me away from writing in last few years. I lost my old glorious days of “sitting in a quiet room and stay motionless until finishing the work”. Now, I am more impatient, more amateur, and duller in terms of creating something artistic.

I can also judge myself with this claim: I am keeping the blog because I am lazy to imagine fiction. One easily accepts that keeping a journal is much easier than writing fiction since writing the life only has nothing to do with art. It could be either history or observation. Because art is a recreation of life, not the life itself and it can be shown in a story. Years pass and people die. We may not know how Dostoyevsky lived his life day by day but we all know how Raskolnikov killed two women. Because Dostoyevsky lived a real life and it is definitely less interesting than fictious life of Raskolnikov. Some people might want to read Dostoyevsky’s journals but again the reason for this would be Raskolnikov. Dostoyevsky’s life is important to the readers because he is such a great writer who once created Raskolnikov brilliantly.

Right now there are many half stories waiting to be completed but I have no idea how I can make them full stories. I should stop blogging and start worrying about creating characters but this itself is a big problem in these days. My biggest problem is being away from the sources of my first language. I have not read a beautiful paragraph in Turkish for almost six months. The only Turkish I read is the news from Internet sites. As it can be imagined Turkish newspapers do not have a fantastic way of giving news to the readers. I guess this only makes me thirstier because the bad Turkish and usually bad grammar keep me more away from the beauty of the language. I sometimes read online magazines on the Net but except for a few, they are also usually not very well-designed in terms of the way they use the language. Writing in Turkish now is scary as if I am walking in a lake where I do not know the depth of the water for my next step. I am not confident… Then why am I writing in English? It is because I have an excuse if someone says “stop writing bullshit”. I can tell him/her that this is not my first language and I have right not to write beautifully. This inferiority complex makes everything more imbalanced for me. The more I write in English, the more I feel inferior in writing English because I will never be confident in writing English and I am definitely sure that neither my English nor my imaginary writing skills improve by this way.

Now I can think of only one solution: Stop reading/writing English and start practicing writing in Turkish again as if I am discovering my language again. This definitely might help me if I can keep going and supporting myself with good stories from the Net. Of course, I will read and write English at work and for e-mails/letters to friends but other than that I will only use Turkish for writing fiction.

* * *

J is coming this Thursday. I am very happy since at least there will be someone to talk with at home. It may not seem so good in terms of writing but who cares! What did I write when she was away? Nothing! Then I should stop thinking that loneliness is necessary for writing. It is a relatively concept. I need her and I need her presence beside me while I am busy with writing. Her presence is enough to keep me working on rational works.

What else? What else? What else?

Nothing else… I want to read some stories from online magazines and go to bed early…

This is all I want to do now!!!

I have three classes tomorrow…