ISTANBUL Shafts of misty light pierce the steam of the Ca?alo?lu hamam in Istanbul’s Eminönü district, once the heart of walled Constantinople and the seat of the Ottoman Sultanate. Built by Sultan Mahmud I in 1741 to provide revenue for the Haghia Sophia mosque, its marble rooms are opulent, timeless pleasure-domes of fountains and gilded columns. In the women’s section, a pleasant gabble of feminine voices mingles with the sound of sluicing water; the bathers gossip languidly, gently washing one another’s hair. Nothing could be more authentically Turkish than this.
Turkey poses particular problems for the foreigner attempting to make sense of it. Istanbul, especially, appears to be quite Western, and in many ways it is. This seduces the observer into thinking it is more intelligible than it is. It is easy to believe that you know what’s going on and who stands where on the political compass. Quite often, you’re wrong.
The Turkish metropolis is one of the world’s safest big cities—but burglaries are booming. Why?
CITY JOURNAL
SUMMER 2009
I walk alone through almost every neighborhood of Istanbul, often at night. This is a megacity of at least 12 million people, many of whom are poor and three-quarters of whom are under 35. Income distribution is gravely unequal. I am nonetheless less afraid—much less afraid—that I will be a victim of violent crime here than I am when I walk through London, Paris, or any big American city.
The Sunday Times, February, 2006 by Maurice Chittenden
White Teeth was a whitewash, says Muslim who inspired prizewinning novel’s central character
WHITE TEETH, the novel that made Britain feel good about the state of its race relations, has been accused of whitewashing the truth by the real-life model for one of its characters.
Ziad Haider Rahman, the inspiration for Magid, one of the twin Muslim brothers at the centre of the novel, said Zadie Smith’s book, which was adapted for a television series, was divorced from reality.
Rammstein — a made-up word meaning, more or less, “ramming stone” — is a popular German band. (1) Very popular. Rammstein released its first album, Herzeleid (“Heartache”), in 1995. Within days, it topped the German Media Control Charts. It stayed in the number one position for five weeks, then remained in the top ten for two years, an unrivaled achievement in Germany’s notoriously fickle pop music market.
DURING THE GERMAN band Rammstein’s 1998 American debut tour, the lead singer, Till Lindemann, whipped out a monstrous black appliance in his performance of “Bück Dich” (“Bend Over”) and employed it to simulate sex with his keyboardist, who lay on the floor with a mask on his face, a chain around his neck and a gag in his mouth. When they tried this in Worcester, Mass., the two men spent the night in jail on obscenity charges.
This is nothing compared with the uproar they have caused in Germany, where people actually understand their lyrics.
Published in Travellers’ Tales, Provence, and Travellers’ Tales, a Woman’s Europe
WE WAKE EACH day to the sound of a different hippie instrument. Day one was a Tibetan Bell; on day two, Instructor Roger plays the piccolo; today, a man we call Guido because of his oiled hair and handsome gold neckchains walks around strumming a guitar. My brother emerges furrily from another corner of the biodynamic farm, teeth unbrushed, ready to hike to the field for our yoga matinal.
The blows Margaret Thatcher struck against socialism at home and the Soviet empire abroad are her most noted achievements. But an even greater legacy was bequeathed to her sex.
She was and will always be supremely significant to women. Unlike other women to whom she is often compared, she compromised no essential aspect of her personality.
Margaret Thatcher made her own political way, from beginning to end.
8 April 2013
CITY JOURNAL
Before acquiring power, Margaret Thatcher was nothing. She was trained as a chemist. Her career in politics was marked by doggedness, but no one, before her accession to office, would have noted her as a distinctive British personality, a woman who for a time could embody the national will. It was power that established her importance, and power that brought into being all of her now-immortal incarnations—diva, mother of the nation, coy flirt, hissing serpent, stern headmistress, eyes of Caligula, mouth of Bardot, screeching harridan, frugal housewife, Boadicea the Warrior Queen, and Iron Lady, all in one.
NATIONAL REVIEW
by Kathryn Jean Lopez
April 8, 2013
There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters is the title of a book by Claire Berlinski. Berlinski talks to National Review Online about why, in fact, she does!
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why does Margaret Thatcher “matter,” as your book’s subtitle puts it?
CLAIRE BERLINSKI: I wrote much of this book in 2007.
