Travels with Herodotus

Posted on June 11, 2017 by wordpressgrethe

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is an amazing book that was given to me as a second hand book by a friend already years ago. It ended up at a pile and stayed there for years. However since I travel a lot for my work in the Middle East these days, I am reading book by book through that pile while waiting at airports or flying in airplanes.
Travels with Herodotus is one of those books that I should have read earlier and that I couldn’t let go once I started reading. It is not a new book (published in Dutch in 2005 already) but who cares, nor is Herodotus who lived in the 5th century BC.
Kapuscinki proves that Herodotus has not lost any of his actuality in 2500 years for 2 main reasons:

1. He is the first known author to check and double check his stories, indicating for his readers how (im)probable the history he offers would be; that is tremendously interesting. His way of operating is amazing, checking stories in the 5th century BC cost him years but that didn’t stop him at all. He must have felt that he was not just writing for his contemporaries but for the entire humanity. So as readers in the 21st century we can follow pretty accurately the games of power of the ancient world.

2. Herodotus shows with facts the extreme cruelty of the rulers of his time – and of their advisers, family and the like. They make you think of some 20th century dictators; indeed not mankind has changed but the possibilities individuals get to apply their cruelty in daily reality. Herodotus describes the cities of Athens and Sparta as cities with a democracy where power was limited or should we say: diffuse, divided; no one was able to rule through fear and cruelty to the extent that it was found among Persians, Assyrians, Parths and many other people where the power was in the hands of one person or family. Somehow it is the system that allows humans to be cruel – or stops them. In the light of today’s debate about the value of democracy, these are intriguing thoughts.
The division of power leads to endless discussions, even on the battle field where the Greek leaders fight although the Persians are near. It is fun to read for those who have experience with democracy; nothing changed in the ‘way it is done’. And the surprise is that small Greek states without apparent unity win the war over well organized Persians who outnumber them and do not loose time in discussions about strategy. The book proves that it would have changed the course of history in Europe, had the Persians won the war. It is an encouragement to proceed on the way of checks and balances in the institution and execution of power!

Travels with Herodotus is not just about Herodotus, it is also about the author Ryszard Kapuscinski himself. He interwaves his personal story as travel journalist with Herodotus’ book Histories in an interesting and also meaningful way. I think Kapuscinski saw this book as his personal life story. On his first foreign trip that he undertook while he had always lived in closed communist Poland, Herodotus’ book accompanied him and did so on many other journeys that followed. It was not just a source of inspiration but also a method and a continuous challenge for reflection. Kapuscinski shares a lifetime outcome of that with his readers; this book has a depth that is rarely seen. It is a gift for humanity: buy it, in a second hand bookshop if no longer available, who cares.

Travels with Herodotus is a must-read for anybody who is interested in:
– (the development of) democracy versus dictatorship
– Asian and European ancient history
– travel journalism, both content/stories and methodology
– philosophy, politics, culture and anthropology.

Useful links:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jun/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview6
http://www.geschiedenis.nl/nieuws/artikel/912/reizen-met-herodotos (in Dutch)

Other blogs about books you might want to read:
‘Why are people like this?’ Boualem Sansal
Simone Veil: une vie
Dead Aid in Malawi

Elections in Turkey

Posted on May 31, 2015 by wordpressgrethe

elections in turkey 0 Elections in Turkey are coming up and it is impossible to overlook them! I went to a trade mission in Adana and Mersin last week with the Dutch ambassador, his team and other entrepreneurs and we saw and heard the elections everywhere. Cars with loudspeakers shout out their messages: ‘Hey Adana’ and then the text of their campaign follows in a volume that forms an interruption for your conversation – just wait untill they passed to continue.
There are flags and banners everywhere, on the houses, over the street, over the river… think of a spot and the politicians did too.

Here some interesting pictures:
elections in turkey 2

CHP relatively modest on a roundabout;

elections in turkey 2

The ruling AK party: ‘Now I can go to university with my veil; they just talk, AK party acts‘;

elections in turkey 3

A big flag from the MHP party (grey wolves, a big party in Adana) and smaller – below the flag – a sign of the Saadet party: ‘not the European union but Islam union‘ (union is the same word as unity in Turkish);

elections in turkey 4

A big flag of the MHP over the road – busses and bigger cars can not go under it without touching the flag so it is damaged on the lower side but the effect is there I guess. In most countries this would be forbidden;

elections in turkey 5

Not everybody is good in flags: the wind has frustrated the Salih Demir message here…

In the Netherlands it happens that people forget to vote. I don’t think that can happen here. Nevertheless it does not make politics more popular in Turkey than in the Netherlands; most people that I asked did not like the overall political presence.

Naziha’s spring – an outstanding IDFA documentary

Posted on November 23, 2014 by wordpressgrethe

It was a coincidence that I went to an IDFA documentary, I never have / take time for things like that but in this case the maker of the documentary was the daughter of a friend with whom I participate in a Turkish litterature club – yes, all Turkish spoken so you understand I do not speak a lot, however I do read all the books (in Turkish) while not every participant does 🙂
I have to say that Gülsah Dogan presented an outstanding documentary that should be obliged learning material for any organisation involved in the problems of Amsterdam-West families. She has succeeded to make an inside picture about one of the (former) most problematic Dutch-Moroccan families Amsterdam-West has known. And anyone in the public can recognize and feel the characters, the conflicts, the existentialist problems that occur in this story. It is very moving – there were many tears – and the complexity of extreme family situations is revealed. This is a documentary that deserves a price and I hope it will win.
See http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=5273991f-70a3-431d-836f-264b6b41bce6, for more info and also times to visit next wednesday, thursday and saturday 26/27/29 November. Don’t miss this one! For me, it will still be on my mind for many days; it is really, really impressive!

Find another documentary made by Gülsah Dogan here: The hunt for my father

Istanbul: mysterious tickets after Süleymaniye Mosque donation

Posted on March 2, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Süleymaniye Mosque

On leaving the beautiful Süleymaniye Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) I gave a donation to a guy sitting at the exit of the Mosque with a sign ‘donations for the Mosque’. As the entrance was free and usually the maintenance of this kind of buildings is enormous in costs, it seemed reasonable to have some contribution. I gave money and got a few blue tickets in return for that. I looked at them and thought, why do I get this kind of tickets? I gave a donation, but what is this for?
As my brains couldn’t find a solution, I started to think the Dutch way. This must be a proof for tax administration that a donation was made, I thought. In the Netherlands this exists; for income that is spent in gifts to good aims, citizens don’t need to pay taxes. But you must be able to proof that you gave away that money. I suggested the Turks might have the same system and that the tickets I got at the Süleymaniye Mosque served to prove to Turkish taxes that this money was really spent as a gift. But I also know that perspectives can be coloured too much by national perspective. The reason why I got the tickets could be completely different.
So in the restaurant, close to Süleymaniye, where we had dinner after visiting the Mosque, I showed my newly acquired tickets to the staff and asked them for the meaning of them. The staff was very surprised about it: ‘we have never seen these tickets before’. They started to question me ‘the Mosque is free to visit, why did you give them money?’. I tried to explain to them the idea, or should I say idealism, of donations but my table company destroyed it all by saying ‘she wanted to feel good about herself’, making everybody burst out in laughter as if I were the kind of fool that was hardly seen in this part of Istanbul.
The restaurant staff explained to me ‘the government takes care of the Mosque, they don’t need your money’. Hey, I don’t give up that easily so I responded in an utmost surprised way ‘ah, I thought Turkey has a separation of state and religion’. ‘Well yes’, they replied, ‘the state doesn’t pay any money but local government does, the city of Istanbul is taking care of the Mosque’. I thought that the separation of state and religion also involved local government as well as national government but they thought that local was completely different from national and showed surprise that the City of Amsterdam is not giving money to churches or mosques ‘Istanbul is very social but Amsterdam is not’.
Soon enough, we started to talk Turkish instead of English and we jumped from the way Christians were treated in the South-East of Turkey to the way Muslems were treated in Greece and Bulgaria. I got a bit upset and so did they, and they had the superiority of language, meaningful in situations like the moment where I said that the monasteries in the North (güney) had a hard time under Turkish government when they declared there were no monasteries in the North – like I usually do, I mixed the words South and North (kuzey versus güney); a problem of mastering a language that weakened my arguments because they wouldn’t notice that I was not telling an ‘untruth’ but making a language mistake.
We didn’t really find a solution for Muslems in Greece and Bulgaria or for Christians in South East Turkey but we had a drink together to close the discussion. The only problem that lasts now is that my question about the tickets was left unanswered: why does a tourist who gives a donation to the Süleymaniye Mosque get tickets showing the period, the amount and the purpose of the donation? If you, reader, know the answer, please send me a message because I really like to know after all…

Other blogs you might like:
Istanbul and souvenirs with a religious component
Agios Nikolaos
Istanbul street cats

Istanbul religious souvenirs

Posted on March 1, 2012 by wordpressgrethe

Istanbul religious souvenirs

Changes can sometimes be perceived in small signs that function as a symbol for deeper lying norms and values. One of those signs in Istanbul is the way souvenir shops deal with presents that have a religious component. When I was here twenty years ago, the presents with different religious background were thoroughly separated from each other. For example in the jewelry market, jewelry with the ‘bismallah’ sign were sold in shops with a muslem owner, golden crosses were sold in shops with a christian owner. In that time there was no mixed collection of presents with religious component to be found at the same shop; absolutely nowhere!
This is something that has really changed now. In many shops it is possible to find articles with islamic, christian and jewish meaning all together not just in the same shop, but also on the same shelve. For someone like me who missed 20 years of Istanbul development, it feels like a radical change. I asked some questions about it in one souvenir shop and the workers there kindly explained to me that they believe in and respect all the prophets. I tried to explain them how this was in the years ’70, ’80, even begin ’90 but they kept telling me how they feel about it now. They couldn’t explain history to me, why it was different before and why it changed. They had Maria and Jesus hanging in their shop next to islamic holy artefacts, see the picture above, and considered that as normal.
I cannot analyze this yet, it would need a more indept insight but as said I have seen this mixture in many shops in Istanbul city already. These are small signs for what could be a more fundamental change. My first and overall impression is that the selfconfidence of the Turks has increased a lot in daily life, and tolerance often comes with selfconfidence. Another way of looking at it could be that the Christian minorities form no more threat whatsoever to the Turks which allows a different attitude. Finally, it is also possible to look at this businesswise. The Turks were always good in customer service, eager to help customers out, create strong relationships and earn some money; maybe they have just added these new products to their buckets…

Other interesting blogs:
Minorities in Gaziantep
Istanbul: mysterious tickets
Mikve Israel-Immanuel synagogue
Ramallah: Jews removing Christians from Middle East

Antiphonitis – Northern Cyprus Heritage (7)

Posted on July 28, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Antiphonitis monastery church

The Byzantine monastery church of Antiphonitis lies lonely but strategically in the hills on the north side, not far from Sourp Magar (see blog Heritage (1). It has a special and beautiful architecture. Inside it has frescoes dating from the 12th to 15th century. Part of the frescoes have been looted, but others are still there.
Greek Cypriots have heavily blamed Turkish Cypriots for the looting, even suggesting that this was part of a bigger plan of the Turkish army to make all Greek signs disappear from their point of the island. Indeed there was a proven case of a Turkish art robber, cooperating with a Dutch one (see: http://www.cyprus44.com/kyrenia/antiphonitis-church.asp. But concerning the harm done to frescoes by visitors, I found hundreds of Greek writings on unique frescoes. Many of them seem to date from before the conflicts on the island, at least the dates that people marked in (!) the frescoes are all before 1975, dates like 1910, 1929 and 1960. This suggests that the Greek Cypriots didn’t care so much or protect this heritage themselves. Just a few pictures to show the serious damage done:

There is nothing Turkish there… it is too easy to blame ‘the enemy’, it is beside the facts and rather paranoid to blame the Turks for a deliberate appraoch in this destruction.

Agios Pandeleimon – Northern Cyprus Heritage (5)

Posted on July 27, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Agios Pandeleimon monastery

The monastery of Agios Pandeleimon, patron saint of physicians, in Camlibel was in closed militairy area untill recently. The church is late 16th century, the 18th century monastery was already abandoned in the ’50’s and contained little of interest. The site shows an incredible negligence. Why not clean things a bit up before you leave them open to the public, I’d say to the army; it makes a much better impression. This looks like the army has really worn out the place and when there was nothing left, withdrew from it. Even if we keep in account that the monastery was already empty for some time it is a great pity.

The place is extremely beautiful and could be developed for new functions although I know that the Greek Cypriot Church is fiercely against that. However, like this a precious site is just falling into pieces. Why was the army so inconsiderate with this place? I think it is the same problem as for Agios Christostomos: when a church acts like a political factor, its buildings will be treated like that too. This is how valuable heritage is lost.

On a pillar of the church I found the words: ‘sleep quiet’, obviously written by someone with Turkish background as they always write the way they speak (‘slip kwot’). Although quite some Turkish Cypriots criticize the role and influence of the army, they never deny the core function of their presence: that since the army is here, they can sleep quiet.

Agios Ermelaos and Lapta – Northern Cyprus Heritage (4)

Posted on July 26, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Agios Ermelaos and Lapta

Sirinevler is a rather poor village. It is located not on the coastal side of the northern part of Cyprus where life is flourishing but behind the Besparmak ridge in the large Mesaoria plain that lies in between the Besparmak mountains in the North and the Troodos mountains in the South; in the middle of the Mesaoria, the Green Line dividing the island in two parts. On the Turkish side in the Mesaoria there are mainly farmers. Life is hard there, cold in winter, hot in summertime.

Where in the very North the EU is only present with some signs about improvement concerning environment, in the Mesaoria villages we find the EU improving the infrastructure and look of the villages themselves; this is really a poverty issue.
The church in Sirinevler that was called Agios Ermelaos before, is in a terrible state. It is a more simple church than the ones with frescoes and all, but it certainly doesn’t deserve this status. It is a little beauty that deserves to be there in all pride.

I think the pictures of Agios Ermelaos are clear: this is dreadfull…

And now a few pictures from two churches in Lapta on the northern side of the Besparmak ridge. There are more than 2 churches in Lapta but the overview is the same: these churches are preserved better and respected more. Lapta is much richer and more international than Sirinevler; this works out well for heritage conservation!

So when you are confronted with a diversity issue, do not assume too easily that the problem is diversity itself; it might be poverty and isolation. Solutions that you propose depend highly of the view you have about the situation: go for an indepth analysis!

Sourp Magar – Northern Cyprus Heritage (1)

Posted on July 23, 2011 by wordpressgrethe

Sourp Magar – Armenian monastery

Who is responsible for the heritage of buildings like churches and monasteries in Northern Cyprus? It is not that there is no money to preserve these monuments. Recent times have shown the construction of a number of new monuments showing the greatness of the Turkish state, celebrating the so-called freedom and peace operation of 1974 or setting Atatürk as a symbol for the Turkish Cypriots.

However, churches and monasteries are left in a very poor state, falling in decline and subject to vandalism and the expression of frustrations. The coming days I will show some examples.

This blogs shows you the Sourp Magar monastery, started as a Coptic monastery in the 11th century and in the 15th century taken over by the Armenians, see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourp_Magar . It was an important pilgrimage destination until 1974 (when the Turks took hold of Northern Cyprus). Now the monastery is in serious decline and needs immediate restauration if any of the beautiful parts are to be preserved for future generations.

It is such a pity that no responsability is felt for heritage within Turkish Cypriot borders. There is money here, and even a lot more than 10 years ago, that is visible everywhere.
However, monuments from Christian traditions are left to fall apart; the picture of the destroyed cross above this blog, taken in the Armenian Chapel is meaningful for the underlying feeling: that the fight is not just about human rights but also religious.

You may also like to read other blogs with an Armenian component:
Apostolos Andreas Monastery – Northern Cyprus heritage (21)
Minorities in Gaziantep
Gaziantep castle: panorama and nationalism

Grethe van Geffen

culture and diversity

Tag Archives: islam and democracy