BRIGHTENING GLANCE
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  • Lusitania Sunk 7 May 1915
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  • Seymour M. Hersh’in 4 Nisan 2014 tarihli “The Red Line and The Rat Line” isimli yazısının Türkçe Çevirisi
  • Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels (9 April 2014)
  • Naci Eriş: A Hero For These Times (15 November 2013)
  • MY APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE by Admiral Türker Ertürk (Ret.)
  • The American Ambassador (20 June 2013
  • Alain Badiou--Türkiye: Gerçek Bir Tarihi İsyan Mı? (19 Haziran 2013)
  • Alain Badiou--Turkey: A Genuine Historical Riot? (19 June 2013)
  • Barricade Defense
  • Ayranı Fazla Çekince (Bekir Coşkun-30 Mayıs 2013)
  • ÜMİT UMUTU VERİR 24 Mart 2013
  • İYİ ŞEKER BAYRAMLAR!!!! AKP'DEN (19/8/2012)
  • Olympic Women (11/8/2012)
  • OBAMABALL: an open letter to the President of the United States (2 August 2012)
  • Sinatra Dedicates One to Ataturk (17 May 2012)
  • As He Lay Dying (14 May 2012)
  • Viva 19 Mayis! Haydi gel! Bizimle ol!
  • It's 19 May...Know Your Enemy! (11 May 2012)
  • I'm as mad as hell... (2 April 2012)
  • ARAB SPRING=AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
  • Happy World Women's Day in Turkey (8 March 2012)
  • My e-mail note from Barack Obama (12/19/11) and my response
  • Women's Volleyball Team-the only winners
  • MEDIA ALERT: ATATURK SOCIETIES OF THE USA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM (6 June 2011)
  • BASIN BILDIRISI: AMERİKA VE İNGİLTERE ATATÜRK DERNEKLERİ (6 Haziran 2011)
  • Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fascist
  • Ryan Interview: Kanal B, Bilmek Gerek, 28 March 2011
  • Ergenekon Headquarters (karargâh)
  • When the Nazis Came: 8 March 2011
  • Letter to President Obama: 20 Jan. 2009
  • (Türkçe) Letter to President Obama: 20 Jan. 2009
  • Letter to President Obama: 20 Oct. 2009
  • Letter to President Obama: 3 Jan. 2010
  • Letter to President Obama: 20 July 2010
  • (Türkçe) Letter to President Obama: 3 Jan. 2010
  • (Türkçe) Letter to President Obama: 20 Temmuz 2010
  • Follow-up Letter to Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone: 12 March 2011
  • Letter to US Senator Mark Udall: 12 Feb. 2011
  • Islam, Secularism and the Battle for Turkey’s Future
  • WHAT PERCENTAGE OF US ARE STUPID? 5 October 2009
  • Portrait of Ataturk-29 November 2006
  • Cool Turkey-7 December 2004
  • Making Hash of Turkish Democracy-16 September 2005
  • Kidnapped (17/8/2012)
  • The Dead
    • AND SO PASSES A WOMAN’S LIFE IN TURKEY (21 October 2014)
    • Bury My Heart At Heartbreak
    • "Adil" means "just" in Arabic (18 July 2012)
    • THERE WILL BE NO ICE CREAM IN DAMASCUS THIS LOVELY EVENING (14 June 2013)
    • IN ISTANBUL A DOORMAN DIES (31 January 2014)
    • İSTANBUL'DA BİR APARTMAN GÖREVLİSİ ÖLÜR (31 Ocak 2014)
    • "Terrorist Pietá"
    • NOTHING BUT MARGARET (9 May 2014)
    • August 6, 1945 (6 August 2012)
    • BREATHLESS IN AMERICA (5 December 2013)
    • JFK DIES FOR THESE SINS (27 December 2013)
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    • Poetry in Music: The Lyrics of Lorenz Hart >
      • A Ship Without A Sail
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    • SINATRA >
      • Only the Lonely
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  • Poetry
    • TO THE IRANIAN KIDS BUSTED ON EXCESSIVE HAPPINESS CHARGE BY TEHRAN’S KORANIC KOPS (22 May 2014)
    • AMERICA
    • Joe the Biden Eats the Bison (21/01/2013)
    • A poem by Etheridge Knight
    • Apprehension in the Bronx Botanical Garden
    • A Shine on the Quay at Üsküdar
    • Like Kerim
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  • On Sports
    • A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE by John McFee
    • Baseball poetry by Lynn Rigney Schott about her father
    • Brownsville Bum
    • Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
    • Miracle of Coogan's Bluff
    • Muhammad Ali: "Eclipse of the Sonny"
    • The Four Horsemen
    • The Green Fields of the MInd
    • The Death of a Racehorse
  • On Peace
    • A WAR ON WARMONGERS, A “JEFFERSONIAN” REBELLION (April 4, 2016)
    • WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SOCIALIST by Chris Hedges (21 September 2015)
    • THE YOUNG EURO CLASSIC PEACE ORCHESTRA
    • Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah ‘Worse than Hiroshima’ 15 October 2014
    • Criminal Complaint: International Criminal Court, 6 October 2014
    • What I'd Like to See on Front Pages of Newspapers (By Noam Chomsky)
    • THE NOBEL OBAMA (2 September 2013)
    • My Vote For President: 2012
    • American Democracy
    • Democratic Socialism
  • On West Point
    • West Point Slimed By Trump Visit
    • OBAMA VISITS WEST POINT THEN LIES, CHEATS AND STEALS (6 June 2014)
    • West Point Graduates Organize Against The War - 21 April 2006
    • Good Neighbor Senator Sessions Walls Out Mexico . . . and Robert Frost - 19 May 2006
    • Now Is The Time - 12 May 2006
    • Cadet Bush at West Point: Screw that chin in, beanhead! - 1 June 2006
    • Guantánamo: The Subject Was Linens- 15 June 2006
    • Impeach the President of the United States - 7 October 2006
    • Election Eve Daze--Hanging in There Together - 6 November 2006
    • Peace Award Remarks - 12 November 2006 - Syracuse, New York
    • George W. MacBush–Serial Murderer - 15 December 2006
    • Abolish It! - 9 Feb 2007
    • WEST POINT TO HONOR DISHONORABLE GEORGE W. BUSH >
      • On West Point, War and Pizza - 6 May 2006
  • On America
    • George Floyd opens the floodgates
    • BRONX GIRL OUSTS 10-TERM DEMOCRAT POLITICAL BOSS!
    • The United States of America: Land of internment camps
    • THIS IS AMERICA!
    • MY DISGUST AND DESPAIR ABOUT TRUMP'S SCHEME TO DESTROY THE V.A.
    • MY LETTER TO SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER , 3 February 2017
    • DONALD DEMENTIA
    • MY LETTER TO GOVERNOR CUOMO
    • Service Academy Graduates Against the War
    • U.S. Service Academy Graduates Oppose Bombing Syria (5 September 2013)
    • NO WAY OUT YOU NO GOOD PSEUDO-AMERICAN NEOCON NUDNIK APPARATCHIKS! CATCH ME IF YOU DARE!
    • WILLIE MAYS FOR PRESIDENT! (SEPTEMBER 24, 2016)
    • COUNT ME OUT, BERNIE! NO MORE $3 CONTRIBUTIONS! March 2, 2016
    • The atrocities of ISIS and the US wars of sociocide (26 August 2015)
    • WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT U.S. FOREIGN POLICY (25 August 2015)
    • KILLING RAGHEADS FOR JESUS (By Chris Hedges) (26 January 2015)
    • The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass
    • THOMAS PAINE, OUR CONTEMPORARY (27 May 2014)
    • JAMES SALTER
    • BEFORE A SUMMER SUN >
      • Prologue
      • 4. Teaching Bloody Instructions
      • 8. The Doctrine of Discovery
      • 11. Crazed from the Cradle
      • 15. The Necessary Ending of the American Indian
    • JFK >
      • JFK Files: Cover-Up Continues of President’s Assassination
      • JFK: Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association (12 September 1960)
      • JFK: American University Commencement Address (10 June 1963)
      • JFK HEALTH CARE SPEECH (May 20, 1962)
    • The CIA and the Media
    • The End Of Democracy As We Knew It (Bernd Hamm)
  • Literary Criticism
    • Mrs. Ramsay's Wedge: A View of Woolf's "To the Lighthouse"
  • Paintings
    • "Genuine Fake"--"Gerçik Taklit"
    • "Progress"--"İlerleme"
    • "Her Şey Ortada"
    • Resimler (7/8/2012)
  • Presentations-Papers
    • Boğaziçi University-Symposium
  • THE ISRAELI-AMERICAN KILLING MACHINE (19 July 2014)
  • I-THE FRAME-UP (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Trial) 8 January 2009
  • II-THE ARRAIGNMENT (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Trial) 9 January 2009
  • III-ATATÜRK APPEARS (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Trial) 26 January 2009
  • How Old Are You? 4 May 2009
  • On Living
    • "Art, Truth & Politics" by Harold Pinter (1930-2008)
    • The Power of Imagination (Chris Hedges-13 May 2014)
    • WE ARE ALL ONE
    • The Story of Stuff-What Needs To Be Done (10 May 2012)
    • An Arab Springtime? by Samir Amin
    • From Resistance to Revolution
  • Photographs
    • Istanbul
    • Tarlabaşı, Istanbul 2013
  • Kidnapped (17/8/2012)
Picture


All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.


Spoken by Ariel, a spirit bound to serve the magician Prospero.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest 

 

IN İSTANBUL A DOORMAN DIES

They are as reliable as the dawn. Three times a day we have the honor of greeting them at our doors, no invitation necessary. They are the doormen. It’s automatic, these regular calls, for they are bound to serve us. They come with their worn notebooks and stubby pencils. They take our grocery orders and our dry cleaning, our bills to be paid, our eyeglasses for tightening, our letters for posting, and our mostly trivial complaints. At least three times a day they come to do their duty. At 9 am for shopping and errands. Again at 3 pm for more shopping and more errands. And at 9 pm they come to take our trash and, of course, say goodnight. In fact, they are available the full 24 hours. And early in the morning, every morning, they quietly deliver our very important fresh newspapers and our very important fresh daily bread. We will probably not awaken. Why should we? It might be raining, snowing, a cold Balkan wind coming in hard from the north, a day to stay in bed. But every day we witness their usual grand work, regardless of the weather or how they feel. The newspapers and the bread must arrive on time. It’s a Turkish expectation. And every early morning this small fulfillment arrives. And the doormen’s endless day begins.

From the soul of Turkey, from the villages of Anatolia, they come to the cities, these men of burden and responsibility. To Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Adana…wherever they hear of opportunity, there they will arrive. With wives, with children, with their hopeful expectations, they come seeking that ever-receding better life. We are all the same, the same except we, the more fortunate ones, live above them. Their children see our shoes passing by their shoulder-high basement windows while we see the sky.

Each day, these noble, purposeful men bring us comfort and convenience and safety. These doormen, these men in charge of buildings, know mechanics and physics. They know how elevators rise and fall, how furnaces generate heat. And if anything dares to worry us, we just buzz them at the call-box by our doors. Someone is always at home in the basement. And there is never an errand too small. They collect our money to pay our bills. They stand in line at banks to keep our credit in good standing. Unfailingly honest, the doormen have understood early what still escapes most Turkish politicians…that you do not steal from the people that support you. They are our accountants, our engineers, our occasional plumbers and electricians and carpenters. They are the keepers of the keys, our trusted concierges. They are our shoppers, our bargain hunters, our gardeners. They collect our trash. They clean our hallways and stairways and elevators. They rake and sweep and hose. And some even have the power to heal. And I can swear to that. Like sergeants in an army, doormen get things done while the officers sit and dream of promotions.

Most of all, they carry heavy things, things measured in kilos and liters and cases. Beer, rakı, soda water, drinking water, fresh vegetables, meat and fish, fruit, canned goods and detergent and… the cumulative weight crushes them. Do we ever think of that? Every day their backs bend, shoulders strain, muscles ache, closer and closer to the earth, the slow crushing ache drawing them down, stealing their breath until…  

How much are such people worth? Can we count the ways and measures? Really? Then how much for one life?

Ilyas, our doorman, died yesterday. He fell to the street in the line of duty carrying water. Ilyas possessed enormous strength but not even he was strong enough for this life. A young man of 48 years made old by years of responsibility, diligence and hard work. A wife, four children, he carried them and the people in the building on his back for over two decades. And at the end he fell among his friends, the shopkeepers, in the street he had walked tens of thousands of times. They called the ambulance. It happened so quickly. At the hospital he had surgery, brain surgery. There were one maybe two cerebral aneurysms. Details don't matter. He died that night. It happened so terribly fast.

He arrived home at noon. A crowd had gathered outside the apartment, his family, his doormen friends, people from the apartment, the hair stylists from the beauty salon, and the others. The men pressed close to the green hearse bearing İlyas, responding to the prayers. The women grouped farther back, weeping, their shining desperate eyes. Then it was over. The hearse pulled away followed by a few cars. İlyas returned to rest in the village of his youth, Yozgat, in central Anatolia. His daughter İlknur told me years ago of how she loved to spend time with her grandparents in Yozgat. “It’s the only place I can ride my bicycle,” she said. İlknur, now a young mother, lives in Yozgat with her growing family. She did not expect to see her father so close so soon. Everything happened so quickly.    

Every time the doorbell rings, my mind shouts “İlyas!” But it is never İlyas. I am crushed by the horror of it all. This morning, like İlyas, I walked up the street to buy my newspapers and a loaf of bread. 
It was not raining—that was the best part of the day.

James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul (Suadiye)
31 January 2013

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