Here is what I remember: my mom was in the dream. I think we were living in the same house. I had a fish. A blue fish. A little bit bigger than Second Chance, and certainly not a betta. Oh but what a blue it was. It was this dark blue, kind of like the night sky on a starry night outside the city. The starlit kind of blue with no shine.  Then mom changed his water, and all of a sudden it inflated. It puffed up like the poisionous spiked balloon shaped fish the Japanese eat that you see on documentaries or read about in magazines. I look at my fish, all swollen up, and I know what’s wrong. The water is too warm. I am like, “Mom, the water is too hot. He is gonna die.” And she said something like, “It’s a tropical fish. The water will cool down soon.” And I panicked, I showed her the fish. I said, look the fish swelled to the size of a tennis ball. And then when she saw it, she was convinced. She said, oh okay, I’ll change back the water then. Then she took the jar and went to another room of the house. Then I had to deal with something horrendous, or something too brilliant to handle, but I felt the fish would be okay.

So, here’s what’s going on. Account of agent B from the past few days preceding this date:

We have the security dog that nobody takes care of. The security people seem to like her, but they are clueless about taking care of an animal. I am trying to get Utku to adopt her. I think they are a perfect match. I also think he needs her more than she needs him. If he agrees, then we might have to steal the dog. Or we could try to talk to them. We could talk to them. I don’t know.

So we were cursed by a pest killer agency employee, because Roberta went to this other apartment she rents in Taksim, and picked up the phone when I called her on her mobile phone when the pest people had called me asking for directions. She was not in the house that we were trying to get bug-free. I mean it’s not clear if there are any bugs in it, but Roberta wanted that just in case. Like, she can afford to be that kind of person. Anyway, so these people got mad and sent her a message, Allah belanızı versin in Turkish, which corresponds to something worse than Damn you, but Roberta thought the man was being polite about his curse and using the formal you.  I think he meant the both of us though. It was clearly a plural you.

I go horseback riding on Saturdays. That one single glorious day. I love it, and also hate it, because every Saturday I have to face the fact that I will never be able to ride more than once a week, due to financial realities of my own self and of our time. I also get inside my guts a burning feeling of astringent jealousy rise up to my throat, and I just wish I could kill everyone in that club, particularly these two guys who bought their own horse not long ago, as co-owners. Fuck the ruling class. They have all the horses. So I ride, and then I have coffee or diet coke.  I socialize with a mixed feeling of okayness (that’s not oakyness) and heartbroken resentment and a weak but nevertheless noticeable urge to cry at the bleak prospects of me spending more time with  equines. It is not like I am upset though. It is hard to explain. I am mostly happy that I can get to ride still, but I also  feel an inkling of desolate bitterness that is, in fact, easy to ignore.

Maybe I should concentrate on improving my conditions. That is, the financial circumstances of my life. But I am just not to type to try and get rich. I am mad at the gods for that.

The other day, actually today, I was thinking about my job. I mean, someone like me working at an Islamic company and all. And I was asking myself for the zillionth time if that is hypocrisy, or am I just a victim of circumstances. I guess I am more like a victim of circumstances. I like to think of it as if I’m a prisoner. Arguably, that could be said of any individual in today’s capitalist world. So I am a victim of the overall human condition. Not much that can be done about that.

What I am saying is, I don’t think it would be much different if I worked for a secular company, or a godless company even, or a company that is not part of a big religious movement, or a socialist company or just plain Colgate orHenkel or Coca Cola. That’s why I think I’m no more of a hypocrite than anybody else. I can’t think of a single person whose values match with the overall ideology or beliefs of their employer. Okay, that isn’t quite true. I guess since I work for an Islamist people, I guess I am surrounded with such people. There are those who are in it for the money or power of the benefits and perhaps they are the majority, but to them, it probably doesn’t go against the grain as in my case.  Certainly, there are also true believers. But these people live in a world of dreams. They are being fooled by, again the human condition which is obscurantly referred to as “the system” in teenage anarchical literature, which, for now, has concentrated its efforts of giving false hope on religion. Not drinking beer for an afterlife that is more than likely never to come. So such is the argument: They might not have conflicting views with their employer, but I can, at least, have a beer when I come home at night. In the process, I might be contributing to an evil cause, but, then I don’t think I could have stopped it in any other way. Undoubtedly, this is a serious violation of the Buddhist ”do no harm” policy, which I think should be adopted and followed piously. So obviously, I am a hypocrite.

So she was traveling on a train, to another town. Perhaps, coming back home from Moscow in the first few months after moving there. I don’t remember all the details. But here is how it goes: She meets a man, who says he has some money buried under a tree in some town along the train’s path. He, somehow, the details are bleak to me now, convinces her that she should help him. He is really poor, he tells some heartbreaking story. So Natasha gets off the train with this guy in this small town. They walk and walk, they leave the town behind. There are few houses left around them, they walk further. And he takes out his shovel, he starts digging under some tree. By this time Natasha gets the feeling that she wouldn’t be able to leave, even if she wanted to. He makes that clear too somehow. She is very uneasy, and really scared at this point. Luckily, the guy is a smoker. He has cigarettes, wants to light up, but he doesn’t have a lighter.

And who says addictions can’t save lives? He tells Natasha to go to the nearest house, and find some matches. By this time, he is actually threatening her. Like he’d kill her if she tried to run. So what Natasha does is, she runs away, and manages to find people, seek some help or something. I don’t remember.

And she tells me, “See I was such an idiot. He wasn’t looking for a treasure or anything under that tree. He was digging a grave for me.”

I guess she had that epiphany earlier on when this was happening. But it really has that dramatic effect when you say it in the end like she did.

When the fog cleared, there was smog.

It is chaotic and ugly with heaps of concrete piled up in the form of mostly rectangular buildings.

It is also a place where dogs get killed often. In its forests, which I drive through when I go horse back riding, lie thousands of lifeless quadruped bodies, poisoned by municipalities to agonizing death that can last up to three days. Its people are not very different. They beat, torture, rape and kill animals. Municipality poisoning is actually one of the more humane death options available to the city’s hundreds of thousands of strays.

Smog and dead dogs. This is all I have seen here.

Municipalities don’t spay or neuter strays animals, but they do tender such tasks off to certain contractors. Most strays are not vaccinated or neutered, but they are killed nevertheless. So they spawn, and the lucrative business can continue. Puppies are born, and — if they somehow survive accidents or hunger — raped, tortured and killed by the city’s inhabitants or poisoned by its municipalities.

Talking about animal welfare, animal life even, is perceived to be nonsensical and lowly. To its inhabitants, if you are concerned about animal life, then you are a bourgeois twat with no understanding of the realities of the country. “A white Turk,” they would label you.

There has been a murder.

Thugs killed a dog. They made a soccer ball out of her. They kicked and kicked. She died. People responsible for her lied. They said she died of old-age.

They kill. We suffer. Our animals suffer.

And then they look at you in the face and tell you there is a god.

More info can be found here: http://letsadopt.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/a-pr-lesson-for-the-marmara-hotel/

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=176069&bolum=100

A young woman was murdered by a psycopath. She was 18. The murderer was his boyfriend. He, purportedly,had planned the murder a long while ago. He had other girlfriends, of course, she didn’t know. She trusted him.

She was chosen as prey. She was made to be his boyfriend, because he wanted to kill her. He brought her home, he told her mom to leave the house. He then, it is assumed according to the forensic reports, invited some friends. Then they tortured her, and killed her. She was found decapitated in a city garbage can; her lifeless body tucked inside a guitar case. The autopsy no confirms she was alive as they cut her head off. There was DNA and sperm samples from at least two different people, but she hadn’t been sexually assaulted.  Her shirt was not even buttoned. They didn’t sexually assault her. They just killed her. But they apparently had sex by her dead body.

A homeless boy going through the trash container found the guitar case, looking for scraps of paper to sell for recycing. If it wasn’t for him, she could have never been found. The city’s security cameras scattered along various streets, called MOBESEs, captured a person dumping the guitar case into the container. This person, investigators believe, was him.

He is the nephew of a wealthy businessmen, who, allegedly, has  ties to the underworld and has his own shady businesses on the side.

He escaped. His family, who appear to have helped him clear up the evidence — her blood was found on his father’s shirt — hauled him off to a truck going to Russia, paid off $100,000 to the driver. His mother and sister also disappeared. Last they were seen was in Moscow, where his brother also resides.

Her family are not that well off. Her father worked as a cook for the Greek Patriarchate.

The city’s police chief, Celalettin Cerrah, said the family should have protected their own daughter and not let her out with a man whom she loved and trusted.

This is the country that I live in. This is what our police chiefs are like.

Now he’s on the loose and presumably having a good time. His family are paying, again presumably, hundreds of thousands of dollars for their son’s violent endavour. Was it the first? The last? Who knows? Did they know that he was planning this, did they assure him that it was his right, if he willed, to kill people if that was what gave him enjoymen tin life? Did they promise him they would never let him get caught? Possible.

I had a dream about two weeks ago. I was in Moscow, I saw him. I notified the authorities — Russian police, maybe — and a lot of people came to this area which looked like a deserted arcade. This was where she had been killed. We were either about to find him, or they had found him. I don’t remember. I don’t remember being relieved. Even if he had been found, or was about to be captured, something felt missing.

Then, I saw a dog, a Golden Retriever actually, with a red collar around her neck. She was tied up to a pole in this deserted  arcadeish-playgroundlike setting. All that time, since all those people came there, nobody had noticed her. I knew instantly, as often happens in dreams, that it was her dog. That was her dog; starving. I untied her, gave her some water. I was going to find her a home. I was going to save her dog. I felt relieved at that point. I saved her dog. Then I woke up.

More info here: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6324544002&topic=13332

I also talked to Roberta, who’s conflicted about whether she should return or stay there. This was online, of course
In the evening, before I came home from work, I saw Esra, my neighbor and dog-walking buddy, on Facebook, and told her I was headed home soon. She sounded standoffish for some reason. Then I called her before I got out, the phone was switched off. I gave it another 10 minutes, cuz I didn’t want to walk the dog alone. Then it rang. She didn’t pick up. I tried three times and she didn’t pick it up. I don’t know why I was being so persistent, but I think by that time I must have felt something was wrong. I mean I did feel that way. So anyway, I ran into them in our meadowish backyard: her, her dogs and our other neighbor. It was awkwardish. Plus both of them told me I’ve gained weight, which I’m not denying. But I guess that is a sign of hostility between women. Esra said they had dinner at the other girl’s place.

Surely, they must have gossiped. I tried to come up with  something wrong I could have said to any one of them, but couldn’t find any incriminating verbal evidence to be retold.
Whatever.

We are back home after a good time in Küçükkuyu. Haydut stole a live chicken, but he didn’t mean it. The other dog there had taken this weird looking chicken — has a special hairdo; the puffed up curly hairdo from the 80s — in its mouth, but then she dropped it. So Haydut picked it up, thinking it must be legal to play with live chicken. The animal was so scared, poor thing. The people there said the animal’s feathers were even funnier, but they cut some around its head, because its bangs on both sides blocked its vision, and it would bump into things on its way all the time. So Haydut had it in its mouth, and then we all started yelling. He dropped it, but he continued to run. He was really confused, because everyone was yelling at him. He was also a little bit scared. And then he got tied up. They didn’t make a big deal out of it, they said the chick was used to being dragged by the other dog. This hyper 8 month old setter they had. They also said they had two akitas earlier, which killed scores of fowl and even pigeons.

I had a dream last night. I stole money. Like $4000 or maybe liras. I did it through some sort of scheme in which I deceived a bank person. I don’t remember how I did it, but it made sense in the dream. So I was in this really posh restaurant, drinking white wine and smoking. I thought to myself, “This is not a lot of money, but I can do this again.” So I was making plans to continue life as a grifter. Because I had pulled the first thing like a true scoundrel, but I felt very unsafe. I also looked terrific. Skinny and all. I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was me if it wasn’t my dream.
Later in the same dream or in another dream that came after that — it did feel like a continuation though — I was attacked by this monstrous stallion which had gray hair and wonderful brown mane. However, it stopped just when it was about to kill me, and transformed into a really cute boy. This angelic face in front of me. We talked, and it was really nice. I think he and some other people were part of a resistance movement or something. So we made plans to meet later, and I can vaguely remember going to this apartment where these people lived. He was there as well. It was a very happy place, and a great feeling. I also felt very safe there with those people. Especially with the angelic faced horse-boy.