Dispatches from an American Picaresque
Belén Fernández
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(...) When I asked why the restaurant’s featured dish had not been christened the Atatürk Fantazy Kebab, Mustafa replied that “tourist from Europe he don’t know the Atatürk.” I brought up the fact that Atatürk was pictured on every unit of Turkish currency, in addition to being the subject of the series of enlarged portraits lining Fethiye’s seaside promenade; Mustafa recalled other examples of European obliviousness: MUSTAFA: Rest of world he thinking we are sick man of Europe, but we taking Cyprus in three hours. ME: I thought it was three days. MUSTAFA: Also in 1987 I taking three woman from England in three hours. One of Mustafa’s companions questioned whether the electronic pulse massager might contribute auspiciously to maneuvers in bed. Mustafa declared beds irrelevant, as the three English women had been taken atop three separate Turkish carpets, which he had then sold to them. He assumed the consecrated tapestries were now hanging above the women’s respective beds in England, where their respective English husbands—in further European obliviousness—believed them to have been hand-woven in east Anatolia rather than mass-produced in a factory in Afghanistan. (...) BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ grew up in Austin, Texas. She attended Columbia University and the University of Rome where she was inhibited by cheap Italian wine. Her post-graduation accomplishments include packing avocados in the south of Spain and hitchhiking from Spain to Turkey. Fernández is currently completing a book entitled Coffee with Hezbollah, based on a two-month hitchhiking excursion she and Amelia Opalińska conducted in Lebanon in the aftermath of the July 2006 war. |
