Gate 207

Behind plate glass windows, doubled reinforced near quiet conveyor belts and two standing security machines were people who stayed. Behind. 

The guards and the cleaners, the attractive blond clerk with thin legs who'd finished her morning shift now going home to change for her "exotic" nightly floor show; all these clowns and European travelers sat waiting for attendants to clean the toilets and load beverages and snacks onto flight 3343 as late afternoon Istanbul light slashed through the terminal dungeon zone of quiet escape.

This man lives in Bursa. He works metal for a living. He is an artist. 

I don't mean it was fun, no - it's a long adventure. However, after just over a year in this wet misty Turkish hammam, this abject rather polite and yet emotionally distracted future tense - a void-like dream substance where people sat around showing no incentives, no desire to be even slightly creative, as if their loss, their past was always now, this dream.

An example was the sullen, out of sorts security woman, girl actually, in her 20's, forced by economic realities to accept a job - a useless thankless job, so I've put my luggage on the conveyor where it is scanned; placed the laptop, pocket watch, and cell phone in a plastic tray and the stuff rolls through and she comes over, "Do you have any knives in your luggage?"

"Yes, in the checked bag. They are from Tibet. They are made of silver with tourquoise and coral stones. The handles are yak bone, streaked with bown earth colors," pointing them out to her masked face. All the security people wore masks. 

Her mask says, "I could care less, I'm so tired, so anxious, so bored about everything and nothing I could shit a Doner in a tomato based food culture with a kebab sausage shaped like a small powerful package of shit grilled to perfection and served on a platter with tomatoes, onions and wedges of lemon for the sour reality." 

Anyway she says, "Open your bags," with a sharp edgy tone in her, "where's your mama" voice.

So, I ask her, "Which bag would you like me to open, the big or small as they are joined," so she said, "the small one, and where's your passport?" (she will never have one in her long life) so I hand it to her and she really, really, wants to be important , self-sufficient, reliable, self-reliant, strong, courageous, adventureous, and other impossible to imagine nightmares in her sweet life; 

controlling the situation with this slightly momentarily limbo based foreigner who resembles a professor from a dig out on parole from his dusty archeology, caressing relics like Ottoman tiles, castles, mosques, tea cups, carpets from Ishfan and Kurdish villages under attack by unmanned Predator drones released by aggressive war loving - keeps the general populace guessing filled with patriots serving as an excuse to print money and purchase expensive war toys while the citizen's education and health care systems collapse under the weight of corruption and theft. 

Finally finished dusting off Turkish military fixed wing aircraft, Meerschaum pipes, ceramics, perfectly cleaned furniture and assorted Roman ruins I open the zipper on the small Eagle bag releasing an amazing beautiful Golden Eagle shocking her back to reality and she rummages through fast, finding a music system and she doesn't want or care

to see it or hear it. All the beautiful music gathered along the trail of tears from Armenia genocide realities into wild wolf Van mountains, down along the southern desert borders, past fields of women birthing songs, cultivating children like seeds after a quick rain. All their voices, singing. 

You see, she is merely going through the motions. That's it.

That's a short, clear, precise and brief sentence.

Peace.