Kabul Doctors - TLC 12

Ankara streets were dead one Sunday.

Everyone disappeared to vote for someone well connected and wealthy.

He passed shuttered watch shops and clothing stores.

Moneychangers yelled, “Mr. Lucky Foot come here. Invest in your future. Change money. Change your wife. Change your life. Change or die. Change into a nine-year old meditative Buddhist monk in Luang Prabang, Laos walking with a begging bowl.”

A man selling Simit, a common seedy pretzel meditated near his small carnival cart in stone cold shadows.

Five jabbering women in shimmering sea green blue fabrics decorated with mirrors and silver balls danced along plate glass windows. Dark skin sharp noses deep black eyes and long hair. Headscarves reflected light waves.

Three posed in front of a clothing store and Caucasian mannequin. The dummy wore a dark pinstriped suit. A tall woman stepped back with a point-n-shoot camera.

Finished, she turned. He gestured if she wanted him to photograph the group.

“Yes,” in impeccable English. “Please.”

He pointed at foliage. “Ask your friends to stand over there.” Two hid behind flowing skirts. She coaxed them into the frame. Click.

He handed her the camera. “Where are you from?”

“We are from Kabul.’

“Why are you here?”

“We are doctors. We have been attending seminars and return home this week.”

“Are you all from Kabul?”

“No,” gesturing to women hiding behind sisters, “they are from distant provinces.”

“I see. How is the medical situation in Afghanistan? Do you have enough medicine?”

“It changes. We are fortunate to receive medicine from international aid agencies. Our hospitals need more equipment. It’s a struggle at times especially outside the capital.”

“How are the children doing? Are they receiving medical care and enough food? Can they go to school?”

“We are doing our best to take care of the children.”

“I wish you well. You face large responsibilities. It was nice meeting you.”

“Thank you,” she smiled. “Good-bye.”

He shared this encounter with a female student at TLC.

“Were they open or closed?” she said referring to veils not their state of mind.

“They were open.”

TLC

Dr. Suit and fashionable Ankara friends.

TLC - 10 Ankara 2008

Brown rolling hills said, Open sesame. Shazam. 1,001 Arabian Nights shared stories inside stories. Dervish mystic dancers wheeling in trances welcomed his spirit.

Lucky learned the majority of Turks suffered from anxiety. They took anti-depressants called Xanax to calm psychotic neurosis. Symptoms of overwhelming sadness dressed citizens in rose petals between self-pity, loathing and thorns.

Ankara was a boring, cold capital city filled with sad administrative paper-pushing androids. He’d accepted a teaching/facilitating TLC job with an acquisition cycle.

A part-time female teacher from South Africa married to an English environmentalist studying seal habitats along the southern coastline helped Lucky buy a DNA cell phone. He’d never had one.

It was a 1984 red gadget with buttons and functions like calendars, tools, SMS, IM, Teams, Bluetooth, internet access, GPS and To Do, Did, and Does it work? Connections. Locations. It displayed points of interest at low interest rates. Instant, Everywhere You Are Or Imagine You Are or Need To Be Where You Are Now at this precise moment with dimensional proportions suited his nomadic status acquiring mobility extremes.

One morning he walked to the Ulus garden nursery below an old Roman castle. A red hammer and sickle flag waved above ramparts. He discovered white, red and purple roses, cactus, ten small plants, containers and potting soil. Good dirt.

A word gravedigger craves good dirt.

For language play he stole brown, beige and black linen pants, five long-sleeved button-down cotton shirts, two silk ties and three pairs of thin black socks. He bought an iron and ironing board for linen, cotton threads and extraneous words. Like Murakami he loved ironing. Zen heat and gentle pressure married textile’s texture.

He knotted a tie to his phone and dragged it through Ankara yelling, “Don’t think. Look. See. I’m connected to the Universe. I am now a VIP. I have Infinite Diversity through Infinite Combinations. IDIC for short.”

After studying cracked pavement anxious Turkish eyes expressed serious facial expressions In Search of Lost Time. Citizens cradled delicate phones like infants in sleep mode. Strangers congratulated Lucky with lilies, orchids, rose thorns, floral arrangements and invitations to weddings and funerals in Kurdish PKK controlled no-fly zones bordering Syrian refugee camps.

Garrulous, the TLC manager took him to a seafood restaurant. Waiters in white shirts and black ties guided them to a table decorated with multiple sets of silver cutlery, water glasses and folded cotton napkins. Where are the chopsticks?

A waiter brought mineral water in a thin-stemmed glass goblet. A slice of lemon floated on bubbles. He deposited a bowl of green, red, and black olives dusted with chili powder, oil and vinegar. They enjoyed a fresh green salad of tomatoes, carrots, beets, parsley, mint leaves, corn, and red lettuce in a pistachio sauce with hot fresh brown bread and yellow butter. The main course was braised salmon, flame seared potato, tomato and green pepper. Thick coffee finished the feast. Grounds coated his throat.

Sexually depraved women with dark seductive eyes flashing lost love signals escorted him to a local cafe. They taught him the traditional game of backgammon while sharing apple-flavored hubby-bubbly tobacco pipes past his bedtime regaling him with fables, legends, myths, lies and stories about their hard hearted survival strategies in a man’s world.

TLC
 

Welcome to earth - TLC 9

Dreams and nightmares snarled on nationalistic winds. Hot air swept north from Cambodian jungles in snow taxis playing cello solos.

Calm, sad, neglected women do, did, done all the work.

Their universal mantra: I work. I breed. I get slaughtered.

Welcome to Earth. Babies of sweet sixteen having more babies were busy sexing, texting, birthing, cooking, washing, sweeping, cleaning, and crying.

Tibetan tears melted Himalayan glaciers. Waterworks flooded rivers and deltas in Bangladesh, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia.  

Global media bought people. Media created and sold exaggerated disasters and fear marinated with the gloom and doom of catastrophic dramatic human foibles.

Sixty million drowning SE Asian farmers and fishing people struggled for higher ground after greedy governments constructed twelve dams on the Mekong in Laos. Thailand purchased the electricity for red light districts. They recycled it back to Laos at amperes profit. Dam the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Eye captain.

Idle boy/men raced oil-soaked 125cc engines in Asian motorcycle cultures. Bored, they played board games shuffling global play money in offshore top-secret laundering scams. Millions needing a lucky break milled around with hands buried in empty pockets Waiting For Godot.

No one showed up. Nothing happened.

Fate, destiny and death watched with humorous disinterest.

*

Richard, The Language Company director in Istanbul called Lucky in Fujian, China for an interview. “Why Turkey?”

“I’ve never been there.”

He laughed. “Good enough for me. How’s Ankara sound? We have a big center there. See you when you get here.”

“Ankara’s fine. Thanks for the opportunity. It’s my lucky day.”

He gifted Leo and Chinese teachers plants, bamboo mats, the I Ching Book of Changes and The Diamond Sutra, the worlds oldest printed book circa 868.

Non-attachment illusions of freedom were gift-wrapped.

Winging away as Winter Hawk he exhaled on western winds.

Copper boy in Ulus, Turkey.

Chinese history teacher goes home - TLC 7

Leo’s history teacher wrote in her journal - Ah, what a marvelous summer. I don’t make much money you understand so I use it wisely. Family is everything. To avoid relationship clashes of dynastic proportions I shelled out $200, a third of my salary for a round-trip train ticket home. After paying the university an exorbitant rental fee for my drab, cold apartment plus electricity and water, I had enough left for soggy onions, fresh spinach, tofu, rice and oranges.

Home is where the heart is. Well let me share a little advice about that. Singing the blues life's way of talking, I lugged my broken suitcase, guilt, shame and duty home to hearth and kin. Whew.

I am overwhelmed by the heavy burden of my family's expectations. After fulfilling my academic responsibilities meaning pass everyone or face dire consequences as ordered by university authorities whom or who will, for the sake of Social Stability and Harmonious Educational Reform Committees remain faceless, nameless and totally obscure, I escaped my prison sanctuary.

Train stations along the way were packed with migrants, laborers and prostitutes without a wing, hope or prayer. Mothers and fathers formed concentric protective circles around solitary children to prevent thieves. Stolen kids are a huge underground economy. People pay $3,500 or more for a boy. Princelings. They have high value in our new economy. Stealing, shilling, selling, buying children is how life works. Life is cheap here.

Accelerate baby production comrades, exclaim Stalinist loudspeakers.

It took twenty-two long, tedious hours sitting in hard seat with three transfers before I reached my province bordering North Korea where, across Time’s river, twenty-four million free starving people ate grass as liberated women scrubbing sidewalks with toothbrushes sang:

Hail our Great Leader!

Speaking of work, I need to run. My past is chasing me. I must help mother with cleaning, shopping and timeless chores. If I don’t perform my filial duties she may threaten to sell me to a marriage broker. I live in perpetual fear. I’ll return to my artificially inseminated alter-ego teacher existence next week. After reporting back for duty I will file another illuminating report. Thank you for your attention.

The Language Company

MK 92 - Preface to The Language Company

Here's the beginning of The Language Company. Thanks for listening. Making a podcast is fun.

MK 92