Asia in a Minor Key

A real challenge to able-bodied emigreys is to find a gainful occupation that doesn’t involve propping up the bar in some sad, insular expat dive to Blighty-bash and complain ad nauseum of all things local. I have my blog but what of Liam? An early decision was to order a Roland keyboard from Istanbul. A creative renaissance ensued. Liam spends endless hours tickling the ivories and fiddling with his knobs. Well, if you can't beat 'em then join 'em, so I have embarked on a set of suitably pretentious lyrics for him to compose around - more Shakespeare's Sister than Shakespeare, methinks. The lyrics are evolving into a compendium cryptically entitled Asia in a Minor Key.

The title lyric, an ode to the emigrey forlorn, goes like this

Land of my fathers, don’t you want your son?

Shall I run from you, my kin undone?

To the land of sunrise and chattering minarets

Bizarre bazaars and monkish pirouettes

 

Chase my dream across dusty hills

Past olive groves and neglected mills

To find myself in the arms of strangers

To talk in silence and delight in dangers

Erase the pain of past misdeeds

Follow my road to wherever it leads

Land of my father I have done all I can

To find the love of an Ottoman

Asia in a minor key

A game of chance

Last chance for me

Land of my fathers; don’t you want your son?

I ran from you, my kin undone

To the land of sunrise and chattering minarets

But shall my dream stay unrequited yet?

 

Pompous twaddle or what? I guess Liam thinks so. While his Steps to Sibelius musical palate may be a broad church, classically trained Liam struggles with hooks and the art of a well-crafted three minute pop song eludes him. In any case, his real dream is to complete the requiem he began to write a decade or so ago and to write a score for a film. This is now.

Liam has been experimenting with his keyboard by writing some short pieces as part of his score for a soundtrack. It's very much a work in progress but you fancy a listen, please click below.

Sylvie.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Catherine.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Elphame_Wood.mp3 Listen on Posterous

More of Liam's work on my website

Ex-Pat Glossary

Expatriates, like everyone else, come in all shapes and sizes - the mean and the mannered, the classless and the classy, the awful and the joyful. The abbreviated epithet expat simply doesn't adequately express the myriad folk who have chosen to live here In Turkey. To add a little descriptive colour to my posts, I've devised some new words to depict the numerous variants of the species.

• Emigreys: retirees serving out their twilight years in the sun, most of whom seem to be just a little to the right of Genghis Khan and who bought a jerry built white box in Turkey because it was cheaper than Spain (well, it was at the time). Everyday emigrey life operates within a parallel universe of neo colonial separateness preoccupied with visa hops to the Isles of Greece, pork sausages, property prices and Blighty bashing.
• VOMITs (Victims of Men in Turkey): vintage desperate ex-housewives with a few lira to spare who shamelessly chase younger Turkish men. Predictably, such relationships rarely last once the money runs out. Thank you to Sara for this one.
• Semigreys: those too young to retire in the conventional sense, who are living the vida loca on the proceeds of property sales. Plunging interest rates present quite a fiscal test to those trying to maintain a hedonistic lifestyle on dwindling assets while waiting for the pensions to kick in, assuming there will be a pension to kick in given the parlous position of the public purse.
• Vetpats: veterans who have been living in Turkey for many years. Usually better informed than their peers with a less asinine view of the world, vetpats have taken the trouble to learn Turkish and are better integrated into the wider community. Some have even acquired Turkish citizenship and are fortunate to have found gainful employment on the right side of the Law.
• Sexpats: discrete grey men of means who are serviced by young Turkish men in return for a stipend.
• Hedonistas: those who enjoy a carefree existence of total self indulgence liberated from the binding ties of responsibility or the worries of tomorrow.
• The Ignorati: a collective term for those who live in utter ignorance of the history and culture of their foster land, shout loudly in English and see the world at large through the narrow-minded pages of the Daily Mail (or The Daily Bigot as I like to call it).

These terms are not mutually exclusive. It's perfectly possible for an emigrey to also be a vetpat VOMIT and a fully paid up member of the ignoble ignorati, and many are.
I have received several suggestions from readers to add to the Pansy ex-pat lexicon.

• Thank you Greg for 'emigays' to describe well to do old queens spending up their life savings because you can't take it with you and no children to fret about (That'll be us then).
• Thank you Tom for the deliciously naughty 'cowpats' for those I really can't abide and would flee to the next town to avoid.
• Thank you Carole for the 'MADs' (My Ahmet's Different) for those delusional VOMITs who think that their Turkish man is somehow different from the rest because 'he really loves me'. Who are they trying to kid?

More please...

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Are We Mad?

Just imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, recently ‘married’ middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country even one that is secular and practises a moderate and state-controlled form of Islam.

Turkey is a country familiar to many Brits: the beer swigging tattooed tourist seeking cheap fun in the sun with chips on the side and those of a more scholarly hue that wonder at the unparalleled scale and depth of Anatolian culture and history. Türkiye means ‘land of the strong’ an old Turkic/Arabic compound; Anatolia translates as ‘sunrise’ from ancient Greek. Both poetic epitaphs are fitting depictions of a place blessed with striking physical beauty, shaped by the brutal force of nature and fought over, won and lost by conquistadors across all of recorded time. Turkey is a true crossroad of civilisations, the evidence of which lies casually underfoot.

I decided to chronicle our exploits with the mad, the sad, the bad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Since most Turkish travelogues we have read tend to be worthy, insipid or both, I decided I would try and stir things up with something a little less reverential and lot more controversial.

Read more on Perking the Pansies