Sweeter, Fresher, More Delicious: Breaking the Fast

Iftar dinners are cooking all through the city. The fragrant smells of borek and kofte, pide and baklava are sweeping the tiny streets and expansive boulevards. All day women have packed the markets their eyes wild with hunger and hurry, purchasing bags of peppers and tomatoes, kilos upon kilos worth of tea and sugar. Head scarves tied tight to the chin or loosely hanging about the shoulders, silk, polyester and cotton, they have feasts to prepare and spare no expense. Tonight is the first night of Ramadan. Families arrive home one by one after work and school anticipating the sunset so that they may break the fasts that lasted too long today but will grow shorter every day after.

Then there is the other side of Istanbul. The kind that makes you forget this is a predominantly Muslim country. They are the ones that fill the trendy bistros along shopping avenues and along the waterfront all day. Women with jewels as big as the sun and nails as long as daggers sit sipping tea while the hungry waves of the Bosphorus lap at their manicured feet. Their children rollerblade around the sidewalk in front of McDonalds, licking ice-cream cones while humming Amy Winehouse's song "Rehab". These are the two faces of Turkey.
Our home phone just rang and the person on the other end asked if this was Kentucky, as in Kentucky Fried Chicken. Apparently our phone number is very similar to the Kentucky Fried Chicken down the street.

I have been fasting for the past three days. Not by choice or because of religious conviction but because of a rather awful stomach virus that had me screaming for Mother and left me certain I would die here. Being unable to close my eyes without seeing images of all the food I have eaten since I got here has left me weary to eat anything, anywhere, ever again. Slowly though I have started to introduce bread and rice into my system. While James was here we had a great time taking pictures of the food we were eating. He calls it Food Porn. So in honor of Iftar, since all I can do I smell and hear the feasts being had all around me. I am having a visual Iftar. Bon Appetite.