{"id":2241,"date":"2015-08-31T08:31:06","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T15:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/?p=2241"},"modified":"2025-07-05T22:38:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T05:38:02","slug":"raki-at-besiktas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/raki-at-besiktas\/","title":{"rendered":"Raki at Be\u0161ikta\u0161"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Not unlike Provence, this sheen off a sea<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> ferries gouge jagged furrow wakes into,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> a warped metal sheet whose irridescence<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> showers blind spots among protein floaters,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> so radiant the glare. Or the graveyard<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> at\u00a0<i>A\u015fiyan Asri<\/i>, a real\u00a0<i>P\u00e8re Lachais<\/i>e,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> its luminaires &#8211; among them poets<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> I shall never read &#8211; mouldering under slabs<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> whose script needs parsing to comprehend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Now here at the bar in Be\u0161ikta\u0161 my gaze<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> falls upon the gauzy film raki sloughs off<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> crisp facets of ice, billowing veils within<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> a tumbler in whose cloud can be divined<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> not diaphanous future but past murk.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><br \/>\nSuppose raki had flowed before pastis,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> the Bosphorus come before my original Seine.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> Would I not then be able to decrypt<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> those epitaphs graven on tumbled stones?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><em>A \u00a0poem written to read alongside <a href=\"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/a-pastis-at-bandol\/\">A Pastis at Bandol<\/a>, which I had finished shortly before we made this trip to Istanbul. We spent a moment seekIng<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\"> out the grave of a Turkish modernist writer, Ahmet Hamdi Tanp\u0131nar.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">. \u00a0We got back in time to our hotel for a celebratory drink of raki.<\/span><\/em><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not unlike Provence, this sheen off a sea ferries gouge jagged furrow wakes into, a warped metal sheet whose irridescence showers blind spots among protein floaters, so radiant the glare. Or the graveyard at\u00a0A\u015fiyan Asri, a real\u00a0P\u00e8re Lachaise, its luminaires &#8211; among them poets I shall never read &#8211; mouldering under slabs whose script needs &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/raki-at-besiktas\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Raki at Be\u0161ikta\u0161&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[8,56,57],"class_list":["post-2241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-memories","tag-provence","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2241"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5086,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions\/5086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}