James M. Redwine

Istanbul

Letting Go

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Porta Batumi Towers. Photo by Peg Redwine

About 4:30 a.m. on February 06 in the country of Georgia Peg and I were awakened by a strange squeaking/creaking sound as if a giant was rolling around on bare bed springs. The sound appeared to come from above us and all around us. We checked through our small apartment and even ventured out on our 17th floor open air balcony and into the indoor hallway.

Peg advised we should exit our apartment but I said, “max nix, let’s go back to sleep; it is probably just a neighbor moving furniture.” These two reactions pretty much sum up how Peg and I address most situations. It turned out it was a neighbor, but the neighbor was the neighboring country of Turkey that was dealing with another kind of giant, giant 7.8 and 7.6 earthquakes. Our apartment in Batumi, Georgia is only 12 miles from the Turkish border and as it turns out, a little less that 400 miles from the epicenter of the quakes.

When we turned on CNN at 7:00 a.m. we learned about the devastation caused by Mother Nature. As we had just spent a week in Istanbul, Turkey the middle of January we were anxious about how the people of Turkey and its bordering countries, Georgia and Syria, had fared. Georgia came through unscathed, but Turkey and Syria have lost over 16,000 people to death and many more thousands to injuries, loss of homes, water, food, power and shelter from the bitter cold.

Batumi Radisson Hotel. Photo by Peg Redwine

The large Radisson Hotel building across the street from our apartment building had some internal shaking and furniture movement but our only effects, as far as we know, were the sounds caused by the barely swaying internal girders. We did have friends in other parts of our city who felt strong tremors and swaying structures. One of our friends told us she wanted to run out of her 10th floor apartment with her 3 year old daughter, but her husband said, no, he was going back to sleep, besides, it was cold outside. I guess the differing reactions Peg and I had to the quivering earth may be universal for wives versus husbands.

We were gratified that several friends and family members were so concerned about us we received emails and messages. They know our six-month mission to work with Georgian judges will soon come to an end and they want us to be safely home. As for us, we are beginning to feel our tour among our new friends, “getting short”. Of course, some folks reacted just as I did, that is, no reaction.

As we watched the relief and recovery efforts on TV we couldn’t help feeling as though we had been shot at and missed. Unfortunately, thousands of our fellow human beings were not so lucky. The videos are hard to look at and the feelings they raise are visceral. The entire catastrophic tragedy is summed up for me with one image, a father sitting in shocked disbelief, haunted by his inability to remove his young daughter from her tomb beneath huge slabs of concrete. He was just able to grasp part of her arm she managed to slip through a crack. The father held her hand as her life ebbed from her. He undoubtedly will always fault himself for being unable to do the impossible.

Batumi, Georgia Turkish Consulate. Photo by Peg Redwine

Istanbul

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Hagia Sophia Mosque. Photo by Peg Redwine

In 2016, Peg and I were signed up for a Danube River Cruise that included a right turn off the Danube and a flight south for three days in Istanbul, Turkey. Because there was unrest in Turkey in 2016 Americans were advised to avoid Istanbul until things calmed. Being raised during the 1940’s to the 1960’s we heeded our government’s advice. We had already visited Amsterdam, Vienna, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania and other ports of call, but we always regretted not getting to Istanbul, the one-time Constantinople and capitol of the Holy Roman Empire. We finally joined the Ottomans, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, British, etc., etc. and landed in Istanbul for a week in January, 2023.

Blue Mosque. Photo by Peg Redwine

We woke up early for breakfast and were amazed to have our morning coffee only a few hundred yards away from the fabled Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia Mosque and the ancient Hippodrome where Constantine and his Roman soldiers raced chariots almost 2,000 years before we arrived. Since we are Americans and, as the great French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville noted in 1835, we always eat breakfast much too early, we had the sixth floor dining room all to ourselves at 7:00 a.m. We had our choice of any large window looking through the morning mist at much of the history that eventually made the revelations of Christianity and later Islam the dynamic forces they became. It was an exciting and intriguing panorama. We could not wait to finish our non-bacon breakfast and go walk where Constantine and so many others had.

We hired a guide even though the Turkish people were not only open and friendly, but also generally able and willing to speak English and help assist us in our quest to experience great architecture and artifacts. We were impressed that both the marvelous Blue Mosque with its glittering blue mosaic tiles and the even more overpowering Hagia Sophia Mosque were open for free to any member of the public without regard to faith or lack thereof. At the Blue Mosque they had a free lecture on Islam and gave any visitor who wanted one a copy of the Quran in any language one chose. Peg and I accepted one in English to replace the one we had been given at an open house at the mosque in Evansville, Indiana in 2005 that had somehow been misplaced in our moves. Although Peg and I were both raised Christian we thought we should at least know something about another faith practiced by over 1/4 of the world’s population. I have, also, donned a yarmulke and accepted invitations to synagogues and Peg lived in a Jewish neighborhood when she was a child. I have not found either the Islamic or Judaic experiences to be harmful or the Christian one either for that matter.

Anyway, after being amazed by the Roman columns and fortresses, the aqueduct and especially the gigantic fresh water Roman cistern carved out of the solid rock beneath Istanbul, we visited one more religious relic that, whether genuine or apocryphal, truly astounded us. In a museum attached to the Sultan’s Palace was a glass case protecting what was claimed to be the bones of the forearm and hand of John the Baptist brought back from the Holy Land by the Sultan. Whether in truth or myth, it was still inspiring to be close to a hand that baptized Jesus. Now, even a skeptic such as I had to suspend analysis for awe by that sight only two feet away.

Later that week we took a boat cruise on the Straights of the Bosphorus and sailed from Europe to Asia then back again. The world map showed we were extremely close to two of the great battlefields of history, Gallipoli and Troy. To think we were riding on the same waters as thousands of Australians and Turkish soldiers who struggled in that great WWI slaughter and also where one of my childhood classic heroes from the Iliad, Achilles, helped bring down “the topless towers of Ilium” was worth every inconvenience and the six year wait since our first attempt to “conquer” Istanbul.

I urge you, Gentle Reader, to follow the steps of those who did so much to make us who we are. They may be gone but you will never forget them for helping to make us, us.

Brothers From Other Mothers

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Photo by Peg Redwine

This week I ran into a man whose family has connections to Ukraine. They live in the country of Georgia now as Peg and I have been doing for the last five months where we are working with the Georgian judiciary. His perspective on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is quite personal as is the perspective of the Russian man who sat next to me on a flight from Istanbul, Turkey to Batumi, Georgia last Wednesday.

The two men looked quite similar. Both were rather tall and athletically built and about 40 years of age. One man’s native language is English but the other speaks fluent Russian. His English created several entertaining exchanges for us that we worked through in mutual good humor. My Russian barely qualifies as communication even though Peg and I picked up some phrases when I was in Russia in 2003 working with the Russian judiciary.

I also managed to pick up a few Ukrainian words when I was in Ukraine in 2000 working with Ukrainian judges. I tried my Ukrainian lexicon with the man whose relatives speak Ukrainian, but it was more comic relief than communication.

Both men have children and both would like to see the war between Russia and Ukraine ended immediately if it can be done in a reasonable manner as each sees it. Peg and I are much more aligned with Ukraine than Russia, which the Russian obviously suspected when I told him at our mutual introduction Peg and I were Americans. He was initially rather cautious in his comments but once he decided I did not hold him responsible for Putin’s military decisions, he relaxed quite a bit. Unfortunately, our flight was only about two hours in length so he and I did not have time to bring Ukraine and Russia to the Peace Table.

He did share several deeply personal experiences and emotions with me during our short flight. When I told him our son had boxed at West Point and that I had helped train both amateur and professional boxers, he opened his mouth and showed me a set of perfect lower teeth. He said he had boxed in Russia and once got into the ring against a much larger boxer without wearing a mouthpiece. He had $3,000 worth of false teeth and a hard-earned lesson about uneven and unfair fights as a result.

The English speaker is a swimmer and an avid hiker who believes physical health is essential to mental health and both men do not hesitate to strongly state their views which are closely related to what kind of future their children may look forward to in a post Ukrainian-Russian war environment.

If the two fathers were to be placed together in a lineup, I would have a difficult time picking out which one was which. Both are about 6 feet tall and weigh about 200 pounds. Both have very short cropped, light colored hair and lean facial features. They could be brothers if looks were the only criteria.

They could, also, be brothers if their concerns for their families and their countries could be considered relevant DNA features. It struck me that both of them might be better choices for leaders of Ukraine and Russia than what we have, although this is purely my thought, as neither of them made such a suggestion. Of course, their natural national allegiances probably interfere somewhat with their ability to set aside any magnanimity. However, each of them recognized the children in the other country are not to blame; only the adults may be held accountable. That is, if the adults come to a realization they should be.

I shared with each man my concern that Russia might be of the same mind a friend of mine who was a supporter of Israel had in 1973 when Egypt could have overrun Israel with its superior, but non-nuclear, military power. At that time most experts believed Israel had stolen enough nuclear secrets from America to construct nuclear weapons. Now, we know they have.

Anyway, my friend stated his passionate support for Israel included Israel’s “right” to destroy the whole world if Egypt were about to destroy Israel. Such nihilistic blindness is what I and my new acquaintances most fear in our current war.

 

I Knew Santa Claus Was Real

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One of the advantages of working in the former Soviet Union country of Georgia is that Peg and I spend our time where a great deal of history was made. It is not that the United States does not have an interesting story to tell. But the good ’ole US of A cannot legitimately lay claim to be the birthplace of wine as Georgia does or the birthplace of the Holy Roman Empire as does Georgia’s neighbor, Turkey. And one exciting aspect of being in a part of the world where so much of our history was made is that new discoveries of old history are being uncovered everyday. For example, it was recently reported that archeologists unearthed an ancient mosaic beneath the floor of a church in Demre, Turkey that was the original burial place of Saint Nicholas.

I do not know about you, Gentle Reader, but with Christmas less than two months away I was stoked to have scientific evidence that Santa Claus might really be coming down the chimney at JPeg Osage Ranch in Oklahoma. I just have to find a way to re-route him to our apartment in Batumi, Georgia. And since we do not have a chimney here I guess we will have to leave the patio door unlocked. We will not get home until March so I hope Rudolph has his G.P.S. system updated as to the 9 hour time change and the 6,500 mile distance between Oklahoma and Georgia. Peg and I plan to leave the patio light on all Christmas Eve.

Saint Nicholas lived from 270-343 AD and was a contemporary in what would become the country of Turkey with Constantine who lived from 272-337 AD. Constantine made Christianity an acceptable religion and established the Holy Roman Empire once he became Emperor in 306-337 AD. Constantine named Constantinople, now Istanbul, for himself. He also convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD that produced the Nicene Creed that set forth some of the principles of early Christian faith, including much of the humanitarian beliefs attributed by history to Saint Nicholas.

St. Nicholas was born in Papara, Turkey and died in Myra, Turkey. He was alleged to have inherited wealth that he spent his life giving away to those in need. He was especially known for his generosity in giving gifts to children.

As for me, I never doubted such a person existed, but as the youngest of four children my Christmases were accosted by my older and more cynical siblings. Well, I hope they read this account that rings out with the joy of a great and generous spirit and I expect them to accept the scientific proof that I was right all along.