Report from the East

[clifford endres]

Fellow Americans,

For what it's worth, here are two events that happened to me yesterday.

One, first thing in the morning, as I leave the house one of my neighbors
comes up to me and says, "We're with you, brother, against those nasty
Arabs.  That business is about what you can expect of an Arab."  I thank her
and move on.

Two, I'm in a stationery store in the afternoon, buying some paper, when one
of the two women behind the counter asks me where I'm from.  I confess that
I'm an American.  

"We don't like Americans here," she says.
"Why?"
"Just think about it," she replies.

The other one chimes in, "We hate your country and your Bush and your war."

And with icy Turkish politeness, they invited me to finish my business and
leave.  Discussion finished.

First time anything like anti-Americanism had ever happened to me here,
except for the occasional wild-eyed student Marxist on the street.  The more
I thought about it, though, the more I considered it might be the mirror
image of monolithic American anti-Muslimism.  If so, and it spreads, we
appear to be in for some shit.

Your Constantinople correspondent,
Cliff