Inter-faith Dinner Again

Yesterday evening, Bea, Vahid, Sara and I was in my place for our second interfaith dinner. Maikel wanted to come; but could not make it due to some health problems.

Dinner Table
I cooked lentil soup; and Sara cooked potato kookoo. I again forgot to take the photo of the dinner table. Instead, I took following picture this morning.

The movie that Bea brought is on the table ("Life of Brian" ); and also the pen and paper I used to take some notes during our chat.

We had chat about this and that first:
- the royal family of Spain (their king after the dictatorship is still the king today)
- the story behind the naming of daughter-in-law Ezo soup (a variety of lentil soup). I discovered thanks to this chat that iranians also say "gelin" for daughter-in-law and bride.
- I learned that Argentina also has a city called Cordoba, named after the Spanish city. And, Sara told us that Ines was from there. Then, it made sense to me why Ines was talking about her life in Cordoba during Fesencan dinner last week in Sara-Vahid's place. Interestingly, Bea is from spanish Cordoba.
- Vahid and Sara asked if the taste of helva I got from them two days ago was similar to ours. I told them that the only difference was addition of spices, which we don't do. It was interesting to hear that they cook this dessert also in funerals.

Regarding interfaith discussions; we basically talked about two main things:
- Violence and religion
- Does the world need religious leaders?

Violence & War and religion
Of course all of us were against violence and war. Bea initiated a discussion about the Buddhistic view with no violence at all even you are attacked, i.e passivity view. She also reminded us the statement of prophet Jesus: "If someone slaps on your cheek, turn your other cheek to him".

At the end of the discussion, we all agreed that the advice of Jesus Christ must have been for the people who can take lesson from "turning other cheek" (Sara's comment). If the person is of the kind who will not take lessons and start to slap more and more to you; you should not behave like this. Probably this was what prophet Jesus meant, we concluded.

So, we all agreed that totally passivist attitude is not true. Everybody must do their best to keep peace, but war or counter-attack for defence purposes is OK when unavoidable.

Do we need religious leaders?
We first started talking about if any religious leader is needed or not (Pope, Dalai Lama etc.). This was Maikel's discussion-question. Bea opened a discussion about sufficiency of inner voice. Isn't our inner voice, our own mind enough to decide on what is right or not? If so, why would we need a religious leader?

At the end, we all agreed on following points:

- General and basic moral values are almost the same in all religions, and it is true that we can make our decisions on those issues (whether that thing is right or not) based on our own inner voice. We may not need a leader or an expert for such things. However, there are more detailed and deeper issues (or controversial points) which require an expert opinion. Since we go to doctor when we are seriously ill (they are experts) and we do not decide based on our inner voice for treatment, we need religious experts to guide us in deeper issues. (Vahid's point)

- It is better to say "religious scholar" rather than religious leader in this sense.

-This does not mean blindly obeying only one leader. There must be more than one leaders equally respected; so that we can have opportunity to compare their views with our inner voice. They should be considered as guides to alternative ways of thinking and interpreting an issue. We can then have opportunity to adapt the view closest to our "inner voice", or we can make our own interpretations depending on those alternative views.

Further ideas

Towards the end of our chat, Bea asked the question: "What should we do next?"

She already had a couple of nice suggestions:

• We can search for dialogue associations in Amsterdam and join their activities


• We can participate in the activities of helping organizations (for kids etc)


• We can visit churches, synagogues or mosques


• I had found a very interesting website last week for organizing voluntary activities:Meet-In. Bea suggested that we could drop an add there to call for people who are interested in interfaith discussions and we could have a big meeting with people with very different backgrounds.


• She said that we can also join ceremonies of Hare-Khrishna which are held on sundays.

We decided on the last activity; and we will go there in our next meeting.

BBQing again

I wanted to check the barbecue before going to shopping; but it was not anywhere in the roof! I told Vahid, and we had a search in the whole building, we could not find it.

We decided to use the tablegrill- the christmas gift of UvA. I called Emrah in the meanwhile. Then he called back and said that they will bring a barbecue grill.

They brought a newly-bought bucket barbecue. We have grilled lambs, sucuks, red paprikas, and marinated chicken wings I had bought from iranian supermarket at Dapperstraat yesterday. Or to be more correct, Emrah and Çağrı were our barbecue-guys.

We also had bulgur salad, prepared in my place with the help of Sara; and a pasta-salad by Sara.

How to marinate chicken
I took recipe from Sara, who took it from the guy in iranian supermarket. I modified it a bit.

• Mix kip kruid (chicken spice) with olive oil so that they form a paste
• Add a bit pomegranate sauce
• Apply the paste to the chicken wings
• Put the wings into a container with chopped onions
  
• Leave them marinate.
  

Seven of us spent very nice time together in the roof, and later in my place for drinking tea and eating pumpkin seeds.

It was very funny to discover words which were common in all three languages: iranian, turkish and greek. Tiryaki (addicted) and hamal were two of them. Yorgos told me that they have surnames like "Kuyumcu", but people do not know that they are turkish words. They even say "yalanci sarma" (fake wrapping), an exactly turkish name, for rice wrapped with grape leaves. They call it fake since that dish does not include meat. Funny to know :)

I am glad that I met Yorgos. This was the first time in my life that I chatted with a greek person. He is such a nice person. Very open-minded, with very turkish appearance. I learned that he was from Mora peninsula, the hand-like part of Greece; and this part is actually an island now since there is a canal to make ship transport easier between western and eastern part of the country.

Gözde said that she was accepted to a program in Amsterdam for the next internship. It was also good to hear that she very much enjoyed the time spent together. I will talk to her to convince her to take more serious decisions on her future life :).

I found the following receipt in one of the bags Emrah and Çağrı:

Farewell Dinner of Walid

We gathered in Sara-Vahid's place yesterday evening at around 20:00 with Walid, since he was leaving Amsterdam.

I learned new things about Singapore and Iran.

At one time during the chat, Vahid asked me if we know "Leyla and Mecnun". "Of course", I said, "It is turkish!". Walid said "Really?, I thought it was indian.." To be honest, I guess it is arabic although I once read that the desert of Leyla and Mecnun's tribes were in Afghanistan.
I should ask Kaustubh if he heard this story or not..

I also learned that his name is after a Lebanese politician: Walid Jumblatt. His brother is called Yaser Arafat, and he has a cousin called Muammer Kaddafi.

It was interesting to hear from Walid that there were no clashes between groups in Singapore. Tamils, Chinese and Malays live happily in the country, without any integration problem. He said that in big buildings, a certain percentage of residents has to be from each ethnic group, which in a way "forces" the different groups to integrate. And it seems that this policy works.

One other thing is: the official language is English in the country. The education in universities is english. I was a bit surprised first. "Why are not your own languages promoted?" I asked. But it does not make sense since the question then would be: "Which of malay, chinese and tamil must be the official language?" In this sense, it is logical to select a language other than any of these three as official language, to prevent conflicts. But still, it is sad that the new generation forgets their own languages, and prefer to speak english in daily conversations, as Walid said.

Vahid and Sara talked about an Iranian poet with azeri origin: Shahriyar. I learned that there are actually two deserts in Iran. Also, one grandfather of Vahid was azeri; and his city Mashad was close to Turkmenistan.

It was also interesting to learn reasoning behind his surname. They also told me that women do not change their surnames when they get married. That was surprising at first; but considering that we and they did not have any surnames in the old times, getting the husband's surnames must be a tradition originating from the west since surname tradition comes from there too.

Moses and the Shepherd

Maikel, Bea, Sara, Vahid and I gathered together yesterday in my place for a dinner and for chatting on beliefs, faiths.

I cooked yoghurt soup and dolma (stuffed paprika). Maikel helped for the mixing of flour and yoghurt for the soup. Vahid fried the cigarette pastries. After the dinner, we had Mangos by Bea and ice-cream by Sara as desserts. I always want to take a picture of dinner table in these occasions, but I always forget.

We talked about many things, nice moments. At one moment, Sara told us a story from Mevlana (Rumi)'s Mesnevi: Moses and the Shepherd:

A shepherd prays God: "My God, I love you, I want to kiss your hand, I want to serve you milk, I want to clean your bedroom, I want to wash your clothes....".
Moses hears this and gets angry "How come you can personalize God! You will make Him angry". And prevents him to go on with his prayer.
Moses gets a revalation just at the time by God: "Why did you separate my lover from me? Is your mission as a prophet to unite or to sever? Every person has his/her own way of approaching to me..."

Sara sent an e-mail to us today, and gave links to the english translation of the complete poem:

http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/jrumi/masnavi/moses_shepherd.php

http://www.islamicamagazine.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=358

She quoted the following parts from the second translation:
"Don't bother with good manners anymore,
But let your heart express what's in its core!"

I would really want Kiran and Kaustubh to be with us during these discussions..

Dinner at Komme Nieuwegracht

Age came to my office during the day and made the following sketch on the board, explaining me how to get to their place.They have a very nice house! The roof has a garden-like balcony. The tower of the famous church is very visible from the balcony, very close. They said that this will probably be the selling point of the house. They have a very big piano in the living room, whose fame I had already heard during the new-house-finding stage. Age told us how they had to get this huge piano inside through the window of the kitchen by first removing the whole window frame. At that time, he wanted to use the word "crane". He could not remember it and he brought a dictionary to the dining table. It was funny to have dinner with occasional dictionary checks..

One of the rooms had graffiti on one wall. Age told us that it was his nephew who asked permission for this, and he agreed; and he liked it at the end.

The house is furnished in such a way that one can think that they have already packed everything for moving to the new place. There was hardly furnitures around. I liked it. It is totally opposite of traditional turkish furnishing where houses are full of unnecessary things, leading to almost no place to walk around freely. This was also what I saw and liked in Inge and Hans's house.

It was interesting to see that the walls were full of interesting picture frames. Inge said that she found the picture in the bedroom very scary.

The dinner dish was very delicious too. Halal meat balls with tasty sauce, served with boiled potato, carrot and spinach. I also liked the dessert they served: strawberrries with a very tasty sauce: mix of a soft cheese type with lemon juice and honey. I will ask Margriet the recipe.

Together with Inge and Hans, we talked about many different issues. The chatting was about many different things from books to music to photography to alcohol dehydrogenase located in stomach... In the meanwhile, Margriet and Inge told the others how they had taught me how to make a typical dutch conversation using "Wat schuift het?" and "dikke neuse"..
:) ...

Inge and Hans talked about their french neighbour. She still uses ashes to make her bed warm before sleeping. "She leaves in 19th century" was the comment. It is interesting to hear that there are still such westerners.

Inge said that the dutch laws require that everybody has to have a certain office space. She said "For instance, I should have 12 m2 office space, and you 2" returning to Margriet. I was surprised why Margriet's space right is so little according to laws. "Probably it is because she has just obtained a permanent position" I thought. Then I realized that Inge had actually said "you too..".

The house had full of plants. I forgot to ask Margriet if she really does not touch any of them.

Overall it was nice moments.. We left at around quarter past ten, and I was home at 23:45, cycling from amstel station..

We have partied at Funenpark roof !!

On friday, we had our vegetarian + chicken barbecue party at Funenpark Roof.

In the afternoon, I went to the P building to meet Vahid. We went to the iranian shop at Dapperstraat together to buy the chickens for barbecue.

After our DBN research meeting, Gooitzen, Maikel, Daniel and me cycled to my place. Johan and Ewout came by tram 10.

We started to prepare bulgur salad (Kısır) and lentil balls (mercimek köfte). Maikel helped me a lot in chopping onions, spring onions and parsley. I guess Daniel chopped an onion too. But he was mostly busy with garlics to be used with shrimps. First, he did not like my garlics since they were rotten somehow, and we got one from Sara and Vahid.

I asked Ewout's help on chopping parsleys. Johan suggested to use a small scissor saying that it makes it more practical. At the end, I realized that Ewout has a noticeably lower performance than he had in our previous gathering in January. Then, I asked him to stop :).

At the end, we had the following menu:

Bulgur Salad

Lentil Balls

Koko Sabzi (Iranian dish; vegetables with eggs. Sabzi means vegetables; and koko is if you mix something with eggs)
Cigaratte Pastry(Vahid helped me to fry them in oil)

Chicken barbecue.

Ewout was our barbecue guy together with Johan. Maikel helped me to mix the things for Bulgur Salad, and Gooitzen squeezed lemons. Sara made the mixing for lentil balls and she shaped the balls.

We were all 9 people, including Sara, Vahid and their friend from Argentina: Ines.

It was very nice weather, and enjoyable there in the roof in open air.

The others left earlier, but we sat in the roof with Maikel, Ines, Sara and Vahid till it gets dark. There was another group started to partying; so we decided to go to my place to have a quieter environment. We made jokes about american pigeons.

After Ines and Maikel left around 11:30 PM, we went on chatting and eating pumpkin seeds (from Ines) with my iranian neighbours till 1 AM or so.

It was funny that my iranian neighbours were referring to Ewout as 'the barbecue guy'.

Overall, I had a very nice evening/night with all those nice people around!

Ben Seni Sevdugumi / The Edge of Heaven

Maikel and I visited Gurchay and Olga on Saturday at The Hague. This time there was many more ducks in the lake in the middle of their complex.

The basic idea was to watch Fatih Akin's movie: Auf Der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven). IMDB gives a point of 8.1 to the movie.

Before the movie, we had a dinner: again a delicious one thanks to Olga. During the dinner, I learned that the lemon slices put into cokes etc while serving were actually limes most of the time. They told me that lime and lemon are not the same variety although the taste is similar. Lime is green in color, and it has a different smell.

It was an interesting movie. More interesting was the song you hear three times in the movie: Ben seni sevdugumi (by Kazim Koyuncu originally). I bumped into this song on youtube a week ago. Shevval Sam sings it in a very nice way. I had listened it few times back then.

Then, few days ago, I saw on the internet that an Azeri girl from Turkish-Azerbaijan high-school sings the same song too..



I was already crooning this song on Saturday morning. It was surprising to hear it in the movie in the same evening.

Dinner with Iranian Neighbours

Last night, I had a dinner with Vahid and Sara. I cooked chickpea soup, potato meal, and pasta with onion sauce. We talked about different issues.

1. We discovered new common words between iranian and turkish languages like sandalye (chair), taze (fresh), chorba (shorba), meyve (fruit), portakal (orange). I told them the story behind the naming of portakal, linked to the portuguese city porto.

2. They mentioned about a professor from Carnegie Mellon, who will die of pancreatic cancer. Today, Sara sent me the link to his last lecture, and strongly advised me to watch it. I have found his weblog on the internet too.
Sara and Vahid told me last night that he said that his mother was saying to people "Look, this is my son. He is a doctor. But not of the kind who can help people."

3. Towards the end of our chats, they said a few times that they wanted to leave and it was already late, but we went on chatting. Then they said : "Is it the same in Turkey. Guests say that they will just leave, but go on chatting? " I said: "exactly!" :).

They liked the taste of paprika paste very much. Sara was saying: "I wonder what would you eat and cook if you did not have paprika paste" since I had added it into all meals I cooked for dinner.

They also talked about the still-continuing effects of Irak-Iran war on the health of people.

Dinner at Defne's & Hans' & Devin's

Yesterday, we were in Defne's & Hans' & Devin's place for dinner. It is funny that I have tasted the traditional Turkish (Mersin region) 'Yuksuk' soup and also 'Hunkar Begendi' (Sultan's Favourite as Hans translated it) for the first time in a foreign city, in Amsterdam. All delicious & well-cooked. I liked the 'borek' very much too, but forgot to ask its name. There was one more delicious thing in their house : the baby Devin :). He is about to walk now!.

Few hours before the dinner, I cycled to Kalverstraat for a small shopping; and on my way to UvA in return there was a sudden rain and hailing. I was completely wet in the few minutes while the hails were bumping and jumping on my head :).