Lunch with Roni Danon, Dinner with Fehmi and Ahmet

I met with John Chandler at 8:00 to say good by and thank you; we ended up talking quite a bit about politics and he seemed very satisfied with my lack of effort at RC.

At 12:30, we had lunch with Ronnie Danon, 74, at Happily Ever After, a new restaurant in Bebek; Ronnie had made reservations so we sat at the table right on the water. It’s a very modern, almost Americanize restaurant, with mostly American food, from pancakes, to hamburgers, to pizza, but really well done. It was full of women at lunch time, having a meal, talking, and women were waiters, which was unusual. He imports wool from all over the world and has offices in London and in Istanbul, where he seems to spend half his time. I taught him as a Lise III student, and as he recalled those days, he had tears in his eyes, as Evie recalls. He was dressed immaculately, with a red silk hankerchief in his pocket, which was quite different from the dress of most of our acquaintances. He has two children, a son in college in the UK, and a daughter who went to Cambridge and now works for an agency or group that works with Christian/Muslims/Jews in the schools in UK, with the goal being learning to live together in a diverse world. He is very proud of her, rightly so, and sent me her website which I found interesting. As he recalls, he took 4 years to get through RC, but he has good memories, of riding his motorbike to school, of listening to music with his friends, of spending a couple of summers on kibbutzs in Israel though he mentioned the whole idea of the kibbutz has disappeared in the New Israel of land speculation and profit. It sounds like his wife spends a good deal of time there, either because her parents live there or else I am not sure. We left in a rainstorm with a promise to get together next time we are in Istanbul. He was really quite charming and interested…he took a course through Yale about a few years ago, got interested in psychology and philosophy, became so involved with a few others that one of they, a famous physicist from Yale, invited him and a few others to his reunion at Yale. Ronnie spent a week there celebrating with his friend and loved it. Currently, he is reading Ayn Rand, which seemed abit strange but it might indicate his politics, because he talked about Reagan being a great president. He clearly picked up that I was not a fan, like many Turks, and started prefacing his remarks with “In my opinion.”

Fehmi picked us up at 7:00, though he had to fight traffic once again, to get us. We are really beginning to feel a burden to people, as they feel the obligation to pick us up. We went to Gokturk, to Ahmet’s restaurant called Balikci, where we ate our second night in Istanbul. Ahmet, Nikki, Florette and Fehmi and us were the only ones this time. For some reason, Ates did not come. We had a great not at the restaurant, marvelous mezze, lots of wine, good conversation, as Fehmi got drunk on wine and spent the last hour singing old tunes, mostly Beatles, calling friends on his phone to find out what Ann Murrays song, Save the Last Dance, sounded like. He was able to find a couple versions on his phone but could not find the right one. Florette and Nikki talked most of the time which is too bad because I would liked to have talked with Nikki a bit more. She seems neat. Florette is very different though pleasant. Ahmet realized that Fehmi was a bit drunk so he ordered us a car, which took us home. The next day Fehmi said that he slept all the way home as Florette ended up driving. Our Turkish friends are very conscious of drinking and driving and make sure someone doesn’t drink or that they come to an event in a taxi so they can get a safe ride home. Later, Fehmi told me he slept till 4:00, couldn’t sleep and got up and went on Facebook. I wondered because when I was on in the morning I saw Fehmi was playing this game of coffee shop at 4:00. Another great night.