[The Old Groaner] Parties over

One day, about six years ago, the muhtar came to sit with us at the cafe and announced that we, that is to say Die Frau and I, were to produce a village newspaper every month. We probably had the only computer in the valley at the time and had considerable experience in the fields of writing and photography. Both of us had set type the old black-fingered way, but had no experience of modern ways. Still, we were a logical choice to undertake the project. As the Turkish editor we were appointed Figen, an educated İstanbul lady with excellent English.

It took the muhtar about a month to get the necessary license to run a newspaper. As a public official, he was disallowed, and as foreigners, so were we, so the responsibility was landed on a friend of ours who was one of the few villagers with an advanced education and with no prison record. We never did learn whether the muhtar was paying for the printing from village funds or from his own pocket, but it was certainly known that it was his baby and that we three, the entire staff of the paper, were to be self-funding.

The senior assistant editor and myself spent the month waiting for the license by planning; no use writing news until nearer to publication. We were very concerned that The Gazette was not to be a sheet only for the foreigners; it was to be truly for the whole village. With that in mind, we contrived to have two front pages, one in English and one in Turkish.

(Now my descriptive powers are to be severely tested.)

The two front pages were to be upside-down to each other as well as back pages to each other. The following three pages were to follow the orientation and language of the front pages and to meet in the center page in two languages set in opposing directions!

Please persevere with your interpretation of that, it may help to pick up a few sheets of A4 and make a model; that’s what we did, but of course, we had the additional complication of composing those pages.

We also determined that the newspaper should at all costs avoid controversy, so we would tread very carefully in the areas of politics and religion. (Sex, of course, was out.)

The license eventually came through, and we set-to. Learning to use the special software was not too difficult and finding content was easy, though our appeals for input from the villagers came to little -- we put out calls for announcements of births, marriages and deaths, but received none. Perhaps those events stopped for a few months.

Experienced computer operators will mock us for our biggest problem. Obtaining any liaison between our computer’s brain, the keyboard, Bill Gates and ourselves seemed impossible. The keyboard wanted to speak Turkish, the computer spoke American and the software we used for compilation constantly argued with Microsoft Office Word. At one time I remember cutting and pasting Turkish alphabet characters from Internet sites and pasting them into Word documents. My computer still cannot get the hang of Turkish.

Well, despite all odds, our first edition was a huge success. We distributed 500 free copies around the village, many of them house to house, and they all went. The villagers seemed very pleased that they had a newspaper. The muhtar was bursting with pride.

All went well for another four months; we even started to receive reader’s letters and no longer needed to write them ourselves! The fourth edition came out halfway through Ramadan, and in it, we announced that there would be a grand iftar party at the village tea house to celebrate the beginning of Ramadan. All were invited.

The party was a huge success. Large quantities of food were prepared by large village ladies, and just about half of the valley’s entire population attended. There were a dozen new European settlers and even a few tourists. For the first time since we had been here, the whole valley came together and thanks in no small part to the local rag.

Of course, we would report the event complete with photographs in the next edition of the paper; and then dawned a brilliant idea which would prove to be the beginning of the end of the newspaper and for the newfound togetherness. Christmas was coming up and we would announce a Christmas party to which all would be welcome irrespective of religion.

I must deny you the precise details of the Christmas party. A few villagers did attend, but none of the imams or muhtars. [Imams and muhtars keep their titles for life]. No village elders but we were joined by four very smart young men with short hair and bulges under their arms and who arrived in a shiny black car. The party survived for about an hour.

Coincidently, the day following the Christmas party, all foreigners in the valley were required to attend the offices of the Jandarma bearing all their documents, which were scrutinized and photocopied. No explanation was forthcoming.

In compiling the next edition of the paper, we were very careful to try to report the facts surrounding the party but without causing any problems. We need not have bothered. As usual, we delivered the CD bearing all the copy to the muhtar, but it was never printed. The Valley Gazette was dead.