Chronicles Of The Return

Gouge my fucking eyeballs out, please. I hate this orientalist tripe dressed up as modern anthropological-cum-travel writing observation:

The Turks, as everyone knows, are insane and deceitful. I say this affectionately. I live in Turkey. On good days, I love Turkey. But I have long since learned that its people are apt to go berserk on you for no reason whatsoever, and you just can’t trust a word they say. As one Turkish friend put it (a man who has spent many years in America, and thus grasps the depth of the cultural chasm), “It’s not that they’re bad. They don’t even know they’re lying.”

Affectionately? Do you have any idea how horribly insulting a Turk would find this? And for good reason, too. It’s an ugly, untrue stereotype. This kind of crap just reinforces orientalism and, considering the source, is a set-up for a kind of ‘Wogs begin at Calais’ trope that delegitimizes anything the Turks might do. It’s also just plain wrong. How about this for a little thought experiment:

My friend is right, and his comment suggests a point about American culture that I doubt many Easterners grasp. People here—and, I would guess, throughout the South and the Mountain States, though Texas is the only state I know well—see “truth” as something plastic, connected more to emotions than to facts or logic. If it feels true, it is true. What’s more, feelings here tend to change very quickly—and with them, the truth.

The above paragraph can be used to describe every Fox TV-watching, Sarah Palin-loving person in America. Now go read the original. The whole essay is full of really, really odious stuff that proves a singluar point about human nature: we see what we want to see. Take me for example: when I first discussed hejab in Turkey with three girls who were wearing it, I saw what I wanted to see. Only later would I learn that it was much, much more complicated than my first, oversimplified impression.

Look, the Turks do have unique characteristics. They love practical jokes. Have a very different and wonderful sense of humor. They are supremely hospitable and kind. But this idea that the truth, to Turks alone, is plastic, malleable and that ‘orientals’ are deceitful and insane is an old Orientalist trope. It’s also complete bullshit.

Human beings lie. Human beings tell you what they think you want to hear. We all do it. Why? Because we don’t like hurting people’s feelings. It’s human nature.

I can’t believe it’s 2010 and I have to fucking point this out.

Please, shoot me.

This story by John Feffer about Turkey is popping up just about everywhere on the internets. The author, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, has as his thesis that “Turkey is chasing China to be the next big thing.” This is rather fanciful and the China analogies litter the essay. I’ll give him this, many of his facts in the essay are correct: Turkey has largely become Europe’s silent manufacturer and his deconstruction of Turkey’s ‘Zero Problems With Neighbors’ is an excellent elucidation of Turkey’s foreign policy. Further, the Turks are on their way towards rectifying the Kurdish problem.

As for superpower? Look, this is silly. No doubt whoever controls Anatolia and the Straits will always be powerful in a regional sense. But a superpower? How will Turkey project power outside of the Mediterranean Basin? They don’t even have nukes, which is pretty much the contemporary definition of great power status. In spite of its problems, the essay is worth a read as a primer on Turkey’s history since the death of Mustafa Kemal. The biggest fault with the essay, however, is his terribly dismissiveness of Islamism’s rise in Turkey. He writes:

This is, however, a fundamental misunderstanding of the AKP and its intentions. Islamism has about as much influence in modern-day Turkey as communism does in China. In both cases, what matters most is not ideology, but the political power of the ruling parties. Economic growth, political stability, and soft-power diplomacy regularly trump ideological consistency. Turkey is becoming more nationalist and more assertive, and flexibility, not fundamentalism, has been the hallmark of its new foreign policy.

Feffer, sadly, misunderstands the role of how “Economic growth, political stability, and soft-power diplomacy regularly trump ideological consistency.” These are the AKP’s means to an end. I’ve seen it firsthand in Turkey. Islamism is real. Very, very real. The Secularists in Turkey are boxed in. So are the Generals. The Secularists don’t have an answer to Erdogan’s economic growth miracle, because the Secularist economic policies are and were bankrupt. Corruption of the worst kind was rampant. Hyper inflation and economic crises like clockwork were the norm under the last twenty years of secular and military rule. When I first visited Turkey in 2001 one US dollar was worth millions of Turkish lira. The notes were simply insane. Try counting none or ten zeros when you wanted to buy a coke. Dinner was a joke.

Today the lira is stable. Turkey’s economy churns along. Economic life in Turkey is better than it has been in a very, very long time. The AKP has gone a long way towards neutralizing the deep state in Turkey, as well as eradicating the worst signs of corruption, although not eliminating it completely. No, I am not idealizing life under the secularists; it had its problems. But the warning signs of a creeping Islamism under the AKP are real.

While I was there in 2001 or even 2003 seeing a woman in Istanbul with a veil was unlikely. Not any more, as this link makes clear. This link is also indicative of how hard it is to come to grips with the reality of Islamism in Turkey. At first, I too got caught up in the talking point of choice, a kind of post-modern spin on women’s rights, which is anything but. It goes like this: women in Turkey are free to wear the veil or not wear the veil. It is their choice. But, as I investigated closer what I found was the opposite: the social pressure, from fathers to neighbors and the increase in honor killings, to conform to the politics of the veil were very real. That isn’t choice, not as I define it. I don’t want to go into the whole debate again, suffice it to say that many young women in Turkey don’t have a choice.

Nor is Islamism’s creep limited to the rights of women. The theory of evolution is under attack in Turkey. And Turkey is one of the few places in the developed world, outside of America, where science itself is being challenged. As a matter of fact, if you took the Christianist project here in America and put an Islamist label on it in Turkey, it would be almost identical.

There are places where alcohol is banned in Istanbul, as well. Sure, tourists can drink to their hearts content. But locals? Nope. In parts of Anatolia, never a liberal bastion, a quasi-Shari’a is often enforced, if not lawfully, then by custom. And these customs are moving West, to Izmir, Bursa and Istanbul itself as rural immigrants pore into the cities.

These are just some of the reasons why the Gaza Flotilla is such a turning point in Turkish politics. The AKP is slowly chipping away at the foundations of secularism in Turkey. And they are winning. The Gaza Flotilla and Erdogan’s attack on Peres at Davos were exhibitions of soft-power par excellence. But, before we cheer Erdogan on in the face of Israel’s coarse and brutal siege mentality, its flouting of international norms and the continuing inhumane blockade of Gaza, let’s keep the domestic Turkish context in mind. Politics, as they say, make strange bedfellows.

The good news is that Turkey presents a serious challenge to the neo-con project in the Middle East (a project, I hasten to add, I do not in any way support). Turkey presents a much needed wake-up call to the American political class’s constant obeisance to Israel, as well. As Erdogan has proven, he is an adroit wielder of Turkey’s significant soft-power.

I’ve long been of the opinion that if there is to be an Islamic democracy it would have to rectify the values of Islam and the values of secularism and pluralism. It would have to be a democracy in an Islamic context, much as Japan is a democracy in an East-Asian context. And this is a project I’ve not given up on. But helping such a project along requires restraint and nuance (not to mention patience) on the part of American policy-makers. This might be a temporary swing of the pendulum in Turkey’s domestic politics, but then again, it might not.

Alas, the American foreign policy establishment has proven time and time again that it doesn’t do nuance. And restraint?

But in order to keep Turkey in our orbit they’ll need to learn both.

I’m not holding my breath.

Last Friday while sitting at a local coffee shop awaiting a call back from yet another software company here in Austin—I got the job—I saw a young Middle Eastern woman. She had luxuriant raven hair tied in two long braids falling over her shoulders, like that of a school girl’s. She wore a heavy wool sweater and baggy pants that did little to hide her shape. Her kohl-lined eyes and deep brown irises were murderous and magnificent, much as I imagine Circe or the Sirens to have looked. But none of this compared to the sound of her voice.

I wasn’t paying her much attention until she spoke. She was teaching an old roughneck-oilman Turkish. It was that sound—a sound I’d heard a thousand, million times in Istanbul that never failed to bring a smile, and a winsome, poignant agony, a certain lilt to her voice, an inflection beating out the tempo of ages past, empires risen and fallen, wild horsemen on the Parthian Steppe. Born of the Earth and the long passage from the Land Of Darkness somewhere along the Orkhon River an age or two ago. Not nasal, more from the back of her throat, almost like the sound of a surprise or a poetess in rapture and while I listened, a thousand keening images from the city on the Straits rose before me, of kahvalti and chai, raki and an uskumru sandwich along the Eminonu docks; of crowds milling in and out of the great bazaar; the horn of the night’s last ferry crossing over to Uskudar; radical students playing the guitar and singing huzun songs along Istiklal Caddesi; of the green glass skyscrapers of Levent, the red-tiled roofs of my home district, Elmadag and the mirror-blue waters skipping across the Marble Sea.

The river flows and takes me away and as each cold day passes here in Austin I lament more and more for my city, the city and the simple sonorous carols of Turkish.

Thus my imprecation to the universe: I’m rotting here.

I’m a bit of a Turcophile, as many of you are aware. That’s why I read this post by Arianna Hufffington’s ex-husband with interest. A friend of mine, who is also a bit of a Turcophile sent me the link. We had an interesting discussion via email and I’ll append his thoughts at the bottom of the post. Needless to say, he disagrees with me to a certain extent.

As to Huffington: he makes some good points, but overall the tone is such that he cannot separate the Turkish Islamists from the Turks. And that is unfortunate. Michael Huffington writes:

Last night on 60 Minutes there was a 14-minute segment about Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). It was an honest look at religious freedom (or lack thereof) inside one of America’s military allies. It is a story that should be seen by the leaders of the free world as well as people of faith.

The Ecumenical Patriarch of 300,000,000 Orthodox Christians (of which I am one) is similar to the Pope of the Catholic Church. And yet he is a treated as a second-class citizen in his own country where he was born. The Orthodox “Vatican” is called the Phanar and it is located on less than an acre of land in the city of Istanbul. There have been so many threats of violence that they have had to use barbed wire and cameras to protect the priest inside the property. The last century has seen the Orthodox Christian population diminish from 2,000,000 in 1900 to less than 4,000 in all of Turkey today. Most were forced out. Yet this geographical area of the world was mostly Christian a thousand years ago.

First, a little reality check. There very well may be 300,000,000 Orthodox Christians in the world. At least many of them are nominally Orthodox, in such post-Communist places as the Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation? But, it must be remembered, the Orthodox Church is semi-autonomous, the separate national churches like the Russian or the Bulgarian or the Greek don’t take their marching orders the way Catholics do the Pope. The idea that there are 300,000,000 pious Orthodox in the world is fanciful, at best.

Furthermore, there was a vibrant community of Nestorian Christians in Central Asia all the way to China—the mother of the the Great Khan Mongke was a Nestorian for that matter—and in China there was a bishop, in the Middle Ages. Should we be poking our noses in their business as well, trying to resurrect the faith there too? I make this point, not to invalidate Huffington’s point about religious freedom. I simply make it to point out the absurdity of worrying about a religion that began dying out in Anatolia almost a thousand years ago (1071AD) and finally did so in the last century.

Over the past 20 years, Turkey has been trying to gain admittance to the European Union. Turkey is not a European country. Most of its land mass is in Asia Minor. It is not ethnically, socially, culturally or religiously European. Yet the U.S. government (especially under President George W. Bush) has lobbied the Europeans forcefully to admit Turkey into the EU because Turkey is our military ally, and the American military and political establishment didn’t want them falling into the Russian or the Iranian sphere of influence.

Couple of different issues at play here. Yes, Turkey has been trying to gain admittance for quite some time. And the Euros would have been wise to have accepted Turkey 15 years ago. This would have forced the secularists in government to change the economy for the better. And it was a huge missed opportunity, if Europe truly cares about Turkey remaining secular. Here’s what happened instead. The Turks grew disillusioned with the secularists and voted for the soft-shoe Islamists to run the country and economy, making what I would call a Faustian bargain, hoping they would fix the economy and not impose their brand of religious politics along with it.

The Turks got an exceptionally strong economic recovery, as I documented during my time there. But they also got the Islamist baggage along with it. And now that the economy threatens to head south in light of the global financial crisis, the Turkish Islamists are using the culture war card to stay in power.

This is a shame. It is also worrisome. Just look at the power the culture war has over the American imagination.

Now, as to Huffington’s contention that Turkey isn’t a European country. Well, a good 15% of the landmass sits in Europe. So does Istanbul. Of course, that’s easy to dismiss. But what isn’t is this: Turkey has been an integral partner in the European state system since the French allied with the Turks several hundred years ago to outflank the Hapsburgs. So, feel free to dismiss Turkey as an “Asian country.” But let’s not forget history.

I visited Istanbul in 1972, and Ankara in the 1980’s when my company had an office there. The Republic of Turkey was founded less than a century ago by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on October 29, 1923. His government changed the local culture from an Islamic dominated society into one that was modern, democratic and secular. One of the major changes was that women were given the right to vote. They were also given the freedom and encouraged not to wear the veil. But today Turkey is returning to its Islamic traditions under the government of Prime Minister Erdogan who took office in 2003. He belongs to the Justice and Development Party which was founded by former members of an Islamist political party. Whereas I never saw women wearing the long black burqas during my visits, I did notice in the 60 Minutes segment that women are now doing so. (Under the Shah of Iran burqas were banned by law, but under the law of the Islamic Republic of Iran they are required.) Will that someday happen in Turkey also?

What Huffington describes is terribly, terribly true. As you are all aware, I have a very difficult relationship with hejab—defined loosely as Islamic dress for women. And hejab in Turkey is just a symbol of the creeping Islamism in the country. Alcohol has been banned in many places in Istanbul for Turks. (Of course, for an economy that derives a quarter of its GDP from tourism, foreigners can still drink to their hearts content.) The freedom of the press in the country has been losing ground for a decade. You Tube is unavailable in the country. Instead they have a what is called, “Turktube,” or some such. Evolution is being challenged in the public schooling system. Honor killings happen more than most will admit. Harassment of key secular intellectuals and artists. I could continue but the point is that the Islamists are pushing the outer boundaries of Turkey’s secular past for the worse.

Now, to Huffington’s other comment: could Turkey go the way of Iran? Not any time soon, because the civic space is still very vibrant and filled with the secularists. But they are losing ground. Were the economy really to head into a tailspin? Perhaps. The larger point is to remember what I wrote when I was out East near Lake Van: I really felt like I was in Iran already. Less than 10% of the women were uncovered. Worrisome, indeed.

It is clear that Turkey is a different place than it was in 1987 when it originally made its application to accede into the EU. If Turkey were ever allowed to join the European Union, the consequences would be reminiscent of those that happened to the city of Troy when it allowed the Trojan Horse inside its fortified walls. The Muslim culture would ultimately dominate Christian and secular Europe. As can be seen in Turkey today that country does not welcome or protect other religions within its borders. They have seized Orthodox Church properties, closed churches, monasteries and schools. If one walks with a priest down the streets of Istanbul it is not a comfortable feeling. Many priests will change out of their church clothes and wear business suits once they leave the confines of the Phanar. This is not religious freedom as we know it in the west. While we welcome people of all faiths in America we cannot be so naïve as to expect all countries to do the same. But we cannot allow their cultural mores to snuff out our religious freedoms or the freedom of women to have equal rights.

This is where I get off the Huffington bus. He’s engaging in the whole, “Muslims are going to take over Europe” concern trolling here. Nonsense. As I have repeatedly stated in posts about Iran and Turkey: the best way to counter the Islamists is to engage them and play their own game. Tell Turkey, sure, you can join the EU, but remember, hejab in the EU is a no-no. You don’t like it, too bad. Moreover, religious tolerance is a key virtue in the EU and a fundamental aspect of the acquis communitiare, and if you can’t ratify that, well, you’ve got no chance of joining the EU. The bottom line here is that the EU has leverage over the Islamists in Turkey it’s too pusillanimous to use.

France and other European countries rightfully have serious and well-founded reservations about admitting Turkey into the EU. If Turkey were admitted any Turkish citizen could travel, work and reside in any EU country because they would no longer need a visa. There are Islamist fundamentalist in Turkey as there are in Iraq, Iran, Egypt and other Muslim countries. This would be a security nightmare. The American Administration should butt out of this issue and let the Europeans make their own decisions.

Clearly Huffington has been huffing some glue here. Yes, of course, there are Islamists in Turkey. But not of the virulent al Qeada type. Please. Are there terrorists? Yup, sure are. But they are Kurds. A people who speak an Indo-European language who value secularism just as much as the secular Turks and Europeans do. Again, the Kurdish issue is more leverage the EU could and has used. But I do agree with Huffington in that the US should butt out.

This brings me back to the interview with Patriarch Bartholomew. At the end of the interview the Patriarch says that he feels crucified in his own country. It is clear that over the last century the church has been crucified in that there are only 4,000 Orthodox Christians left out of a population that totals 72,000,000 people. In the Bible Luke 9:5 says “And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.” It is probably past time for the Patriarchate to leave its homeland. The Turks have made it unbearable to live and work there. There are many other countries in this world that would welcome the Patriarch and the several dozen priests that remain. And why should the next Ecumenical Patriarch of 300,000,000 souls have to be a Turkish citizen just because the Turkish government “won’t allow” any other citizen of any other country to hold that position? A government should not hold a veto right over the spiritual leader of any religion. Orthodoxy will grow faster and more soundly if its roots are planted in nourishing soil. After all Jesus Christ did not stay in Jerusalem or Bethlehem for most of his ministry. He had no physical house or building to live and work in. Instead he wandered the countryside meeting all who wanted to listen.

I agree. The Patriarchate would be better off in Greece. Will it happen? Probably not. It would be a serious blow to the Turks internationally if the Patriarchate announced it was leaving. But if it did, it might force the Turkish Islamists into a nasty little corner, one the secularists could capitalize on.

I’ll let my friend have the last word here. He’s much more positive than I am about Islamism in Turkey:

On the topic of Turkey, I’m less concerned than you are, but keeping a very watchful eye on things. Yes there is harassment, which is not good, buts its unclear to me to what degree this is being done by isolated but vocal fundamentalists, part of a broader movement, supported by the Erdogan government (directly or indirectly) and so on.

Like you, I know and have had conversations with a range of people in Turkey. My general feeling is that while Erdogan’s government is introducing religion into the government its happening in a way that is different than the religious fundamentalists here or elsewhere in the Middle East. While it may seem similar I think that something different is happening, that at least so far, does not raise the same alarms for me as elsewhere. Of course I could be smoking crack, but it feels different to me.

Having said that, I also don’t think that Ergogan can take things very far. Both the military and the “deep” government (there’s a word for the permanent part of the Turkish government that I’m blanking on at the moment) control too many levers of power and will not permit much movement on the issue. As such I suspect that introduction of religion into Turkish society and government will be more superficial than all encompassing. Enough to sate the majority of the vocal supporters while leaving the real crazies disappointed, think abortion clinic bomber types.

Attached are snippets of my time from an email I sent to a friend:

The day before yesterday, as you know, I was in Malatya. I hired a cab after breakfast. He was a well dressed, handsome Turkish man in his late 20s, early thirties. He had the most amazing blue eyes. I often wonder if they shock me as they do because they are so unexpected and at the same time, blue and green eyes, shockingly so, seem to be very common. He spoke little English, but we got on well. Some taxi drivers talk to excess, even when you don’t share a common language. Mehmet didn’t. He asked simple questions in a combination of English and Turkish and I replied likewise. We drove out to Battalgazi–the site of old Mitelene under fierce spring light. It was the first time I used sunglasses since Oman.

The drive was downhill, probably about 600 feet as altitude goes. There were many small canals, gravity pulling the water home, plane trees with gravy white bark and luxurious seven pointed leaves provided shade.

Our first stop was the old Seljuk, Ulu Cami. We walked around, found the groundskeeper’s son, named Sabri, who lives in a rabbit burrow like home on the side below the mosque. He grabbed the keys, unlocked the door, literally rolled out a welcome mat and said, “Hos Geldiniz,” which is Turkish for ‘Welcome!”

The mosque had eight parallel aisles, most of the piers–supporting pillars–are a newish basalt–the mosque has been restored considerably, but done very well. There are no naves in mosques, as there are no priestly processions to need one. So, you get eight parallel rows for prayer in the old style-Damascene mosques. You’ve already seen the photos, but here’s the link to where those of the Ulu Cami start, just in case. This is the first Seljuk mosque I’ve seen in Anatolia that shows movement away from the old Damascene, rectangular floor plan. It’s still a rectangle, but this was the first I’d seen that had a pishtaq, or iwan–an entry portal. But what was so odd about this one is that it wasn’t in the front of the mosque, as they usually are. The iwan was in a central courtyard, which is even stranger. Iwans are very common in Persian Seljuk and Ilkhanid (Muslim Mongols in the late 13th early 14th century Iran) mosques. But Iwans are triumphal entry portals and facades, not mean to be hidden in a recessed courtyard. An oddity I must research more.

I wondered, while admiring its rich faince tiles–I so love that color and the tiles and I haven’t seen nearly enough!–if this was one of the first attempts to utilize this most magnificent of expressions in mosque architecture. There was a woman’s prayer hall at the back of the mosque, very much in the mold of a Jewish Synagogue. This was the first ‘bayan mesjiti’–woman’s prayer hall–I’d seen in a Seljuk mosque as well. A handful of old muqarna cornices survived in the ‘bayan mesjiti,’ but they were in poor condition. The dome was nicely done, supported by four squinches and eight small windows in the zone of transtition let in the light. The dome had a wonderful checkboard pattern of brick and turquoise tiles, a pattern which wrapped around in a gorgeous swirl of color, finally morphing into a Star of David, one interlocking triangle blue and the other black, with thuluth inscriptions weaving the triangles togehter.

Right now I am in a cafe, sipping tea and listening to live musicians play Turkish music. It’s really magnetic, soulful and melancholy music. A splendid end to an almost perfect day–of which I will write more tomorrow or this weekend.

I broke off the narrative and discussed some personal matters and picked it back up here:

I dropped a few lira into the donation box at the mosque and walked outside. Mehmet asked a young boy where a certian turbe was. The boy hollered something back at him in Turkish and sped off on his bike, yelling, I assume, “come on! Follow me!”

We saw two minarets, not terribly inspiring, but still nice, three mausolea and an old ‘konak’ in a terrible state of disrepair, supposedly being renvoated for tourists. As I was the only one on this gorgeous day, I thought, “well, they’re renovating for no reason. No one else is here.” I didn’t even see any tourists in the city center later that afternoon while having tea in the meydan–the city square. Of course, I loved the fact that I WAS the only one there. It was all mine, disrepair or not!

We were done about 2pm and I then dealt with some administrative stuff, bank account, uploaded photos, stuff like that. I took a short nap–I had two relatively sleepless nights before that–and then walked into the city center. I sat on the roof of a tea house for a few hours, scribbling away, and had lunch. I had ‘tavuk sote’ and ‘coban salat:’ shepherd’s salad and a delicious chicken dish that came out in a shallow iron bowl–broiling over with a tomato sauce, onions, green chilis and arik–kind of like fajitas back home. Damn good stuff.

After that I walked around, took some photos, chatted with two old men who spoke English who ran a jewlery store and asked all kinds of questions about America.

The last bit of the email was kind of unconscious jotterings from my travel journal:

Old man casting a line out into a river. Strange seeing a Muslim man with a skullcap fishing. Why is that? Tractors stir up dust on roads adjacent newly planted fields. Beans, potatoes, wheat, barley (Turks do like their beer). An aquaduct looms ahead of us, growing larger and larger until we pass beneath it.

Grapevine trellises surround saltillo-tiled roof farm houses. Apricot orchards are everywhere. Green leaves with a taste of orange on the ends droop in the harsh alpine sunlight. The Mitelene Valley is one of the finest pastoral landscapes I’ve ever seen. So fecund, so much potential, so green and alive.

Flowers like purple bluenbonnets amidst a sea of green grass. It’s semi-arid now, between Malatya and Sivas. Wow, dry. Dusty. Caliche looking rocks, pristine snowcaps in the foreground.

Hills are mostly sedimentary now, the igneous is buried deep now, or has eroded. Which erodes faster, igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic rock? There is a lot of thurst and uplift evident, however, like these hills have been tossed about by some petulant child-god in a fit of pique. Conglomerate litters the river bottoms now. The water grows dirtier and dirtier. We just crossed the Kizilirmak–the Red River. Every country must have one of those, eh? The rocks look like they have a patina on them. I wonder if there is copper in the soil? Woudn’t they mine it if it were here? What other ores oxidize into a greenish hue? Need more verbs for mountains. Climbing, soaring, towering, etc. . . overused, but so goddamned true! Wow, those rocks look like giant orange dominoes.

The pass was 1,750 meters. What is that in feet? I don’t even remember. Grown so accumstomed to metric. What is a mile anymore? My life is measured in kilometers now. If it can be measured at all.