Rosie Reflecting

The first four of these books are fictional and all set in Turkey, yet as all fiction have somewhere some grains of truth. the last three are factual books. The Architect’s Apprentice - Elif Shafak I've struggled to read two of Shafak's books before, in fact never finished them. My daughter mentioned this one and I read about it and decided to read it. This one I loved and  finished it. The descriptions of Ottoman life in 16 th Century Istanbul and the intrigues and the beautiful descriptive language she uses fill this book with color. Jahan by default arrives at the Sultan’s palace with Chota the elephant, about whom he knows nothing, yet manages to become his keeper. He meets many colorful characters along the way, some who will defraud him and others who will help him in unexpected ways.     Jahan manages to catch the eye of Sinan (who was in fact a real architect) and works together with him, never quite achieving the fame and fortune he might have deserved...

Yes just that an earthquake. Actually it happened a couple of weeks ago, one Sunday evening. We were sat on the balcony about 8.45 pm, unusual for us because about then is when the mosquitoes appear and the ones at that time of night are minute, nasty vicious things with a bite that reminds you it was there for a couple of days. We had experienced our first earthquake a couple of months before, still during shielding we had been up in a neighbor’s apartment whilst we had new railings built on our the step up to our balcony (the previous railing not having been fitted by a craftsman, rather by a man on the cheap thanks to our previous managing agents, (along the lines of ‘I have a mate he’ll do it cheap’, not that it was of course). On that day I was stood on the balcony listening to the various Imams in the local area calling to prayer, literally the after noon prayer Dhuhr or Zuhr that is called when the sun passes the zenith. The balcony railing shook a little, I looked down and ...