by Walter Agnew Moore II
13 April 2002, Amiens, France

My Tunisian Associate, Maher, was delighted to find that he made it into some of my previous messages to you all. I directed him to the tenthousandmonkeys.com website so he could read about himself. He came back to me and said:

"Walter, in one of the stories you said that Kebab was Moroccan, but they just now got Kebab places in Morocco. We have them in Tunisia too. Kebab is really more of an old Ottoman Empire thing. I think it started in Turkey."

Hmmm— it seems I committed an error tantamount to declaring that spaghetti is from Sweden. Turkish, huh? Well, Maher is going to become the first leader of the Neo-Carthaginian Empire, reconquering the Western Mediterranean about the same time as I get my King of Picardy project going full-swing, and as my friend and ally I trust him when he says Kebab is really Turkish.

That would also explain why, except for the one Moroccan guy I met early on, every one that I have since encountered working in Kebab-shops has been either Turkish or Kurdish. Like restaurant people everywhere, they hang out in each others' places after work, and despite anything I see on CNN, the two ethnic groups seem to get along fine.

There is the fancy sit-down Kebab place near where I live, the Marmara, and despite telling the man that I am not German, he knows I really am and he keeps greeting me in that language. My German is fine for the basic "Hi-how-are-you" type work, so I have gone with the flow and now we chatter along auf Deutsch.

The Grille Efes down in St. Leu is the one I hit the most, I like the little grinning guy with the moustache, and his serious son who looks like a moustache-less 12-year-old-clone. That's where our pal Ishmet works too, he came out and sat on the sidewalk and had a Coke with me and the English Girls one unseasonably warm night.

Turns out Ishmet got to France almost the same week I did.

Then one night I walk in, and all three of them, father, son, Ishmet, are gone. The sign is the same but it seems like new management.

I order my boulette-sandwich from a friendly man with hardly any French, who has a broken face that looks like he knows how it feels to be on the wrong side of the interrogation table. He invites me to sit anywhere with courtly gestures while he prepares my food.

After I eat, and browse through the local paper a bit, I get up to pay. There is a different man at the counter, fine features and an aristocratic manner. He is more interested in talking to me than in taking the bill from my hand, so we talk. It turns out that he wants to speak in English, which he does slowly but very clearly.

"Yes," I say, " I came to France in October. It was supposed to be September, but there was that bit of confusion." He half-winces and studies my eyes.

"Now," I continue, "I teach English here."

"So in the States, you studied what?"

"Linguistics."

"Ah, I did something similar. In Turkey, I got my degree in Language Education. I taught French."

"You could teach English as well," I tell him.

"No, there are too many guys like you who really speak it, for them to hire someone like me. In fact, you should contact my University if you are ever interested in working in Turkey, they would like to have someone like you. It is in the central part of Turkey."

"Near Konya?"

"You know Konya?"

"Just from pictures. So— are you working here in France for a while before you go back home to teach the language?"

"I'm not going back home. I have a wife here, children... perhaps it surprises you that I studied at the University, and now—" he gestures at the pots of sauce, the bowls of shredded lettuce, puffs some air out of his nose, "— and now I make Kebabs. This—" he laughs, shakes his head— "This was not my life."