With The Crescent Above Us
- Thread starter Nassirisimo
- Start date
pity that it was a short update, but good still.
how are the maya doing in a better mexico?
can you discuss the papacy's relations with outside powers in a nutshell?
are the swiss willing to unite with germany anytime soon?
i have so many questoons, i have to restrain myself.
Idk about the Swiss uniting I mean they still have large parts of the country that speak French, and Italian, and the Swiss always struck me as a continuation of the mountain folk vs the settled ones. Obviously their not mountain folk anymore but the Swiss prob romanticize it, and certainly celebrate kicking Austria's ass all those years ago plus it's a stable country safe in its neutrality.
German officer: your army is so tiny what if we invaded with a million troops?
Swiss officer: shoot twice and go home.
But Who knows I mean the butterfly effect of 1878 stopped Teddy from getting a second term and ruining America which was an ocean away so maybe? :/
i was thinking the swiss would just vote to which nation they felt were apart of. but being together turned them into their own identity. while the rest of europe fights wars, the swiss just have fun watching it.
I like where TTL's Australia is heading. Indeed, it's the most intuitive possible path they could've taken.
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In the view of the Australian army, this wasn't just a coup to defend the state against a dangerous ideology, but was to save Australia from the peril of invasion and conquest from one of the rising Asian powers. It is unlikely that the Australian army seeks to act as the "Ultimate Arbiter" in the same way that OTL's Turkish Army does, but may act once again if it sees national security at critical risk. The quick turnover to a credible civilian government is seen by most observers that the Australian army is indeed unwilling to be a political army.
Yeah, apologies about the length. I'd originally planned to post a narrative update, but that's been postponed to the next one. When I can get around to doing it that is...pity that it was a short update, but good still.
how are the maya doing in a better mexico?
can you discuss the papacy's relations with outside powers in a nutshell?
are the swiss willing to unite with germany anytime soon?
i have so many questoons, i have to restrain myself.
The Maya are actually in a better position to protect their linguistic heritage. Some schools in the Yucatan actually teach in the Mayan language rather than in Spanish, though with the earlier improvement of infrastructure connecting the peninsula with the rest of Mexico, the soft pressure of mainstream Mexican culture has begun making inroads earlier. Nevertheless, the Maya of Mexico are likely to hold a strong regional identity at least until 2015 TTL.
The Papacy is committed (at the moment) to maintaining the power of the institutions of the Catholic Church even at the cost of its connections to society. However, the changing social structures and attitudes of significant parts of the Catholic world (particularly Italy) means that even the Vatican cannot ignore developments for a long time. When reform does come to the Church, expect it to be even more radical than OTL's Vatican II.
The Germans in Switzerland aren't really interested in integration with Germany at the moment. While there are some pan-Germans on both sides of the border who consider the task of unification uncompleted while the German parts of Switzerland are not in the Reich, the desire among the general populations is relatively low, so it is likely the status quo will exist there for the time being.
And don't worry about the questions, strange as it sounds, I have fun answering them
Well, I was going to write an update for New Zealand as well, though I scrapped it after realising that it was too short to be taken seriously. To sum things up...
- The rights of Maori have strangely enough taken a backseat to the right of Aborigines.
- The New Zealanders followed the Australian declaration of full independence relatively soon. There is a desire for some kind of confrontation between the two but nothing solid yet.
- New Zealand isn't as liberal as Australia is, and officially kept the Monarchy until Britain itself jettisoned it. It is still aligned against Canada and the Resurgentist Rump.
The one thing I can say about the Swiss is that there won't be a minaret ban there in TTL...
And isn't Switzerland all mountain? Except for that one medal where there's a boy and a goat with an oversized horn practicing their yodelling? Perhaps my knowledge on Switzerland has room for improvement...
And sometimes profiting off of it.
There will be no shirtfronting of Nusantara over boat people in this TL, that's for sure. I'm half tempted to try and shoehorn Abbot in as some menial worker in a god-forsaken corner of the world, and I'm not quite sure why. Bad influence from a mutual Aussie friend of ours perhaps.
If only I could say there's more where that came from...
On the Shores of the Aegean: Salonika
Richard had been to many places in his lifetime, though none was quite so as unusual as this place. When he had been told that he had been offered a posting in Europe, he had jumped at the chance for travel, as the poverty of his family as a youngster had not permitted whatever ambitions of travel he had harboured. However, the posting was not all that was expected, and he was located in a Jewish City in a Muslim Empire. He was fairly sure he was the only Quaker in the entire city, and was admittedly rather uncomfortable in a place that was so obviously Jewish.
Although the Jewish immigrants from all corners of Europe had supposedly given the city a European feel, Richard certainly thought the city was very different to Rome and Paris. True, the buildings weren’t the flat-roofed buildings of imagination that came to mind when one thought of the Ottoman Empire, but the streets were chaotic, the city filled with cafes with men smoking shisha, and the weather was far too warm for comfort. Richard was thankful that most buildings were air conditioned, though between the dodging of the traffic and the heat, he could not get from one neighbourhood to another without being covered in sweat. Not, this was a very Ottoman, very alien city to him despite the supposed Western roots of many of its inhabitants.
Nevertheless, he had carved himself a little niche, and a fairly comfortable existence. From eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, he performed various tasks in the office. Though Salonika was an important city, Americans were rare and he did not find himself as swamped as colleagues in other parts of the Ottoman Empire were. So he was able to finish his work on time every day, whereupon he would go to a coffee shop in the shadow of the White Tower of Salonika, watching the world go by. He would have liked to have been doing something more suited to him. He felt that diplomacy was not his strong suit, as even his friends joked that they would not buy a used car from him. Despite this, he tolerated the job as he knew a promotion to a more exciting post, or even to a good political position back home was a matter of time rather than effort. And that was when, for the first time in Richard’s seven months in Salonika, someone approached him while drinking coffee.
“Excuse me, but is this seat taken?” spoke the bespectacled man as he gestured at a seat on Richard’s table. His accent was neither a Salonika one, nor one that could be found anywhere else in the Empire. It took Richard a few seconds to realise that the man who had addressed him was a German. Not quite an American, but Richard was desperate for any new company he could get, an urge which now overpowered his natural awkwardness. “By all means”
The man pulled out the seat, and ordered a coffee with no milk or sugar. After a few seconds of awkward silence, the bespectacled man struck up a conversation with Richard, though spoke in an unanimated and rather disinterested fashion. “I must say, it really is a different place, isn’t it? Compared to the rest of the Empire I mean. It doesn’t have the European character of rural Bulgaria, or even the Muslim feel of Anatolia. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place quite like it…”
Richard simply grunted and took a sip of his tea. “I don’t think you’ve sat with me today to discuss the comparative merits of different Ottoman cities today. No, you’re after something else I think”
The man seemed unfazed, though Richard’s words had certainly had their effect. “You’re the head of the American consulate here, correct? You’re Richard Nixon?”
Richard simply nodded. It had only been a guess that this man was after something, and it was something he intended to keep off the records. Richard’s curiosity got the better of him. “Yes, I am. And I think there’s something you want to ask me”
The man nodded. “Yes, there is. Maybe you’ve heard of my story in the newspaper. I made a very public criticism of the Islamic dominance of the political system here in my class. Someone recorded me, and reported me. I think it is only a matter of days before I’m arrested. That’s why I need to leave this country as quickly as I can”
“And when you were in trouble with the government, you thought the American consul would be a better choice to seek help from than some Albanian smugglers or a corrupt Greek merchant?”
The man spoke in a hushed tone “People of that nature would be as sooner to sell me out the authorities as to keep their word. No, I need the services of someone a little more trustworthy and the backing of a government that isn’t afraid to stand up to the Muslims”
“And yet you didn’t come to the embassy”
“Because our understanding would be on public record. I’m a professor of Political Science, so I know that something like this is to be avoided to ensure that international relations are not damaged. No, this part has to be a secret I’m afraid”
Richard almost had this man’s fate in his hands. He was obviously intelligent, though he wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. Still, he figured that the man could have his uses. “I might help you with this. But I think it should be done with the understanding that we could both profit greatly if we worked together back in the United States. I don’t want to stay in this squalid place any longer than I have to. If you’re in the States, I want you to help me return”
The man let out a weary sigh, and nodded in acknowledgement. “That is acceptable to me. We are in agreement”
“That’s good. Come by my office tomorrow. It’s the one near the gates of the old city. What did you say your name was again?”
“Heinz Kissinger”
******
In the City of Men’s desire: Konstantiniyye
In the City of Men’s desire: Konstantiniyye
Lusine had been struggling to start the painting for almost a week now. In her youth she quite enjoyed painting her native city of Konstantiniyye, but somewhere the magic had been lost. Overlooking the Bosporus, she almost forgot what it was. The moon’s reflection still danced so elegantly on the waters, and the night sky was so clear. Then the first realisation occurred to her. She could barely see a single light from the sky for all the lights coming from the city! Her gaze now settled on the section of the city across the water. This was what had changed so immensely since the days of her youth. When she was a young girl, the city had still been mainly made up of semi-wooden houses and smaller buildings made of stone. The rich lived in opulent villas by the shore, and the poor were huddled into houses along narrow and crowded streets in the hillier areas of the city.
What a change there had been indeed. As she looked across the sea, the city she beheld still had familiar features of course, but it was not the Konstantiniyye she had grown up with. The towers of glass and steel now towered over the smaller structures that had been left. The poor now tended to live in apartments in buildings up to ten floors high. Living conditions had improved greatly, that is true, though she felt that she may have been the only one of Konstantiniyye’s four million inhabitants who did not appreciate what was lost. The money that had come with the commission was welcome enough, though it left Lusine frustrated in more ways than one. She had always valued her artistic independence. Rather than the great and powerful in the city requesting her to paint a specific person or place, she had painted what she wanted across the world. From the awe-inspiring Pyramids of Egypt to the Jungles of Nusantara she had captured the world as it appeared in her eye. To be reduced to this mercenary work was degrading.
And no matter how, she could not paint the Konstantiniyye of 1959 as she had painted the Konstantiniyye of 1919, when she had been young. She looked away from the window into her home, and strolled about her living room. The place had changed little in years in contrast to the view outside, with much of it having been purchased when they had moved in in the 1930s. She looked in her mirror and gazed at her own reflection. “I would certainly like to think that I have aged better than this city”
And with that thought, the door to her home opened, and in came her husband, Hovnatan. He looked upon her with a genuine concern and commented “You have still not been able to make a start on the painting?”
Lusine shook her head. “A start for a painting which is inspired not by my own desires but by a cold, hard purchase is not an easy one to make. I just cannot see the beauty in the city as I used to when we were young. There has been so much change…”
“As there has been in you my dear”
Lusine pouted mockingly at this. “Do you really find me so old and unattractive? I am not even sixty years of age yet”
“I never did say that change has to be negative darling. Sometimes, the change can bring new and beautiful things that bring the joy of discovery we felt in our youth come rushing back to us”
“That is true. Yet I cannot see the beauty in this modern monstrosity of a city! It simply isn’t possible”
Now it was Hovnatan who shook his head. “That is because you’re not looking at the city in the right way. You’re looking at it wishing for things to have stayed static since our youth. People change, and so do place. Especially in times such as these”
He took her by the hand and led her to the window her canvas was set up beside. “Now I want you to see the city dear. I want you not to see it on the terms of yourself, but to see it on its own terms. I’m sure you have noticed that the reflection of the moon on the water has not changed since we were young”
He pointed at the skyline of the business district of Scutari. “They may not have the old fashioned charm that the buildings of our memory had. Yet there’s something beautiful about them. The subtle nods to the buildings of the past in the way that they are built. The way that they the area around them glows around them in the night. Admittedly it is not a conventional beauty, but that does not take away from it”
He pointed in the direction of a couple making love within view of an open window. “Look at that careless couple down there”
“Oh god” Lusine muttered as she turned away, covering her eyes with her hands.
“This isn’t an exercise in voyeurism. Concentrate not on the visual act itself. Concentrate on the people behind it. They’re so in love with each other and enthralled by the act that they forget basic privacy. That the rest of the world even exists, as they lose themselves in each other”
Finally, he pointed at the street below them. “Finally, look at what the people down there are doing. The men sat outside the café smoking nargile. The bored looking woman stood outside the restaurant waiting for customers to arrive. In the end, all that really changes in the city is the aesthetics. The soul of a city is in its people, not its buildings. When I first set eyes on you and that painting all those years ago, I saw the soul of the city in that painting. I saw how you understood this place in a way that no one else could. You have not lost that ability Lusine, you just needed to realise it once again”
Lusine did not respond with words, but rather with a tender kiss. Hovnatan knew that he had opened her eyes once again as she turned toward the canvas and began painting the soul of the city once again.
******
The Pearl of the Mediterranean: Alexandria
The Pearl of the Mediterranean: Alexandria
As Antonio stepped off the boat in the port of Alexandria, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that much hotter than Milan after all. It took a while to sink in that he had taken his first step outside of Italy into the Orient. His parents had not been keen on the idea of him traveling around the world, and indeed he was a bit apprehensive when he stepped on the ferry in Brindisi. Nevertheless, a childhood and adolescence of reading travel magazines and hearing the tales of his uncle had imbued him with an irrepressible wanderlust.
While planning his travels, he had figured out that Alexandria was as good a place as any to start. It was an international city, so he wouldn’t appear too unusual. It had a similar climate, not to mention a lot of sights to see. Though he was warned beforehand that the library had burned down. Nevertheless, as he made his way to the hotel his nerves were tested by the infamous Egyptian traffic. Ottoman motorists did not have the best reputation in Europe, and Egyptians in particular were held to be borderline dangerous motorists. Having survived the journey to the hotel, he unpacked his things and began planning the day. Perhaps he should go see the Citadel of Qait Bey. Or possibly the ruins of Roman Alexandria. Eventually, he resolved simply to explore the city at his own pace.
There was much that was similar about Alexandria, and much that was very different. The city was noisy and positively heaving with people. He heard what seemed like a hundred different languages being spoken around him. Kebabs in restaurants were prepared in full view of the street, and everyone in a café seemed to be smoking Shisha. “When in Rome”. Antonio sat down at a chair in a café and ordered shisha. He had only smoked a handful of cigarettes in his life, but he had resolved before he started his travels to try new things. He managed to draw from the pipe without coughing, an accomplishment which led to a small smile of pride forming on his face.
He was content to watch the city go by. He noticed the undisciplined traffic, the men wearing fezzes and the women with Hijabs. He suddenly felt so foreign, so different to the world around him in a way that had never happened before. But the feeling was exciting, exhilarating even. He wanted to see more of this strange but wonderful place. He paid for his shisha and left to explore more of the city. He walked through the more religious neighbourhood where every man seemed to have a beard and every woman seemed to be wearing a veil covering her face. He saw the commercial centre of Alexandria, which while not being impressive as Milan’s was still of considerable size.
He also began to walk into a rather less pleasant area of Alexandria near the Western docks. More graffiti appeared on the buildings, and there was the occasional smashed window. He had decided to double back and go to his hotel until he heard shouting. A man with an enormous scar on his face hurled a glass bottle at a group of men across the street. Before Antonia could realise what was going on, knives were drawn and blood was spilled on the streets. He recognised the language of the group attacked as his own, as they shouted “Albanian scum!” at their assailants. Sirens sounded and with as much haste as it had started with, the fight was brought to a halt, leaving a man with a bloodied shirt lying by the side of the road.
Without a second thought, Antonio ran over to the man. “It looks like the first aid class that I took in High School will finally be of use”
He lifted up the man’s shirt, seeing where the wound was. It didn’t appear to have hit any vital organs, yet Antonio knew that the blood loss would be a threat to the man’s life. He held down on the wound, and the man winced in pain. He repeated to the man several times “No, I’m a friend”
A look of surprise now mixed with the pain in the man’s expression. He was barely able to speak the word “Italian” to Antonio. Antonio simply nodded, which seemed to bring a measure of relief to the man. Perhaps he realised he was in safe hands for the time being. It was only one or two minutes before the police and an ambulance arrived. The police pulled Antonio aside as the paramedics rushed to the aid of the man.
The senior police officer, a man of around fifty with a thin, curled moustache looked at Antonio and spoke to him in Arabic. Antonio was just able to blurt out “ana mo atkhallam arabi” to the police officer, who almost immediately rolled his eyes. “I get too much trouble from you Italian. You make bad time for me”
Antonio was able to grasp his meaning through his broken Italian and responded “Sir, I am not a criminal. I am a student. A visitor from Milan”
The policeman simply waved him away with his hand. “I don’t care. You go now. Enough trouble from you Italian”
Antonio had sense enough to walk away from the situation. The police appeared to be uninterested in taking him either as a suspect or as a witness. It appeared that they could not care less about the event that had taken place, though it had slowly dawned on him that what had happened was a gang fight. He had heard that in certain ports of the Mediterranean Italian gangs from Sicily and the Mezzogiorno clashed with Albanians and other types of criminal groups, and cursed himself for being slow to realise that a skirmish between the two had been what he had seen. Already he had been in Alexandria for less than twenty four hours and he had seen that the pearl was far from perfect.
TTL's Konstantiniyye is a place I'd like to visit, and Lusine and Hovnatan's conversation about its dimensions is a beautiful way to describe it.
Alexandria, on the other hand... well, it isn't entirely a salafist stronghold ITTL, but I see its multiculturalism has some drawbacks.
And Tricky Dick is tricky in any timeline.
Alexandria, on the other hand... well, it isn't entirely a salafist stronghold ITTL, but I see its multiculturalism has some drawbacks.
And Tricky Dick is tricky in any timeline.
Amazing update, Nassir! I like the fact that Richard Nixon's a Quaker ITTL, though I wonder what Kissinger had gone through to critique the system so harshly.
And I would really like to visit the Ottoman capital of this timeline; it sounds as if exploring it is an adventure in itself.
And I would really like to visit the Ottoman capital of this timeline; it sounds as if exploring it is an adventure in itself.
Amazing update, Nassir! I like the fact that Richard Nixon's a Quaker ITTL, though I wonder what Kissinger had gone through to critique the system so harshly.
And I would really like to visit the Ottoman capital of this timeline; it sounds as if exploring it is an adventure in itself.
Nixon was a Quaker OTL, or at least raised such. I can't believe I didn't guess based on that or the used car salesman joke, and then the Kissinger bit took me by surprise. Oh well, haven't had my tea yet.
Wonderful vignettes, Nassir. Any plans to do more for other Ottoman cities? If so, might I request Beirut?
I'd like to see Beirut too, as well as Baghdad and Damascus.
So Kissingers brilliant idea is the U.S. a country that's had a right-wing racist coup...and whose northern neighbor is remnant of Britain's worse regime?
guinazacity
Banned
A place that that might arrest him someday in the future is probably better than a place that will arrest him soon
Anyway, Amazing update Nassir!
Alexandria looks like an alternate Marseille, definitely not a place i would visit.
What about other cities, like Baghdad?
yah but Kissinger has 1000x better chance of receiving a FAIR trial in the Ottoman Empire than in the states.
US Police: "He's a Jew? YOUR UNDER ARREST!"(Insert unnecessary beating here)
US Judge: "He's a Jew? GUILTY!"
US Jury(all white protestants): "He's a Jew? GUILTY!"
and theirs like what one state in Europe that you could consider to be completely religion free and that's New Britain. The rest of Europe is dominated by Christians.