I have trouble trying to recall the laundry list of moments, the hour by hour, minute my minute events that transpire in my life. I'm not like Ka from
Snow: I maintain none of the obcessions that drove him to record and catalogue his experiences. This isn't laziness. What is it, then? Reluctance? Knowing I'll be called to account for my journey time after time upon arriving home--although, I can only think of a handful of people with whom I will speak at length...most will just get the cookie-cutter response: "It was really great," or, "I think I learned a lot." Maybe I should trademark a catchphrase, a tagline, something to draw out a smile, a laugh. Or, perhaps, if I put my mind to it, I can think of something smart, something really poignant that will stick in people's minds. I can't tell them how I managed through the generosity of so many, and that without the intervention of good fortune--and a touch of divinity--I would have been tossed overboard, flailing and drowning in the cold, unrelenting, ancient Bosphorus during my first week. Nor can I tell anyone how far my money stretched, not because I'm a frugal man, but due to much luck I could save my money for travel, museums, food, etcetera. No, if I tell the world these things, if I put them on my life's resume in a manner that I feel to be wholly honest, they will lessen the significance of my experience. What will I have accomplished, then?
Moving on.
The trip to the Southeast can summed up in one word: enlightening. I enjoying destroying the misconceptions of the uninformed and ignorant. The Southeast of Turkey--while, practically holds more in common with the Middle East than the imperialist Turks--is stunning, vast and beautiful in the inhospitable way that deserts are. You respect the people that make it their home because a great reserve of tenacity is required to scratch together an existence, above or below the poverty line. Urfa and Mardin are poor, dirty, clamourous towns with deep histories than expand into the depth of mankind's existence on earth as the plains that pull the the imagination south, away from Europe and the West, and towards exoticism, the Middle East. My goodness, if you could only see them...I've felt closer to God than standing atop the bluffs overlooking, Deyrul Zafaran, a 1600 year old Syrian Orthodox monastary.
The Laundry list:
The flights to reach Urfa were uneventful, save one moment: I met Baris, one of my oldest friends from my Ankara days, on the flight to Ankara in order to make my connection to Urfa. It was completely a moment scripted by the chance that his flight from NYC to Istanbul was delayed 2 hours. Its the ripple effect: dropping a pebble into the ocean that precipitates a psunami halfway across the globe. We chatted so animatedly that the 50 minute plane ride flew by in no time. Upon reaching Ankara, after a brief and unsuccessful attempt get out pass through customs in order to greet his mother, we parted ways.
When I boarded the plane in Istanbul, I was preparing myself for complete isolation. That is a melancholy thought, without question, however it's something that I practice regularly. It is my ritualistic ablution, like a fighter bracing for the punch that he knows is coming, to deflect whatever negetivity and sadness you can, taking to heart as little as possible. You have to prepare yourself for the lonliness, condition your mind so that the emotional toll of solitude and isolation that are cleaved into the heart of the lone foreigner do not become debilitating. There are moments when time alone is a pleasure, however foreign travel is not one of them considering how much effort I invest in gleaning some enjoyment from the daily life, which unfortunately by design, breeds lonliness.
Enough of that tangent!
In Urfa, the friendly and all-too-ready-to-talk-about-"Seks" guide named Aziz, picked me up from the airport on Friday night and drove me to his home where he rents out rooms for YTL 25 per night--not unreasonable. We toured around the city quickly on Saturday--I was leaving at 4pm for Mardin and there was little time to dawdle. Urfa, at first blush, reminds me greatly of Jiddah from the 1990s. The predominant culture in this area--Kurdish--owes more to, and has more in common with the Middle East than Turkey. We saw the propeht's cave, Job's pool where, so the story goes, the fire into which he was being thrown was transformed by God into water, and the wood into fish. I love believing in little stories like that, but with all of the little kids tossing food into the pool for the fish, and all the pipes arrating the pool, I wonder if the pool is not, rather, a modern conception.
Saturday afternoon I grabbed the otobus from Urfa to Mardin; a trip which lasted about 3 hours. The exciting thing about this trip was the person whom I met along the way... First, a little back story: the bus was late. Attribute it to "Turkish-Time" and an environment of near universal delay. Whatever the reason, it left me sitting in the bus station with Aziz for 45 minutes. Then, a woman walked in, head uncovered and altogether "Western" in appearance; a Turk, of course. Aziz knocks my shoulder--a little too forcefully--and maked a few of color comments about her sex appeal; she was quite attractive, but I paid those thoughts no attention.
We all left the office together and the attendant guided us to the bus. It was at this time that Aziz spoke to me in English about my trip, within earshot of the woman. She turned around, introduced herself in English and asked where I was going. We exchanged the usual introductory round of questions and responses. As we were stepping into the bus, Aziz shoved me forward saying, "She good girl. You go with her to Kiziltepe." Of course, I blushed at the thought.
I expected just a few words to be traded back and forth between the two of us: a combination of my broken Turkish and her English, once fluent, now faded. I learned that she was Kurdish and asked her to teach me a few words from her language--this is always a good way to get people talking! Her name was Melek, meaning "Angel" in Turkish. The time on the bus flew by, even after I exahusted her limited knowledge of Kurdish vocabulary--she lives in Ankara and speaks very little Kurdish. After she departed from the bus the lonliness I had been expecting from the beginning of my trip finally arrived, but it was accompanied by a real fear that something during my trip to Mardin would go wrong and I would be left to fend for myself in the fast darkening Turkish frontier.
My time in Mardin, and my trip to the Southeast in general, became the highlight of my trip to Turkey! I met up with a couple, one Canadian and one American, and together we shared a taxis to the Deyrul Zafaran. My thought was that the tour would last only a couple of hours at most. Instead, we attended Mass, dined with the priests, toured the monastary, and hiked the ruins of St. Jacob's Monastary (several hundered years older) on the hills surrounding Zafaran. The abandoned Jacob was amazing to explore with numerous chambers and tunnels carved into the rocks; it was like Cappadocia in a more central location without any pushy, photo-happy tourists.
I speak often here about time spent alone. This entire trip was proposed and undertaken with the expectation that I would feel more alone than ever before in my life. In reality, I connected with a handful of people--complete strangers--faster than ever. What does this mean? You tell me. I haven't a clue. I find it ironic that I have been more alone in Istanbul, a city of 18 million people, than in the Southeast, an area that is much less densly populated by comparison.
At the moment I am resting comfortably in Ankara with Baris and his mother. The thought that I will be strapped into a jet somewhere over the Balkans this time next week, heading for home, is bizzare, and in a way, unwelcome. My departure will be a sad one: I have become very fond of this place and I will be sad to leave, not knowing when I will return. Nevertheless, its time for me to go home. I am ready. Well, I do have to buy a little wine first to startup my collection ;0).
