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OtherRealms Issue 28 Part 07
Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 7 of 18
Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
Romancing the Turquoise [Part 1 of 4]
Susan Shwartz
Copyright 1990 by Susan Shwartz
Breaking Away
Don't call me Ishmael. Ismail was my driver in Cappadocia, and I don't
think he'd approve.
For how I spent my vacation in Turkey, I might, however, decide to
answer to the name "Joan Wilder." As in Romancing the Stone Joan Wilder,
author of some rather purple prose and heroine of some very unlikely
adventures. Unlike many people I met in my recent trip -- or unlike Mike
Resnick (now planning his latest safari) -- the writers I know tend to
travel mostly in our imaginations.
Mostly, I write about Byzantium and China from half a world or so away.
But in May 1990 (May 9-May 27), I spent almost three weeks in Turkey,
playing tourist in Istanbul and Anatolia, researching Byzantine and
Seljuk sites, and acting out...I should know about lives like that: the
lucky protagonists of my books usually get to live them.
This time, I did.
Three years after my last vacation (a Pan Books-subsidized trip to the
Brighton Worldcon), I sat over lunch with Sargent Cheever. Sarge is in
the Foreign Service and, as I knew, has been stationed most recently in
Ankara.
He tells me now he has a new, temporary posting to Istanbul. That stops
me cold. After writing four novels set in a Byzantium of my own
imagination, I'd kill to see Istanbul. Accordingly, I turn the green of
my computer CRT.
"Well, why don't you stop talking about the place and come on out and
see it?"
"This is crazy," I tell him. After ten years of thrashing about in New
York City, I have a book contract, more writing commitments than I can
handle, volunteer editing, the Nebula Jury, ballet and opera
subscriptions, not to mention my Wall Street job, which was eating up my
entire life at that point.
No answer. I think of my other Commitments. Never let Commitments get
in the way of living. I'd be lying if I told you that's what I always
say; but it's what I should have been saying for a long time.
"Do you mean it?" I ask. Wouldn't you know it, my voice squeaks? I
promptly put both elbows on the table, narrowly missing the rice, the
soup, and the chicken curry.
"Sure. Why not?"
And "do you mean that?" I ask in a letter; after all, Turkey -- you
can't just arrive and expect crash space.
A letter confirms the original invitation. Sarge has once again been
posted back to Ankara and would gladly show me around Anatolia on
weekends before I took off on my own for Istanbul. I call a travel
agent.
"You're going WHERE?" Startled people invoke Midnight Express,
hijackers, and every other spectre overactive imaginations can conjure.
When I don't blanch, they grin. Istanbul. Byzantium. I have waited an
entire life of getting drunk on maps to see Hagia Sophia.
Now that the trip has become more than a dream, it shocks my coworkers,
to whom "vacation" means Club Med if it doesn't mean a careful
progression from one nice hotel to another or (if they are very senior)
a painstakingly orchestrated triumph of luxury hotel after luxury hotel.
"You know," they tell me seriously, just as they told Joan Wilder in
Romancing the Stone, "you're not equipped to handle this."
According to them, I'm in no shape for a trip that would involve heavy
walking and some climbing because I don't do aerobics at a healthclub.
And, while they are on the subject, have I forgotten that Turkey is a
Muslim country, that it probably gives people dysentery, and that I
don't speak the language? All of a sudden, the Ideal Traveler (hereafter
IT) reared its smug head, weighed me in the balance, and found me even
more inadequate than usual.
You do know the Ideal Traveler, don't you? The IT is the equivalent of
that terrible woman in TV commercials who finds ring around the collar,
dust on the floor, or water spots on glasses not washed with Calgon.
The IT never goes on tours, always is perfectly groomed, yet carries no
more luggage than a clever little backpack. The IT always knows the
language, is never sick, and will tell you -- without being asked --
about all the fascinating people who invited IT into their homes and
told IT how unlike other American tourists IT was. The IT always finds
bargains and out-of-the-way places and even makes time to go jogging.
People who listen to the IT go crazy.
Letters and phone calls planning my trip start to happen. Sarge returns
from a visit to the American consulate at Adona to tell me that one of
the consuls there read SF and had my books. Not only that, he had Harry
Turtledove's Agent of Byzantium. I laugh. Harry, when I call him at
about 2:00 a.m., howls. At 6' 8", he makes a really incongruous Joan
Wilder.
The people at work immediately conjure six different ways of letting me
know that taking that much vacation time was probably going to crash
Wall Street about my head and theirs. It's funny how you're not
valuable at raise time, but if you want some time off... Several asked
me if I couldn't put off the trip for a few weeks. Having not had a
long vacation since I started there and for more than a year before, I
put down my foot instead.
"I don't believe this," my colleagues at work begin to say and tease me
for the way I was grinning.
Instead, I make it through a last dutiful half day and a ritual lunch,
flee home, and head for the airport.
Unreality really hits me on the jet. Maybe the IT sleeps on jets: I
don't. Like other writers who make deals with hyperspace, I'm a nervous
passenger; but I am inexpressibly reassured after the pilot comes on and
introduces himself. In three languages (none of them the Appalachian
that Tom Wolfe says is de rigeur for pilots), he introduces himself as
Captain Jaeger. That Anglicizes as Yeager -- in my opinion, the very
best possible surname for a pilot.
Comfortable as Swissair is, the trip from New York to Ankara is long.
When I arrived at Esenboga Airport, jetlagged as I've seldom been,
practically the first thing I saw was Turkish security. Their uniforms
are unfortunate, rather like Peter Cushing's in Star Wars; and they
carry automatics.
The cab ride to the American Embassy gives me an inkling of what I've
let myself in for. While Turkish driving isn't as nutty as Egyptian
driving, the Turks have one of the highest crash rates in Europe. That
goes double for the small, marauding taksis, which are enough to daunt
even a New Yorker who thinks she's heard everything in taxi-stories.
Most cabs and trucks have a blue evil-eye charm somewhere about them;
inscriptions of MASHALLAH or "In the name of Allah, the Merciful and
Loving Kind" are more common than plastic Jesuses in a country-western
song, considerably more sincere -- and necessary.
Somehow the taksi gets me to the Embassy and my host without fatalities.
No rest for the wicked: I unpack and find myself at a dinner party full
of Foreign Service officers celebrating the return of a colleague from
Italy with wonderful food and wine. Assiduous tourists, all of them --
and full of information on what I should see.
The next day, I take it (relatively) easy. I go to the Museum of
Anatolian Civilizations at Ankara, which is housed in a
fifteenth-century bedestan or covered market. It is an extraordinary
collection in which Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman exhibits can be lumped
together under the heading "modern." An important part of its collection
consists of artifacts from Catal Hoyuk, the oldest town yet discovered:
stag's heads, beads, a diorama of the site, and a very early mirror made
from obsidian. In the main hall of the bedestan, the chief attraction
is Hittite lions, labeled arslan.
Since it is about noon, I wait to hear the muezzin chant the call to
prayer for the first time. Technology has helped the Faithful; sound
systems now carry the chant all over Turkey. Only once -- in Amasya --
did I see an actual man emerge from the minaret to sing.
After the Museum, I walk up the hisar, or Citadel. It is still
inhabited by families, who live in houses off the narrow, twisted
streets: a market sells macadamia nuts, brasswork (for the tourists),
dried fruits, and other food that the local cat population hangs about,
preparing to steal; old men lounge about the streets (no Turk will
consent to use a sidewalk if there's a more comfortable street to walk
in the middle of); women in headveils come to the fountains to draw
water and carry it away in huge sunflower oil tins; and the children in
their black school tunics swarm up to you demanding you take their
photo.
The hisar is the site of the original hill fort. Most of its
fortifications are now from Roman and Byzantine Ankyra.
After the hisar, I head for Anit kabir, located on a couple of acres of
parkland in the center of the City. Why, in a crowded city whose
population has exploded from less than 100,000 in the 1920s when it
became the capital, to more than 2,000,000 today, would there be acres
of parkland? Because Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern
Turkey, is buried there.
Before I go on, let me make a few comments about Ataturk. He was the
only Turkish general in World War I to win -- and he won at Gallipoli.
After the War, when Turkey received much harsher treatment than its
ally, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire was known as the "Sick Man of
Europe," Ataturk led an uprising that replaced the decaying sultanate
with a Republic. Like Peter the Great, he determined to bring his
country into the West and into the current century. In six months, he
had substituted the Roman alphabet for the Arabic. He proclaimed Turkey
a secular state, established a parliament, and ordered women to adopt
European dress and no veils because he was concerned how they suffered
from them during the summer. He required all Turks to adopt surnames:
his own -- Ataturk -- means "father of the Turks."
More than fifty years after his death in 1938, he still is. Think of a
combination of George Washington, Mao Tse-Tung, and Martin Luther King;
you'll have some idea of the veneration in which Ataturk is still held.
Anit kabir looks very much like a Hittite Lincoln Memorial. Set on a
hill, it's reached by taksi, which can take you to the first guard post
outside the chapels with their huge mourning statuary groupings of
Anatolian men and women. The soldiers are young, heavily armed, and
solemn. Past the chapels is the Lion's Way, stone avenue through park
marked by paired arslans that watch tourists unblinkingly: respect;
remember; behave yourselves. The Lion's Way opens into a cloistered
square. Side buildings contain memorials of Ataturk's life:
memorabilia, clothing (including the white tie in which he is most often
depicted), his car, his cigarette cases and coffee services, photos and
portraits of Ataturk with kings and generals so Turks can see that he
was honored as an equal -- and so were they.
The hero cult reaches its apex in the Memorial itself. It is utterly
stark: a severe, long-windowed building marked inside by mosaics in
Turkish folk motifs and huge torch holders wrought of black iron. The
ceiling is very high: your footsteps echo, and you whisper as you walk
toward the enormous sarcophagus. It is bigger than Napoleon's and, to
my mind, more impressive than Place des Invalides. Though Anit kabir
received Ataturk's body in 1953, you get the sense from it that you do
throughout much of Turkey: of incredible age, of an overlay of cultures.
I walk from Anit kabir, get thoroughly lost, and when I grow tired of
it, found a taksi driver who could understand my city map and get me
back to where I was staying, high in the newest part of the city where
officials, Embassy personnel, and the most Westernized Ankarans live.
This section of town is full of cats. As I discover, Turkey itself is
full of cats -- there's a whole feline ecosystem that goes its way with
no help from humans except their food scraps. These are not pampered
pets, but wild hunters.
I did coax a fluffy red cat to come and be fussed over -- much to the
amusement of two old men playing chess, who applauded and said "Very
good" to the crazy foreigner (Turks don't notice the cats). All bets
were off, however, when the red cat wanted to introduce me to its
friends. They ran. This incredible cat population, a guide told me,
may come from the legends that Mohammed was very fond of cats: custom
disapproves of hurting cats.
Custom disapproves even more, thank God, of hurting kids. In the short
time I was in Turkey, I never saw a child, even in the poorest villages,
who wasn't well-fed, cheerful, and courageous, with the spirit of
someone who knows that all adults will love and protect him or her.
Compared with the wariness American children have to learn to protect
themselves from adults, the Turks are doing something very right.
Weekend One -- Back To The Past
On Saturday (May 12), we planned to head into the Anatolian countryside.
(Geographical rule of thumb: Western Turkey is not landlocked; think
Black Sea; think of the "garland of waters" that travelers have
described as adorning Istanbul. Eastern Turkey is mountainous...like
Mount Ararat. Central Anatolia is a huge plateau.)
Early, as in about 7:00 a.m. Jet lag, or no (and helped by ten years of
blitzkrieg packing for science fiction conventions), I make the deadline
and we get into the rented Murat, a Turkish-made car that could be
sturdier than it is: the door handle breaks in my hand. "You tell the
rental people that if a small woman can break this door you shouldn't
have to pay for it!" I gripe to cover major embarrassment.
We start for Bogaskoy. (The name actually contains some umlauts and a
diacritical mark over the g which means it's not pronounced: the town
sounds like "Bo-AS-koy" and is better known as Hattusas, the ancient
Hittite capital.) On the way, a sign at a crossroads is hand-marked in
white paint: Iran. That's the way the international truck routes head.
The horizon expands: all Asia seems to be scrolling out in front of me.
Bogaskoy, Yazilkale, and Alaca Hoyuk ("huyuk" means "mound") are fairly
thoroughly excavated. Bogaskoy consists of temples and living quarters
and a number of mysteries, as well as some ritual gates in its huge
walls. In addition, heaped over by earth about four thousand years ago,
is a tunnel about 70 meters long, leading through the wall. The stones
form a natural arch from which moisture drips; the hillside slopes down;
and it is very dark. After the obligatory wisecrack from Indiana Jones
("Are there snakes in this tunnel?") I find myself racing through it,
not frightened, particularly, but with my breath coming faster. I put
my hand up to touch the ancient stones. Entering the sunlight feels
like a rebirth, and may have been: archeologists like Dr. Peter Neve,
who has worked at Bogaskoy for the past 30 years, now think that these
sites have a ritual purpose: the metamorphosis of a dead king into a
god.
Yazilkale is, essentially, a temple complex containing too-much-worn
freizes of gods and godkings. Alaca Hoyuk is an excavated barrow,
essentially. I was intrigued to see a double-headed eagle, symbol of
the Byzantine Paleologus dynasty that didn't happen for much more than a
thousand years later.
The fields are very green now, thanks to a wetter-than-usual spring. In
another month or so, they'll be dried to golden stubble. But right now,
women and girls, many wearing the headveils and trousers that Ataturk
tried to forbid (but that countryfolk never abandoned) kneel or squat in
the fields picking herbs. Young men sit in groups, learning to carve
"arslans" out of local stone -- scuola di Bogaskoy -- for sale to
tourists. Around the excavations, numerous children come up, clamoring
for "bonbons" and baksheesh.
Having always relied on my ability to use words to get by, I'm having
trouble with the idea that in Turkey, I'm as mute as I am illiterate.
If I want to communicate with Turks who don't speak English, French, or
German, I must do it with tone of voice, body language, and goodwill.
We have lunch in the farming town of Corum. Even in this town, the food
is excellent: wonderful bread, savory lamb, the "white cheese" that I'd
call Feta if we were in Greece, and tomatoes and cucumbers that make
even the most expensive products from Manhattan Korean vegetable stands
look and taste like styrofoam.
"Did your doctor tell you to avoid fresh fruits and vegetables all
trip?" Sarge asks, reaching hopefully for my salad. I decide to give
him a run for it.
Curiously, Corum reminds me of a Midwestern farm town, with people
driving into town in wagons and minarets on every corner, rather than
steeples. Corum, like most other towns, has a very pretty small museum
with some good antiquities: the fine system of local museums is due to
Ataturk, who not only turned the Sultan's palaces into people's museums,
but mandated local ones nationwide.
After Corum, we get off the roads into back-country, unpaved roads,
frequently crossed by flocks of sheep. Guarding the sheep are the
kangal, huge white dogs about the size of mastiffs, who herd cars when
they get bored with sheep. They are all sinew and muscle and jaws; they
wear spiked collars; and having six kangal come after you across the
fields because they think you're trying to steal their sheep is a very
daunting experience, even for animal lovers.
Eluding this pack of kangal, we come to Surusulay, a town scheduled for
evacuation because it is build on top of Roman Sebastopolis. Right now,
though, the ruins of the city (probably first century A.D.) are
scattered throughout the town. Sarge pulls to a stop and plunges into
rapid negotiations with the local elders and teenage boys. Three of
them crowd into the Murat and take charge of the tour: columns in a
dungheap; first-century Roman columns forming a bridge; fragments of
pediments in a field.
They beckon us into a shed. Sarge slides through the lathes and down
onto what looks like an earth floor. I decide to pass until "Byzance,"
explains one of the boys, making a gesture as if crossing himself. He
holds up what I think is gravel until I see the sun glinting off it.
That's not gravel. That's tesserae from a mosaic. I nearly pass out.
It's strictly forbidden to remove antiquities from Turkey; but what
about destroying them?
I call plaintively to Sarge: "I don't think we ought to be here."
Visions of jandarma and their automatics march through my head. But the
boys have probably been playing on this site since they were children
and see no problem.
"They're clearing the dirt off the mosaics with a board," he replies
from the depths of the shed. The boys pry another board away from the
shed, making my descent easy. To stop the unauthorized excavation -- or
get in on it (I can't tell which) -- I slide down into the shed and
photograph some highly satisfied amateur readers of the last ark and
their pink-and-green mosaic finds; shortly afterward, we all go happily
off for tea at a hot springs where there is a cafe.
The owner of the cafe has a mixed breed dog: part kangal, part something
else. Smaller than the real herd dogs, it is embarrassingly friendly.
Leaving the people of Surusulay with enough dinner conversation for a
couple of days, we arrive at Amasya, a very pretty town in which layers
of history rest lightly upon each other. At some points, it has been
used as a center of government and a training ground for princes, such
as the grandson of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, conqueror of Constantinople. At
others, it has been an exile for insurgent artists.
Its site is lovely. A swollen river runs through the center of town.
Near the river, an octagonal fifteenth-century medresseh (Koran school)
is still in use; when we enter it, we see a volleyball net in the
courtyard. Across the river are some lovely mosques of various ages and
a thirteenth-century Seljuk insane asylum (consisting of an impressive
gateway and a sort of cloister), now undergoing restoration.
I pause on the bridge to listen to the call to prayers and watch the
muezzin emerge onto the balcony of his minaret: this won't be the first
time I regret not taking a picture in deference to the Islamic
prohibition on representing the human form.
We visit a restored Ottoman house that once belonged to a wealthy
merchant and now serves as a museum. I wander from the men's quarters
into the women's, wondering what such women talked about in the
interminable hours during which they produced delicate, intricate
embroidery. Somehow, I am lulled into conventionality; I smile, look
down, and do not shake hands like a proper American with the guards.
Sarge teases me for acting like a docile Turkish lady and laughs when I
glare.
Five minutes later, I've shed that wholly aberrant docility. Above a
railway tunnel we can see Phrygian cave tombs. We climb onto the
railway embankment; Sarge takes my camera to climb further -- fine for
someone who climbed Mount Ararat, but beyond the reach of someone my
height. Turkish ladies peer from their window at the crazy Americans.
I'd be embarrassed, but I'm too busy keeping a lookout for trains.
An evening ride brings us to the hisar at Zile, which is where Julius
Caesar said "veni, vidi, vici." Architecture in the town is simple and
beautiful -- half-timbered, plaster construction, with gables projecting
over narrow streets. Except for the bright colors, it almost resembles
Tudor houses.
We stop for the night at a new hotel in Tokat. The manager insists on
guiding Sarge on a tour. It's an impressive place, well-run and
maintained, and it boasts a series of pictures derived from Tokat's
history through the ages.
The next day (May 13), at a local museum, I try to buy a book containing
photos of the pictures. It's not on the list of publications offered
for sale. No price is given. The rules don't say anything about it.
Regardless of what the hotel charged for the book, the museum guard has
no instructions; and he's not selling. Grrrr.
We visit a local dye works in which men in hipboots flush long cotton
cloths stamped with colorful folk motifs with cold water, then hang them
from ancient rafters like so many banners.
[continued]
------ End ------
