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OtherRealms Issue 28 Part 08
Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 8 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 2 of 4]
Another drive over mud roads. Sarge has found evidence of a Seljuk Turk
han, or caravanserey, on some back road or other and wants to find it.
As long as the Murat doesn't break an axle and leave us facing kangal,
I'm all for taking the back roads on which only electrical wires remind
me that this country is occupied. After numerous backtrackings and map
consultations (during which I take the wheel), we find the site of the
han -- down a very steep, rocky slope and across a swollen stream
bridged only by a few railway ties and boards.
I topple and slide down the rocks to the stream. Once there, I hate to
be a party-pooper, but I'm only three days away from a plane trip from
New York and my balance is a little shaky: no way I'm taking that
bridge. Sarge negotiates it valiantly and sets off in search of Seljuk
ruins.
The presence of strangers, and Westerners at that, draws the women of
the village out of doors. Holding their headscarves politely over their
mouths, they stare at the apparition in a Banana Republic jumpsuit who
sits on the rocks on the opposite side of their stream, fiddling with
her camera and trying to convey that I'm going to be courteous and not
stare and not take pictures. I definitely get the impression that
they'd like to chat.
A truck roars up, and two men leap down the rock slope that it took me
so much time to negotiate. It's the bread delivery. It's also a
problem for me. There are a number of village women and they know the
newcomers. I don't; there's only one of me; and what they would consider
my natural protector, the only other Westerner for miles, is off
questing for ruins. Clearly, a tactful display of good manners is in
order. So I look around, concerned, then sit back down on my rock, hand
politely over my mouth as a sort of veil in the presence of strangers.
I think I notice some of the women nod approvingly: poor thing's scared;
let's move in to reassure her.
Sarge emerges and announces that the han has crumbled to rock piles. He
starts across the bridge, but the bridge is swaying; prudently he drops
to all fours. The village women go into such giggles that their veils
fall off. I'd like to laugh too, but the stream looks treacherous; I
can't drive stick shift; and it occurs to me that if I laugh or get out
my camera, I'll make Sarge lose face.
After he crosses and gets to his feet, the village women decide that
they will show us how such bridges should be crossed. Heads up, not
looking at their slippered toes, they sweep across the rickety, swaying
thing -- all except for one woman, who fords the stream with supreme
disdain. Sarge shouts something in Turkish that gets a laugh; I smile
and wave; and we get out of there.
After another long drive, we return to Ankara.
Cappadocia and Beyond
On Monday, I go to the Aslanhane Cami, or Lion Mosque, in Ankara. The
mosque is thirteenth-century. Outside it is a turbe or tomb and the
arslans that give it its name. Inside it are much later chandeliers,
prayer rugs, and a sound system. I am particularly struck by its many
columns, which are highly polished tree trunks. I'd have stayed in the
back because I feel it's improper just to march up before the place
where the imam would stand, but the sexton insists on leading me before
the mihrab, the niche that marks the direction of Mecca, and the mimber,
a stair of age-blackened wood leading to a pulpit from which the imam
can preach.
I visit the Ankara Hilton, where I find a copy of The Fleet, volume II
(Ace, edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett), and Lisa Cantrell's The
Ridge (Tor). Talk about great distribution.
That night, Sarge throws a dinner party, announced as "The stock market
is up 50 points, six people are coming to dinner in one hour, and you're
going to Cappodocia for three days starting tomorrow. Early."
Sounds like fun to me.
An hour later, we're mostly done cooking, I'm packed for Cappadocia,
dressed for dinner, and talking about stock options with people who'd
play them if they were back in the States. I suggest a computer modem
hookup, but the costs in money and time are prohibitive. I'm introduced
to Dr. Toni Cross, a classical archeologist who came over on a dig,
married Ihsan, an economist, and has made Turkey her home. She's
interested in my reactions to the Hittite sites and invites me to hear
Dr. Peter Neve lecture on them on Thursday, if I get back from
Cappadocia in time, and then join them in the Old City for dinner.
The tour bus arrives early the next day. It's dolmus-sized, which means
about the size of the vans used as group taxis in Ankara, and the driver
is equipped with cigarettes, blue- and yellow-beaded "Mashallah" charm,
blue glass evil eye, and invocations to God for protection. He's so
skilled he doesn't even need them. Our guide's name is Ali Mert, but he
says to call him Matt. The tour group is blessedly small: two other
Americans (from the Hilton), an Italian couple, and a French couple,
traveling together. The French man gets up and delivers an enthusiastic
and semi-accurate lecture on Western Culture. I strike up a
conversation with the American couple, a musicologist turned travel
agent and a research cardiologist from Philadelphia. The bus roars
toward Cappadocia, past a huge salt lake.
Some words about Cappadocia. It sounds like a Roman province or
something out of the Bible: as with a lot in Turkey, it's both. The
reason, though, that it is such a tourist haven is that it's largely
volcanic. In addition to Hasan Dag and its companion peak, which are
snow-capped even in May, Cappadocia is noted for its "fairy chimneys,"
mounds and strange conical shapes puffed up out of volcanic tufa, a very
soft rock that cuts easily but hardens on exposure to the air. The
properties of tufa also made it attractive to monastics and villagers,
who used it to build church communities in caves and to construct
underground cities that were originally used as refuges against invasion
by Seljuk Turks (or anyone else).
The churches are carved out of the rock in the shape of basilicas and
elaborately frescoed, though the paintings have suffered from Byzantine
iconoclasts, Muslims intent on eradicating forbidden representations of
human faces, and the barbarism of tourists whose desire to leave their
names on a thousand-year-old painting turns out to be international.
Though the landscape looks somewhat like the limestone karst in China,
I'm more reminded of Dunhuang in Central Asia, where Buddhist travelers
grateful to survive the terrible crossing of the Takla Makan
commissioned chapels cut out of the rock. Definitely, I think (hardly
for the last time), I've wandered into my own Silk Roads and Shadows.
As we head south, the green of Anatolia is replaced by the whites and
tans of a bleaker, more volcanic landscape. Up ahead, I can see Hasan
Dag. The sky is turning black in patches at the horizon: we're heading
into a major thunderstorm.
Hmmm, Storm Over Cappadocia... can I do anything with that title?
No...it's too much like Storm Over Warlock.
In any case, it's time to look, not think. I get out the opera glasses
that I've decided are easier to cart around than binoculars. A
veritable lunar landscape rises about me.
Our first stop in Cappadocia is Goreme, where fairy chimneys, gargantuan
tour buses, and roadside stands suddenly appear on the road. The cave
churches are jammed with tourists eager to escape the torrents of rain
that turn the smallest wadi into a river; I think of how Alexander the
Great's army was almost wiped out one night when it camped on just such
a river bed.
Dark, lit by windows carved in the tufa or by flashlights or matches,
the churches have smoke-stained walls from which the frescoes flicker
out like ghosts from a violent past. The artwork is crude, but
powerful, and I find myself straining to read the Greek inscriptions and
the iconographic patterns.
Leaving the first cave church, we wander further into the valley as some
spectacular lightning strikes outside. Sand-colored cliffs tower above
us, honeycombed with living caves, chapels, and pigeon houses. Ladders
and rickety metal stairs lead to some of the larger chapels. Cracks in
the rock remind us that this area, though geologically old, is still a
risen seabed and not as tectonically steady as it might be. The outer
cliffwall of the Dark Chapel has fallen away, exposing the frescoes and
the pattern of its carven clerestory.
The rain stops. On a rise above the Buckle Church, I see a toothless
old man holding what has got to be the oldest camel in creation. A
rickety ladder leads to its shabby saddle because you can tell that if
that that animal ever sinks to its knees, it won't be able to get back
up again. What a mangy beast. But abruptly my vision shifts, and the
wretched thing somehow becomes Lawrence of Arabia (yes, I know: we don't
talk about Lawrence in Turkey), my own books, or every fantasy I've ever
had about this part of the world.
"That's so fake!" warns one of the other Americans as I strip out of
raincoat, shoulderbag, postcards, and camera and toss them
apologetically into her arms.
"That's a tourist trap," I'm told. Would the Ideal Traveler get her
picture snapped perched atop it? It's not even one of the big,
two-humped Bactrians. Do I care? Happily, I race toward the camel and
wonder when was the last time I ran toward anything except a taxi.
The cardiologist snaps my photo. I recall that in Lawrence of Arabia,
Omar Khayyam tells Peter O'Toole that saying "hut, hut, hut!" will get a
camel moving. Frankly, I doubt it; and I'm not minded to try and
probably fall through the ground into the apse of the Buckle Church,
which is right under the camel's feet. The next stop is the actual town
of Goreme. Cappadocia is the center of the carpet trade and the
manufacture of onyx ornaments: stalls offering carpets, trinkets,
postcards, fake Izod sweaters, and enough material for a whole city of
garage sales spring up under the shadow of fairy chimneys all over
Cappadocia, each entrapping its share of tourists.
Actually, this is a symbiotic relationship. Most people come to Turkey
wanting to buy carpets or other gifts. Why not make it easy for them?
Naturally, the Ideal Traveler (remember IT) avoids these stalls as
ripoffs and rake-offs, preferring to buy rugs at auctions, bargaining
fiercely, and driving down the price to a level that even Turks admire.
Right. All I want is good value...maybe not in comparison to what an
expert could get, but in comparison to what there is no way I could
spend at Bloomingdale's.
The carpet gallery to which we are taken is a little piece of the
Arabian Nights. We are led into a room festooned with carpets of all
shapes, colors, sizes, materials, and ages -- from faded, woven kilims,
to the aristocratic and wickedly expensive hand-knotted silk
reproductions of ancient Persian paradise and prayer-rug designs, to the
geometric patterns of the heavy wool nomad rugs. Seated on divans
cushioned and tapestried with old rugs, we sip tea and coffee while men
bring out a model loom and explain the knotting of rugs simultaneously
in English, French, and Turkish.
How do you buy a rug? First, you get a lecture on the basics.
Rugs are either woven, like kilims, which are flat, or knotted like the
classic Turkish carpets (double knots) or Persian rugs (single knot and
less durable). They are made of silk, wool, wool and cotton, or all
cotton. Warning: some rug dealers will try to pass off all cotton as
cotton and silk. This is a sign of fraud. Because of silk's great
strength, the silk thread would cut through the cotton fibers. Dyes are
either chemical or vegetable; some are secrets of individual households,
passed down from woman to woman within a family.
There are Persian patterns and individualized patterns from every region
of Turkey. You can identify Persian patterns from their flowery designs
or from their representation of the mihrab or prayer niche. You can
identify tribal patterns from their vivid colors and geometrical
designs. You can even identify regions and tribes by the colors they
select.
You can make carpets the study of a lifetime. Or you can simply fall in
love with one as the gallery's employees, like capitalistic genies,
unfurl them on the floor in front of you. You sip tea and gasp as rug
follows rug. The supple, wickedly expensive silk rugs shimmer in the
light and literally fly across the room.
I keep looking at the tribal rugs, which have a most satisfying depth
and wildness.
"That one," I say, pointing. It is jerked from its place on the wall
and hurled at my feet like a captive tribesman: a nomad rug from Kars,
about four feet square, in saffron, rust, and crimson. It folds into a
remarkably small compass and fits into a Converse bag, I discover, as I
sign travelers cheques.
The French and Italian tourists laugh and point fingers as I emerge.
Matt shakes his head: and another tourist bites the dust! The Americans
warn me that it was no bargain. First rug, though, like first love, is
oblivious.
We stay that night in Urgup at the Turban Motel. My English guidebook
observes snidely that it is a favorite of huge tour buses. With its
bars, restaurants, shops, and numerous rooms, it is indeed a magnet for
group tours, but, as my guide agrees, it's also the modern equivalent of
the ancient caravanserays established by the sultans. With one
difference. In the Seljuk caravanserays, however, food and shelter were
free.
We turn down the offer of a floor show of ethnic dances, including a
belly dancer. The dining room is crowded -- and cloudy with cigarette
smoke. Though Turks are legally able to buy and sell spirits or beer,
custom seems to have been that tea (or coffee) and cigarettes replace
the U.S. cocktail hour. The Turks I spooke to regard American
queasiness about cigarette smoke -- including passive smoke inhalation --
as a foreign weirdness. While, in general, they like Americans, they
tend to regard them as fragile creatures as susceptible to lung cancer
as Scandinavian tourists are to sun poisoning.
Unfortunately, the smoke-filled dining room and lounge are the only warm
rooms in the place. It's May, after all: no reason to turn on the
furnaces in the sleeping quarters. My room is about the size, color,
and temperature of a large hailstone. Fortunately, it comes equipped
with twin beds, and they come equipped with thick plaid blankets --
Turkish weaving to the rescue. I burrow into every blanket I can steal.
For additional warmth, I seriously consider kidnapping one of the
Turban Motel's cats, sleek, long-haired creatures who greet the tour
buses and -- uncharacteristically -- crave affection.
Random observation: I have seen fowl along the roadside that I would
call turkeys. In Turkey, however, people call them "hinds" (or Indian)
because they were first imported from the West Indies.
The next morning after a breakfast of bread, honey, tomatoes, olives,
white cheese, and coffee, we pick up two more Americans (both retirees
and a little peevish after almost getting drowned in the crossing from
Greece), and we drive toward Zilve to see more cave churches and a cave
mosque.
Tentatively, I offer my 39 sunscreen to the Frenchwoman who explains
that she's from Marseille and doesn't need it. By this time, we're
speaking a weird mixture of French, English, Italian, and German -- plus
a few words of Turkish -- at once another and tossing cameras back and
forth. We exchange cards and offers of hospitality in our own
countries. "Elle est gentille," I hear in whispered French. After many
years of flagellating myself because Americans Don't Speak Other
Languages and, in any case, my French accent is lousy, it's nice to be
the one trying to help bridge the gap.
Carved into the rock face at Zilve is a basin. Legend has it that if
you throw a rock into the basin and it doesn't skip out again, you will
have good luck. On my third try, a lucky underhand throw brings me a
chance to make a wish.
The French and Italian men are having an urgent discussion with Matt.
He returns to the front of the bus and announces: we are detouring to
the underground town at Kizilcukur. Like the kilises (derived from
ecclesia), or cave churches, the underground cities have been carved
from the tufa; the big problem isn't cutting the stuff, but hauling it
out of the excavation, which they probably did via the airshafts which
I'm told are the first things sunk into the rock.
Down, out of the sunlight, we go, three floors, four... bending over in
the long, twisted passageways with their rudimentary steps. The taller
men are having trouble negotiating. I have to stoop in the corridors,
but I do have headroom. Though I have expected to be claustrophobic,
I'm fascinated as I gaze at where they prayed, where they made wine, the
sites of long-cooled communal cookfires, grain storage in the walls,
pits that could be used to hold bedding. Deep down, I'm told, they
still store oranges: natural refrigeration.
I gather that these towns were cut out as a refuge against Seljuk Turks
(about the time period of the Byzantine massacre at Manzikert -- 1071).
You could instruct your spies, get your shepherds to hide your flocks (I
think that would be a suicide mission), flee underground, roll the
two-ton millstones over the entrance, and wait out a siege of a couple
of months. Granted, this would only work against a fast-striking nomad
strike force that lacks the resources to starve out a town. An Old
Roman legion would just tunnel in after you -- look at the ramp they
built at Masada over more than a year of siege. A Byzantine army could
do the same, or just drop Greek fire down the airshafts.
I mention this to the guide and start scouting around to see how the
town could be defended. I am amiably imagining deadfalls in the storage
pits and arrows in the airshafts when I realize he's looking at me as if
I'm one sick puppy. But that gives me some ideas, and I start frantic
picture taking. Tomorrow, there will be Kaymakli, an even bigger
underground town, joined to a network of other such towns by nine
kilometers of tunnels. Legend has it, Matt says, dropping his voice
impressively, that there is one such hidden city that goes deeper than
any others and contains treasure.
His shadow looms up in the electric lights they've tacked up. I shiver
and try to imagine this place lit only by torches or lamps.
We emerge and realize we've been clambering around beneath the bus.
Getting back into it, we drive to Avanos for a pottery demonstration.
The Italian man disappears and reemerges from a store wearing a vest
made of old kilims. The effect, with his tapestried sweater and print
purple pants, is indescribable.
Lunch is planned for a cave restaurant. I'm enjoying myself
tremendously, drinking Turkish coffee and chatting ineptly in a couple
of languages until the realization sinks in: the others in the tour put
in for a day and a half. I signed up for three days. After lunch, the
bus will be returning to Ankara. I, however, won't.
They're gonna abandon me in this awful cave! My lips start to tremble,
but I get out my luggage and wave my friends good-bye, then resign
myself to a troglodyte afternoon in the restaurant. Although the saner
part of me knows something's going to be arranged -- at the very worst,
a Mayday call to the Embassy -- I'm jittery. But I'm learning.
I manage, calmly, to ask Matt what gives. The car hasn't arrived, he
says, all concern that I won't want to go on with the tour. Meanwhile,
he introduces me to Ismail, who offers to show me around.
I am consoled by the sight of a small, plump black-and-white cat.
Ismail explains that this cat, born by Caesarean section, is famous in
the region. He offers to show me a puppy. I look in, don't see its
mother, and decide that, while the puppy is very cute, its mother may be
a kangal. If she is, I don't want to be there when she gets back.
No chance. The car, a sturdy little Fiat, has arrived. There, in front
of the biggest tour bus I've seen all day, I learn that I am continuing
the tour in style -- with my own car, guide, and driver. Ceremoniously,
my baggage and I are escorted to the car and helped into the back seat.
Matt the guide and Ismail the driver get into the front seat. Is there
anything I want?
Nothing I can legitimately ask for. Elephants and pith helmets wouldn't
be bad, though. Matt and I spend the afternoon exploring more cave
churches in deserted valleys that he doesn't take the usual middle-aged
tourist to because the tourist won't walk that far. We go to Sari Han,
a Seljuk caravansary that has been totally renovated. What looks like a
Romanesque church in the back is actually camel quarters, the high
vaulting serving to ventilate the place in the winter. Matt explains
that by order of the sultans, food, shelter, and fodder for animals was
free in the network of caravanserays running the length of the Empire.
Guards to the next han were also available, but at a small fee. Every
night, the gates were closed, not to be opened till dawn, even for the
Sultan himself. The yellow and brown stonework of Sari Han makes a
pretty imposing fortress.
We return that evening to the Turban Motel and my hailstone of a room.
Matt points out the various tour groups. Ismail speaks to the other
drivers. Every five minutes, someone rushes up to him, kisses him
Turkish-fashion on both cheeks, and involves him in a serious discussion
of what car to buy...including the waiter. Ismail is a sort of local
legend; he knows the roads and the landmarks better than any other
driver, and he truly loves his work.
The room is turning blue with smoke from Marlboroughs, Dunhills,
Sobranies, and other things that my eyes and lungs are beginning to
protest. Besides, Matt and Ismail have friends to talk to, and Ismail
badly needs to unwind by talking driver-talk. God knows what sort of
stories he's telling about me. Decorously, I retire. Outside, I find
an Austrian tourist talking to the Turban cats, who may not understand
German but do understand handouts. We exchange places of origin,
comments on the day's travel, and complaints that our rooms are
freezing.
[continued]
------ End ------
