EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN IN TÜRKIYE – VAN TO ŞANLIURFA

Oct. 7, 2000
Otel Kardelen, Tatvan, Türkiye

We got up late, even though we had a lot to do, because I was too sick to jump out of bed. We barely made it to breakfast before it was finished. There was nothing left but bread, cheese, and olives. Mehmet joined us for tea and then Deanna and I went out to round up the cash to pay for Deanna’s carpets. I had paid Fuat the night before and would have my parents wire the $2200 to Mehmet, as I could never get that much out of an ATM. Six banks and two credit cards later, we finally managed to round up the 1,030,000,000 lire that Deanna owed to Fuat and Mehmet. We paid them and arranged for them to ship the rugs to the United States.

Mehmet took us to a music store and helped us to select some traditional Kurdish music to bring home. We bought two tapes of instrumental music and one CD of vocals. Then, we went to an internet café for a couple of hours, where I almost managed to finish writing about our adventures in Van before we had to dash to the bus. Mehmet drove us to the otogar in a taxi that he had borrowed from someone. We thanked him for all of his help and hospitality and hugged him goodbye. We would miss him. He was very bright and interesting and completely trustworthy. He offered to take us to Iran someday. I had mixed feelings about going there, but he would have been the perfect guy to travel with and I was sure we would have no trouble as long as we stuck with Kurds. (The events of 9/11/2001 prevented us from ever going.)

The bus ride to Tatvan, in the southwest corner of Lake Van, should have taken two hours, but took two and a half because we were delayed at an army checkpoint where they searched all the luggage and patted down the men. The soldiers were friendly to us and one of them did card tricks while he searched my bag. There was one handsome fellow in a beret and mirrored shades who seemed to be in charge. He tried very hard to look cool, but even he had a good laugh with us as Deanna pantomimed the uses of the various vitamins and cosmetics in her bag. No one would ever beat us in charades after our trip to Türkiye.

As the guidebook warned, there wasn’t much in Tatvan. The city is on the lake, but they didn’t use it to advantage. We tried to get a hotel on the lake, but had to make do with craning our necks out the window to see it. The hotel was expensive for the region at 24 million lire per night, even after we wangled a 20% discount. The room wasn’t much, but the furnishings and the bathroom were nice. There was even a tub with a shower curtain, an unheard of luxury. Apparently, modern plumbing was just reaching Türkiye because television ads for sinks and toilets dominated Turkish TV. We watched the news with a dictionary in one hand, trying to figure out what was happening in the world.

Oct, 9, 2000
Otel Güler, Diyarbakir, Türkiye

Neither of us liked Tatvan much, so we got up and headed straight for the bus. We took a cab all the way out to the otogar for 1.5 million lire, 500K less than the “nice” man had charged us to take us four blocks to the hotel. At 11:00, we boarded a bus to Diyarbakir. The trip was very slow and some of the road was unpaved. Diyarbakir had been the center of Kurdish terrorist activity and the army was taking no chances. We were stopped at two checkpoints and some of the luggage was searched, but not ours. We passed through rocky mountains, at first, and then emerged into the most depressing landscape we had seen in Türkiye, to date. The rolling hills were covered with sparse grass and scattered oak trees. There were numerous ugly towns built out of mud and cement blocks with no aesthetic consideration, whatsoever. They all looked like they were related to mining of some sort. The weather must be very hot in the summer because most of the houses (ALL of which had rebar for an eventual second floor sticking out of the concrete slab roofs) had bedsteads on the roofs. Many of the houses had oak branches piled on the roof for insulation and/or kindling in the winter. This pruning (read denuding) of the native oak trees did little to improve the appearance of the landscape. Everything was covered with a fine layer of dust. We stopped once in a dusty little town that seemed to specialize in manufacturing candy. After five hours, we finally reached Diyarbakir. The outskirts featured mile upon mile of modern apartment blocks and wide streets, in sharp contrast to the dark and narrow alleys within the walls.

Modern Buildings Surrounding Diyarbakir

We entered the old town through the Dağ Kapı, where a section of the wall had been demolished to ease traffic. The walls surrounding Diyarbakir are the most extensive walls in the world after the Great Wall of China. They were constructed from imposing, black basalt blocks.  We caught a taxi into town and the driver had no idea where to find the Otel Güler and must have been illiterate because showing him the name and address in the guidebook did no good at all. Despite our protests, he drove us to the scummiest imaginable hotel in a distant intercity neighborhood. We protested vehemently and finally managed to get him to take us back to where we wanted to go. Our attempts to direct in Turkish must have been hilarious. When we finally reached the hotel, he tried to charge us seven million lire for the trip. We refused, since he had taken us on a wild goose chase. We gave him five million lire and walked away. He followed us, complaining loudly, but the hotel staff paid him no mind.

The Wall Surrounding Diyarbakir

The Otel Güler was very nice and even the bathrooms were clean and modern, although there was no tub and the shower still splattered all over the floor. They charged 22 million lire per night. Prices were high in Diyarbakir. Deanna had left her Slick 50 jacket on the bus, so we went to the bus office to try to arrange to get it back. They indicated that it would arrive by the morning, so we went to the Sinan Lokantasi, a very nice, rooftop restaurant that actually served beer, for dinner. The food was nothing special but the staff was friendly and the beer was cold. There was BBC news in the room, so we went upstairs, watched TV, read for awhile, and crashed early. Diyarbakir gave us the creeps and we decided to move on,

Oct. 9, 2000
Bus Between Diyarbakir and Malatya,Türkiye

We got up very early and went to see if we could retrieve Deanna’s jacket. The office said to try the otogar. We took a taxi out there and were gratified that the ride plus the tip came to exactly what we had paid the previous day’s clueless driver. Once again, we inquired after Deanna’s jacket. There was a young man there who spoke German and he told me that the jacket was in Mersin and would not arrive until tomorrow. We asked him to hold it there for us.

After waiting for half an hour or so, we boarded the bus for Malatya. Our ride to Malatya took us through prettier country. We wound for 100km or so through low mountains covered with oak and pine trees. The earth was red and looked a little like the Sierra foothills. Eventually, we came to a large reservoir, which sported a few attractive, new towns on its banks. The buildings were plastered and painted in pleasing colors. There were even a few single family homes.

We were stopped at a checkpoint between Diyarbakir and Elaziğ. There was a female jendarma who took us into a little shack and patted us down. They did not, however, search the luggage.

View of Malatya from Our Hotel

We passed both the Keban (first) and Karakaya reservoirs and then drove through green apricot groves to the gracious, modern city of Malatya. Old Malatya was eleven kilometers to the north and was largely abandoned. New Malatya was founded in the nineteenth century and was mostly comprised of new, tile-roofed apartment blocks. Most of the growth occurred after the construction of the two dams.

The otogar in Malatya was fabulous and contained every possible service including an internet café. From there, we took a local minibus into town and, for an extra 1 million lire, the driver took us to the tourism office. We had some difficulty locating the office and, when we found it, it was closed. There was a note on the door directing us to another office back the way we had come with all our luggage in tow. I waited with the bags while Deanna went back. She located a nice man named Bülent who arranged a hotel for us and told us how to get a tour to Nemrut Dağı. He got the bellboy from the hotel to come and carry our bags three blocks to the hotel. We stayed in the Yeni Sinan Hotel.

Oct. 11, 2000
Nemrut Dağı Güneş Motel, Malatya,Türkiye

After getting settled in the hotel, we went for a walk to see some old Ottoman houses. We had not gone very far before we heard, “ Hoç geldiniz.(Welcome.)” We turned around and saw on old woman with her daughter and grandson beckoning to us. She didn’t speak a word of English but she invited us up to her apartment for tea. There, we met another daughter, a friend, and all their children. They served us tea, baklava, and fruit. We conversed as best we could in our limited Turkish. They were very happy to see us and we were interested to see what Turkish women did all day, since we seldom met any. Deanna took some video and the older woman was very moved when I stammered out, “Benim yeni arkadaş (my new friend,)” while posing with her. We played the video back for them and they all got a kick out of that.  (Unfortunately, the video did not survive and I took no pictures.)

After our visit, we went back to our hotel to meet Bülent, but he thought we were meeting him at the office, so we missed him. We spent the evening in the internet café.

The next day, we had intended to go to Nemrut Dağı, but the tour was delayed because there were more people who wanted to go, but could not go until the following day. The tour guide, Sabri, took us on a trip to Old Malatya, instead. We went to the 13^th century mosque, which is still in use. The floor was covered with many carpets and there was original Seljuk tilework in the dome over the mihrab. The brick minaret was broken. There was a separate mosque for women, which had stoves for warmth. In the winter, the women got ousted and the men used that side because it was warm. We also visited a 17^th century caravansary, which still smelled of camels. After Old Malatya, Sabri took us out to the lake formed by the dam. The plants had all turned a reddish color for the fall and made a pretty picture against the eroded white banks and blue water. There was a litter of puppies huddled in the middle of the road.

Reservoir in Malatya

After we came back, we left Sabri and wandered off to the carpet bazaar where we met Erhan, who turned out to be a friend of Bülent and Sabri’s. We spent a couple of hours with him and Deanna bought a Caucasian style carpet made in Malatya for $385 and four small kilims to be made into pillows for a total of $220. Bülent met us there and came back to our hotel with us. We drank beer and tea and chatted for a couple of hours about relationships and whether or not to have children. Bülent works in tourism and would like to travel, so he was leery of getting saddled with a family. We told him to find a different girlfriend who would welcome the chance to live in different places.

The Road to Nemrut Dağı

We awoke the following morning to the sound of rain. We picked up our laundry and Deanna got her sunglasses soldered back together where the hinge had broken. After much deliberation and several changes of plan that left me with no pajamas or clean underwear, Sabri decided to take us to Nemrut Dağı, after all. We were joined by a Dutch couple and an Israeli couple, both of whom were quite young. We drove for 100km through the mountains. After we climbed out of Malatya’s valley, the weather improved. The mountains were reddish shale and the poplars were beginning to turn yellow. There was some farming on terraces and the villages looked prosperous. We stopped for lunch at a roadside place out in the middle of nowhere and I had liver with rice. We then drove for a few more hours through an increasingly fantastic landscape until we reached

Sabri's Village

Sabri’s village, just outside the Nemrut Dağı National Park. The village was lovely and commanded panoramic views. A little way up the hill, we ran into Sabri’s cousin on a donkey. He invited us into his vineyard and gave us bunches of big, tasty grapes. The grape vines grow right on the ground in Türkiye.

Sabri's Cousin, Deanna & Sabri in the Vineyard

After the vineyard, we struggled up a steep, muddy hill until we had to stop and change a tire. Then we got stuck and had to get out and walk up a particularly steep hill while Sabri drove the van up. Once we got back in the van, the road improved and we drove a few more kilometers, past the stone walls of the summer encampment of Sabri’s village, to our hotel, looking very out of place all by itself in an alpine valley.

The Tomb of Antiochus on Nemrut Dağı

We stopped at the hotel, briefly, and then headed up the mountain to see the big carved heads. It was raining lightly but we got to see the tomb of the Comagene king, Antiochus, built around 2200 B.C. Sabri’s friend had a stone hut on the side of the mountain with a wood stove and we ducked in there to warm ourselves and drink tea whenever we got cold. We stayed up there a couple of hours, looking at the heads and the massive pyramid of scree constructed by Antiochus. There was also a fabulous view of the immense, sprawling lake formed by the Ataturk Dam. A cloud envoloped us just as the sun set and we scurried down to the van and back to the hotel.

Jumble of Statuary on Nemrut Dağı

Deanna on Nemrut Dağı

At the hotel, we had a nice dinner of chicken and couscous with watermelon (picked from a field by the road on the way) and grapes for dessert. After dinner, the two couples went to bed but Deanna and I stayed downstairs to hang out with Sabri and his silent friend. We had intended to read, but a strong wind blew up and the power went out. All we had was a small lantern, so Deanna and I drank raki and I played a few games of backgammon with Sabri. He was surprised that I knew this eastern game so well.

Oct. 13, 2000 (Friday the 13th)
Ipek Palas Hotel, Şanlıurfa, Türkiye

The Big Heads in the Morning Light

Yesterday, we got up at 5:30 to watch the sun rise from the top of Nemrut Dağı. It was beautiful, although a layer of clouds delayed the actual appearance of the sun until after the colors had faded. It was cold, but not freezing, and the rain had stopped. We went back to the hotel for breakfast and then hustled back down the mountain to Malatya. Sabri took us to the hotel to fetch our luggage and then took us to the otogar to catch the 11:00 bus to Şanlıurfa. There was supposed to be a through bus, but we took a small bus over the mountains and were headed for Adiyaman when we saw a dolmuş coming toward us. Our bus pulled over and we ran across the road and hopped onto the dolmuş to Şanlıurfa. I’m not sure how the switch was arranged but it went smoothly. Money changed hands between drivers. Deanna said, “I think he just sold us for four million lire.”

We headed south on the dolmuş to Şanlıurfa, passing through very dry, rolling hills where there were large groves of figs. There was some confusion when we got to the otogar because no one wanted us to take a taxi, but we finally found a man who spoke German and I got him to call one for us. We tried to get a room in the government guest house near the kale, but they were full. It was difficult to find a room in Şanlıurfa at that time of year because pilgrims come there from Türkiye and Iran to visit the birthplace of the prophet, Abraham. Some people speculate that the Garden of Eden was located at Şanlıurfa.  It was very hot there in the summer and still about 80 degrees in October. We finally got a room at the Ipek Palas, which was cheap at 16 million lire, but didn’t offer much service. The room was tiny but had good ventilation and the first window screen we had seen in Türkiye. The bathroom was good for hanging laundry.

Sacred Fish Pond in Şanlıurfa

Sacred Carp

Today, we did a few errands and then walked down to the sacred fish ponds, where we spent most of the afternoon shopping and eating lunch in the bazaar and complex across from the kale. We met a young man named Ali and he and his friend escorted us up through a tunnel in the rock to the top of the kale where we watched the sun set and then walked back down the stairs on the surface of the rock. There was a large rose garden and complex of mosques surrounding the sacred pools and the cave where Abraham was born.

Rose Garden & Mosques

We climbed up to the Onur Café to visit a young Kurdish man named Metin that we had met in a jewelry store earlier in the day. We drank soda and then had tea with Ali and Metin. The kale and mosque are beautifully lit at night and we could hear the muezzins sing. Metin played a CD of Ibrahim Tatlises, the Kurdish singing sensation from Urfa. We liked it very much and recognized many of the songs from the radio. Then we walked back up the very dark main street where most businesses were closed, grabbed some dessert for dinner (We had a big lunch.), bought a beer to share, and came back to the hotel.

Oct. 14, 2000

Ipek Palas Hotel, Şanlıurfa, Türkiye

We started today with a visit to the museum. It was supposed to open at 8:30 but, when we got there at 10:00, the gates were still closed. We pried them apart and got them to open up the museum for us. The museum had a nice collection of bronze age pottery and metal implements from the areas flooded by the Ataturk dam. There were also many Christian statues taken from churches that had been converted to mosques.

The Kale in Şanlıurfa

After the museum, we picked up dry cleaning, ate lunch, and bought plane tickets to Ankara. Then we went to the PTT to mail postcards and headed for the old section of town. We visited the Ulu Cami, where the muezzin showed us around and offered us holy water that was reputed to be good for the eyes. We were afraid to drink, but rubbed some on our eyes so as to show him we believed. We then headed for Abraham’s birth cave, but got side tracked by old Ottoman houses with stone corbels supporting their overhanging second storeys. We soon got tangled in the web of streets that comprise the bazaar. We turned into one seemingly insignificant archway, only to find ourselves in the main vegetable market. All of the merchants were very glad to see us and many of them wanted to be in Deanna’s video. The bazaar offered every conceivable vegetable, fruit, and spice. Goods were moving in and out by donkey, hand cart, and motorbike with side car. None of the motorbikes had mufflers and the din was ear shattering. A man selling dried fruit gave us a sample of a sheet of a dried fruit that tasted like pear. We were a bit turned around when we exited the market and we wandered for awhile until we emerged into the courtyard in front of the complex of mosques surrounding Abraham’s cave.

Vegetable Market in Şanlıurfa

Women weren’t allowed into the main part of Abraham’s birth cave and westerners weren’t allowed at all. It was very crowded with pilgrims, many of whom were Iranian. The women carefully arranged Deanna’s scarf to cover her blonde hair, surrounded us, and hustled us past the imam at the entrance. The cave was carved out of the rock and the floor was covered in carpets. Women were donning elaborate coverings before settling down to pray. We prayed for peace in the Middle East.

When we came out, there was a group of Iranian women in black chadors listening to the iman lecture. One of them had a video camera. As we walked back to the park, we were stopped by two modern looking Iranian women who wanted to greet us. They wanted to know if we had been to Iran. They assured us that the Iranian people had nothing against Americans.

Cemetery in Şanlıurfa

From the park, we climbed up to the government guest house and had a cold drink in the courtyard. Then we walked up a back street lined with old buildings, some built from the remnants of even older buildings. Children kept running out to say, “Hello,” and old men on horseback rode by the blue painted doors of those residents who had made the haj to Mecca. We came upon a cemetery where contemporary graves rested beside those from the 14^th century. It was crowded with tombs and stretched on as far as one could see. Next, we walked back to the main street. Deanna grabbed a bowl of soup and I bought a banana. Then we headed back to the hotel.

Oct. 16, 2000
Plane between Şanlıurfa and Ankara, Türkiye

Pognon's Cave in Soğmatar

Yesterday, we went on a tour of Harran and the surrounding countryside with a jovial, singing taxi driver named Yusuf. He would have been a lot of fun if he could have kept his hands to himself. We traded arabesque songs and show tunes. We drove on paved roads for awhile and then rattled over stony dirt roads through low hills of decaying shale to Soğmatar.  The hills in that area are composed of layers of soft shale and many natural caves have been enlarged to form homes and other necessities. Soğmatar features the Pognon’s Cave temple (150-200 AD) and another open air temple to the sun and moon gods on top of the hill. There are several inscrpitions in Aramaic

Deanna and Me in the Temple to the Sun & Moon

carved into the stone hilltop. There are ruined structures on seven surrounding hilltops that were either beacons or temples to other gods, depending on who you ask.

From Soğmatar, we jolted along another 15 kilometers to Şuayb Şehri, the supposed home of the prophet, Jethro. This was the region where Jesus was said to have wandered in the desert.  There are many, many cave homes there, some with elaborate arches and lamp niches. There are also the remains of some massive stone structures on the surface. It must have been quite a place. Yusuf hired two small boys to show us around who were doing a fine job until the local mafia, in the form of a gorgeous, rifle toting Arab with a shawl wrapped around his head, ran them off and made us buy tickets from him. We felt guilty that we never got to pay the boys.

Şuayb Şehri

Yusuf & Deanna in a Cave Home

We ate lunch in the home of an Arab family. The woman was probably 30 and had eight children. Their concrete block house had a bedroom, kitchen, and living/dining room. The only furnishings in the living room were two strips of indoor/outdoor carpeting on the floor. When we ate, they dragged in a plastic tablecloth with the food on it. We had rice, lavosh, tomato and cucumber salad, and watermelon. They spoke no English but were very hospitable. The children were shy, but curious and kept drifting in and out and peeking at us from behind their parents. We had brought the food with us, but we made sure to slip the lady of the house some money when we got her alone.

Yusuf & Deanna at the Caravanserai with Locals

We bounced over another 25 kilometers of desolate wasteland to the Han el Ba’rur Caravansarai. The people in that area near the Syrian border were all Arabs. Yusuf was half Arab and half Kurdish. He was related to many of the people we met and got into a loud family argument with the Arab ticket seller in Şuayb. We weren’t exactly sure what they were arguing about at the time and passed a few anxious moments there. 

At the caravansarai, we met three Arab ladies and their children. The two younger ones were dressed in lovely, green silk robes. They begged us for sunscreen and marveled at how young we looked for our ages (39 and 62.)  Their children were wearing modern kiddie garb but they were absolutely filthy. We took some video of the ladies and they enjoyed watching the monitor as Deanna played it back for them. I took a picture of everybody watching and Yusuf asked for a copy. The caravansarai was built by the Seljuks in 1128-29 and was in disrepair with cakes of dung stored in the remaining rooms.

Not far from the caravansarai, we stopped to visit the Bazda Caves. These caves were actually a huge quarry where most of the stone to construct Şanlıurfa, Harran, and Mardin was taken. The caves honeycomb an entire mountain and are four kilometers by one kilometer and as much as fifty feet high in places. Light and air shafts have been conveniently placed, which makes them more pleasant to visit than most caves. We drove right into the cave and, I must admit, the first sight was spectacular. Pat Yale, the Lonely Planet writer, refused to go there with Yusuf and omitted the caves from her account of the area. We could only assume this was because she had had enough of his roaming hands by that point and just wanted to get to Harran.

Gate at Harran

Harran from a Distance

Harran was another twenty kilometers west of Şuayb and the road improved as it neared the site. Harran is in the biblical land of Canaan and Abraham was said to have dwelt there after leaving Ur (Şanlıurfa?) There was a great three-story castle built by the Hittites in 2200 BC, replete with (mostly buried) gates featuring dogs on chains carved into the stone. There were also the remains of the world’s oldest university and a tower once used for astronomy. The buildings had also been used for the worship of the sun and the moon, by Byzantine Christians, and finally as a mosque. Only a couple of arches and half of the tower remained intact. Harran is most famous for its beehive houses and a nice young man named Ibrahim showed us around a couple of restored ones and took pictures of us dressed in Arab garb. The sun set while we were in Harran and we returned to Şanlıurfa in the dark. I was beginning to feel sick, again, and Yusuf bought me a very nice bowl of lentil çorba while we wrote in his memory book.

Beehive Houses in Harran

  When we returned to the hotel, we discovered that we had been moved to a room without toilet or shower. The toilet in the hall was a squatter without a light. I was too sick to object, but Deanna went downstairs and made such a stink that they managed to find us a better room despite the arrival of 47 ladies from Ankara.

This morning. We got up at 4:00 to catch the 5:00 service bus to the airport. All flights in Türkiye seem to leave at ungodly hours. Our flight left at 6:00. No one could complain about security. Our bags were x-rayed as we entered the airport and then searched before we boarded the plane.

Me and Deanna in Arab Costume