The End of an Era

Middle East » Turkey » Southeastern Anatolia » Diyarbakir
December 7th 2004

Published: December 7th 2004

Greetings to my loyal following.

The past few weeks have found me extremely lazy and/or too busy to sit down and blog. Now that I finally find time to do so I don't have any pictures with me (left them all in Istanbul), so this will be a boring blog without pictures (which means Beybora won't be reading it). Since I last blogged I have:

Been to Cappadocia

Cappadocia was awesome: Goreme, with deserted valleys full of phallic towers with houses and churches carved into them, trudging through knee-deep snow all day long, occassionally taking refuge in a cave (which, I may add, are surprisingly warm). Ihlara Valley, in striking contrast to the plain and barren surroundnig countryside, the walls of which are full of deserted monasteries with vandalized awe-inspiring frescoes and paintings. Those monks really knew how to live. Derinkuyu with its immense church, resembling a Seljuk mosque, and famous underground city connected to the church and many of the houses, built as a refuge from invading armies, and "lost" when the local Greeks were deported and the city re-populated. According to a local, his father "found" the underground city when he went looking for eggs that his chicken laid in some undisclosed location: he opened the door to the basement and Whoa! an underground city. Never ceases to amaze me.

Kayseri and Beyond

I then planned out an impressive trip going through Kayseri, Sivas, Tokat, Amasya, Malatya, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Urfa and Antep. It would have lasted a month and taken me to many-a place in Anatolia that I wanted to see. When I made it to Kayseri the place was practically frozen over, with the temperature dropping below -15C shortly after sundown... it took me a bit of convincing to realize I should stop betting on a losing horse and head south to warmer climates, especially since I would be facing even worse weather the further east I went. So I aborted the trip and head back to Istanbul. For the record, Kayseri (Caeserea) is an ancient city, with an over 50%!n(MISSING)on-muslim (mostly Armenian) population in the late 19th century. I visited the old Armenian quarter of town, and the locals told me the entire hillside was covered with caves in which the Armenians used to live. Their vineyards are slowly being taken over by concrete apartments. After returning to Istanbul I read in the paper that a boy was mauled and killed by a wolf in that very same neighborhood.

Head, please

While in Kayseri I had the pleasure of mistakenly ordering a lambs' head and then eating it. The '&' sign is liberally used in store signs, and with no apparent meaning. I, not aware of this, assumed "kelle & tava" meant "head & pan", which I interpreted as "head soup and (some sort of meat on a) pan", although it apparently meant "head on a pan". Apart from the brain (which I've never been fond of), it was actually fairly good, especially the tongue, possibly the most tasty part of all. While I ate I got to watch the guy pull lambs' heads out of a bucket, wash off the bits of blood, and put them in a large metal tray which he said would cook all night, giving us many a cooked "kelle & tava" for tomorrow's consumption.

Wrapping up in Istanbul

Getting off the train from Kayseri in Istanbul was an odd experience... the thermometer at the train station read 12C, a full 27 degrees higher than what I had been experiencing in Kayseri... regular tropical weather.
This stay in Istanbul was by far the most productive I've ever had. I got my visas to Jordan and Syria, the former in less than 10 minutes, and the latter in roughly 4 hours. When I paid 40million instead of the 160million they charge US citizens I was once again proud to be a citizen of Turkey (even though the EU doesn't love us). Both were essentially hassle-free, and (for US citizens) I hear the Syrian embassy in Istanbul doesn't require a letter of invitation from the US embassy (contrary to what your guidebook might tell you). I got pages added to my US passport (free), payed an unreasonable $70 to extend the validity of my Turkish passport for another year, which was done in 24 hours, a definite improvement over the 2 weeks it used to take. So in 5 short days I had basically finished everything I had come to accomplish. I finally gave in and started using my large 5400cubic-inch Gregory pack, something necessary albeit depressing, considering I've been fine without it for over 4 months. I packed waay too many books, and have started reading up a storm in hopes of at least finishing them before returning.

Trains and Ankara

Ankara is a dreary ugly city sitting smack in the middle of nowhere, a city that has basically sprung into some semblance of life after it was made capital of the republic some 70+ years ago. I made a stop in Ankara to see my very good friends Ender and Sinem, and got to play paintball in the 10+ hours I was there. During said game I sniped Ender right in the left eye the second he tried to peek from his shelter, something I will be proud of for a long time. From there we made a panicky dash for the train station, and I boarded the train with bare seconds to spare, completely exhausted from a week's running around and the previous night spent on the train. 22 hours (of which many were spent sleeping), and 150 pages of my book later the train pulled in to Diyarbakir, one of the centers of the Kurdish rebellion 10 or so years ago, and a city I had purposely avoided the last time I had traveled Anatolia. For unexplained reasons the train didn't have any water in its bathrooms mor a dining car, so every so often I'd dash off to fill up my water bottle when the train stopped at a station. No matter what people say, train travel is infintely preferable to buses. The two seats beside mine were empty so I prompty laid down and slept in a position roughly resembling lying down (something for which I am ever grateful).

Diyarbakir

I've only been here for a day, but I think I can say that the city doesn't live up to its hype for being dangerous. The people I met today all complained that their city (and Kurds in general) are mis-represented in the western parts of Turkey, and that the people are extremely nice and hospitable. It's hard for me, a foreigner, to tell, but I haven't had any real problems since arriving. The growing hair and beard does (as always) stand out, but I think I've found the solution in the scarf-like thing that men wear here: I'm going to try tying that up so it covers my hair and most of my beard and see if that makes me less conspicious.

There is a bit of a problem in that little kids who spot you walking down the crooked labyrinthine streets that populate the old part of the city will come running and ask for "money" (they know the english word for it). Firstly, I don't know who got them used to it, but it's a terrible habit to support. But I haven't figured out how to shake them off, so I give them tangerines whenever they flock to me. They seem quite content with that, although one boy today continued following me and asking for money until I said "ogorbe" ("goodbye" in kurdish, one of the 3 words I know), whereupon he immediately stopped, said "ogorbe" and left me alone. I'm not quite sure why that worked so well. The old city is surrounded by impressive basalt walls, occasionally with decorations, on which you can walk all around town from a position where you are the calm observer rather than the hunted observed. A plain-clothes policeman I came across on the walls told me (after telling me I looked Israeli) that it was unsafe to walk on the walls since apparently bag-snatching is a fairly common occurrence. LP also talks about attempted robberies on the walls, so the fact that I didn't feel threatened probably doesn't mean much. I've been stopped for conversation at least thrice today, most people wanting to complain about the government's attitude towards Eastern Turkey and to point out that Diyarbakir is much much safer than it used to be in its "anarchistic" (as they call it) years when apparently people would kill each other for no good reason, and the police and army terrorized the populace. A man said the surrounding villagers had all fled from the terror to Diyarbakir, and only about 15%!o(MISSING)f them had returned. The rest apparently are unemployed and lounge about in coffee shops.

Where do we go from here?

The plan is to head south to Mardin, close to the Syrian border in the next few days, spend some time soaking that in, and then finally(!) head to places where I can't speak the language, know next to nothing of the culture and customs and must rely entirely on my good luck (and others' good will) to survive. Excitement!