Friday, May 30, 2014 The day didn't start off well. I got to the bus station at around nine. The guy in the little information booth at the Urfa bus station pointed me in the direction of two booths manned by rival companies, with each booth staffed by two employees. I asked them what time they were leaving, and the men on both sides--all four of whom were yelling at me at once--assured me they were leaving on the hour at ten. The prices were the same, and the buses for both companies were big and modern looking (they had pictures posted). Yet there was clear antagonism between the rival teams, and when I resolved to go to the company on the left, I thought I'd smooth things over with the guys on my right by telling me I'd come back to Urfa with them. They were not assuages, with the guy on the left muttering to himself darkly that I 'hadn't believed him.' When the folks on my right handed over the ticket, I saw that it was for a bus leaving at 11. What happened to 10? 'We don't have one,' the guy said. Maybe I'd misunderstood them in the cacophony that had accompanied our five-way conversation a few minutes before, but I'd been pretty sure he'd said the bus was leaving at 10. I said I was sorry, but in that case I'd go with the other guys. The fellow took the news with equanimity, but the dude to my right--from whom I ended up buying the ticket--was still snarling at me as he collected my money. I told him he had an interesting way of treating his customers, and he said 'What kind of customer are you, you didn't believe me when I said he was lying about the time!' I asked him how he expected me to understand him when four people were shouting at me simultaneously. His co-worker mediated between the two of us, but it was still an unpleasant experience, if only due to the fact that almost every interaction I'd had in Urfa up to that moment had been so friendly.
The ride to Mardin was okay--it lasted two and a half hours. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the villages outside Mardin had been the scene of some pretty ugly undertakings during the struggle between the Turkish Army and the PKK. I wondered what kind of stories the hills we passed could tell. On one hillside, I saw the following words written: "Ne mutlu Türküm Dineye" (happy is s/he who calls her/himself a Turk), a common site in parts of the country where Turks are a minority. I wondered if the relative peace that this part of Turkey has known for the past decade or so would last, and if so what changes it could bring to the country as a whole.
The mosque inside the Sultan İsa medrese complex The previous day at my hotel in Urfa I'd had breakfast with a young American woman who started making categorical statements about Islam that I thought were uninformed, and I told her as such. She responded by telling me that real Turkish Muslims had said these very things to her, implying that the words of her native informants naturally trumped mine, as I'm neither Turkish nor Muslim. Sitting in the medrese waiting for these shouting and disrespectful idiots to get the hell out so I could listen again to the sound of the fountain in the stillness of the courtyard, I thought again about my conversation with this girl and wondered if these were the types of people that she had been talking to. After walking around a bit more, I sat down in a tea garden to relax and figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of the afternoon. I was a bit bummed, to tell you the truth, because I'd just read in my guidebook that the monastery I wanted to visit--known as the Deyrul Zafaran--closed at three o'clock, which meant it was too late to go check it out properly now. I was a bit annoyed with myself, and wished I'd looked at the guidebook properly before setting off to see the rest of the sites in the city. The monastery had sounded really interesting, and had been specifically recommended by an acquaintance of mine in Istanbul--a jeweler in Tesvikiye that I used to buy gold from in the 1990s, whom I'd had tea and a nice chat with when I was re-visiting my beloved old neighborhood at the outset of this trip. I was feeling a bit at loose ends--I'd already seen most of the sites and had lunch and tea. I figures I'd just walk around the town some more until my bus left at 5.30 that evening. Suddenly, I saw Veysil, a guy from the bus that I'd been chatting with, pass by the tea garden. I flagged him down, apologizing for the fact that I'd had to cut off our previous conversation suddenly as I'd gotten off at a stop ahead of his. He sat down and we talked for a while over tea, and had a lot of thoughtful things to say about growing up in a place like Mardin in the 1980s and 90s. Veysil told me that the monastery didn't close at 3 anymore, but rather was open until 6, and encouraged me to go. I wasn't sure whether to believe him--I often find that the locals I meet know less about the local attractions than the people writing the guidebooks--but figured it was worth a trip out there. Thinking it would be rude to just go and leave him so soon after inviting him to sit down to tea, I asked him if he felt like going out to the monastery with me. He took me up on the offer. Across the street from the tea garden was a taxi stand, and Veysil insisted on bargaining with the guy in Arabic while I waited. I then talked to the driver in Turkish, and we agreed on a price for him to drive us out there, wait until the tour ended, then take us back. The driver, whose name was Kemal, was a friendly enough dude, and I amused both him and Veysil with my terrible Arabic--I studied classical Arabic for a few years in graduate school, but never learned to speak it very well. Usually I'm pretty shy about speaking Arabic, but in this context--where I could insert Turkish words and phrases when needed--encouraged me to try. Amid the stunning scenery of the mountains around us and the sight of the monastery in the distance, it felt like a special moment. At the monastery, I practically had to wrestle Veysil to the ground to prevent him from buying my ticket. It turns out, he'd taken the tour several times before, and knew stuff about the monastery that he'd point out to me before our guide started speaking. The guide--touring in a group with a guide is mandatory--was really informative, and apparently was a student at the monastery. I left feeling really impressed, and very glad to have bumped into Veysil at the tea garden.
We left the monastery fifteen minutes before my bus was due to depart. Kemal stepped on the gas, and with a touch of dramatic flair skidded to a halt in front of the bus as it was parked in front of the ticket office. |
Anatolian Express XI: Amazing Mardin
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