Final day in Van

I was glad I hadn’t planned any major sightseeing, since I awoke to a dreary, rainy day. After breakfast and a short chat with Remzi, I headed into town, intent upon finding the cheese market (Van is known for its sharp, herb-laced cheese) and looking around at the city itself.

I found the cheese market down a side street filled with commercial stalls hawking tools and fabrics. Inside, the place was so clean it gleamed. The first corridor featured about a dozen stalls, each with piles of green-herb-specked cheese in buckets, eggs, and bottles of honey filling the windows. At the end of the corridor, suddenly it became the meat market that Remzi had warned me about – he said the variety of organs on display can be a bit disgusting. After about five seconds of looking, I agreed. No thank you. I turned back and set out exploring the other commercial streets in the area.

I’d been admiring the sparkling Kurdish women’s dress fabric since my time in Urfa, but I’d only seen it for sale in bolts. But here, in Van, there was an ample supply of fabric stores advertising ready made dresses. With a little bit of uncertainty, I decided to enter one and check on prices; a sparkly robe, I thought, could be a fun thing to have.

Inside the fabric store I chose at random, I encountered an old man in a suit jacket, vest, and small, jaunty cap. He looked at me, surprised, with watery blue eyes. Where are you from? he asked in Turkish. I told him. “Ahh!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together and grinning. I pointed to some of the ready made dresses along one wall and asked the price. About $20 USD he answered; that seemed more than worth it to me and I began to look. While I browsed, apparently he called some others into the store. They watched me look at the sparkling robes and underdress sets. It was hard to choose. Some of the dresses were entirely made of the sparkling material, while others featured and open robe that clasped at the front and covered over a solid or print, cotton or satiny, baggy underdress. I pulled out on of the ones that was a full dress; one of the men watching me approached. From his gesture, I got the idea he was suggesting that I not buy choose one like that. “Iraq’da,” he said. From Iraq. “Taliban. Bu Taliban,” he said pointing to another, then to me, waving his hand as if to say no. “Bu, Van’de.” This is from Van, he said, pointing to one with a satiny underdress. OK, I agreed. “I want one from Van,” I explained, and proceeded to look at ones with underdresses. That made sense.

I enlisted the help of the men and woman watching me to choose, and finally picked out a black robe with green and red velvety flowers, studded with silvery sparkles. The underdress, a baggy yet high waisted affair that I knew would be completely unflattering on me, was royal blue. I suspected I’d never ever wear the whole thing, but thought that perhaps I’d have occasion to wear the robe as a dressy jacket over evening wear. As they wrapped the dress, it occurred to me that mom’s girls at school might enjoy having a kids size one, so I asked for their help again choosing a tiny one as well.

With my purchases tucked into my bag, I headed back to the main street, where I window shopped some jewelry stores and then decided that I was a bit hungry. I’d heard Van was known for its breakfast only restaurants, where you can sample Van cheese and honey, so I chose one off the main street and ordered breakfast from the friendly but somewhat shy waiter, who was eager to know where I’m from. He suggested that in addition to the cheese I should also take kaymak and honey (clotted cream). A few minutes later I was thoroughly enjoying a plate of a thin slice of clotted cream laden with honey, spreading it onto crusty bread. I alternated it with bits of the herbed, sharp, salty cheese and sips of my tea. I complimented the waiter on the food, and he said something I didn’t understand and hurried back to the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned with another plate, this one filled with a warm paste, perhaps made of sesame. It was slightly sweet and a bit rich – really tasty with the honey and cream on the bread. This was his gift to me, and he seemed happy when I tried to explain how much I liked it.

After breakfast, I wandered over to the Van museum, a tiny place filled with Urartian artifacts. I didn’t spend much time there, although I enjoyed seeing some of the jewelry and the old kilims upstairs. Part of the upstairs gallery was devoted to skulls and bones of supposed Turks and Kurds killed by Armenians. I didn’t bother to try to read any of the labels – all my guidebooks noted this particular display was a show of propaganda. In a leaking atrium at the museum’s core, I became fascinated by a series of peculiar carved stone blocks labels as the Hakkari stele, discovered in 1998. Supposedly they were from the 15th century to the 11th century BC and are highly unusual examples from this era, according to the labels. They looked remarkably new and unworn, and had a feeling of modernity to them which made me wonder. A find like this, of so many perfectly intact unusual stele should be more famous than this, wouldn’t you think? After hearing some of my friend Sue Ann’s stories about corruption in the local museum system, I wondered what the situation with these stelae really was. I tried an internet search and came up with a few articles, mostly written by the discoverer, who said that these provided proof that Eurasian steppe peoples first came to that part of Turkey 3000 years ago. I wonder if there is some kind of political agenda at work. Something for more exploration later.

From the museum I headed back to the hotel; it was closing in on noon, and I needed to leave for the airport about 1:30. That left me plenty of time to agonize over the purchase of a kilim. I was sure that I wanted the one Van kilim, but the other one was up in the air. I debated and debated in a way that must have thoroughly annoyed Remzi and his brother; I was annoying myself, for that matter. As we chatted about things, Remzi laughed at something I said, and then shook his head, saying, “I really would like to meet your husband someday.” I must admit, “So would I” almost popped out of my mouth. Instead I managed to keep my mouth shut and take it as the compliment that it appeared to be.

What ended up transpiring was an embarrassing display of my rampant indecisiveness and frugality. I ended up offending Remzi’s brother by saying I’d take both, then getting second thoughts and questioning whether it was a good price for the one I wavered on. He ended up saying he wouldn’t sell it to me right then because he wanted me to check with my husband to be sure. Since my neighbor was heading to Van a week later, it occurred to me that Louis could pick up that one or another Van kilim I had my eye on if I decided I indeed wanted them. In a flurry, Remzi’s brother unpacked the already wrapped Persian Kurdish kilim and threw it back into the pile. I felt seriously embarrassed by my own inability to make a firm decision.

Then it was time to head in the rain to the airport. Remzi drove me; I then embarrassed myself by continually apologizing on the way for my indecisiveness. Ugh. A thought passed through my mind that I was happy to be getting home to my husband so he could talk some sense into me. I had to remind myself again that there was no husband waiting in my flat in Ankara. I think I am beginning to show wear and tear from the constant influx of new and strange experiences here.

The flight was eventful only in that it was filled with young soldiers who clearly had not had much opportunity to fly. The slightest things excited them. A few hours later I was back at the flat, checking emails and admiring the dresses and kilim I’d bought. I was really happy I bought the carpet – I love it and it is a good souvenir. My thoughts also turned to the success of the phantom husband enterprise. Not only did it allow me to let my guard down a bit, it also was good for me to see that people, strangers, would actually believe that I have a husband. I am used to thinking that people would find that utterly laughable; however they did not. For me this was a sign of some kind of personal growth in self-assessment.

My favorite little guy was the one in front, the little mouse.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Self timer shot with Sevgi. I practically fell running down the hill to make it there in time.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Another of the castle ruins.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Van Castle.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Urartian writing.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The School Visit

I hurried to dress and eat breakfast, and by 8 a.m. I was outside the hotel waiting for Sevgi. And waiting. And waiting. I finally sent a text message (in Turkish, which seemed to be the best way for us to communicate). She said she was coming. I headed back inside to wait in the lobby. Remzi arrived, and we chatted for a while. I was trying to explain that we’d gone to play pool, but he kept thinking we’d been playing either the saz or the violin. A major miscommunication on our part!
When Sevgi finally arrived, we walked several blocks and boarded a crowded dolmus to head to the school. I was really looking forward to the visit – I’d been wanting to go to a school for the last few months, but it has been a bit difficult to arrange. Their school was out near the airport, right across the street actually, with views of the lake and the mountains. Yet the school itself, I discovered, was rather grungy, a sterile concrete multi-story building. As we approached the gate, the uniformed school children, younger ones in blue smocks with white collars and older ones in suits or skirts and sweaters, clustered around to greet us. I recognized one boy from the handball team. He grinned up at me. Sevgi led me across the school yard, an ever increasing escort of children following us. Our first stop, inside, was the smokey faculty room, filled with suited men talking in clusters and women chatting in the corner. Everyone was drinking tea. Sevgi announced my presence and told me to sit down. My eyes were already burning from the smoke, and I hoped we’d leave soon for one of the classrooms. After sitting there and drinking a cup of tea, watching the teachers interact while the children played outside largely unsupervised, Sevgi announced that she had a class to go to. We climbed up to the top story, my smoke filled lungs feeling like they were on fire, and headed down the dim hallway to a classroom echoing with noise. The children in this class were about 12 or 13, and upon our entrance initially they ran to their seats. There were more than forty of them in the class.

However, the initial calm quickly faded; something Sevgi said gave them the idea that it was ok to get up from their seats and mob me. During this outpouring of I don’t know what, Sevgi asked for my camera and snapped a few pictures. It felt like every kid wanted a piece of me – I’ve visited schools in many places in the world, and it was never quite like this. I felt vulnerable and intimidated, the chaos was so utter and Sevgi’s lack of control so complete. My head began to ring from the noise. I asked her to get them to sit down; eventually they did, and then sang me a song. Then she gave them permission to ask some questions, in Turkish. Which country do you like more, America or Turkey? Which country is more beautiful, America or Turkey? Which country is the best, America or Turkey? “They’re the same,” I shouted weakly into the din, at a loss at how to handle this encounter. One boy asked another question: “How can you say that they are the same. Your country makes wars. Our country does not.” I felt a sudden wave of anger at this young boy. Yes, my country makes wars, but so does his – and a kid who grew up in this part of the country, which was under military rule and torn by an unnamed civil war, should know that. Besides, in a country so proud of its hospitality, why would a school kid be so confrontational towards a foreign guest? I tried, though my Turkish failed me, to make the point that a government is different from a nation and its people. I don’t think they got it. The boy smiled up at me – I stepped back and realized that he didn’t really mean anything by it. I suppose.

Sevgi then decided she should start the lesson. She’s an art teacher – and I was looking forward to seeing what that would be like. She told the children to take out their art books and stepped to the blackboard. With chalk, she drew four squares, and colored in each one with varying degrees of shading. That was the lesson. The children were supposed to copy it, which they set to doing with little enthusiasm. She let some of them come up to the front to show me their books. Smiling from ear to ear, the kids all clustered around me, proudly showing me pages of art books, each profoundly identical. There was almost no way to distinguish between one child’s and the next. I repeatedly muttered the same compliment over and over again, “Cok guzel” very beautiful. I felt my energy draining away. Meanwhile, total chaos began to return to the classroom as they all wanted their pictures taken.

Soon, though it was over. The lesson was 40 minutes long, followed by a 10 to fifteen minute recess. The kids filled the hallways, shouting and running. Sevgi led me back to the smoky faculty room and introduced me to a few more people. Outside the window, the children wrestled and jumped and screamed and seemed to have lost all control. This break, Sevgi introduced me to some of the kindergarten teachers, who were dressed in white medical jackets. One woman’s face looked young, but something was funny about her, I couldn’t quite figure out what. I wondered if she was wearing a wig.

Another bell rang, and Sevgi and I headed upstairs to disperse the pictures of the handball team I’d brought. One by one we wandered into different classrooms, handing out the photos and starting chaotic riots in each one. One classroom we entered was a crazy scene even before we arrived. There was no teacher present, and the kids were literally on top of the desks and wrestling in corners when we stepped in.

All the kids from the handball team looked different, especially the boys who had to wear the very feminine blue smocks with white embroidered collars. Actually, I didn’t see any of the girls; from talking with Sevgi I learned that the girls’ team was from a different school. Only the boys were at Suphan Primary school.

Soon enough, there was yet another break and recess. I felt disjointed by all this stopping of the daily flow. The kids poured into the hallways and flowed out into the yard. Sevgi this time took me to Ercan’s office. He explained that he wasn’t a teacher, but is the assistant principal. We sat in his office while he looked at the pictures, and he agreed to deliver the ones to the girls since he knows the teachers from that school. He yelled out into the hall for a student to bring us tea, and a few minutes later a child appeared toting teas for us all. Another bell rang, and Sevgi said she was heading to another class, and that she’d return in a little while to pick me up. I couldn’t quite understand the flow of this day. It seemed like the kids were never ever in class.

Left alone in the office, I realized I had nothing to say to Ercan. He was a really good looking guy, but clearly had quite an ego. He seemed particularly disturbed by the fact that, though I had his number from our meeting in Urfa, I’d called Sevgi instead. Of course I called the woman instead – calling him might have been interpreted as an advance of some sort.

As we sat there not saying much, two fifteen or so year old girls came in. They wanted some kind of note of excuse, but he first declined. Then the older looking, prettier of the two girls turned on the charm and argued her case very flirtatiously. Her friend kept looking at me, seeming annoyed at this performance. I wondered if Ercan would fall for it. Indeed, she stroked his ego perfectly, and soon she had the permission she wanted. This school was really not what I expected.

Again alone, Ercan turned to me and tried to say something in English but it didn’t come out making much sense. He asked to see my dictionary, looked up a word, and pronounced to me, “Sorry. I am not interested you.”

“Efendim?” I asked – pardon me?

“I not interested you. I am sorry.” He repeated, looking at me apologetically.

That was fine. But it seemed an unusual pronouncement. I reached for the dictionary and asked him to show me the entry for what he was trying to say. It was one of lose Turkish words that has multiple widely different meanings in English. This one also meant, among other things, “to pay attention to.” Apparently he was trying to apologize for not paying me enough attention.

No problem I said. A few minutes later Ercan said he’d take me to Sevgi’s classroom. This room was filled with much older kids – some of them appeared to be in their late teens. Sevgi had told me that the school’s 800 students ranged in age from 5 to 20, but I thought there was some misunderstanding. But some of these boys could have been close to twenty, though others were far younger, no more than 13 or 14.

Sevgi directed me to sit at the table around which the students clustered. They all wielded X-acto knives and were hacking at strips of cardboard trying to cut repeating heart shapes out of each scored side. Apparently they would be making identical pencil holders from the cardboard. This class was a bit smaller, so I didn’t feel as overwhelmed. They began to ask me questions: “Do you know Kurdish?” one hissed at me. I glanced towards Sevgi; she seemed to have intentionally turned away. Another asked the same thing. “We’re Kurdish,” one boy said, gesturing towards himself and some other boys. I didn’t quite know how to respond. They started instead asking me questions about America. I’d taken a map, figuring that I might get to make some presentations. That was clearly not going to happen, but I pulled it out to show the kids where I was from.

Sevgi said to stay with her class, and that she’d return soon. Then she left. How peculiar, I thought, to leave a class of students alone with a stranger, to leave me alone with a bunch of unfamiliar kids.

We continued to talk a bit, about different states in the US. We live in Kurdistan, one said. Sevgi returned, and sat down across from me. In front of the kids she started asking me all kinds of mostly unintelligible questions about what I would do with the photos I took. As I began to better understand what she was saying, I realized she was telling me, primarily, that I should not share the photos with newspapers or magazines. I wouldn’t do that, I said. She told me again. And again. The kids stared at me. I felt annoyed. She explained that the principal would fire her if I published any photos. I won’t, I assured her. I won’t. Then the bell went off and the kids started to fly out of the room and into the hall.

I followed Sevgi back to the progressively smokier faculty room and drank my sixth or seventh cup of tea for the day. A teacher who spoke a bit more English had joined us in the corner. Sevgi brought up the photos again, this time in front of the teachers. I felt a wave of anger, and asked if I was causing problems. No, they assured me, but then proceeded to ask again if I was going to put the photos in a magazine. No, I said, trying to be even more emphatic. “But you can’t put them in a newspaper,” said the teacher who spoke some English. “I understand!” I snapped; how many times did I need to say this! I think she is angry, Sevgi said in Turkish.

I agreed. Yes, I was angry. I won’t print the photos, I said. Three of them told me again that I shouldn’t put the photos in a newspaper. “I won’t!” God. I asked if I should leave the school -- maybe it would be better, I said. No No…no problem, they all reassured me, repeating again to themselves that I was angry. I looked up “spy” in my dictionary and said that I am not one. And I said it again. They laughed and said they knew that. But you can’t put the photos in a newspaper. The principal said so. I was utterly frustrated. My temper had frayed. I told them that it wasn’t very hospitable to treat me this way. I said I wouldn’t print the photos and I won’t. No newspapers. No magazines. I’m not a spy.

But just don’t put them in a magazine, because it will be trouble.

I took a deep breath. I explained that I have been in schools in many parts of the world. I have taken photos. There has never been a problem. Ever. In fact, I continued, I was in the USSR before the end of communism, went to schools, took photos, and there was no problem. But in Turkey…. I left my sentence hanging, not knowing how to finish it. “Turkey is different,” I finally managed. They all looked at me. There was silence.

“I’m not a spy,” I said in English, sulking. My feelings were hurt.

“It’s Turkey. Yes, Turkey is different. It is Turkey,” hissed Sevgi in a whisper. “Of course it is like this.” Another teacher nodded emphatically. The teacher who I suspected was wearing a wig yanked at her hair. “It is Turkey and I wear this,” she said. I didn’t understand what she meant. Sevgi made a gesture indicating a headscarf. She wears a scarf, she said, but she isn’t allowed to in school. Headscarves in universities, schools, and government offices are strictly forbidden. So in order not to show her hair, this young woman wears a wig. I’d heard of this but never actually noticed it before. I’ve seen young women from METU putting on their headcoverings on the dolmus after we pass through the gates. I understood what they were saying. “This is Turkey,” Sevgi repeated.

The break ended. All the teachers got up, and one of the kindergarten teachers told me to come with her to see her kids. You can take as many photos as you want, she said.

This class was an entirely different experience. We entered the room; the kids were in there without any supervision, but the class only numbered about 8 or 9. They were adorable. The teacher explained who I was in Turkish so slow and simple that I understood it as well as English. The kids looked at me wide-eyed. One little guy, a little mouse of a kid, looked completely lost and seemed younger than the others. The teacher told them to get out a math activity -- as I watched I realized they were doing math activities with manipulatives…my mom would be happy. The teacher sung things out and repeated the numbers and the lesson seemed to be really quite good. While the kids continued the activity for a few minutes, talking quietly and constructively among themselves, the teacher explained that all the children were Kurdish and came to school unable to speak Turkish. The class was small because this is when they teach them the official language. The one little boy seemed so lost because he doesn’t understand Turkish enough yet; he’s only four and new to the class. I took a few pictures of them, focusing of course on the one little guy who had stolen my heart. He smiled at me, finally seeming to realize he was getting attention. After a few minutes the teacher told them to clean up, and one dropped a bunch of the counting beans onto the floor. The kids wrestled with each other on the floor to sweep up the fallen items – kids are kids.

Another end of the period. They seemed to go so fast. All the kids were out in the school yard again. When are they in class, I wondered. They aren’t, really. They come to class for 35-40 minutes, have the lesson, whatever that is, and then get released again for 10 – 15 minutes. Sevgi said that the kids were going home. For lunch, I asked? No. For the day. It was noon. Apparently because the school is large, they have two sessions, 7:30 – 12:00 and 12:30 to 5:00. Entirely different students come for each. So they are in school for 4 and half hours only, and nearly an hour of that time gets taken up by the various recesses. And art classes of utter uselessness. I found it profoundly depressing. How was anything going to get any better if this is what it was like?

We lingered around the faculty room and outside for a while longer, and I was trying to think of a way to gracefully leave. Then Sevgi said her day was over too. She’d take me to Van Castle, which was one of the places I still wanted to see. I agreed, and soon she’d found a friend to take us by car; we piled in – I sat in the back and noticed that he had screwdrivers stuck in the window to hold up the glass.

I felt drained and utterly sapped of energy. I was glad to leave the school – it wasn’t the feel good visit that I expected, and I was surprised by the level of my disappointment. I zoned out in the back as we sped past the airport and past a sign directing drivers towards Iran. Suddenly I realized I couldn’t pick up any words. Were they speaking Kurdish?

Sevgi noticed, it seemed, that I’d suddenly started paying attention. “Kris,” she managed in English, “we speak Kurdish. We Kurds.” Hmm. Somehow this changed things a bit. I could ask different questions now. “What percent of kids in the school are Kurdish?” I asked. 80, she said. Hmm. So, do Kurds like America? Within seconds, both were nodding – “Dost” the guy said, letting go of the steering wheel to hold up two fingers pressed together. “Dost.” Friendship.

The day was getting more interesting.

It took more than 20 minutes to get to the castle, which stood high on a prominent rock outcropping at the lakeside, beyond the main section of new Van. Old Van stood between the castle and the lake, but only a few structures remain. What happened in Van earlier in the century is subject to much debate – historically it was a primarily Armenian city; Old Van was destroyed in 1915 and the new town, with a much smaller population, rebuilt where Van now stands.

Moisture laden clouds hung heavily in the sky; the friend let us out of the car and drove off. We walked in towards the castle, but Sevgi decided first to take me to a house museum. Inside, as we admired old kilims and furniture, Sevgi made mention of people who were Armenian who converted to Islam; she might have said that some of her family met this description. But she also called herself Kurdish. I didn’t know what to make of this, and I never will. It’s not easy to grasp the complexity of these issues here.

From here, we headed up to the castle itself, a rather strenuous walk up the steep paths. The caretaker led us and some others who were visiting to the Urartian king’s tomb, chiseled into the rock face on one side of the cliff. The walls were carved with endless cuneiform writing; inside the tomb there were few lights so it was hard to get a sense for it.

We continued to climb around the castle ruins, which date from the Urartian era about 800 or 700 BC. Sevgi and I had a good time. My Turkish was loosening up considerably, and we were more able to understand each other. I tried to explain to her my anger of the pictures – to make sure she understood I hadn’t been angry at her but at the situation. After I explained she told me in Turkish, “You are like a Kurd. You understand.” I didn’t expect such a comment.

The views from atop the castle were stunning, despite the brooding weather. The clouds hung heavily, but still didn’t manage to completely obscure the mountains encircling the Lake. I imagine that on a beautiful day it would be breathtaking.

We climbed some more, Sevgi in stocking feet since she took off her high heeled boots in order to be able to scale the ruins. At one point, Sevgi urged me up into the ruins of an old minaret; the heavy winds terrified me and I wasn’t so happy about scaling up the dusty spiral stairs. But the view was intriguing. Again, I found it terrifying in general to be up there – there is no railing or any kind of blockade along the edge of the ridge, and some of the cliffs drop straight down. I wouldn’t take a little kid up there without precautions.

It was beginning to rain, so Sevgi and I headed down the mountainside and walked down the long road to the main street, where we hailed a dolmus and climbed on. Instead of taking us directly into the main section of town, the dolmus wound through a rather dilapidated neighborhood that offered me a window into what the lives of some of Van’s poorer residents must be like.

Once we reached the main street, Sevgi led me through the rain to a restaurant. People there seemed to know her well. She chatted in Kurdish to the waiter, who recommended that we both get a certain stew. We munched away trying to chat, although we grabbed for the dictionary often. I got her laughing by telling her the story of the male teacher Ercan saying that he wasn’t interested instead of that he wasn’t paying attention. She doesn’t much like him. She also said that about half the teachers at the school are Kurdish, half Turkish, but that most of the leadership, like Ercan, is Turkish. But, she explained, the teachers all get along. She did describe the kindergarten teacher as one of the most ardently nationalist of the Turkish teachers at the school; I hoped I hadn’t offended her.

At one point, someone greeted me from behind, and I was startled to see the guy from the day before – the Bush lover. We exchanged a few words before he joined his friends, who were equally as intense looking. A few tables away they talked intently, waving their hands and gesturing wildly as they spoke.

I couldn’t quite understand why we were waiting at the restaurant for so long. Apparently, I gathered from Sevgi’s explanation, we were waiting for her friend to come with a car so that we could visit the ferry dock and drive to Edremit, a lakeside down near to Van. We waited for a long time: for a while I thought we were holding out for the end of the waiter’s shift, but that wasn’t the case. Eventually, after we laughed and tried to talk for well over an hour after we finished eating (she thinks I am a good observer of people’s characters), she got a cell phone call and said it was time. We went down to the street and she led me toward a rather fancy car with tinted back windows. She hopped in the front, I in the bank, and her friend introduced himself. He was wearing a formal suit, and I got some pretty serious mafia vibe from him (the tinted windows didn’t help the situation) but I shrugged it off. We headed out of town, after a quick stop at the hotel for me to grab a sweater.

We took off driving back through town towards the castle and past it, out to the ferry dock where a rail ferry lands after making the four hour trek across Lake Van. There was a boat there, with rail cars already loaded on. We paused to examine the castle through a man’s telescope, and then walked around for a few minutes. There was a nice view, I suppose, but the weather at that point wasn’t good enough to really enjoy it.

Then we climbed back into the car and drove around the edge of the lake for a really long time – they were taking me to Edremit. The sun was setting, and, despite the clouds, it was still beautiful. They talked and sucked down cigarettes in the front seat, and I began to feel a little sick from all the smoke in the closed car. The ride would have been much nicer had I not been hemmed in by the dark tinted windows in the back. I shifted my placement so that I could see better, and they finally realized that their whole plan to drive me the scenic route had been undermined by the windows. They laughed and laughed, but didn’t have me switch to the front!

We stopped off along one scenic pull off point to take some photos. I got to stick my hand in the lake, and it was surprisingly warm. Its alkalinity gave the water a smooth, almost chalky feel that I didn’t expect.

We climbed back into the car. Sevgi kept saying we’d go back to her house to have dinner, but my stomach was churning from our late lunch and it was nearly 8. I was happy just to go back to the hotel. But there seemed to be no convincing her. To make conversation, I asked how they knew each other. Sevgi answered, and from what I gathered, she’d only met him in the restaurant that day. I asked her to repeat, and got the same idea again. So, I’d been driving around the lake in the car of a total stranger? That she’d just met?

As full darkness fell we cruised along. Those two in the front talked back and forth; I wasn’t paying much attention to what they were saying, but suddenly, after he said something, I sensed tension. Serious tension. There was silence and a definite sudden coldness in the car.

He insisted on stopping for some tea, although we both said we’d prefer just to get back.Turning the car in the other direction, he drove us into the parking lot of a lakeside hotel. Grudgingly, I followed them in. Just before we got to the door, Sevgi whispered, “Who is he? I don’t like this guy.” What was going on? I suspected he’d just made some kind of advance on her, and I was a bit uneasy.

We sat in the lobby of the hotel – there was a funny chemical smell like fresh paint or shellac, and I really wanted to get out of there. I ordered soda instead of tea. The guys working in the hotel seemed to know our driver well, and I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t really want anything to drink, and I’d kind of had enough. So, I started to lay the groundwork for departing and going straight to the hotel; I explained that I felt ill. Sevgi said she felt ill too. The sleazy guy ordered us all more tea.
I sighed. This was not going well. I refused to touch the tea; refused to eat the chocolate truffles he ordered. Instead, I kept repeating that I felt terrible and needed to go to the hotel. Eventually it worked. We got in the car and after a silent ride, I was bidding goodbye in front of my lodging. I worried a bit about leaving Sevgi alone with the guy, and managed to subtly ask if it was ok. She said yes, and we hugged. It had been an interesting visit.

Inside the lobby I sat and had some tea with Remzi and chatted, then suggested I take a quick look at his brother’s carpet shop. I was interested, possibly, in a local kilim. The visit ended up blowing into an hour or two of leafing through carpets – some were beautiful, and I identified a few that I might consider, if I had a day to think about it. Remzi was amused by some of my comments on the carpets (for instance when I pointed out some small uneven weaves and said that it looked like the person got tired). I said, also, that I needed to check with my husband. The phantom husband could be a good excuse on the carpet buying too. I extricated myself from the sales pitch by saying that I needed to go up to the room and call my husband. It sounded utterly natural – so natural that when I got to my room, I actually took out the phone. Wait, I reminded myself. No husband to call. That is the funny thing about lying. You start to believe it.

The car trip.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Kids with bows. AF memorial.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

View from Hosap.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Hosap from a distance.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Boy on the boat.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Another one.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Too beautiful.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The mountains in the distance.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Akdamar on approach.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The beautiful setting.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

David and Goliath, Adkamar Kilesi
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The Armenian church, 1000 years old.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Akdamar Island, almond trees in bloom.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Boat to Akdamar Island.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Wanderings around Van (tanks included free)

After a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby, I met up with Remzi and we headed out to his car to begin our day tour of some of the sights in the area. Speeding along on the road out of town, we soon were skirting along Lake Van towards the ferry terminal for Akdamar Island. The weather was OK – although it was slightly more hazy than I would have liked. Tall, snow-capped mountains encircled the opaque, glistening lake, and I quietly stared out the window admiring the scenery, a soundtrack of Kurdish music blaring from the car stereo.

For a while we took an inland route along winding roads past small towns; the ferry dock was about 45 minutes or so away, and there we would board a small boat that would make the 5 km run out to Akdamar Island. Remzi had warned me that we could have to wait up to an hour for the boat to fill; otherwise, they might leave sooner but I would have to shoulder the payment for a boat full of people. Better to wait.
Our route once again began to hug the coastline, and soon Remzi pointed out the boat dock off in the distance. As we drew closer, I noticed that we were beginning to speed up. Remzi squinted off into the distance and said, “I think the boat is leaving!” He gunned the engine and we flew forward – indeed the boat seemed to be full of people and pulling away from the dock. He began to honk the horn, and as we skidded up to the small terminal building, the boat stopped and began to back towards the dock again. We’d made it. Remzi sent me to the boat and went ahead and parked the car. Within a minute or so we were slipping across the lake toward the distant island.

Akdamar Island is one of Van’s major tourist sites – and it is a popular location for locals to take picnics. Most of the others on the boat were local people loaded down with picnic goods and grills planning to spend the day at the island. The main attractions here are the views -- mountains all around, the alkaline lake’s glowing blue, and the natural features of the small island itself – and the old Armenian church that represents the only human structure there. As we cruised along, I snapped photos of the water’s unusual color, and admired the mountains that seemed to rise from the shore every direction I looked. A man about sixty years old approached me and wanted to know where I am from. I told him and he was very excited; subsequently he went around the boat telling everyone else that I was an American, and everyone was looking at me and talking.

As we approached the island, I saw that it was covered with green grass and trees in bloom with white and pink flowers. This is definitely the season to visit Akdamar. Remzi said the sweet smelling trees are almond trees, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before; they were stunning.

As the boat docked, we climbed off amidst the locals toting grills, baskets, and blankets for their picnics and made our way up the flowering embankment towards the church. Wow, I kept thinking. I am so glad I came here. Everything about the island was gorgeous; everywhere I looked I was awed. As we began our lecture about the church, I realized that two teenage boys were following us around curious about me. They tracked our every step for about a half an hour as we circled the church admiring its architecture and its relief carvings. At one point during our visit, the man from the boat came over and took a bunch of photos of me, Remzi, the boys, and the church with his camera phone. He even leaned in and took one of the two of us together. Remzi seemed to find him amusing.

The church was once part of a monastery complex that stood on the island. It was constructed by the ruler of an Armenian kingdom between 915 and 921 AD, but despite its age, the relief carvings of biblical and local scenes that cover the walls of the church are still for the most part crisp. Compact and symmetrical, the church reflects common Armenian style. Though representing Jonah and the whale, Abraham and Isaac, and David and Goliath, the reliefs feature dress styles from the medieval era in which they were carved. Elaborate crosses and inscriptions in Armenian pepper the walls, and a beautiful frieze of intertwined foliage and human forms shows scenes of local life such as farmers harvesting. Inside the gloomy church, much of the artwork has been either defaced by vandals or damaged by time. It’s in serious need of conservation and restoration work, which I’ve heard from several sources is coming down the pike.

After the tour, Remzi gave me some free time to wander around the island and take pictures. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. The almond trees scented the air, and temperature was perfect, crisp and springlike but not too hot. More children came up and began to pick flowers for me, and eventually their mothers came over as well. They really wanted me to eat and drink tea with them in their picnic area, but Remzi suggested that we should take the next boat back if we were going to accomplish all the sightseeing we’d planned. I debated for a second and then decided I should get going. We had the boat mostly to ourselves on the way back; a huge group of French tourists had arrived, so I was glad we’d gotten there early and were finishing our visit. My tradition of having places to myself continues.

A little boy on the boat ride back was making us all laugh. He was hot, so he took off his shirt, revealing a muscle undershirt. Somehow that seemed to make him feel manly, so he started doing incredible hulk style poses and roars, and eventually darted up to the roof of the boat and proceeded to flex his muscles next to the Turkish flag.

Back on the dock, I waited around a little while Remzi ran an errand for a friend, and then we headed via car towards our next stop, the Urartian ruins of Cavustepe, on the road to Hakkari. The scenery became isolated and desolate, with tawny mountains and small villages of low mudbrick houses. We’d drive for miles without seeing another car. It felt like we were on the edge of the world. After a while of cruising along through the empty landscape, we made a right turn onto a small gravel road and wound our way up the side of a steep, rugged mountain ridge. Remzi pulled the car to a stop, and announced that this was Cavustepe. There didn’t appear to be much remaining there besides some scattered ruins, but the view was astounding. To one side, I could see snow capped mountains; to the other, a series of rolling hills was punctuated by a ragged black mountain ridge poking up in the distance.
An old man appeared from a small outbuilding alongside the ruins. Remzi chatted with him for a while, and then we began our tour. Despite the grand view and the fact that we were scaling around a royal palace built between 764 and 735 BCE, it was not the most pleasant experience due to gale force winds that buffeted us back and forth across the narrow, guardrail-less outcropping. At some moments, I was fearful of getting thrown off the mountain as they might have done in Urartian times for purposes of sacrifice. We tried to find sheltered spots amidst the remains of grain storage bins and the basalt blocks that were the sole lingering elements of the temple area, but no matter where we stood, the wind was fierce. Remzi pointed out the cuneiform writing of the Urartian alphabet, its ordered, rhythmic forms parading across the great basalt blocks. He also warned me not to fall into the gaping holes leading to massive cisterns, dangerous drops straight down.

We stopped briefly in the old man’s shop; he carves the Urartian alphabet onto basalt jewelry, slabs and other small items that can be sold for souvenirs. He was an interesting man – he’s learned the alphabet apparently and has worked in the little house carving for decades. I ended up buying a small knife labeled with Urartian for the chief god and goddess names, as well as the artisan’s name, too.

We drove back down the hill and continued through the desolate scenery towards Hosap Kalesi, a medieval Kurdish fortress. The road became more winding, with broad curves snaking past low round peaks and a dammed reservoir. The traffic along this stretch was increasing – alternately, trucks passed us and we sped by trucks. Remzi explained that the Hakkari road is another main smuggling and trade route.

We were stopped briefly at a rather large jandarma checkpoint, but we didn’t have to show our IDs here. I did notice, though, that Remzi turned off the Kurdish music as we passed through.

The landscape slowly became slightly more populated, and soon we were atop a gradual hill that led into heavily trafficked valley. The crags of towering Hosap Castle towered on a rock pinnacle above a busy road, strips of small businesses, and village homes. Remzi pulled off the side of the road into a parking lot at a petrol station and said it was the best place for a photo. As I got out of the car, though, and readied myself to take the shot, suddenly he shouted at me to stop. To our left was a large Jandarma post, and he wanted to make sure that I did not include any part of it in my photo. Taking jandarma images is strictly prohibited by the Turkish government, and he didn’t want to push our luck. I framed the photos to make sure the castle appeared with no sign of a jandarma presence, and climbed back into the car.

As we drove into Guzelsu, the Turkish name for this Kurdish town (both Hosap and Guzel Su mean Beautiful Water – there is a small stream running through the area), I noticed how busy and crowded the businesses lining each side of the street were. Remzi asked if I wanted to stop for lunch, and I said yes, as long as it wasn’t a lengthy affair. He said we could just stop in at a small local place; nothing fancy. So we pulled up along side a bunch of trucks and headed into the tiny lokanta.

Inside, the place was clean and cool, with bright blue walls and neat rows of tables. In one corner, a man served up ready made food from heated trays, mostly various kinds of stew. Behind the steam trays, a big wok-like tray offered steaming meat stew, and I chose that – it looked similar to a food I’d had in Dogubayazit, which Zafer said was typically Kurdish. Soon we were seated at a table in the back, with heaping plates of meat stew steaming in front of us. By this point we’d been joined by a friend from Remzi’s village, and they chatted in Kurdish as we ate and drank cokes. The meat was oily but very tasty, and I realized that I was more hungry than I thought. When it came time to pay the bill, I pulled out my wallet, but the waiter came up and said something to Remzi in Kurdish. He shrugged and gestured for me to put my wallet away. “That’s Kurdish hospitality. He says it would be shameful to let you pay.” It wasn’t clear to me whether Remzi paid for my meal or whether it was courtesy of the house; either way, I got a really good free lunch.

Remzi said goodbye to his friend and we climbed back into the car (waiting a few minutes until they found the drivers of two different trucks that had us parked in among the chaos that doubled as a parking lot.) It took a few minutes to work our way through the commercial strip – it had the feel of a border town, with smuggling trucks making multiple lanes where there should only have been one or two, a constant soundtrack of honking, and the buzz of commerce and tea drinking all around. I didn’t see any women at all around there, and I was really glad that I’d arranged to go with Remzi instead of by myself.

We circled through a village that clung to the base of the castle’s towering rock base, and I noticed Kurdish women washing carpets that they’d spread on the ground. They were scouring them with sudsy water and sponges, their colorful clothes catching the light of the sun.

After parking near the entry, which we reached by twisting up a series of switchback roads, we headed into the round turret and through the dark interior into the castle grounds. Remzi explained that Hosap was built for Suleyman Mahmudi, a Kurdish leader/warlord type of the 1640s. The site offered strategic views of the entire region, and the fortress once boasted several hundred rooms. Now, though basically only the major walls remained, but the site was evocative and thrilling; from our perch up there we could see sweeping views on every side, and also ponder the certain death that might result from any slip of foot near the edges that opened to sheer drops down the cliff to the town below.

We spent a lot of time wandering around the ruins and I took a lot of photos. The amount of climbing needed was more than I expected, and I realized I was getting pretty fatigued. Once again, there were no other tourists there, so I felt I had the place to myself. Here I felt I got a sense of what live might have been like in this wild region several centuries ago. Hovering above a small village of mudbrick houses to the east of the castle, the old, eroding protective walls formed a stegosaurus-like ridge of ragged pinkish forms.

We made our way down from the castle and Remzi stopped to give some candy to two boys who approached the car with homemade bows. I asked if I could take their pictures, and they grinned while I shot and then showed them the image. Remzi drove back past the women still scrubbing their carpets and then told me that we’d stop to have some tea in the truck-laden commercial strip. He navigated into a makeshift parking space and we got out; immediately I felt out of place. Definitely the only woman around, I was drawing stares. Remzi led me to a table and stool outside a tea house and directed me to sit. It was highly unusual. I would never ever try to sit at a place like that if I weren’t with a local man. Never. Some of Remzi’s friends approached, and the conversation that ensued in Kurdish was clearly about me. The men pulled up stools and joined me at the table. Someone shouted for some tea, and soon we were sipping away. One of the men sitting next to me was staring at my face as if I were an alien. He was only about two feet away, so it was incredibly awkward, and I tried to look everywhere possible but back at him. A young boy came up and Remzi introduced him as a local young singer of Kurdish music.

Sitting there was incredibly noisy. Traffic was moving slowly, and everyone was honking. Part of the problem was the stream of jandarma tanks – yes tanks – trundling along the street, each with a soldier peeking out the top shifting the artillery aim from one side of the road to the other. Much of the business along this strip, apparently, was in bootleg petrol. Each time a jandarma vehicle came along, the men would start shouting to the customers who were funneling petrol into their cars. Those putting in the petrol would glance at the jandarma, stop, and put the funnels and hoses behind their backs until the jandarma passed, trying rather unsuccessfully to look nonchalant. I turned to Remzi and asked him about it, utterly confused by the obviousness and openness of a clearly illegal activity. He shrugged and said that at this point the jandarma knows they can’t stop it; they only ask that the people not do it blatantly in front of the soldiers out of respect for the authority. So they stop momentarily and tuck the equipment behind their back until the jandarma have moved out of direct eyeshot.

That, apparently, was what we were sitting there waiting for too; eventually Remzi explained that he was waiting for someone to come with our petrol. Although I felt just about as utterly out of place as I have ever felt in my life, I could feel my heart racing a bit from the frontier feel and sense that I was pushing the limits just a little bit. Suddenly another guy rushed up to the table, greeted Remzi with a kiss on each cheek, and then swept a stool from another table and settled in directly across from me. He was extremely tall and strong looking, with wild longish black hair, thick stubble pricking through his cheeks, and startlingly green, intense eyes. Remzi introduced him as his cousin, although I must say there was little similarity in either physical appearance or demeanor. Remzi seemed like a tame tiny kitten compared to this man.

Though the rapid fire conversation that ensued was in Kurdish, I knew that it clearly concerned me: I kept hearing the word American peppering their speech. The new guy’s penetrating, direct, bullet-like gaze made me nervous, so I tried not to look in his direction either. With the one next to me fixated on my face, and the guy across boring into me with his wild intensity, I realized that my only choices were to stare at Remzi (which seemed odd as well) or to stare at my empty tea glass perched on the low table top. I dropped my head to the tea, but I could still feel their looks.

“I’ll go get the petrol now,” Remzi said. “Stay here.” When he left, another guy came up to the table. He asked the others about me; I heard the big, intense guy explain who I was, despite the Kurdish, since he mentioned American and the name of my University job. Then I felt the conversation directed towards me, in Turkish. The cousin said, “So, you are American.” It hung there for a second while I looked up at him, then away immediately with the confrontation in his stare. “Evet (yes),” I mumbled, feeling distinctly nervous. There was a silence, and then the guy burst into a grin. In simple Turkish he exclaimed, “I really love America. I LOVE America.” “Really?” I asked – this was somehow not what I was expecting. “George Bush is wonderful. I love George Bush. George W. Bush. Very good man.” He continued to drill into me with his wild eyes, but my surprise led me to stare back, directly. I was not at all prepared for this particular encounter. “I don’t like him,” I disagreed. “Why do you like him?”

This question sparked a rant – one unlike any I have encountered elsewhere in Turkey. In a country where a recent survey ranked Turkey the highest in anti-Bush feeling, with 82% opposed to him, this man launched into a passionate pro-Bush diatribe that praised him more whole-heartedly than anyone I have ever heard – even in the US during the Republican Convention. He loves Bush more than Laura Bush does. He loves the Iraq War; he loves Bush’s leadership in the war. He kept talking about the “dost” or friendship between Americans and the Kurds. He kept calling Bush “Baba Bush” – Daddy Bush, and saying that he was going to help the Kurdish cause the world over. Taken aback, but as usual totally unable to hold back my opinions, I began to offer my own objections to all the things he held so dear. This provoked him into more impassioned speech in defense of Baba B, explaining his expectation that this administration will conquer Iran, Syria, and Turkey in addition to Iraq, acting in dost towards the Kurds. I vehemently disagreed with the idea that a move like that would be a good idea, and he lunged back with more praise of Bush and America. I realized I probably should not be having this argument under these particular circumstances. I started just saying OK back to whatever he said, although, from what I could understand, he was going more and more off the deep end. This guy is more than a little militant, I thought, as I glanced around to check on Remzi’s progress with the bootleg petrol. They’d stopped momentarily as a massive tank rolled past; a boyish Turkish soldier peeking out the top handled the fixed machine gun and surveyed the area from his perch. He saw me and we made eye contact for a second –upon spotting me, sitting there outside a tea house in this wild west place alongside a table of Kurdish men, the soldier’s expression turned from bored to perplexed, and as the tank moved beyond us he kept watching me. I nodded back at him with a small shrug.

Once Remzi finished with the petrol, he returned to the table and asked if I was ready to leave. Uh, yeah, more than ready, I thought. The wild guy started speaking to Remzi very fast in Kurdish. Remzi shrugged and gestured towards me, then he turned to me and said that his cousin needed to go to Van, and he wanted to ride with us. But Remzi said it was only OK if it was OK with me. I didn’t know what to say. They guy was a bit much – but with him staring at me like that, I felt really awkward saying no. And despite the statements he’d made, all in all I felt he was pretty harmless. “Fine,” I agreed, and we piled into the car.

In Kurdish, the guy continued to talk about America as we sped down the road into the mountains. I asked Remzi what he was saying, and he explained that he was repeating all that he’d told me at the tea house. “He really likes America,” Remzi explained. No kidding.

As his level of passion ratcheted up, I kept asking Remzi to translate. At first he would (generally more of the same about Baba Bush); but eventually, whenever I asked, Remzi would just chuckle and repeat, with a tiny tinge of embarrassment, “He just, he just, well, he really loves America. He really loves Bush.” Who knows what the guy was saying.

We sped down the two lane winding roads; every few kilometers, Remzi would have to slow down because of trucks coming the other way using our lane to pass. At times, this was hair raising. Coupled with the rapid fire rants coming from the back seat, the rugged scenery, and the evocative Kurdish nationalist music, I felt once again that I was in a different world. Again, I found it strangely thrilling rather than uncomfortable; there was, I could feel, a slight euphoria bubbling in me with the excitement.

After we passed the reservoir, we pulled into the large checkpoint again. This direction, instead of the cursory once-over we got the other direction, we now had to submit our IDs. I dug out my passport, and handed it over. The guy didn’t hand one forward from the back seat, and when asked about it gave a long explanation in Turkish – from what I could gather he was claiming that it was in Van, or that he needed to pick up a new one, or something. I worried momentarily that this would cause a problem, but after a few sentences exchanged with Remzi, and a long stare at the American woman in the front seat, the young soldier acquiesced, and accepted only our passports. He came back a few minutes later and asked to search the trunk. Remzi hopped out and willingly let the search occur, then talked with the soldier for a little while. The guy in the back and I sat in silence. The jandarma was searching dolmuses, collecting stacks of IDs, and asking questions of the other cars they’d stopped. This is ridiculous, I thought. This is not modern or democratic. Suddenly I found myself saying, aloud, “Avropa degil.” This is not Europe. I immediately regretted it, because it provoked another rant, this one hushed, from the back seat. He was saying, as well as I could understand, that Turkey was a police state, and that the west of the country and the east were completely different. The west life is good, he said. In the east, it is hard.

Remzi returned with our IDs and handed me my passport. The soldier waved us through, and we cruised between stopped cars and dolmuses beyond the checkpoint. He reached down and turned the music back on. The guy in the back started enthusiastically repeating what I’d said to Remzi, in Turkish. He alternately called me “bayan” the lady and the American. He was too pleased about my comments; Remzi glanced at me as if to say, “Why on earth did you encourage him in this way.” On we drove.

As we neared Van, Remzi pulled off along the side of the road in a rather remote and unscenic location and suggested that it would be a good place to take pictures. We all got out of the car, and I looked around wondering what I was supposed to take pictures of. I glanced back and saw that Remzi had opened the hood of the car and was fanning it with his hands. Oh, I thought. Car trouble. The other guy was standing next to him, and hadn’t yet stopped talking. As he fanned, Remzi listened patiently. After a few minutes, we left, and soon we were back in Van, pulling up in the hotel parking lot. On the drive, I’d been wondering a little bit about the guy’s lack of an ID. The whole thing seemed a bit fishy to me, and I had a thought that perhaps he was someone who might not be let past such a check point – was a tourist in the car a good cover?

I sent a message on the phone to the teacher I was supposed to meet, and while I waited for a response, Remzi ordered coffee for us. We sat in the lobby and chatted. Unfortunately, Sevgi, the teacher, didn’t get back to me immediately. This left Remzi and I about an hour to chat; it was interesting. I was telling him about some of my experiences in Turkey, and he was expressing his frustration with the way tourists are sometimes treated by other people in the country, saying that makes his job harder. He thinks it is especially hard for women. Of course, during this conversation my fake husband kept coming up; I’d spent enough time with this guy that I was beginning to feel a bit disingenuous but I felt it couldn’t be helped. Otherwise….

Eventually Sevgi got back to me and she said she’d come by the hotel shortly to pick me up. It was well after five when she got there, and we greeted each other then took off to walk around the town a bit. The places where she wanted to take me, a Russian bazaar of largely blackmarket electronics and gifts, was largely closed. We headed to the grocery store, where she bought some food for dinner at her house, and then we walked for about 20 minutes to her place, back past the hotel along the main road. We were having a bit of trouble communicating, so it was mildly awkward. She was also a little upset that I’d not spent more of the day with her and that I wasn’t staying overnight at her house.

We stopped off to buy a peculiar celery-like stalk from a street vendor; Sevgi showed me how to peel it and I bit in. It was more bitter than celery, but had a similar texture. I asked if Sevgi lives alone, but she said she lived with four friends. I thought this would be an interesting evening. Many of the women my age I know here who are unmarried live with their families, which is typical; or else they live alone in METU housing, which is not a typical situation at all. As it turns out, I discovered upon entering the basement apartment in a rough-around-the-edges 12 story building on the edge of town, Sevgi’s situation may or may not be typical for Turkey, but it would be highly unusual in the US. She lives with two college students at the local university; one was from Ankara and the other Istanbul. The girl from Ankara explained that the apartment is her uncle’s place. The uncle appeared later, seemingly having just arrived from work (though it was Sunday); a while after he showed up, his wife came home as well. So the two college students, 28 year old Sevgi, and the uncle and his wife all live together.

The apartment itself struck me as fairly typical; I took off my shoes when I entered; there was a large living room, but not much furniture or decoration. They seated me on the sofa and we talked for a while, struggling a bit with language difficulties. We watched music videos on the TV; they explained that one song I hear all the time is actually an anti-American diatribe. Once I actually listened and watched the video, I realized that was true. The girl from Ankara took out her saz and started playing traditional Turkish music. Meanwhile, the girls kept popping into the kitchen to work on the dinner they were preparing, something involving drumsticks and rice. Eventually, the male teacher I’d met in Urfa arrived; he immediately began communicating almost solely with the uncle and with me, attempting to speak English but not accomplishing much. Critiquing my hotel and my cell phone seemed to be his primary priorities.

Eventually it was time for dinner; Sevgi took out some newspaper and laid it on the floor, announcing that it was the sofra, or traditional table. They brought out bowls of food, and served up platters of pilav and chicken drumsticks and served everyone a huge bowl of yogurt and cucumber. Ercan, the male teacher, refused to eat; as we all gathered on the floor around the newspapers, he said he wasn’t eating, but also made no move to join us on the floor either. He remained seated on the sofa, up above us, and talked the entire time we ate. This struck me as incredibly rude under any circumstances, but particularly in Turkey, where I would absolutely never feel comfortable refusing food.

The evening seemed to last a really long time. Around ten o’clock, we decided to head out, the two teachers and I, to play pool. I wasn’t quite sure what this would be like, as I’ve never been to a pool hall in Turkey before, let alone in an out of the way place like Van. But the facility really surprised me. It was on the basement level of a building that appeared to house some bars and cafes; inside, mixed groups of men and women played cards and tavla at tables, and the place seemed almost cosmopolitan.

I didn’t shoot good games, and Sevgi and I repeatedly lost to Ercan, who announced his prowess by declaring “Showtime” before beginning small runs on the table. We played three or four games before the pool hall closed and they kicked us out. Actually, I had a far better time than I would have expected. I don’t do things like that much in Ankara, although I really enjoy them. I just haven’t made enough of a circle of friends to make that possible (which is a shame, I suppose. However, I think it is a tough city for that under my circumstances). Anyway, that being said, when they dropped me off at the hotel, Sevgi said she’d come at 8 a.m. to pick me up for the planned visit to the school the next day.

The boy and his mother from the village. I was at their house during the small earthquake.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The village house at the foot of Ararat.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

It's hazy, but you can see Ararat in the distance, and little Ararat to the right.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The Noah's Ark site.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The palace complex.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Inner courtyard of the palace.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Trees of life, Ishak Pasha.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The mosque and minaret at Ishak Pasha Sarayi.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Ishak Pasha Sarayi courtyard gate.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

Dogubayazit -- earthquakes and all

I didn’t get a lot of sleep. For some reason, I was restless in the little room, and there were pigeons outside who were making noises. I’d set my alarm for just after dawn to see if there was a better view of Ararat at that time, but the call to prayer awoke me around 4:30 a.m. and I struggled to get back to sleep. All morning, Ararat was still cloaked in clouds and haze. I finally fell back asleep around 7:00, but was due to meet Zafer at 8:00 in the lobby, so soon the alarm was going off again.

Zafer and I hopped into his minivan and took off through the streets of Dogubayazit, which were already awake and beginning to bustle despite the relatively early hour on a Saturday. Every block, Zafer would honk and wave at a man opening a shop or standing on a street corner – he’d grown up there and seemed to know everyone. As we cruised out of town, he told me about the ending of the big Renault meeting he’d been helping with – the car company was sponsoring a tour called Silk Road 2005, in which a bunch of their trucks are going from Lyon to Peking overland. They crossed through Turkey, and their final night in Dogubayazit was my night there – I’d noticed the trucks at a nicer hotel on the edge of town from the dolmus the day before. They were due to cross into Iran near Dogubayazit today.

We cruised out of town past a huge jandarma post on the outskirts. Gun-toting soldiers wandered in the fields, and above the post, painted on the mountain, was the Ataturk quote, “He who calls himself a Turk is happy,” as well as some other statements using the word Vatan. I asked Zafer what it meant, and he said, “Nation.” It is a governmental, nationalistic term, he said.

Just above the jandarma post, I saw Ishak Pasha Sarayi for the first time – it hovered on a cliff, with craggy mountains behind it. I squinted into the morning sun to try to get a better view of its silhouette. The road heading up was rough, and Zafer slowed down. He pointed out the ruins of a town – the original Bayazit – underneath the palace. He explained that tens of thousands had once lived together in the old town – mostly Armenians and Kurds. Noting that the relations between the two were friendly and harmonious, he said that the town was dismantled and the remaining Kurdish population were moved to new Dogubayazit in the 1930s as the result of a local rebellion, after the Armenians were no longer there. “So you are telling me that that many thousands of people lived here until—“ I stopped dead, stumbling, without thinking, into a comment on one of the subjects we’ve learned not to talk about in Turkey – the Armenian issue. Zafer glanced over me, and nodded. “Yeah, until the Young Turks. Until the “departure” of the Armenians.” I nodded. He said his grandfather used to tell him about that time – he remembered the Armenians and the community that was previously there. It was an interesting weekend to be in this part of the country – across the ocean, in Washington, protests were going on about the Armenian question.

We stopped at the base of the palace for breakfast at a restaurant run by some of Zafer’s friends. The view of the mountains around and Dogubayazit below was stunning; I watched several shepherds leading sheep, and some villagers pulling onion plants from a field below us. I asked Zafer what the industry was around there – I saw shepherds but little agriculture and little in the way of potential jobs for the several hundred thousand people residing in Dogubayazit. “I can tell you,” said Zafer “that more that 80% of people here are involved in some kind of black market dealings – there isn’t industry here, and most people are earning a living from smuggling.”

As we ate breakfast, Zafer told me a few amusing stories about his dealings with tourists. He said that Japanese tourists in particular are the most vulnerable to scams because they are the most likely to believe anything you say. He told one Japanese guy who asked what he was drinking one evening that it was Kurdish tea. In actuality, it was beer. The young male tourist kept ordering more Kurdish teas for himself, and ended up drunk. Zafer encountered another tourist from Japan taking photos at Ishak Pasha. He approached him and said, “How many photos have you taken?” Six, said the man. “Well, you owe me six hundred dollars – it is a fee for photos here -- $100 per photo.” “I only took two photos!” the man changed his story, but then proceeded to pull out the money. Zafer started laughing and scolded the man for being so gullible.

After breakfast we headed further up the hill and to the palace itself. With the bright morning sun shining down onto its face, the honey colored carved stones seemed to glow against the blue sky. Immediately I knew I was glad I’d come all the way to Dogubayazit. On the mountains around the site, the ruins of a Urartrian fortress clung to the cliffside alongside an aging mosque. While I took photos of the intricately carved arched doorway, Zafer talked to the caretakers, obviously friends of his. Inside the courtyard, I continued to wander around while Zafar chatted. The palace was incredible – not lush and intricate in the way of Topkapi palace but instead with the fortresslike feel that one would expect from a remote outpost on a frontier cliff. When our tour began, Zafer explained that the place was built on a strategically important site and was begun in the 1780s; it took a few decades to complete and shows a variety of architectural styles from Selcuk and Ottoman to Georgian, Armenian and Persian. Indeed, it seemed to capture the mythical middle east feel that you might imagine. Zafer noted that the gateway once featured huge, intricate gold plated doors, which the Russians took in 1917 during their retreat out of what is now Turkey. The doors are in the Hermitage now. After its brief use as a palace, by the late 1800s it was being used as an army barracks. Bullet holes from the Russian siege pockmark the walls.

First, Zafer led me into the stone walled rooms of the harem; the Pasha had three wives, each with equal living quarters. Now that it is a ruined palace, it was hard for me to envision what it must have been like. Zafer explained that the floors would have been covered by carpets, and the place would have been warmed by a central heating system. Now though, cold and bare floors and walls made the place feel not at all like a home, let alone a palace. I kept lingering at the windows – from our position on a high plateau overlooking the town and the mountains, the views were outstanding. Zafer pointed out a great old latrine, with an amazing view out a huge picture window.

My favorite area was the public courtyard for male guests – with checkerboard black and white stonework, elaborate carvings, and a series of arched arcades, the section was evocative and intricate. Zafer pointed out that the women of the harem could watch the goings ons from a series of windows on one side of the courtyard, able to see the guests by catching their reflections in specially placed mirrors.

From one terrace, I noticed the bizarre looking hillsides across from the palace – they were covered with a greenish smooth facing that almost looked like icing spread on the hills. I asked Zafer what it was, and he said it was like concrete, but natural. If I were I geologist maybe I would understand, but I have no idea what it was.

The palace’s dome held an elaborate mosque, with a tree of life painted on each of the four walls and a delicately painted interior. Zafer went to talk with his friends again and left me to wander on my own a bit, taking pictures. I’d already joked with him that if it were a hundred dollars an image, as he’d told the Japanese man, that I owed about $3000. I loved the elaborate panels of carving that decorated the walls, especially around the doors.

After the visit, I asked if we could go up the hill a ways and take a more panoramic view of the palace. Zafer drove me up to an area by the Urartian fortress, and I took a few photos there while he waited by the car. Some boys had climbed to the top of the mosque on the hillside, and they whistled and yelled down to me when they saw me. I realized at that moment that I was happy to have Zafer there – it was worth every penny. We’d been the only people in the palace until right at the end of our visit, and had I been alone, I might have felt rather isolated.

As we cruised back down the hill, our earlier conversation continued; we ended up having an actual discussion about the Armenian situation, and it felt strangely liberating to be having open conversation about it. Under most circumstances in Ankara I wouldn’t be comfortable saying certain things. With Zafer, who came from a different perspective than many of the people I meet in Ankara, I felt more comfortable expressing some of my personal critiques of Turkey’s politics and nationalism. As we passed the jandarma post, I mentioned my discomfort with the writings on the mountainsides.

We drove back into Dogubayazit, and Zafer stopped off to purchase smuggled petrol from an unmarked building along the road towards the Iranian border post. The first place he tried had no petrol; the second did, and as he and the attendant funneled petrol from a concealed hose into the van, I watched some women patting bricks out of cow dung and setting them to dry in the sun. Zafer had explained that the strange hive-shaped small huts that I’d noticed on the dolmus ride actually weren’t ovens; they were the way that people store dung bricks for use as fuel over the long winters.

Our next stop, Zafer explained, was the supposed site of the Noah’s Ark ship, not on Ararat as some say but on a neighboring mountainside. Zafer said that he was closely involved with the project to prove that this oddly shaped formation represented remains of the famed ark. His friend Bill, an American who spent his time trying to discover biblical sites, had taken up others’ previous work on the subject and was passionately involved in the quest. However, he died unexpectedly at the age of 54 two months ago. Zafer was clearly still troubled by the death of his friend. I have to admit that I was skeptical of the validity of the claims that the ark is here in Dogubayazit, but I do genuinely enjoy seeing these peculiar places that are the results of people’s unusual passions (such has House on the Rock). So there we went.

We followed the road to Iran for a while, but then took a right off the main drag through a small village with a school. There, everyone had gathered to celebrate children’s day, Ataturk’s holiday in honor of the world’s children, so there was a small festival going on. Further down the road was a large jandarma post – they marched around seemingly doing nothing, under more Turk nationalistic signs.

The road up to the Noah’s Ark site snaked along, with little paving and tight switchbacks. We stopped at one point to pick up a hitchhiker heading to the village atop the hill. From here, the views of Ararat and Little Ararat nearby were even more dramatic than they’d been on the road to Iran. At nearly the top of the mountain, we pulled up the car in front of an octagonal pink cinderblock building and got out. This was the visitor center that Zafer said he rents out from the government. Inside, alongside tables and a few souvenir racks, were a few small museum cases holding coral and urchin fossils supposedly plucked from this site – evidence of sea life on top of a mountain. Other specimens were labeled as petrified wood from the ark. Around the walls, newspaper articles from the Knoxville newspaper to the Weekly World News were tacked up on bulletin boards next to posters explaining the history of research at the site and justifying the claims that the formation on the hillside out the window was the real thing. It was discovered initially supposedly by a Turkish military pilot who saw the formation, which does have a boat-like look, from the air, and immediately notified authorities. At one point the Turkish government declared it the real ark, but it seems that most claims have gone relatively ignored or unheeded, despite the fact that the formation measures exactly 40 cubits or whatever the biblical record states. Some stele carved during the middle ages supposedly represents Noah, his wife, and their sons and wives, indicating that people did once believe that it was the remains of the ark.

Outside, as a bunch of German tourists arrived, I looked out at the peculiar shape – it did indeed have a boat-like look to it. Who knows. It was interesting to see no matter what, and the views of Ararat from there were worth the trip.

Next, we drove on further towards the Irani border. We were driving another hitchhiker down from the village, and when Zafer drove pulled onto the main road, initially he forgot to leave the guy off. We’d completely forgotten him; Zafer was caught up talking about his dead American friend who believed the ark was the real deal.

It took about 20 minutes or less to arrive at the crowded border; we avoided the line of trucks and took a left off the main road. The border itself wasn’t necessarily marked in any way that indicated it was Iran. But seeing the barbed wire fences and the bare hills on the other side of the border was exciting enough. That is probably the closest to Iran that I will ever get. We followed the side road for a few kilometers, skirting the barbed wire border markings. Zafer pointed to a village visible in the distance, and explained that that village was in Iran. He’d said the night before that he was lucky to have been born in Turkey instead of Iran; it is completely different there, he explained. “But it is so close” – he shook his head – “my family could have just as easily been there.”

Our next stop was underwhelming, a supposed meteor crater from the early 1900s, basically a huge, stone lined hole in the ground maybe fifty feet or more deep. The sign explained that a meteor had hit and had sliced through the bedrock. Zafer, when I questioned him, told me he doesn’t believe it; he thinks it’s a sinkhole instead. I stood there for a few minutes, looking across to Iran and then over to Ararat – a dramatic vantage point.

We climbed back into the van, and headed back towards Dogubayazit. It was well after noon and I needed to be back in town by 2:00 for the last dolmus back to Van. I asked about our next stop; this would be to drink tea in a Kurdish village at the foot of Ararat. We passed some newly built houses, and Zafer explained that these were built after a fairly bad earthquake hit last year, destroying a number of homes and killing 18 people. The government stepped in to build ostensibly more secure homes for the people in areas of destruction. Our conversation on the subject continued, and then switched to issues of Kurdish life in the region. I found it instructive to be having a conversation with a Kurdish person; in Ankara particularly there is a lot of less than flattering talk about this segment of the population, and to have a genuine interaction made me feel more informed. For instance, when I asked about the percentage of the population that is Kurdish and where they are living, Zafer explained that there are Kurdish people living all over Turkey (especially in Istanbul), not only the east. He says the government might say that about 20% of the population is Kurdish, but he thinks it is more like 40% or more, because those populations are historically undercounted. Now, my tendency is to think that it’s about 30% -- i.e. somewhere in between the two estimates. My talk with Zafer – and other experiences I was about to have in Van – gave me another side of the story, one I rarely hear about from my perch in the capital.

Soon we turned off another small road, pausing to wait for some livestock to clear out of the route. After another few minutes of driving towards Ararat, we entered a small cluster of buildings and parked in the dirt. A cute little boy strolled out from one of the buildings and smiled at me shyly as I climbed out of the car. From the other side, an older woman strolled out from inside a partially built building made of dung bricks being prepared for the winter. She shook my hand, and she and Zafer led me into the low white building with a yellow door and a row of wooden windows that stood nearby. I slipped off my shoes and entered the house, not expecting much. But inside it was amazing – bright, clean white walls, several feet thick; fancy carved wooden furniture with cushy upholstery; and a large tv-dvd complex in the corner. To one side, Zafer explained, was the guest room; to the other was the common bedroom where all would sleep together on pads on the floor. The place was sparklingly clean; I took a seat on the far side of the room facing the door, underneath a kilim hung on the wall. I asked about some of the photos tacked up around the room. Zafer laughed and explained that in general Kurdish people love photos. The mother disappeared to arrange for tea, but the little boy sat and talked in Kurdish with Zafer. He has just started school this year, and he really loves it. Later they were laughing because his mother told a story about the little guy (I am blanking on his name – Agaz I think) took his horse to school to show the teacher. The teacher (probably placed there against his will from Ankara) tried to ride the horse but never had gotten on one before. He fell off and broke his arm.

The routine of tea serving began, as two teenage girls in long skirts but with uncovered heads, came in from the outdoor kitchen area and served us. It was particularly good tea. The girls were friendly and pretty, and chatted comfortably with Zafer. They seemed, well, liberated, considering the circumstances. Zafer told me that the woman sells socks to earn money to educate the 8 kids, so of course I had to buy a pair. They had sparkling beads woven in, which was something different from what I’ve usually seen.

While we sat drinking tea, Zafer and the mother chatted aimiably – they seemed to have a good relationship. The mother had one of the girls bring a huge canister of fresh milk for Zafer to take home to his baby daughter. I wondered briefly about feeding a baby unpasteurized, unrefrigerated cows milk but shrugged it off.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise – it felt like everything was rumbling. The family and Zafer stopped talking and in a flash were running out of the house. “Get out – it’s an earthquake!” Zafer yelled at me. I jumped up and ran out the door too. By the time I got there, though, the short quake had stopped. It only lasted about 5 seconds or so. We waited a minute or so, and then, having decided it was over, we went back in. Everyone was laughing. It seemed to amuse the girls, who kept peeking in through the door at me, that a tourist had been in their house during the tremor. “That was short but strong,” Zafer said. “You could here it, not just feel it.” That was true. The ground had felt wobbly and the building shook. But what really made an impression on my was the noise – the actual sound, in the silent open land at the foot of Ararat – of the earth quaking.

Zafer then explained to the family that he and I had just been talking about earthquakes a half an hour before. The women thought that was ironic, as did we. The experience wasn’t so scary in and of itself – it was so short. But the frightening part was that for those first few seconds, it wasn’t clear how long or how strong it was going to be. And, most disturbingly, it did remind me that Turkey is in an earthquake zone.

After a few more minutes of visiting, Zafer pointed out that if we were going to make the dolmus, we should leave soon. I took a few pictures of the family and promised to send them to Zafer to give them. We then headed out back into the road to Dogubayazit. Zafer wondered if they’d felt the quake in Dogubayazit; he suspected not, since people didn’t seem to be out in the streets like they do after a quake. We turned into town and drove down a semipaved narrow alley, scattering chickens, playing children, and pedestrians as we passed. The streets were full of people, and Zafer saw one man and yelled out the window to him when we were stopped in traffic. He told me that the man, who was leaving a tea house, was the husband of the woman we’d just met in the village. Zafer told the man I’d just been at his house, and he waved and thanked me, a big smile passing across his face. After a short stop at an ATM, we bought my dolmus ticket, and then I paid Zafer and thanked him for a great day. He was definitely worth it.
There was a short wait for the dolmus, and I tried to explain to the office manager that I wanted to get some water. He misunderstood, and sent a little boy running to a tea house to get me a glass. I thanked the boy, but then asked for a store –I wanted to buy some pretzels or something, since I’d not eaten lunch. On an empty stomach I can be prone to nausea on the dolmus, no matter what other anti motion sickness strategies I’ve taken.

Soon, they’d loaded far more people than there should have been onto the dolmus. I had to go to the bathroom, but that wasn’t a possibility, so I prepared myself for a bumpy three hour ride on a full bladder. We sat and waited longer for them to load even more people on, and some boys approached me outside the dolmus window and were asking where I was from. The tea house nearby was doing a brisk business; the man whose house I’d been at caught my eye again, and he smiled, nodded his head as if in a thankful bow, and touched his hand to his heart – it was a warm gesture that touched me. Despite its frontier image, dusty streets, blackmarket industry, and seeming chaos, I felt the people of Dogubayazit had been exceptionally open towards me.

By now the dolmus was standing room only, and people continued to climb on. With every minute, the temperature inside increased. I was crammed next to a young businessman who was imputing sales data from scraps of paper into a palm pilot. Four people squeezed into the front seat. The driver sped aggressively out of town, and I realized it might be a hairy ride.

Indeed, it was. We retraced the route from the day before, through the ragged mountain passes, small villages, and snow covered, rocky hills. But we went a lot faster this time; each time the driver came up behind another truck he’d dart into the next lane and try to pass, whether or not the lane was clear. I was a few seats back, directly behind the driver, and that meant I could see the near misses. It was hot in there, but anytime anyone tried to open a window, someone would complain about the noise of it as we sped along. All in all it was a fairly terrifying ride, one of the scariest of all my dolmus rides. But our speed allowed us to get there more quickly – instead of three hours, we arrived in Van in 2:15.

When I got off at the stop, I asked the guy next to me for directions to Cumuriyet Street, where the hotel was located. He asked what hotel; I avoided saying, but he escorted me to Cumuriyet anyway. Turns out he was a nice and harmless guy. When I told him I needed to go to the bank, he turned towards me, shook my hand, and said “Welcome to Van.”

The street was full of people, mostly children. Apparently there had been a children’s day parade and fair, the last vestiges of which were lingering. Van itself didn’t seem so beautiful – it struck me as a relatively new city with out a lot of outward charm. But, it seemed relaxed and friendly. I found the hotel quite easily, and headed into the lobby; it looked fairly nice for only $13 a night. After checking in with the good looking, smiling desk clerk, a bellhop led me upstairs to check out the room; it was clean and crisp, with a tv to boot. I said I’d take it, and after he left, I soon found myself caught up in watching the international children’s day special on Turkish TV – kid dancers from all over the world performing folk dances. Reclining in the bed I watched for about an hour and a half while making a list of what I wanted to see in Van, trying to decide how I should approach my sightseeing. A few of the sites seemed like a hassle to get to via dolmus, with long distances and a remote location. I wondered if it would be a good idea to try to go alone.

I felt my stomach growl, and realized that I’d really eaten little the whole day. I headed out to find some food, and in the lobby, a man approached to ask if I’d emailed him in advance. It was Remzi, the guide I’d contacted from Ankara. We agreed that after dinner we’d sit down and talk about potential itineraries for my stay. He suggested I go to a restaurant a few blocks away, and the bellhop walked me there an showed me where to go. I had a great meal of Ali Nazar – a new dish for me. Spicy meat and tomato sauce over something similar to babaghanoush, with pide. It was really good. I finished it off with kunife, my new favorite decadent dessert – it is like sweet shredded wheat wrapped around cheese, dripping with honey sauce, heated warm. It might not sound like it, but it’s really good.

After dinner, I sat down in the side room with Remzi and explained what I wanted to do. I’d told him via email that I had a husband – just to keep things easy and hassle free. I felt good about that decision, as our interactions could be more relaxed and I felt I could let down my guard a little bit. He was a nice guy, also Kurdish. He asked specifically about my husband, so I continued the fabrication, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable because I don’t like to lie. But that is one of the hazards of this situation, I think. We went over the sites and decided that we would leave the next morning and see pretty much the vast majority of what I wanted in the area that morning. Then Remzi directed me to the internet café, where I sent a few emails. I’d made plans to meet the teachers from the school who I met in Urfa the next afternoon, after our return from the day of sightseeing. We’d leave around 8:30 in the morning, and our first destination would be Akdamar Island, on Van Lake.