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| Hadrian's Gate, nearly the only thing to see in Antalya |
At breakfast in Antalya I pile my plate
with fresh French bread, olives, feta, and slices of cucumber and
tomato. I go back twice more, balancing the ratios and refilling my
cup of cai. I'm nervous about flying to Eastern Turkey and the rumors
of insecurity and violence that I've heard, and the Nervousness
Lottery awards me the ability to eat massive quantities this time.
Around me, amiable Midwesterners sit
and chat amiably. An amiable fellow from Memphis tells a Turkish man
about Elvis and the vigil they have every year on his birthday. The
Turkish man listens with a perplexed look on his face, but the
Memphisian is just so...amiable.
As I refill my plate for the third
time, he asks me if I'm headed home. I tell him no, I'm heading to
Diyarbakir, in Eastern Turkey. He has nothing to say to that.
An uncle of the hotel-owner family
drives me to the airport. He drifts around the road, occasionally
settling into a turn lane for a split second before getting bored
with it, passing on the outside then cutting through the red-light
intersection and away we go.
When the plane approaches Istanbul the
city is marinating in fog. I assume it's weather, and it has to be,
right? The tear gas being sprayed by riot police down in Taksim
Square against a few desultory protestors can't account for all that
haze, can it?
We land, people clap then jump up to
get stuff out of the overhead bins while we're still moving down the
runway. An irritated stewardess announces“Attention passengers, we
have not reached the gate, please remain in your seat and do not take
objects from the overhead compartment.” She has to repeat it.
I am the only tourist in the boarding
area for my flight east. Men's dark eyebrows furrow while they stare
at me, and women in headscarves do not even glance my way. Someone
has given the children balloons, which bob above the crowd to an
undercurrent of screaming as an older brother takes one away, one
pops, or assorted other tragedies of balloonery.
There is a woman in my seat on the next
plane, but I am pretty sure I'm not allowed to speak to her directly.
Whatever, I take a seat a row ahead. A little while later a
stewardess says something to me in Turkish, I hand her my ticket
stub, there is a discussion, the woman behind refusing the move, then
the stewardess puts her hands up, “ok, ok” and we all stay where
we are.
I am the only tourist on the plane, the
refreshment cart passes right by without a word to me. It's a budget
airline anyway, which means it operates like an American or European
one, so no free food. On my three hour Turkish Airlines flight to
Istanbul we got a full meal and drinks. Western miserly capitalism is
losing the customer comfort battle in the airline industry.
Like other budget airlines, we make an
unaccountable number of turns, and just as with Ryanair, I wonder if
Pegasus is saving money on navigation equipment as well.
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| I don't think that's the Tigris, but I am have no clue(s) |
Diyarbakir is surprisingly green from
the air, and a great river winds away below. I realize it's the
legendary Tigris, and I am impressed. When we land in the cradle of
civilization, I am feeling nervous. I don't really want to get off
the plane, things are simple here.
The military shares the airport, and
there is a sign for what I assume is a military runway saying “MIL
F →”. Alone in the grass beside the runway leans a mannequin with
blond hair and blue eyes.
When I got on the plane the flight
attendants greeted us in Turkish, but as we get off they use Kurdish.
Diyarbakir is predominantly Kurdish, and one website advised that if
I buy the bandana with the colors of the Turkish independence
guerrilla group, I will have a lot of friends.
One of the buckles on my backpack is
broken when it comes off the belt, but luckily it's not one of the
essential ones; that would be catastrophic. My gear is wearing these
days, with a prong on each my shoulder bag buckles also broken off,
toothbrush and soap cases cracked, and clothes needing regular need &
thread maintenance (to be fair, the regular maintenance is mostly the
result of my poor sewing).
Taxi drivers are customarily satanists,
so I look for a bus and find seven. The first is full of women so I
move to the second, full of men. I don't know the word for
“downtown.” The driver asks me a question in Kurdish.
“Uh...downtown?” I say. I don't
even know which direction to gesture. He shakes his head in
confusion.
“Uh...Diyarbakir?” I try.
“Ah! No, no!” He gestures me
towards another bus.
I get to that one. “Diyarbakir?” I
ask the driver. He looks at me with irritation that asks “Do they
know you've escaped?”
A man standing nearby says “Where you
want go?” I tell him downtown, and he gestures me onboard.
I am wondering when to get off when a
voice behind me says “Hello. Where are you from?”
His name is Ferit and he is my best
friend. He tells me they like Americans here, and are thankful to
George Bush for freeing them. I say I'm glad, and decline to tell him
my views on Dubya, though the more I learn about the Kurds, the more
I think that was one thing that he got seriously right. Saddam really
did need to go. I just wish I believed we did it for the right
reasons and in a better way.
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| Outside my window just now |
Diyarbakir looks okay out the bus
window. Like the outskirts of Belgrade, Guatemala City, or
Casablanca. Any place you won't see on the Travel Channel, but where
people are going about their lives on crowded streets while laundry
hangs to dry on balcony railings next to a profusion of satellite
dishes on the profusion of seven-storey housing blocks.
Ferit gets off before me, and I miss
him immediately. He has told me I must go to Mardin, and was glad to
hear that it was the real reason I came. Before he goes, he tells the
driver to let me know when we are near one of the three hotels I
researched before coming.
A few minutes later the driver gestures
me off, and I am walking across an open square where kids are playing
soccer, men are smoking, and the cart in the corner is ready to
squeeze some oranges for me.
Suddenly my travelmojo is back, and I
am in love with Diyarbakir. And it gets better from there...
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