August 1, 2006
Catching Up on Some Old Photo Albums
Since yesterday was the last day of the month, I decided to max out the remaining bandwidth in my two-gigs-a-month allotment from Flickr by uploading some photos from my previous travels. Before switching to a digital camera, I used to have my 35mm photos burned to a CD when I got them developed, leaving me with a batch of CDs just asking to be uploaded. So I've uploaded three new sets to Flickr:
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Rajasthan 2001: Our second trip to India, including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, the Pushkar Camel Fair, Udaipur and Chittorgarh. |
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Russia & Estonia: My February 2002 trip to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tallinn. |
This brings my Flickr collection to 10,364 photos. Wonder how long it'll take me to reach 20,000. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:00 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
September 8, 1999
Confrontation at the Foot of Mount Ararat
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| 18th century Kurdish mosque, Dogubeyazit, Turkish Kurdistan |
The restaurant at the Hotel Güngören was a dark, hazy hall populated by chainsmoking business travelers. Guests ate buffet-style Turkish breakfasts, with each table piled with heaps of fresh bread. I approached the buffet and loaded my plate with black olives, kosher cheese and some hard boiled eggs. To my disappointment I found an empty honey platter -- a large serving dish with only a tawny glaze. I reached for two packets of processed jam and began to head to a table when a man appeared with a new serving plate. Returning to the buffet I found a glorious Kars honey, darker than amber and thicker than jelly, freshly scraped from its honeycomb. I could barely lift the spoon off the platter to slather my plate with the honey; once I managed to raise it, I required a second spoon just to transfer the honey to my plate.
I could have spent all morning sitting in that dingy cafeteria, slopping up fresh bread in golden honey while drinking tea and listening to cell phones erupt every other minute. But my mellifluous slice of heaven came to an end once Susanne and Berzan finished their breakfasts, ready to hit the road.
"All things must come to an end," I sighed. "I guess I'd gain 100 pounds if I had this for breakfast every day anyway."
By 9 o'clock we were on the road from Kars, driving through a series of farms and lava floes. Shepherds tended to their flocks as wheat farmers loaded pickup trucks with bales so large the wheat extended 10 feet off both sides of the cab.
About 45 minutes into the drive we noticed what appeared to be an overturned truck on the right side of the road. Overturned vehicles are a common sight on Anatolian highways -- we had passed at least three or four on the way up to Kars. But as we got close to the truck we realized we had stumbled upon a fresh accident scene. Five cows lay dead on the side of the road while at least a dozen others wandered aimlessly. An old man with a thick beard sat in the grass crying, holding a bloodied cloth to his right ear.
Berzan pulled over immediately to see if we could offer assistance. I opened the back door just in case we needed to carry someone away from the accident. A younger man left the side of the older man and yelled something in Kurdish to Berzan. I noticed the man had smears of blood across his forehead but didn't appear to have any wounds of his own. Berzan jumped back in the car and speeded away.
"They want us to go get the military police," he said. "The old man is scared people will come and steal his things."
We arrived at a jendarma checkpoint about two minutes after leaving the accident scene. Berzan rolled down his window and began speaking rather authoritatively to a young soldier while Susanne and I each tried to piece together what had happened. My first impression was that the old man was carrying cattle in his truck and it had overturned, but now that I had time to think about it I wasn't really sure. Meanwhile, the soldier waved us through without asking questions as he got on his walkie talkie to radio for assistance. A great smuggling strategy, I thought to myself cynically. Tell the soldiers there's been an accident and speed through the checkpoint while they're preoccupied.
"So what exactly happened back there?" I asked.
"The old man must have been driving and hit the cows," Susanne replied.
"But I thought he was carrying the cows," I responded.
"I don't think so," Susanne answered. "There were two boys on the left side of the road watching over some of the cows." I hadn't even thought to look left, actually, so I missed seeing the boys.
"Yes, that's probably what happened," Berzan concluded. "The boys were herding the cows across the road when the old man came around in his truck and hit them. He probably doesn't have a license. Many villagers cannot read so they cannot pass a driver's test, but they go ahead and drive anyway. That's why there are so many of these accidents here in Turkey."
Anatolian Trivia The name "Dogubeyazit" is Turkish for "West Beyazit." The original town of Beyazit had been a human settlement since Urartu times over 2700 years ago, but was ravaged during World War I and the subsequent war for the Turkish republic. The newer city was settled in the 1930s. |
A little more than an hour after the accident we arrived in Dogubeyazit. Just as it had appeared while passing through the previous day, Dogubeyazit was overrun with dust: dusty streets, dusty shops, dusty trucks, dusty dogs. We stopped at a cafe along Belediye Caddesi, where we drank tea and ate scones as classic Hanna Barbera cartoons played on a TV in the corner. Not far above our heads we noticed an ink-drawn caricature of Gary Coleman.
"How long of a drive is Ishak Pasa from here?" I asked.
"Is-hak Pasa," Berzan corrected me. "Don't pronounce the S and the H in Ishak like shhh. They are separate sounds."
"I know, I knew that," I replied smirking. "How far is Is-hak Pasa then?"
"Much better," Berzan said. "Only 20 minutes. Very close."
It's a five kilometer drive from Dogubeyazit to Ishak Pasa's Palace but in order to get out of the town we first had to steer around a sizable construction project in which an entire block of street had been dug up, forming a rectangular hole 20 feet deep. Berzan waited patiently as mule carts laden with watermelons pulled out of the way so we could have our turn driving over the sidewalk.
Just outside of town we reached a military checkpoint, not far from the local army barracks. As Berzan dealt with a soldier explaining our intentions in Dogubeyazit, I noticed a row of a dozen tanks parked in a lot behind an electrified fence -- another reminder of our proximity to the Iranian border.
"Iran is that way," Berzan said, pointing east. "No more than 30 minutes away. If you want we can go to by a carpet." Until we got new passports that weren't politically voided by Israeli border stamps, however, Persian carpets would just have to wait for another visit.
"Can you see it from here?" Berzan asked us, pointing towards the mountainside. There far above us, halfway up the mountain, I could see the majestic palace of Ishak Pasa. Though few visitors ever make it this far east to see the palace, it is still one of the most indelible images of Turkey. Numerous tour books display Ishak Pasa on their cover: a grand 18th century palatial fortress standing guard over a desolate Anatolian plain, a solitary mountain looming in the distance.
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| Ishak Pasa Sarayi, near Dogubeyazit, Turkish Kurdistan |
Ishak Pasa Sarayi, the Palace of General Ishak, was the life-long quest of Çolak Abdi Pasa, a Kurdish emir of the late 17th century. Building on the architectural strengths of Ottoman, Kurdish, Seljuk, Armenian and even Georgian styles, Çolak erected a palace that would be unique in Anatolia. Construction was so detailed and laborious (366 rooms take a lot of work), the palace was not completed until 99 years later, late in the reign of his son Ishak Pasa. In 1784, Ishak Pasa moved into the palace of his father's dreams, naming it in honor of himself. Though abandoned in relative ruin long ago, the Turkish government is meticulous renovating and conserving the site, returning the palace to its former glory.
Berzan parked the car just in front of the palace gate. The gate's original gold-plated doors, masterpieces of Kurdish workmanship, were whisked away by Russian troops at the turn of the century and can still be seen on display at St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum. Even without the doors, the structure is breathtaking, especially from above. Susanne and I immediately climb the hill in front of the palace in order to get a better view.
Atop the hill we found a restaurant whose owner seemed eager to have us come up, take some pictures and perhaps have some lunch. Instead we stood at the edge of the hill, admiring the view for half an hour and taking pictures each time the sun came from behind the clouds.
"Absolutely incredible," I said to myself, my right eye pressed against my camera.
A stiff wind made posing for pictures and changing lenses a little tricky, but that just meant we would have to spend a little longer on the hill enjoying the view. I could see Berzan chatting with someone near the palace gate.
"He must be so bored," Susanne said.
"I hope he's not," I replied, "but at least he's getting paid to be bored. Besides, how could this place ever be boring?"
Ottoman gravestone, Ishak Pasa Sarayi
As Susanne used the restaurant's bathroom I walked back down the hill, stopping at a small graveyard just above the palace. Ottoman-style graves dotted the land, most of which were broken or receding like Pisa towers in miniature. Susanne caught up with me a few minutes later."I'm glad we went to the top of the hill first," she commented. "The view up there is definitely the best."
Berzan met us just outside the gate and led us inside. The first courtyard had yet to be repaired in any way so it was littered with broken pavement and fallen bricks. Climbing over a pile of stones through a door on the left side, we arrived at the main courtyard, currently a grand obstacle course of square pits, 10 feet across and 50 feet deep. The spaces between each pit were only about two feet wide, so I did my best to walk carefully and follow Berzan's footsteps. Susanne, meanwhile, trotted through without blinking, fully enjoying the exercise. Once across the pits we reached they freshly restored white marble courtyard, behind which stood the main palace buildings, including the mosque and dining room. At the back of the courtyard stood a stone gazebo, fabulously decorated with marble carved into grape vines.
We began our exploration by visiting the harem, made up of multiple living rooms each with tall windows and stone fireplaces built into the back walls. The harem rooms had received varying amounts of renovation, including several rooms with obtrusive metal braces reinforcing the vaulted ceilings. Others had no roofs at all, allowing the light to pour onto their polished stone floors. Beyond the harem we reached an open-air dining room that had been restored to nearly flawless conditions: rose quartz columns connected by delicate arches, empty window panes trimmed by meticulous flourishes of vines and geometric shapes carved into the rock. The upper edges of the walls and arches were decorated with triangular Seljuk mouldings, jutting out like stone diamonds that had been cut in half. Because there was no roof above us, we had a beautiful view of the mosque's dome and minaret as clouds sailed across the crisp blue sky. What a pleasure it must have been for old Ishak Pasa to dine here, whether under a rising morning sun or a cool starry night. Berzan tried to show us several more harem rooms but Susanne and I kept coming back to the dining hall. If you had seen one harem room you had seen them all, but there was no other place like this beautiful dining space.
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| Main dining hall, Ishak Pasa Sarayi |
After having our fill of dining room atmosphere we crossed through the main courtyard to visit the mosque. The mosque was small and simple, yet graceful. I was about to comment on its remarkable state of preservation but then I remembered reading that it had been used as a functioning mosque until the 1980s, so much of its decorations including its low Ottoman chandeliers were probably fairly recent.
"Let's go upstairs," Berzan suggested. Susanne and I followed him up a narrow stone staircase whose steps were too high and too thin for an easy climb.
"Didn't some Mughal emperor die following down stairs like these?" Susanne remarked.
"Sultan Humayun," I replied. "Fell down his library staircase and broke his neck. Watch your step...."
The second floor led to a row of balconies which offered views of the mosque interior. Beyond them we found a second flight of stairs leading to the roof. We stepped outside and leaned against a row of stone blocks, admiring the view of the dome and minaret. A sudden breeze sent a chill up my neck. As Susanne peered over the edges of the roof, Berzan and I sat there for some time contemplating the palace, the scenery, perhaps even our experiences over the last two days. Susanne broke the silence by grinning and pointing to a round air vent leading to the dining hall below. "The royal toilet?" she joked.
"Can we climb the minaret?" I asked Berzan.
"Not anymore," he replied. "They closed it because it was dangerous. I did it once but I didn't like it. I felt it swaying in the wind. Never again...."
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Two views of Ishak Pasa Sarayi's mosque and minaret
On the way down the stairs we bumped into three backpackers, the first we had seen since arriving in Kurdistan. Two Israelis and a Brit had met in Van and were now traveling together.
"We started walking here after lunch in Dogubeyazit," the Brit explained. "I thought we would have never have gotten here if it hadn't been for the lift an old man gave us in his lorry."
After taking advantage of the workmen's bathrooms we returned to the car and drove downhill to Dogubeyazit. As we passed the checkpoint and the row of tanks I had seen earlier, Berzan pointed to them and said, "When I first went into the army I drove a tank. I didn't like it because we had to spend so much time keeping the tank clean, oiling it, so I changed jobs and became a cook."
Susanne and I were both surprised by Berzan's experience as a tank driver. When he had first mentioned that he had been a cook in the army, I had assumed this was Turkey's way of keeping the Kurds in army jobs that wouldn't train them in the use of force. But Berzan's comments blew my theory out of the water. Apparently the Kurds were trained to fight, even though those fighting skills could eventually be turned against the Turks. It didn't make any sense.
"I can't imagine having to be in this army," Susanne said.
"I didn't wanted to join the army," Berzan replied. "I wanted to leave Turkey, go to Switzerland. But I stayed because of my father. He said if I go I could never come back home. But I hate the army. They're killing us."
I didn't know how to react to Berzan's words. They're killing us. He had said the same thing the day before, but today the syllables struck me as both tragic and ironic. The Turkish army was the enemy of his people, yet they still wanted young Kurdish men to serve in their army. It was like the Serbs forcing young Kosovars to join the army and fight against Kosovo's independence. The only purpose such a policy could serve was the enforcement of absolute submission, pure and simple. If we can make you join our army and fight for us, we can make you do anything. Berzan turned up the volume on his stereo and began to sing quietly to himself.
Turkish Pronunciation
Interested in learning how to pronounce the Turkish words mentioned in this journal? Check out my Turkish pronunication guide!
We parked the car across from Tad Lokantasi, a two-story kebap restaurant. Inside Berzan visited a waiter he knew and said hello while the maitre d' approached us, apparently thinking we were there alone.
"Hos geldiniz," the maitre d' said, smiling.
"Sag olun," I replied, assuming he knew we were with Berzan. As the maitre d' walked towards an open table he turned around, puzzled why we weren't following him. He shook his head back and forth, the Turkish way of saying I don't understand.
Before I could figure out an appropriate answer, Berzan returned and asked if we were ready to go upstairs. The maitre d' laughed and nodded his head as soon as he realized why we were standing there. Upstairs we sat by a window with a beautiful view of Mt. Ararat. Susanne ordered a beans and rice dish while Berzan and I both ate Iskender kebap, a popular dish of döner meat over bread with tomato sauce. A little boy from an Iranian family walked back and forth the room, watching GI Joe on a television against the wall.
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| View of Mt. Ararat outside the Tad Lokantasi restaurant, Dogubeyazit |
As we returned to the car Berzan pointed across the street to a short man with gray hair and a five o'clock shadow. "That's my friend Hasan," Berzan said. "He just got back from China."
Berzan called over to Hasan and got his attention. The plump man gave Berzan a broad grin and joined us for a walk through the town's Iranian bazaar. This small market specialized in commercial goods brought in from Iran, including radios, computer parts, light bulbs and coffee makers, as well as other household products. Berzan and Hasan chatted away in Kurdish as Susanne and I peered through the shops, examining their assortment of goods. As Berzan talked with a shop owner Hasan came over to me and talked about his recent trip. Over the course of 163 days he led a caravan from China to Turkey via Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. It sounded like a wonderful, difficult journey.
Having completed a loop around the market, the three of us said goodbye to Hasan and returned to the car. As we stopped for gas, Susanne asked Berzan to tell us the tale by Turkish storyteller Nasreddin Hodja that he had eluded to yesterday after a military checkpoint.
"One day Hodja decided to sell his mule at the market," Berzan began. "There were many people interested in buying the mule that day, so they each got a chance to look at it. Each time a person went up to the mule, they checked its teeth to see how old it was, to see if it was healthy. One after another, people visit the mule, examine its teeth and leave. In the end no one buys it, and Hodja is stuck with a mule that smiles every time it sees someone. Sometimes I feel like Hodja's mule."
Sometimes I feel like Hodja's mule. With each checkpoint, Berzan did what was expected of him as the Turks examined his identification, his car, even his face. And with each checkpoint, we too had learned to react as had Hodja's mule -- retrieve our passports, smile, and hope nothing went amiss.
A small twister meanders across a field Leaving the city limits of Dogubeyazit I noticed a swirl of dust in a farmer's field. The swirl grew higher and higher until it formed a small twister.
"Do you see the twister?" Berzan said, pointing out the window. "They are very common around here. It isn't strong enough to be a problem, though."
As we passed the twister Berzan increased the volume of his stereo. Soon afterwards the man singing on the tape began to speak in English as orchestrated Kurdish music dramatically coursed around him. He then switched his lyrics to Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish.
"Who is this?" I asked Berzan.
"It is Sivan Perwer," he replied. "He is Kurdish, but he lives in Germany. He is originally from Turkey though his family fled to Syria. Sivan Perwer is the greatest Kurdish singer. He can never come home because of what he sings. The Turks would arrest him."
We turned off the road and headed along the main highway to Van. After driving for a minute or two I noticed Berzan began to pull over the car to the side of the road. My first reaction was that he wanted us to get out and take a picture of Mount Ararat one last time, which would soon disappear in the distance. As the car slowed down along the shoulder of the road, I could hear the sound of sirens behind me. It appeared we were being pulled over by police -- were we driving too fast?
I reached into my pocket to pull out our passports, sure that we would need them. A small two-door police car pulled over to our left. A policeman was leaning out the passenger window with a large automatic rifle pointed up into the air.
"Get out of the car," I heard Berzan say quickly.
While turning to open the rear left door I felt someone's hand grab my arm and yank me out of the car. It was so fast I could barely process it, but I realized it was the police officer with his large automatic rifle in his other hand. The next thing I knew I was being thrown against the back of the car spread-eagle, the soldier screaming in my ear while another soldier was frisking Berzan near the front of the car as Berzan shouted at him. Susanne appeared to be standing alone, away from the car, but I couldn't really tell. Were there other cops? What did they want? What the hell had we done?
I then felt a sharp pain in the back of my right thigh, punctuated by yelling in my ear. Had I been kicked? Smacked with the rifle butt? Before I could process what was happening the soldier kicked the inside of my left foot, causing my legs to swing out into a an even more vulnerable spread-eagle position.
My mind went blank. I wasn't scared, nor did I feel angry. I wasn't sure why we had been pulled over or why they were doing this to us. All I knew was that our lives could be in a lot of trouble, and the only thing that might get us out of that trouble was in my left hand. I held onto our passports for dear life.
"Amerikaliyiz! Biz Amerikaliyiz! Bizim pasaportlar!" I yelled, holding up our passports while trying not to raise my hands off the back of the car. The second soldier came over to me from where Berzan was being frisked and took the passports out of my hand. He thumbed through them quickly and said something loudly to me in Turkish.
"Get back into the car," Berzan said, still spread-eagle on the front of the car. "Get in now."
Not sure if this was Berzan's translation or suggestion, I looked over at the second cop. He nodded his head and motioned to the back seat of the car as he allowed Berzan to stand up straight. Berzan and the first cop began to yell at each other as Susanne and I returned to the car. It appeared that our passports would grant us safe conduct, though Berzan's future was far from certain.
Once inside, I took a deep breath as soon as I closed the door. "Are you okay?" I asked Susanne.
"Yes -- they didn't touch me," she replied. "Are you okay?"
"I'm a little bruised, I think. I think I was kicked. I got hit by something in my left thigh before getting my foot kicked from under me. I don't know; maybe he hit me with the rifle."
"What are they going to do with him?" Susanne asked, looking over at Berzan.
A moment or two later Berzan was allowed to open the front door of the car in order to retrieve his keys. Apparently they wanted to search the trunk. Berzan leaned inside to pull out the keys and simultaneously handed Susanne the Sivan Perwer tape from the stereo.
"Put them in, in...." he said quickly, pointing to the glove box. Berzan closed the door and began arguing with the cops again as Susanne stashed his tape.
Ages seemed to pass as the argument continued, though in truth it may have been no more than 30 seconds. Berzan and the second policeman then called over to us, asking me and Susanne to get out of the car yet again. Unlike my first exit, this time I was allowed to step out on my own accord and walk towards them. As the first cop stared at me coldly, the second cop reached into the front seat of the police car and pulled out a two-liter bottle, holding it up towards me.
"No thanks," I said first in English. "Hayir, Memur Bey, tesekkürler."
The first cop began to speak to me in Turkish angrily, then pointed to Berzan, hollering out English, "Who is he?"
The second cop, now holding a liter of water, added, "How do you know this man?"
Turkish words raced through my head as I tried to organize a thought. How could I explain that Berzan was the manager of our hotel and had been recommended to us? Should I say we knew him well or not? What would get us out of this?
Berzan took the bottle out of the second cop's hand, giving it to me. "Drink this," he said, possibly stalling for time to give me a moment to think. "They want to know how you know me. They say I am taking you somewhere against your will. Tell them you know me."
"Friend!" Susanne said anxiously. "How do you say friend in Turkish?!?"
"Arkadas!" I blurted out, finally understanding what to say. "Berzan -- bizim arkadas! Bizim sofor bey! Oteli Ipek Yolu. Arkadas!" Susanne was joining in at this point, saying friend and Arkadas repeatedly.
"This man is a problem!" the angry first cop replied in broken English, his cold blue eyes staring right at me. "He is a problem, a Kurdish problem...." The policeman seemed intent on having us say something -- anything -- that would give them the excuse to drag Berzan away.
"Yok!" I said back to him indignantly. "No problem.... Dert degil! Bizim arkadas!"
"Why are you here today?" the second policeman asked.
"Dogubeyazit," I replied. "Ishak Pasa Sarayi. Berzan -- Berzan sofor bey. Oteli Ipek Yolu'dun! Arkadas!"
At this point the second policeman began to nod his head. "Okay, okay," he said.
Berzan then spoke up again. "They want you to get back in the car," he said. "Take the water with you."
Once again Susanne and I returned to the car, wondering what would happen next. From what we could tell the situation was beginning to simmer down. The cops knew they weren't going to get anything useful out of us. One of them got back into their car to turn it around while the other one continued to argue with Berzan. Once the car was facing the other direction, the second one returned to the car, leaving Berzan to lean into their window and continue the argument, almost as if he was the cop who had just pulled them over. They had let him go, though Berzan was doing his best to give them a piece of his mind before they departed. A moment or two later the police drove off, leaving Berzan near the side of the road.
Berzan returned to the car and slammed the door shut. A pause.
"Bastards!" he yelled, clearly shaken from the experience.
"Are you okay?" Susanne asked.
"They say I take you where you don't want to go," he replied, his English beginning to suffer from his anger. "They wanted to know if you know me. 'Of course they know me. We are together for three days -- friends!' They said we ran the road block. What road block? They said they saw two tourists with Kurdish man and it looked suspicious. They said they fired three shots above us and we didn't stop."
"I thought I heard a tire pop," Susanne responded, reviewing the events prior to being pulled over. "That must have been it. That popping sound."
"I also thought we had a flat," Berzan continued. "That's why I slowed down. Then I saw the police and the man hanging out the window with the gun."
"I honestly didn't know what the hell was going on," I said. "Driving with the windows open there's a lot of noise back here, so I couldn't hear anything. I had no idea there were police behind us until we almost made a complete stop."
"They wanted to take me away and leave you here," Berzan continued, now getting angrier. "Or maybe they would have taken you. They would say nice things to get you to go.... They take you away and 'play football' with you, you understand? They worry that journalists will come here and show what they really do to us..."
"I cannot tell you what they do, what they do to us," he trailed off. "The things they do, the electric... I cannot tell you." Susanne and I could only stare in silence.
"Every day it happens," Berzan continued. "Any day 10 or 15 Kurds are taken off the mountains and they are killed. Nobody knows, nobody knows. This is how we live...."
"I am so sorry," Susanne said, filling in the words that would not come to me.
"You are not used to this," Berzan replied, shaking his head. "They do this to me. They can take me and hit me but I would not let them leave you on the road. Maybe they would have let you drive to Van and maybe I would have to meet you later."
"We wouldn't have left you," Susanne promised him. "If they put you in their car we would have gone with you too."
"The police," Berzan continued, "when they let us go they said they would come by my hotel and would make me treat them well. Free drinks, free rooms, a good time. I said okay. But if they come I will pretend I don't know them. They can only come as civilians, so I will treat them as civilians."
"I'm so sorry," Susanne said. "I wish you could get on a plane with us."
"So this has never happened to you before," Berzan joked as he began to calm down.
"Nope," I replied. "I can't say that it has."
"Now you have," Berzan said, a smirk forming on his face. "It's good for you..."
We sat quietly until nearing the next military checkpoint. As we pulled into the checkpoint, Berzan cranked up his Sivan Perwer tape for one last moment, then turned it off. Berzan continued to sing the Kurdish anthem until rolling down the window to speak with the soldier. The soldier examined our passports courteously and soon waved us through."So how are you?" Berzan asked, checking in on us.
"Fine," Susanne replied. "And you?"
"No problem... No problem...."
Muradiye Falls, Turkish Kurdistan
Around 3pm we arrived a Muradiye Falls, a picturesque waterfall just northeast of Lake Van. Just across from the falls was a small cafe which could only be reached by crossing a hanging wood bridge suspended over the Muradiye River. I walked over the bridge slowly, knowing that every step I took made the entire bridge oscillate. Susanne and Berzan, just behind me, took the opposite approach, stepping as powerfully as possible in order to get the length of the bridge bouncing up and down."Now we walk like drunks," Berzan smiled, hobbling across the bridge.
The cafe sat on a steep hill just across from the falls. A large group of soldiers were finishing their drinks at one of the tables. As soon as I saw them I felt a shock in the back of my head, as if I had just been startled. It was almost as if I thought one of these young soldiers having a drink was going to come up to me and continue the harassment we had encountered near Mount Ararat. Of course nothing happened; I don't think any of them even noticed me. But I still felt their secret gaze over me. It didn't matter that we had been harassed by civilian police, for in my mind they were all the same -- they were the men with guns. I could only recall two images from that whole encounter: the blue eyes of the policeman who pulled me out of the car, and his gun. Those policemen were probably 80 kilometers north of us now, having a cigarette by the side of the road, but I felt their presence here in the form of these off-duty privates. I might never look at a soldier the same way again.
Berzan sat down at a table with the cafe owner while Susanne and I descended the hillside in order to get the best view of the falls. Because we were visiting in the dry season we weren't treated to the full waterfall experience. Nonetheless the sight of the water gracefully drifting over the cliffs was quite beautiful. It felt strange being surrounded suddenly by such serenity after having gone through such a scary experience with the police less than an hour before.
"Are you okay?" Susanne asked me, staring towards the falls.
"I'm okay," I replied, "Just a little pissed off. I'm just wondering when the shock of all of this will hit me...."
I climbed back up towards the cafe, where Berzan continued to sit at a table having a cigarette with the cafe owner. We did our best to relax over a couple of Cokes while Berzan and his friend chatted and swapped stories in Kurdish. As I finished my soda the soldiers paid their bill and left the cafe, walking over the foot bridge. The irrational side of me felt a palpable relief as they departed -- another encounter averted. The rational side of me smiled as I watched one soldier make his way across the swaying bridge, holding on for dear life as if his next step would be his last.
Berzan put out his cigarette and said goodbye to his friend. We returned to the car and finished our drive to Van in about 45 minutes. Berzan rolled down his window, playing a Ciwan Haco tape as we entered town.
"We would love to bring home some Kurdish music with us," Susanne said. "Are we allowed to buy it legally?"
"Yes, it's legal now," Berzan replied. "Before you leave for Istanbul we will stop at a store and find you some good Kurdish tapes."
Back at the hotel we relaxed on a couch over tea, comparing Berzan's license with our passports. Berzan looked like such a boy in the photograph -- he actually looked his age. In real life, Berzan seemed so much older. No wonder, considering what we had just experienced today -- imagine having to live under the yoke of another people, always under suspicion, always assumed guilty? Kurdistan makes for shorter childhoods, I suppose.
After resting in our rooms for a couple hours we decided to take Berzan to dinner at Merkezi Et Lokantasi. We met him in his office downstairs, which was decorated with photographs of Kurdish children. Behind his desk I noticed a long stringed instrument -- a saz.
"I will play it for you after dinner, if you would like," Berzan offered.
Never in a rush to proceed anywhere without first drinking tea, we sat for a while in his office, watching the evening news in Turkish.
"Is there Kurdish language television here?" I asked.
"Not legally," he replied. "We watch Kurdish TV on satellite. It is called Medya TV. It is illegal in Turkey but everyone watches it on their satellite dishes. I think it is based in Britain, maybe Germany. It has to change names and locations sometimes to keep the Turks from shutting it down."
Berzan shut off the TV as we got ready to depart for dinner. I commented on how difficult it must be to have only the Turkish perspective on television and in the news. "In America we hear very little about what's going on in Kurdistan. We read about it when Turkey goes after PKK fighters in Iraq, but that's about it. We don't hear much otherwise, except when the Turkish government is doing something."
"No one knows what we go through here," Berzan replied. "You only hear about the Kurds as terrorists, the Kurds as killers.... But we have no human rights -- there is no human rights in Kurdistan. You, you can go where you want. I cannot leave Turkey. I cannot leave Van without permission."
"They say Ocalan is only a terrorist," he said, putting out his cigarette. "They don't understand. To the people, his is more real than God."
We arrived at Merkezi Et Lokantasi just after 8:30pm. It wasn't as crowded as it had been two nights earlier, which made for a quieter dinner. Susanne and I both ordered chicken sis kebap and lamb çop sis kebap. Berzan ordered a large plate of lamb kebap as well as several plates of shepherd's salad, cacik and spicy tomato puree. We also received a plate of çig köfte, the raw meatballs that had shocked us during our first meal here. Always willing to make the same mistake twice, I scooped up a meatball and ate it. Susanne was more upfront about it: "You know," she said, "I don't think our stomachs will be able to handle this twice."
"We will have to hide them," Berzan joked. "We would not want them to think we don't like them."
The three of us stuffed ourselves as we spent the evening talking about crime and punishment. Berzan had read about the recent school shootings in America and was interested in how common they were. This led to the interesting topic of blood vendettas.
"In Kurdistan if you kill someone, the dead man's family will want justice," he explained. "They will then kill someone in your family, which will mean your family will want to kill someone again. It is all very bad. Does this happen in America?"
"Not often anymore," I replied. "There are legends of some families going to war with other families long ago, like the Hatfields and McCoys, but now the government punishes people for killing people."
"Does your government always execute killers?" Berzan asked.
"No, not always," I explained. "For example, if I killed someone in Washington DC, I would go to jail for life but not be executed. But if I killed someone in Virginia, just across from DC, I could be sentenced to death. It depends on which state you are in. Whatever you do, though, don't kill anyone in Texas."
After finishing our meals and paying the bill -- $12 for everything -- we returned to the hotel to listen to Berzan play his saz. He brought us to what he called a "traditional Kurdish room," which was decorated with carpets and oversize cushions. As we sipped another round of tea, Berzan asked us questions about American music and what styles were popular regionally. Berzan played several songs on his saz, which he had been studying for about a year. The saz was very unusual to the ears, tuned in such a way that made everything sound extremely dissonant and out-of-tune. Berzan passed the saz over to me, allowing me to play with it.
"Are you sure this thing is tuned right?" I asked jokingly.
"It is tuned right," he replied. "It sounds very good, doesn't it?"
Putting my guitar-playing skills to use I managed to figure out the basics of the instrument but had a difficult time in making anything good come out of it. Unlike the guitar, which is tuned to a 12-tone scale, Berzan's saz was tuned to a seven-tone scale, with some of the frets aligned to be purposely sharp or flat. Using my empty tea glass as a slide, I laid the saz in my lap and played a couple of Led Zeppelin tunes before making a feeble attempt at the Doors song "The End." Berzan showed me how to play a Kurdish song by tapping his fingers over the frets, allowing me to follow each tap.
After returning the saz to Berzan, our conversation shifted back towards politics. "It's very bad what's going on here," he lamented. "Everyone thinks we're terrorists. Everyone is afraid to talk...."
I was surprised by Berzan's openness -- only two days earlier I couldn't even get him to talk about using Kurdish in public. Perhaps our altercation with the police earlier today had been the test that graduated us to a new level of honesty. We had experienced the absurdity of modern Kurdistan for ourselves, so now we could talk about it.
"It's very bad how they treat us," Berzan continued. "We have no rights. They treat us like animals."
"I wish you could come to America with us," Susanne replied.
"It would be a dream," Berzan said quietly, stirring his tea.
The room went silent for a few moments. A grin then appeared on Berzan's face. "Bashka!" he proclaimed.
"What does that mean?" Susanne asked.
"It is Turkish.... You say it when there is a pause in conversation and you don't know what to say. In Kurdish we can also say eysha."
"I don't think we have a word for that in English," I replied.
"You could say 'Well!'," Susanne suggested. "Or 'So!'"
"Bashka!" I said, practicing aloud.
I glanced at my watch and noticed it was well past one in the morning. Berzan's bashka couldn't have come at a better time, for I was becoming extremely tired. But I was quite glad his invitation to hear him play his saz had turned into a long evening over tea.
"Despite what happened today," Susanne said as we were going to bed, "I'm so glad we spent the last three days with Berzan. There's no way we would have been able to hang out with someone like that if we had joined a tour."
"There's a lot we wouldn't have experienced in Kurdistan if we had gone on a tour," I replied.
"I can't believe we're going back to Istanbul tomorrow," Susanne said, shutting out the light.
Bashka, I thought to myself.
The next morning, Berzan brought us to the Van airport for our flight back to Istanbul. We spent three final days in the city, revisiting our favorite sites, lounging in cafes and even experiencing a traditional Turkish bath. But emotionally, our trip to Turkey had concluded in Van. We had crossed the length of this beautiful, enticing country by land in two weeks. Our Anatolian fortnight had come to an end.
Posted by acarvin at 2:53 PM
September 7, 1999
Armenian Ghosts
After waking up at 7am, Susanne and I went downstairs to the hotel dining room for breakfast. A Turkish breakfast buffet had been set up near the bar, including fresh bread, green and black olives, goat cheese, hard boiled eggs and honey. Susanne and I both took our plates outside to the terrace, where a waiter brought out hot cups of Nescafe with milk.
Church of St. Gregory, Ani As we finished breakfast, Berzan's Van cat appeared from inside. Susanne and I both made a feeble attempt to pick it up, but the frisky kitten was too quick for us. The waiter returned to retrieve our plates when he saw our dilemma. He obligingly reached down and lifted the cat, holding it on the table for us to take a picture. Unfortunately the cat didn't look too happy to be tethered by the waiter's grasp, but it humored us for a moment and allowed us to get that photograph.
We met Berzan with our bags just after 7:30. Once again I bought a large bottle of water for the ride up to Kars, which would take "four or five hours depending on the number of police checkpoints," as Berzan put it. His words really struck me -- it was one thing for weather or traffic to be the variable affecting your travel plans. Potential police harassment was a new issue for consideration. New for us, perhaps, but a daily way of life for our Kurdish guide.
Reaching Van's northern city limits around 8 o'clock we stopped for our first checkpoint. As had been the case going south, we were scrutinized by a plain-clothes official in a dark vest. After examining our IDs the official asked Berzan to unlock the trunk for inspection. Once on our way again we followed the highway north. Over 1000 years ago this very road was a major Silk Road artery connecting the cities of Persia with the Armenian capital of Ani to the north and the Roman town of Caesaria (modern Kayseri) far to the west in Cappadokia. Today the highway is still called Ipek Yolu, or Silk Road.
Soon after leaving Lake Van behind us we were stopped at a military checkpoint. A sour-faced jendarma approached Berzan's window and took our identification. Berzan was then asked to step out of the car to open the trunk. A moment or two later the jendarma knocked on the window to my left. I rolled down the window to find out what was going on just as the jendarma began to speak swiftly in Turkish.
An exasperated Berzan approached the window. "He wants both of you to get out and open up your luggage," he said.
Susanne and I both stepped out of the car and walked back to the trunk. I opened my bag first, displaying a motley collection of dirty old shirts and unspeakably crusty socks. Satisfied that I wasn't carrying a bomb or copies of the US Constitution in Kurdish, he moved on to Susanne's bag, which had been closed with a small padlock. Again, the jendarma found nothing that could alter the balance in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict.
"You can get back in the car now," Berzan said as the jendarma closed Susanne's bag.
We sat in the car for a moment until Berzan returned, starting up the car and cranking up his Kurdish music as soon as we were no longer in earshot.
"I hate them for that," he said quite clearly in English.
"I can't imagine having to live like this," Susanne sighed.
"They're killing us," Berzan said, shaking his head.
We drove northward for an hour through typical farm country, an occasional mountain looming in the distance. As the number of hills began to increase I noticed the ground was now littered with cracked black boulders, sometimes so prevalent it was as the earth had disemboweled itself. We were in an ancient lava field, which meant that Anatolia's most famous dormant volcano was not far away -- we were approaching Mount Ararat, the legendary resting place of Noah's Ark.
A few miles further into the lava field we stopped briefly at another jendarma checkpoint. As we left the checkpoint I could see military barracks surrounded by barbed wire extending far to the east. Along the barbed wire was an ominous red sign with a black outline of a rifle-toting soldier. "Dikkat!" it read. "Attention! Forbidden Zone!" Mount Ararat was perilously close to Turkey's borders with Armenia and Iran, making it a prime spot for heroin smuggling, illegal Kurdish immigrants, even arms trafficking. Mounting an expedition up the slopes of Ararat was near impossible without friends in high places (no pun intended), and permits to climb the mountain are routinely rejected. Mount Ararat, the place where Noah's journey came to a safe end, is now one of the least safe places in the Middle East as far as the Turkish army is concerned.
As we weaved through the lava field my eyes continued to follow the barbed wire fences and the many red and black Forbidden Zone signs that decorated them. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Mount Ararat appeared in the east, dominating our entire field of view. Often obscured by clouds, Ararat was today clear and crisp, its dark gray slopes capped with an icy white layer of eternal snow.
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| Mount Ararat, Turkish Kurdistan |
"Can we pull over for a photo?" Susanne and I exclaimed almost simultaneously."Not yet," Berzan replied. "The army can see us here."
Several minutes later, after our car had curved around a hillside, Berzan pulled over to the left of the highway, parking in the midst of the lava field. Ever the science geek at heart I immediately reached for a piece of foamy black lava as I stepped out of the car. "Look how light this lava is," I said to Susanne. "It's like black pumice or something...."
"Please," Berzan stressed, "we cannot stay here long. Please take your picture. I had trouble last year...."
Not wanting to get anyone in trouble, Susanne and I quickly crossed the road to take our pictures of Mount Ararat. As we snapped our photos a young girl appeared from the village to see what we were doing. Berzan soon relaxed with her presence, even asking us to take a picture of them together.
"Dim," she replied.
Before I could introduce myself, Berzan ushered us back into the car. "We really must go now," he said, starting the ignition as I closed my door.
I had trouble last year.... I thought of Berzan's words as we drove northward. I did not want to venture whether that was an understatement.
With Ararat still dominating our view to the east, we soon arrived in Dogubeyazit, a dusty frontier town known for its border crossing with Iran and its famed Kurdish palace of Ishak Pasa. We planned to visit the palace tomorrow, so for now Dogubeyazit was nothing more than another windswept spot along the highway.
"Would you like to stop for some tea?" Berzan asked.
"Sure," Susanne and I replied. I expected us to pull over in Dogubeyazit but Berzan drove on to the next major town, Igdir.
"What is this town called again?" Susanne asked as we reached Igdir's city limits.
"Uch-dursh," Berzan said with a deep gutteral voice, sounding almost like he was mumbling in German.
Turkish PronunciationInterested in learning how to pronounce the Turkish words mentioned in this journal? Check out my Turkish pronunication guide!
I knew that the Turkish G was usually silent and the letter I without a dot over it was pronounced in between the sounds "ih" and "uh." I also knew that some Turks put a "sh" sound when the letter R is at the end of a word (like pronouncing the city Izmir as Izmirsh). But apart from Berzan I hadn't encountered the hard ch sound in Turkish."I would have guessed this town would be pronounced Uhh-duhrsh," I commented, "but you pronounce it like Uch-duhrsh. Is the ch sound a Kurdish trait?"
"Yes, we use a lot of hard ch's," Berzan replied. "Uch Duhrsh, Dochubeyazit. It sounds much better that way."
Igdir is a medium-size university town with not much to note except that it makes a convenient place to stop for tea after being on the Van-Kars highway for a few hours. We parked along a busy street next to an otogar and a produce market. Just across the street we found a hole-in-the-wall tea shack with two small tables and several squat stools out in front. As the three of us were settling in around a table, Susanne said she needed to find a bathroom. Since the tea joint had no room for a kitchen let alone a bathroom, Berzan offered to walk Susanne over to the otogar while I waited at the table.
Susanne and Berzan disappeared in the crowd across the street. Meanwhile I quickly discovered that the empty seat and table I was guarding was a precious commodity here in Igdir. Two old men approached the cafe and grabbed on to Susanne's and Berzan's chairs. Wanting to make clear to them that these chairs were spoken for by my friends, I did my best to convey my apologies in Turkish.
"Üzgünüm, effendim -- benim arkadaslar," I said to them. Excuse me, sirs -- my friends. I couldn't get more specific than that because my Turkish skills were so limited, but I hoped I at least got my point across.
"Arkadaslar?" one of the men responded rather skeptically, as if I had just introduced them to a pair of imaginary friends.
"Nerede?" the other one challenged me. Where?
"Tuvalet," I replied, realizing that they didn't find my chair-hogging excuse very convincing.
"Tuvalet!" he exclaimed, throwing his hand up in the air before leaving me to the company of my troubled imagination.
Berzan and Susanne soon reappeared from across the street.
"Where's my tea?" Berzan asked sarcastically.
"Don't blame me," I said. "Blame your two empty chairs, which almost didn't stay empty for long."
We eventually received a round of tea, while snacking on some chocolate biscuits. "We are almost there," Berzan assured us. "Two hours at most."
After paying the waiter we returned to the main road to Kars. Much of the drive for the next hour was perilously close to Armenian territory -- often no further than a kilometer or two. That made all land to the east of the road strictly off limits -- razor wire and numerous "Forbidden Zone" signs would greet every glance I made out the right-side window.
Our drive was slowed significantly by what seemed to be an infinite stream of lumbering military transports. We found ourselves behind two army border patrol convoys, each made up of 20 or so vehicles. At first I assumed we'd be stuck behind them for the rest of the ride, but Berzan wasted no time in speeding down the left lane, veering into the convoy to avoid oncoming traffic. We weaved in and out, in and out, usually encountering blank stares from the heavily armed 20-year-olds stacked in the back of each truck. The vast majority of them looked terminally bored, counting down the days, hours and minutes left in their 18-month conscription. Occasionally I spotted a handful of soldiers joking around or perhaps bobbing their heads up and down to the sound of their Walkmans. One transport's complement was completely asleep, flopped on each other's shoulders like a litter of newborn kittens.
After snaking through multiple lava fields we neared an area of rolling farmland that marked our approach to the city of Kars. Acres of land were pockmarked by evenly-spaced piles of rocks, as if the farmers had just harvested their annual gravel crop. For a brief, grim moment I thought the stones were actually thousands of markers for the graves of soldiers killed fighting the Kurds, so I decided to ask Berzan what they were for.
"The land here has good soil but there are too many rocks in the fields," he explained. "Since the farmers have no place to put the rocks they put them into small piles so can farm the land around them."
Not far after the rocky fields we reached the outer limits of Kars. Small apartment blocks and auto repair shops lined the sides of the road. Lonely Planet had warned us that Kars had nothing to offer except an excursion point for the ruins of Ani, but as we entered town I was pleasantly surprised by its setting. Tree-lined streets, turn-of-the-century Russian houses that smelled of wet paint, public fountains, and freshly paved roads: Kars was obviously in the middle of a face lift.
The Russians built Kars in the late 1800s on a strict grid plan giving it a very European feel, but the city's location on the westernmost edge of the Caucasus makes you feel as if you've just arrived in Yerevan or Tiblisi. Many of the storefronts carried signs that appear to display the name Kafka's but I quickly realized that the word in fact was Kafkas, based on the Russian word for the Caucasus mountains, Kavkaz.
"Kars still likes to look to the East," Berzan said. "Many of the residents are Azeri Turks who settled here while the Russians were in Kars."
Russia's foray into Kars lasted less than 40 years; the Turks regained the city near the end of World War I, during the spring of 1918. But recapturing the city had come at an enormous cost, including what was one of the most self-destructive campaigns of the entire war. In December 1915, Ottoman military generalissimo Enver Pasha sent the Turkish Third Army towards the Russian-occupied Caucasus, in the hopes of liberating the region as a first step towards establishing a pan-Turkic empire across Central Asia.
Though northeastern Anatolia is known for its difficult winters (Kars literally means "snow" in Turkish), the winter of 1915 was particularly brutal. The commander of the Third Army, a former military college instructor of Enver's, begged the pasha to not force him to attack the Russians before the winter subsided. Enver, who had never commanded a regiment, relieved his former teacher of his duties and took over the Third Army, renaming it the Army of Islam. Enver pressed over 90,000 troops from Erzerum towards Kars, reportedly forcing his men to leave behind rations and precious layers of clothing in order to speed up the march.
Anatolian TriviaNot far from Sarikamis, another decisive battle took place along the northern shores of Lake Van in 1071. At the Battle of Manzikert, Byzantine emperor Romanus Diogenes was humiliated by the forces of the Seljuk Turks, led by Sultan Alp Arslan. Captured by the Seljuks and forced to pay annual tribute, Romanus had lost the battle in part because of treacherous Byzantine rivals who may have encouraged their troops to retreat prematurely. Manzikert served as a stark demonstration of the ascension of the Turks in Anatolia - and prophesied the eventual fall of the Byzantines, who lost Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.
By Christmas 1915, the Army of Islam arrived at the outskirts of Sarikamis, a small Russian garrison town just west of Kars. Enver planned to capture Sarikamis as the first step in liberating the Caucasus, but the frigid weather had devastated his Army of Islam -- thousands of men froze to death on their way to Sarikamis. Enver ordered his desperately weakened soldiers to attack Sarikamis on December 29, but it was a lost cause. By the time Enver retreated and returned to Constantinople, 75,000 soldiers of the Army of Islam had died, leaving barely 15,000 survivors.Enver did his best to cover up his ineptitude, but the crushing defeat severely limited the Ottoman threat to the Russians in the Caucasus mountains. To the Russians, though, Enver's attack was a dangerous diversion from their primary front against the Germans in Eastern Europe, which was not going well to begin with. Because of Enver's attack, the Russians lobbied the British to start another front against the Turks. After extended debate led by then-Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, the British agreed to accept the challenge, laying the seeds for what would eventually be their disastrous invasion along the Gallipoli peninsula. Ironically, the Turkish victory at Gallipoli propelled a young soldier named Mustafa Kemal to fame, who had rallied the Ottoman troops at a decisive moment. In less than ten years, Kemal would become the founder of the modern Turkish republic and be forever remembered as Father Turk -- Atatürk.
Near the center of town, Berzan pulled over to the state tourism office in order to begin the process of receiving permission to enter the ruins of Ani. Because Ani is so close to the Armenian border, the Turks have piled up the red tape in order to scrutinize everyone who wants to visit it -- and perhaps to discourage others from even bothering. After stepping inside the office armed with our passports, Berzan returned and started up the car."We must go to another office first then come back here," he said. "They have changed the rules since I was here last."
A few blocks away we arrived at what appeared to be the center of town -- a T-shaped intersection with a large public fountain and numerous park benches. There was nowhere to park so Berzan manouvered the car right up to the fountain and turned on his blinkers.
"I will only be a minute," he said, taking our passports once again. "If the police come to take away the car tell them I will be back soon."
Susanne and I looked at each other as Berzan walked into the building.
"The police aren't going to like this," Susanne said.
"That's okay," I replied. "I can point to the empty driver's seat and say in Turkish, 'Arkadas! Arkadas!' like I did in Igdir."
We didn't spot any police during our wait but we soon lost count of the number of teenagers we saw walking down the street. Boys and girls in blue jeans, t-shirts and baseball caps strolled around the fountain plaza, probably on the way to lunch from the nearby high school and university campus. While some older women wore head scarves, none of the younger women did. I also noticed that a surprising number of the men were redheads -- not brunettes with a hint of crimson, but fiery Irish redheads. I cracked the window to get some fresh air and was greeted by a cool breeze -- Kars was indeed mild compared with Van and southeastern Turkey.
Berzan soon returned with our passports and a brown sheet of paper. "Okay, now we can go back to the other office." He turned the car around and brought us back to the first building we had visited just 15 minutes earlier. Once again, Berzan ran inside, though this time he exited with just what we needed: security approval stamps on our entry form.
"There is still one more stop," Berzan said. "We will need to buy entry tickets since they are not available at Ani. But first we can go to the hotel and get some lunch."
We drove around the corner and parked in front of the Hotel Güngören, a dilapidated two-star which at one time in the past may have been charming. As we checked in, the man behind the desk and Berzan had an extended conversation in Turkish. From what I could make out they were arguing over whether to give Susanne and me a double bed or a single bed (a "French bed," they called it.) Eventually they grew tired of their debate and settled on giving us an extra-large triple.
Once inside the room we discovered stiff beds, a stiff sofa, stiff chairs, stiff lighting and a fluttering color TV.
"How Soviet," Susanne said.
"It's like the Russians never left Kars," I replied.
On the desk I found a Kars Turism folder that contained a postcard of the city taken at night. "What does it tell you when the only postcard they can give you is a picture of the city in the dark?" Susanne quipped.
We met Berzan at the front desk and drove a few blocks away to a döner kebapci. We sat on a long picnic bench right across from a produce market which offered large watermelons and even larger cabbages. A teenaged waiter brought us bottles of Coke and slices of fresh pide as a chef who looked like Monty Python's Graham Chapman shaved slices of meat off a flamethrowing rotisserie. As a döner kebapci, the restaurant didn't have much to offer but döner kebaps and drinks -- our choices were limited.
We soon received our kebaps piled over a mound of greasy rice. I had expected the döner to taste more like Greek gyros since the concepts are almost identical, but the döner meat was marbled and chewy, more like a slice of unprocessed lamb. The meat was rather oily as well, which made the kebap a little undesirable but left the rice with a delicious gravy. Susanne proceeded to hide her uneaten meat under her rice. I almost inadvertently revealed her deception when I greedily scooped a spoonful of rice from her plate, but Berzan seemed neither to care nor to notice.
After lunch we made our final bureaucracy stop at the Kars Archeology Museum, where Berzan was able to procure our Ani entry tickets after proving we had permission to visit the site. We then began the 30-minute drive to Ani, across the train tracks and through several poor farming villages. Somewhere in front of us was Ani, and just beyond that was Armenia. I looked at the hills and mountains ahead, trying to guess where Turkey ended and Armenia commenced. Surely the mountains were in Armenia, so I theorized that Ani would lie amongst the many hills that were visible below the mountains.
Arriving at a military checkpoint we were approached by a soldier who demanded our passports and entry permits. Carefully obeying protocol he determined that the names on the permits were indeed spelled like the names in our passports. After giving me a glance that seemed to suggest "maybe I'll not let you in just for the fun of it," he returned our passports and waved us through.
"There is a story by Nasreddin Hodja I think of sometimes," Berzan said cryptically as we left the checkpoint. "I must tell you the story later...."
Descending over the far side of a hill we could now see the outer wall of Ani. From our distant perspective it appeared that Ani was now a massive pasture with walls on one side and hills on the other side. In the middle, just out of view, must be the Ahuryan River, which serves as the natural border between Turkey and Armenia. This meant the hills that lay just beyond the walls were in Armenian territory.
After parking along a recently restored wall, we walked around the corner to a sentry post where two armed soldiers stood guard. One soldier took our passports as collateral during our visit while the other laid down the law concering Ani's tourist policy.
"This is the natural international border between Turkey and Armenia," he said in rehearsed English. "Our governments have made strict rules of conduct for your visit. You may take pictures of the ruins but you may not take pictures of the ruins facing into Armenia. You must direct your photos west towards Turkey, not east towards Armenia, or your film and camera will be confiscated. Please follow the main path around the ruins and do not step off of the path. Do not go any further south than the mosque ruins, near the citadel. Do not go to the citadel. It is not safe. If you understand these rules you may proceed."
"We understand," the three of us replied. The soldier nodded his head and slung his rifle over his shoulder in order to open the gate for us.
Once we were no longer in earshot, Berzan added, "You may only take pictures of me. Facing south. Do you understand?"
"We understand," I droned back, knowing full well we'd do what we could to get the best photographs. "I will not start an international incident with my camera."
Susanne and I were both rather incredulous about these Soviet-era rules, finding it a little absurd that we would be restricted in taking pictures of a city that died over 600 years ago. But because the Turks were still irate over Armenia's military successes against the Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, the border was sealed completely shut. If politics and hatred hadn't closed the border, we could have had lunch in Yerevan.
Long before the arrival of the Armenians, Turks or Kurds, eastern Anatolia was populated by the Urartu civilization. Among their many gods the Urartu worshipped Anahid, an early Persian version of Greek Aphrodite. Anahid's spell must have been truly seductive, for though her worshippers are long gone, her presence is still preserved in the name of the ancient city of Ani.Since ancient times, eastern Turkey has been an important strategic crossroads. The legendary Silk Road passed through the region, linking the cities of Byzantine Anatolia with Persia, Arabia and Central Asia. By the late ninth century AD these crossroads were controlled by an Armenian dynasty known as the Bagratids. Recognized by both the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople and the Arab caliph in Baghdad, the Bagratids presided over prosperous principality centered around their capital city, Kars. Yet the nearby town of Ani became a tempting alternative to Kars, for it could be defended more easily given its location along a deep river gorge. In 961 AD Armenian king Ashod III the Merciful left Kars and moved his Bagratid capital to Ani, laying the foundation of what would become a glorious, yet short-lived, medieval metropolis.
By the end of the first millennium, Ani was a thriving commercial and religious center, its 100,000+ population rivaling that of Constantinople. Contemporary chroniclers boasted of the Armenian capital as "The City of a Thousand Churches." Following Ashod III, his royal successors Smbat II and Gagik I maintained Armenia's dominance in the region. But after the death of Gagik, the throne was weakened by internal rivalries, eventually allowing Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachus to inherit the city in 1045 AD from Bagratid King Yovhannes-Smbat. Constantine's grasp was fleeting, however. The Seljuk Turks fighting under warrior chief Alp Arslan swept into eastern Anatolia, taking Ani and Kars in 1064 as they headed west to find fame and glory in central Turkey. They too didn't stay for long, and successive waves of Kurds and Georgians made their presence felt in Ani.
By 1239, no power in either Europe or Asia could compete with Cingiz Khan and the Mongols, who ravaged Anatolia and captured the city. This marked the beginning of the end of Ani. Earthquakes, plagues and changing patterns in trade ravaged the local economy. The great Turkic warrior Timur Leng (Tamerlane) took Ani in the late 14th century, but soon abandoned it to Ani's dwindling Armenian population. The Armenian Catholic Church, which had been based in Ani since 992, transferred its central administration to the city of Yerevan in 1441. By the end of the 15th century, Ani was a ghost town in-progress.
And so it has been ever since. A victim of perpetual enmity between Turks and Armenians, Ani exists in a no-mans-land forgotten by history.
As we passed through the soaring stone gates we found ourselves at the edge of a rolling wheat field. All was silent except for the wind and the rubble crunching under our feet. Several hundred meters in front of us, crumbling stone churches and mosques could be seen scattered across the plain, separated by acres of wheat and shards of broken marble, never piled more than a foot or two high. It was more like a movie lot than an ancient capital: a building here, a building there, separated by ample distance to avoid film crews getting in each other's shot.
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| The deserted Armenian ruins of Ani, along the Turkish-Armenian border |
The ruins were almost completely deserted. Several Turkish archeologists could be seen sifting through a mass of rubble, while two rifle-toting soldiers stood guard over the gorge. As we walked towards the ruins a small convoy of jeeps passed us. I could see well-dressed civilians and high ranking officers in one jeep, with nervous soldiers in another jeep. It seemed that some VIPs wanted a private tour of the ruins. This might complicate our plan to sneak pictures of the ruins facing into Armenia, I realized as I saw several of the soldiers in the jeep get out to stand guard while the VIPs explored each site. We'd have to be cautious.
Lightning-shattered Church of the Redeemer, Ani We followed the path clockwise around the ruins, walking half a kilometer towards the Church of the Redeemer. Approaching the church from the north it appeared the structure was still in fine condition, a typical medieval Armenian church not unlike Akdamar Island's Church of the Holy Cross. But as we walked around the church we saw an entirely different picture -- the eastern half of the structure had been sheared off completely. Built in the 1030's, the church had survived intact for over 900 years until a lightning strike devastated the building in 1957.
Susanne and I climbed over mounds of rubble in front of the church in order to get high enough for a photograph. With each step I could hear the same gravel crunch that I had heard as we first entered the ruins. I kneeled to the ground and ran my fingers through the rubble. With each handful of dirt I found sizable shards of pottery, many pieces several inches wide. Everywhere you looked were mounds of medieval trash, left in situ for some future archeologist to piece together. Tempted as I was to explore the mounds, they were unstable and plagued with thorns, so I eventually took my pictures and returned to flat earth.
Walking around to the other side of the church I got a good look at the lightning damage. An entire half of the building had collapsed straight down, leaving the other half unscathed. Susanne was climbing inside the church on a large pile of marble. I scrambled over the outer ruins, shifting my gaze between the fading frescoes along the remaining vaults and the shattered walls beneath my feet. Berzan stood further back on another pile of stone, his dark sunglasses reflecting flashes of light along the shadowy interior of the church.
The three of us continued our walk down the path, which now sloped downhill towards the gorge. It was at this moment we had our first clear view of the gorge and the Ahuryan River. Cliffs on both sides of the border plunged towards the bottom of the ravine, 500 feet downward. The Ahuryan was a tumult of white water, crashing against the many boulders that had fallen down the gorge over the ages. On the Armenian side you could see military barracks and observation stations -- ample places for the Armenians to watch the Turks as the Turks watched the Armenians.
At the edge of the path we searched for the Church of St. Gregory. This church was actually one of several churches in Ani dedicated to St. Gregory the Illuminator (c. 257-332 AD), whose missionary work led to Armenia becoming the first nation to adopt Christianity. Our books had described St. Gregory's as the best preserved church in Ani but all I could see was a foundation and half of a wall from some long forgotten structure.
"This can't be it," I said aloud to myself.
"It isn't," Berzan replied. "We must go down towards the river."
As we made our way around the foundation I saw the church, 100 feet below, perched on a cliff's edge. The sight was nothing short of extraordinary -- an ancient stone church standing guard over a gaping tear in the earth. The scene was straight from a fairy tale, begging to be photographed, though to my frustration the entire backdrop was filled with forbidden Armenia. My first reaction was to throw caution to the wind and snap a few photos, but those VIPs we spotted earlier were now inside the church as two soldiers stood on watch on the hilltop above it. Though one soldier appeared to have his attention elsewhere, the second soldier spotted me and kept his eyes on us as we walked down. As I descended the hill I lifted my camera as it hung around my neck and removed the lens cap to inspect the outer lens for dust. I blew at the lens, pretended to look frustrated, then tilted it horizontally to allow the dust to fall. I repeated the process three times, though as my camera went horizontal the third time I pressed the trigger, having no idea whether or not I'd capture the church. The soldiers did not react.
"I know exactly what you're doing," Susanne said over my shoulder.
Nearing the bottom of the path the VIPs began to climb up, passing us along the steps. I nodded my head and said "Iyi günler" to one of the generals. Another general approached, though he was wearing a different uniform and didn't look particularly Turkish. Not wanting to offend by speaking Turkish I simply nodded my head. Soon enough all the VIPs and their escorts cleared out of the area giving us some breathing room to inspect the church.
Built in the early 13th century by a wealthy Armenian, the Church of St. Gregory is called Resimli Kilise (the Church with Pictures) by the Turks because of its collection of frescoes along its inner vaults. Though terribly vandalized and not as striking as the Akdamar frescoes, the paintings nonetheless captured a lost era of Armenian prosperity in Anatolia.
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| Resimli Kilise (Church of St. Gregory), Ani. The land behind the church is Armenian territory. |
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| Close-up view of Resimli Kilise's frescoes. |
"Remember how you take your pictures," Berzan said dryly. "Take it facing Turkey -- good. Take it facing Armenia -- not good."
I stood in front of the church, facing towards Armenia. "If I take a photo this close, no one will be able to see Armenia, right?" I commented as I snapped the photo. I looked up and saw a soldier looking down at me. He didn't seem to care either way.
Ruins of Ani Cathedral
We climbed back up the hill to the main path and headed to our next stop, Ani Cathedral (known to the Turks as Fethiye Mosque). The cathedral was built at the turn of the first millennium by Trdat Mendet, the master Armenian architect who also constructed Akdamar's Church of the Holy Cross. Depending on who was in charge of the city at the time, the cathedral was used as either a church or a mosque. Today it is Ani's largest freestanding structure, not counting the city walls. From a distance the cathedral looks like a drab brown box, but as we approached I could understand how it was used to strike awe in the heart of its parishioners. The cathedral soared high above the plain, forcing you to look up towards heaven as you admired it. If its enormous dome hadn't collapsed ages ago, it would have soared even higher, perhaps into legend as one of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages.A baby-faced soldier stood guard just outside the cathedral. He smiled shyly to me as we approached.
"Merhaba," he replied, politely nodding his head.
Susanne, Berzan and I admired the cathedral from outside as the soldier looked on. "I wonder if it would be appropriate to ask him to take a picture of the three of us," I asked. Berzan took my camera and brought it up to the soldier, speaking to him in Turkish. I saw the soldier nod and take the camera from Berzan's hand. He then backed up onto a mound of rubble to snap the shot.
After the photo we went inside to inspect the rest of the cathedral. It was very dark inside despite the enormous hole in the roof caused by the collapsed dome. I hadn't realized how vast the structure was until going inside -- the vaults soared as high as any gothic cathedral in Europe. Incredibly, I could see graffiti carved into the vaults, well over 100 feet above my head. The lengths people would go to in order to desecrate a holy work of art -- it was beyond my comprehension.
Ruins of Menüçer Camii,
an 11th century Seljuk mosqueExiting the cathedral through its western door we came near the Menüçer Camii, Ani's oldest mosque. Built in 1072, Menüçer Camii is believed by some historians to be the first significant mosque built by the Seljuk Turks during their push into Anatolia from Persia. It didn't appear to be a mosque when compared to more common style of Ottoman mosques, with their graceful minarets and Aya Sofya-inspired domes. The Menüçer Camii was a rectangular structure with a smokestack-like octagonal minaret, more akin to an Armenian church. It was fairly likely that the Seljuks employed the local Armenians when building it, achieving a unique fusion of Seljuk-Armenian styles not commonly found elsewhere.
Susanne and Berzan went inside the mosque while I scoped its outer walls. Realizing that there were no soldiers within view, I discreetly changed lenses and snapped a photo of the gorge and river below. As I walked inside the mosque I heard several people laughing. Susanne and Berzan were chatting in English with a Turkish soldier who had a huge grin on his face.
"How's it going, man?" the soldier said to me in what could only be native American English.
"This is Halil, the soldier from America I told you about," Berzan said as I shook the soldier's hand.
"You can call me Hal," Halil replied. "Halil's just my Turkish name - and my army name, I guess."
"To me you will always be Halil," Berzan joked. "If I remember, you were born in San Fran..."
"St. Louis, actually," Hal said, "But I grew up in Omaha."
"Ah yes, St. Louis," Berzan corrected himself. "Is that near where you live?"
"No, not at the moment," Susanne replied, "but we used to live in Chicago, which isn't too far from St. Louis."
"So if you don't mind me asking," I jumped in, "what on earth are you doing in the Turkish army, stationed along the Armenian border?"
"I decided to enlist," he said matter-of-factly. "My parents were from Trabzon but they settled in the US. We became a pretty typical American family, including getting a typical divorce, so they split up when I was a kid. I've been on my own and working since high school, and one day I thought that I just didn't know much about my heritage, my family, my culture. So I decided to drop everything and move to Turkey.""Did you speak Turkish before coming?" Susanne asked.
"Nope," Hal replied. "It was pretty awful for a while. My sergeant would threaten me with latrine duty if I didn't learn fast, so I've learned a lot over the last 14 months."
"It must have been a huge shock to settle into this way of life," I commented.
"Tell me about it," he laughed, pulling out his old driver's license from his wallet. On it was a picture of a long-haired 20-year-old.
"I was such a freak to them when I joined," Hal continued. "I showed up to the recruitment office with sunglasses, hair down to my chest, earrings in both ears, a pierced tongue and nipple rings. They didn't know what to make of me. It was pretty cool... But overall the army's been great for me."
"Do you know anything about those VIPs who came through here earlier?" I asked.
"Yeah, they were Turkish and Armenian generals," Hal explained. "The governments have a monthly inspection protocol in which one side visits the other side's border facilities. It supposedly helps keep the peace."
"Apart from them we haven't seen any other visitors here," I added.
"We only get a few tourists a day," Hal continued. "Most tourists would rather party hard along the Aegean rather come here to the middle of nowhere. Fine with me -- I just hang out in the mosque and enjoy the view...."
We spent about 20 minutes chatting with Hal, hearing about his life in the military and his plans for afterwards. ("I'm going to move to Bodrum... It's like Fort Lauderdale but so much cooler...") At one point I joked about the policy against photographing Armenia, to which he responded by encouraging me to lean out the window and take a few shots. From the window I could see the remains of an ancient bridge stretching across the gorge.
"When is it from?" I asked Hal, pointing to the bridge.
"It's from the Silk Road, actually," Hal explained. "That bridge would lead to Persia or to Anatolia, depending on which way you went. Whoever controlled that bridge controlled this part of the Silk Road."
After a while we noticed it was approaching 4pm, which meant we had to wrap up our visit within the hour in order to get out of the ruins before the soldiers closed it after 5pm. Susanne and I both offered to take pictures of Hal in uniform to send to his family. He then traded hats with Berzan, handing him his G-3 automatic rifle for an impromptu Turk-versus-Kurd photo.
"Mind if I try?" I asked somewhat hesitatingly after they finished posing."Be my guest," Hal replied, taking the rifle from Berzan and giving it to me.
"You'll need this as well," Berzan added, sticking an unlit cigarette in my mouth. Images of Lee Harvey Oswald posing with his Menlicher-Carcano rifle passed through my mind as Susanne took the photograph. It was a strange feeling, holding a rifle just shy of the Armenian border. In the two days we had been in the heart of Kurdistan, we had encountered many well-armed soldiers. Numerous times in my mind I had paraphrased a quote from a John Sayles movie: "There are only two types of men here, my friend: Men with guns and men without." It had been true in Sayles' fictional account of a Central American peasant uprising, and it was true here in Kurdistan. Either you had a gun or you didn't; either you were the powerful or the powerless. For the brief moment I gripped the Turkish rifle, I felt what it was like to be on the other side.
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Having said our goodbyes with Hal we walked north from the mosque along the western edge of the Ani plateau. A vast, verdant valley stretched far westward, a small river meandering through it. The silence of our walk was broken by an irate donkey somewhere in the valley, hee-hawing as if his life depended on it."So Hal has been in the army for 14 months," Susanne commented. "That means he has only four months to go?"
"That's the way it is now -- 18 months," Berzan said. "When I joined the army many years ago was only 14 months. They changed the rules when my younger brother Feyzel was in the army. Just when he was approaching his final month the Turks changed the rules, making it 18 months. He was stuck for an extra four months. It was really terrible for him and my family."
"Watch where you step -- land mines," Berzan added, pointing at the cow patties that littered the pathway."
Nearing the city walls again we reached our last stop at Ani: the Gagikashen, or King Gagik I's Church of St. Gregory. Built 1000 years ago by master architect Trdat in honor of the end of the first millennium, the church was one of the most ambitious construction projects at Ani. Trdat designed his millennium church as a reconstruction of Zvart'nots Cathedral, a magnificent 7th century Armenian church that was destroyed during an earthquake. Gagikashen may have been too ambitious, though, for its great dome collapsed soon after it was completed. Today the church is but a circular foundation littered with shattered marble walls and columns. Ruined wall fragments the size of boulders made visiting the church a little tricky at times. Our exploration was monitored by a cow dining on the grass outside of the church. I tried to get a closeup of the cow but he refused to cooperate, walking away every time I approached.
It was almost 5pm by the time we returned to the gatehouse on the opposite side of the city walls. The soldiers returned our passports, allowing us to make the 30 minute drive back to Ani. Even though we had spent just over three hours in the ruins, Susanne and I were both pretty tired.
"I think it was well worth it," I said, leaning back in my car seat.
"Absolutely," Susanne replied from the front seat.
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| A soldier on patrol, Ani. Note the Church of the Redeemer, sheared in half by a lightning strike. |
Berzan gave us a couple of free hours back at the hotel to shower and rest before heading out for dinner. At 7pm we walked from the hotel to Kazim Pasa Caddesi, which had several restaurants along the road. We had dinner at the recently relocated Yesilyurt Lokantasi, eating Turkish pizzas in a high-ceiling dining room decorated with the pelts of bears, foxes and what appeared to be ferrets. Berzan ordered another plate of çig köfte, the raw meatballs that had surprised us the previous night. Just as Susanne and I were both trying to find a way to decline politely, Berzan tasted one of the meatballs and said, "Do not eat them tonight. They are not as good as in Van. Your stomachs would not like them."Left with a full plate of uneaten meatballs, Susanne commented, "When I was a kid I was an expert in hiding uneaten food."
"Good idea," Berzan smiled, hiding an uncooked morsel under a piece of flatbread.
Following dinner we strolled around the streets of central Kars, watching shops closing up for the evening and kids playing soccer along a street that had been repaved earlier in the day. It was surprisingly chilly outside, perhaps in the mid 50s. Once again I was reminded that Kars, Turkey's foothold in the Caucasus, is also the Turkish word for snow. As we strolled by the Otel Kervansaray we overheard folk music coming from a suite high above the street.
"It almost sounds like Irish music," Susanne said.
"It's traditional wedding music," Berzan replied. "Not Turkish or Kurdish, though. I think it may be Kirghiz music."
Berzan then noticed I was looking up at marquee for the Otel Kervansaray. "Not a good place," he said. "You must be careful where you stay in Kars sometimes. Have you heard of the Natashas?"
"Yeah," I replied, "we had read about Natashas the day before in Lonely Planet." Natashas are Russian prostitutes that began streaming across the Turkish-Georgian border after the fall of the Soviet Union. Though rarely spoken of publicly here, prostitution is tolerated in some parts of Turkey as long as it is discreet, and many residents now complain that the high-heeled, bleach-blonde Natashas are bringing it too far out of the closet.
Not far from the restaurant we found a small pastane that was still open for business (eateries close early in Kars, we discovered). The three of us sat in the back of the cafe, near a large fish tank populated with five or six tropical fish. The head colds that Susanne and I were fighting were acting up again, so we asked a waiter if they had apple tea.
"Elma çay var mi?" I asked, with Berzan beside me, smirking at my Turkish.
"Yok," the waiter replied, adding something I didn't understand.
"No apple tea until winter," Berzan explained. "Here in the east it is a seasonal drink. He said they have cherry tea, though."
We each ordered cherry teas and sat quietly, admiring the fish tank. Berzan kept reaching his right arm around his neck, pawing at his left shoulder blade.
"What is it?" Susanne asked.
"It is my shoulder," he said, squirming in obvious discomfort. "My muscle is -- how do you say it -- moving very fast and tight."
"It sounds like a cramp," I said.
"Yes, that's the word for it -- cramp. I have never had one like this before. I must be coming down with a cold."
"If you'd like I have some pain medicine at the hotel," I offered. "I sometimes have back pain so I bring it whenever I travel with a backpack."
"Okay, let's see how it is when we go to the hotel," Berzan replied.
Our cherry tea soon arrived and Berzan tapped the waiter on the arm to stay for a minute. Berzan tasted the tea and spoke to him in Turkish, causing the waiter to scurry away to the kitchen. He returned with a container of instant cherry tea mix and a spoon. Berzan took the bottle and scooped a spoonful into his tea glass, offering some to us as well.
"Cherry tea should not be weak," he said, stirring the dissolving powder with his spoon.
The three of us finished our teas quickly, all eager to get back to the hotel for some sleep. Berzan followed us to our room for the Naproxen pills I had promised.
"Tomorrow we can sleep in," Berzan said, wrapping the Naproxen tablets in a tissue. "We can meet for breakfast at 9am and leave after that. We will be at Dogubeyazit for lunch."
I thought about Dogubeyazit as I went to bed. It might have been easier for us to have planned our visit to Kurdistan for the beginning of the trip instead of the end, but Susanne and I agreed that wrapping up our trip at Dogubeyazit's Ishak Pasa Palace near the foot of Mount Ararat would be a climactic finish. We had come so far to the remotest corner of Anatolia -- and tomorrow we would go to Mount Ararat to visit the most magnificent Kurdish palace in the Middle East. For the first time I realized the trip was nearing an end.
Posted by acarvin at 2:53 PM
September 6, 1999
Deep in the Heart of Kurdistan
I may or may not have slept for a couple of hours -- I was too groggy to know the difference. The rising sun was still hidden behind a range of jagged, graphite-gray mountains to the east, though the sky had brightened to a crisp morning blue. Most of the other passengers of the bus, including Susanne, were still asleep save a thin Kurdish man in his thirties who was vomiting in a thick plastic bag dutifully provided by the yardimci. In retrospect I believe his retching had actually jarred me back into consciousness -- not a auspicious way to inaugurate our arrival in distant Kurdistan.
10th century Armenian Church, on Lake Van's Akdamar Island The bus entered a sizable town steeped in the bottom of a jagged gorge. Men on motorscooters steered around us as we pulled over to a Best Van office. High above on the left side, the ruins of a Seljuk castle stood guard over the city. As far as I could tell we probably were not yet in the city of Van since it had a large otogar terminal, not to mention a 100km-wide lake that should have appeared to my immediate left. In fact, I hadn't seen any sign of Lake Van that morning. After groggily staring at my map of southeast Anatolia I surmised we were passing through the town of Bitlis. This meant that we must have been at least two hours away from Van, which would put us at our destination no sooner than 8:30am, a full five hours past our scheduled arrival time.
As our bus drove northeast beyond the gorge, the terrain transformed into a wide valley, revealing gravel-colored hills on all sides, with more mountains further afield. Descending the far side of a pass I saw an expanse of blue trailing far off towards the north, a mountain perched along its western shore. We had finally reached Van Gölu -- Lake Van. The first thought that entered my mind was an image of the approach to Copacabana, a Bolivian town along the edge of Lake Titicaca which Susanne and had visited precisely one year before.
As my sleep-deprived mind continued to clear, I remembered we were far, far away from that Andean lake. Yet as we approached the shore I could see that Lake Van shared Titicaca's mysterious, deep blue hue, with only the reflections of passing clouds blurring its near-perfect complexion. Along with its gorgeous color, Lake Van is perhaps best known for a rare quality it shares with another great body of water, the Dead Sea: extreme salinity. Millions of years ago, an enormous eruption from the volcano known as Nemrut Dagi (not to be confused with the other Nemrut Dagi we visited two days earlier) blocked the outflow of Lake Van's only river, causing the lake to bloat up with mineral-rich water from the mountains. With no river to release its waters, Van maintains its size through evaporation, leaving the lake saturated with unusual amounts of minerals and natural sodas. The lake is so rich with minerals that its waters are extremely buoyant, causing swimmers to float uncontrollably -- not unlike the waters of the Dead Sea. This mineral saturation also allows the local Kurds to wash their clothes without the need of soap. The lake's chemical content works just as well as any detergent.
We soon passed through the town of Tatvan, 100 kilometers from our destination. Until recently, Tatvan was a booming port whose ferries carried cargo and train cars across the lake to Van before continuing onward into Iran and Iraq. But Turkey's undeclared war on Kurdish separatists dried up the local transport business, leaving many of Tatvan's residents wondering what to do next. The bus dropped off a couple of passengers before continuing towards Van along a two-lane road hugging the shoreline. Susanne began to stir a few minutes later.
"Where are we?" she asked, removing her sleeping blinds from her eyes.
"Along Lake Van," I replied. "Probably another hour or so to go."
The road briefly steered away from the shore, cutting through another mountain pass. As the bus returned to the coast 15 minutes later I noticed a small island several kilometers off the shoreline, shaped like an immense shark fin.
"Arrrrrgh, Shark Fin Island," I joked. "We must be nearing pirate waters, matey...."
As we returned to the water's edge I noticed what appeared to be a rectangular structure with a low, conical roof sitting near the right side of the island. The closer we got the more I recognized it as Lake Van's most famous landmark.
"It's Akdamar Island!," I said to Susanne, tapping her with one hand while grabbing my Lonely Planet with the other. "That has to be Akdamar's Armenian church."
One thousand years ago, centuries before the Ottoman Turks ruled the land, Lake Van was Armenian territory, and Akdamar Island was its spiritual center. At various times over the past 1600 years, Akdamar Island served as the home of the Armenian Orthodox patriarch, the Katholicos. Though most of the island's buildings are gone, its church remains brilliantly intact, perhaps the best preserved medieval Armenian religious structure outside of modern-day Armenia. It was the experience of seeing photos of Akdamar Island that first attracted me to Lake Van; despite my exhaustion I was thrilled to see it with my own eyes, even at a teasing distance. At some point in the coming days we would certainly make our way back to this spot and hopefully charter a boat to the island.
Leaving Akdamar Island behind us, the bus passed through the town of Gevas, best known for a well-preserved Seljuk cemetery. The road once again veered away from the shore, heading several kilometers inland towards Van's outer city limits. Surrounded by an increasing number of apartment blocks and small factories, we soon pulled over at what appeared to be a police checkpoint. A plain-clothes official boarded the bus from the front as several armed soldiers stood guard outside. Row by row, the official checked the identification cards of everyone on board, occasionally referring to a collection of papers kept in his khaki safari vest.
"Pasaportunuz, lütfen," he said to us as he reached our seats.
"Iyi günler, Memur Bey," I said as I pulled out our passports from my front pocket.
He leafed through our passports one page at a time, occasionally looking up at us. After scrutinizing them to his satisfaction he returned the passports to me, nodding his head as he handed them over. Within a few minutes the official departed the bus, allowing us to enter the city and proceed to the otogar.
The bus made its way through the morning traffic, passing a large white statue of a Van cat, a prized local feline famous for its eyes: one is colored yellow while the other is green. I wasn't sure if we would get a chance to see a Van cat during our stay -- the animals have become so valuable that residents are forced to keep them secured inside their homes to avoid potential catnapping, so to speak.
On the north side of town, the bus arrived at the otogar, pulling into the far side of the terminal's parking lot. Susanne and I exited the bus and quickly walked to the luggage compartment on the other side, eager to confirm that our backpacks hadn't vanished during the many stops throughout the night. To our relief both our backpacks were safe and sound, allowing us to hail a taxi on the other end of the parking lot in order to ride to the city center.
Susanne and I didn't have hotel reservations in Van, but various sources on the Internet had recommended the Ipek Yolu Hotel, near the center of town. Once at the hotel, we were encouraged to ask for Mr. Berzan Dersimi if we needed any help in arranging tours of the area. With Turkey's military crackdown on Kurdish terrorists, Van's tourism industry had collapsed almost completely, wiping out any chance of us latching on to a regularly scheduled minibus tour like the ones so prevalent in Cappadokia. Since we both wanted to visit a number of Kurdistan's off-the-beaten-track historical sites, Susanne and I probably would have no choice but to hire a private guide. Assuming the remaining travel agencies couldn't arrange one for us, hopefully Mr. Dersimi could.
The taxi made its way into downtown Van, weaving through a traffic sprawl of cars, motorscooters and horsecarts laden with fresh produce from the countryside. The Ipek Yolu Hotel was right around the corner from the main road, across the street from the Kebapistan restaurant and several banks. Our Lonely Planet guide also mentioned that the tourist information center was a few blocks to the south, assuming it was still in business -- I didn't notice it as we exited the taxi. To our cabbie's chagrin, we didn't have exact change for the fare. The ride had cost just over three million lira (around seven dollars), but the taxi driver was unable to break the five million lira note I had. He said something to himself in Kurdish before motioning for us to follow him into the hotel where he could get some change.
The Ipek Yolu Hotel was a comfortable two-star hotel with 44 rooms, three elevators and a restaurant/bar -- several steps up from some of our previous accommodations.
"Good morning," a tall man at the front desk greeted us in English.
"Merhaba," I replied. "Do you have a double room available?"
"Of course," he answered, signaling to another man to take our backpacks upstairs. "Follow him upstairs to the third floor. Hos geldiniz."
Turkish Pronunciation
Interested in learning how to pronounce the Turkish words mentioned in this journal? Check out my Turkish pronunication guide!
Susanne and I entered the small elevator, fitting rather snugly along with the man carrying our bags. "Merhaba," Susanne said to him, to which he smiled shyly and nodded his head. As always I was eager to carry on the pleasantries -- a polite exchange of "Merhaba, nasilsiniz?" and so on always seemed to be appreciated by Turks when initiated by us. But now we were in Kurdistan, where well over 90% of the population were ethnic Kurds and native speakers of Kurmanji Kurdish, not Turkish. Turkish, by law, is the public language of exchange in this country, so Kurds can only speak their native tongue discreetly among themselves.While I suspected that any attempt of mine to say hello in Turkish would have been accepted kindly even by Kurds, I felt awkward using it here in Van. I didn't know a word of Kurdish, nor did I know what the local etiquette was. Since the public use of the Kurdish language can be construed as a political statement in itself, would I break any taboos if I learned any Kurdish? For the time being, I would smile and hopefully learn through observation, yet it made me wonder just what it would be like to live in a place where even your choice of language could have profound personal consequences.
After settling into the room and cleaning up from our grueling overnight bus trip, Susanne and I hit the streets of Van to find some breakfast and exchange some travelers cheques. Just off Cumhurriyet Caddesi we found a pleasant pastane shop, the Ayça Patisserie, which appeared to still be serving breakfast.
"Kahvalti dahil?," I asked, inquiring about the availability of breakfast to the man behind the counter.
"Evet, kahvalti var," he replied, placing a sheet of fresh baklava behind the glass counter. We were desperately short on cash, though, so we decided to continue up Cumhurriyet Caddesi to find a bank and perhaps some other options for breakfast.
As Van's main thoroughfare, Cumhurriyet Caddesi was an energetic artery of Kurdish city life. We veered around oncoming pedestrian traffic of all makes and models: businessmen talking on cellphones, teenage boys hawking snackfood and lottery tickets, old men in skull caps strolling to a local çayhane for some tea. Compared to other cities we had visited in Turkey, we sensed a difference in style here we hadn't seen since Selçuk. Most younger women were casually dressed in jeans or fashionable dresses, while older women wore colorful Kurdish costumes, hiding their faces with intricate lace head scarves. A surprising number of young men wore the knit skull caps that we had only seen on elderly men in other cities. In fact, my initial reaction to one particular man in his twenties was that he was wearing a large Jewish yarmulke rather than an Islamic skull cap. I also noticed a significant number of disabled people in Van, including several beggars whose tattered traditional dress suggested they had come to the big city in the hopes of a better chance. Life has been hard and often violent in rural Kurdistan for a long time; the vibrancy of Van has attracted more than its share of villagers hoping to escape the ravages of poverty and insurrection.
Though Cumhurriyet Caddesi had at least half a dozen major banks along it, none of them seemed willing to exchange money. Several blocks up the road we discovered two exchange offices but neither of them accepted travelers cheques, so we had no choice but to dip into our cash reserves. Susanne exchanged $100 in one office at a rate of 442,000 lira per dollar. We then returned to the Ayça Patisserie, where Susanne ordered a puff pastry and some cookies while I enjoyed my usual Turkish breakfast, along with some coffee and peach juice for both of us. Initially the pastane played Turkish music, but as a young man behind the counter brought over our drinks someone switched the radio station to low-grade American pop. As has been true in so many places we've traveled -- Egypt, India, Thailand, Bolivia -- people seemed eager to supply us with Western music rather than the local variety, whether we liked it or not. At least there were no more swarms of bees trying to steal sips of our peach juice.
After breakfast we passed several tour agencies, each of which advertised bus travel to Iran but not much else. We walked several blocks south of the hotel in search of the Van Tourist Information Center, which was supposedly four or five blocks from where we were staying. I couldn't find any obvious entrance so I assumed it was out of business -- not a surprise considering the indefinite state of emergency here.
Just as we were heading back to our hotel a man stopped us and asked in English, "Where are you going?"
"We're going back to our hotel,", I replied, assuming he worked for the carpet shop on the corner."If you need to find the tourist office it's right here," he answered, pointing to a door directly across the street. Somehow I had completely missed it despite the fact it was right in front of our faces. A little embarrassed because of my mistake, I thanked the man before we crossed the street and entered the tourism office.
The Tourist Information Center was a hollow shell of an office, totally barren except for a few posters and a dusty desk counter. Two men were sitting behind the counter, both looking as if no one had visited them in weeks.
I approached the counter, hoping one of them spoke English. "Ingilizce konusuyormusunuz?," I inquired.
"Yok," they both replied, raising their eyebrows and clicking their tongues.
Struggling to find out if there were organized minibuses to the local sights I asked in Turkish, "Turist dolmusler var mi?" One of the men pointed to a large map taped to the counter. For reasons beyond my comprehension the map was oriented with east at the top rather than north, so the men and I had a terrible time of referencing points on their map with points on my guidebook's map. After several minutes of frustration I did my best to pretend I had gained some knowledge from our discussion, then thanked them before heading back to the Ipek Yolu Hotel.
Susanne and I approached the front desk to get our room key. "Uç yüz dokuz, lütfen," I said, requesting our key by our room number.
"Good morning," replied the man behind the desk. "Are you interested in tours in Kurdistan?"
"Actually, yes," I answered. "Can you help us arrange a guide?"
"Of course," he said, reaching for a thick folder of tour information. "We can talk in the lounge." Susanne and I followed him towards a couch near the restaurant bar. The man was tall and thin, probably in his late 30s or early 40s, and he had unusually green eyes. His sideburns and bushy mustache showed signs of premature graying.
"Would you like some çay, perhaps?" he asked. "Apple tea? Coffee?"
"Coffee please," Susanne answered. We could have certainly used the caffeine infusion after the previous night's sleepless bus ride.
"By the way," I added, "my name is Andy, and this is Susanne. What's you're name?"
"My name is Berzan," he replied. It appeared that we had found Berzan Dersimi, the travel agent-turned-hotelier who had been recommended to us.
As our Nescafe arrived a small white cat darted between our sofas. Berzan reached down and picked it up. "This is my new cat," he said. "Have you heard of the Van cat? Its eyes are both green and yellow." Indeed, as the kitten peered up at us it became readily apparent that each eye had a distinct color, as if an eccentric cat lover had purchased contrasting contact lenses for it.
"This is my third Van cat," Berzan continued. "A tourist took my first cat last summer. I was out of Van guiding a tour and someone staying at the hotel took it. The second cat disappeared this spring. They are very valuable outside of Turkey, you know." Susanne and I both tried petting the kitten but its interests must have been elsewhere, for it quickly vanished under the window curtains.
"There is much to see here in eastern Turkey," Berzan explained as he opened a large map on the table. "How much time do you have here?"
"We fly back to Istanbul on Thursday morning," I replied. "That gives us the rest of today, as well as Tuesday and Wednesday."
"You can fit a lot into three days if you get started soon," Berzan said. "Around Van, you could visit Akdamar Island, Hosap Castle, the ruins of Çavustepe and the Rock of Van before the end of the day."
"We have a few priorities," Susanne noted. "We really want to visit the Kurdish palace at Dogubeyazit above everything else, with Akdamar Island second and Hosap castle third. Can we do Dogubeyazit as a day trip or will we have to stay there overnight?"
"Yes, Dogubeyazit can be done in less than a day," he answered. "Two hours each way, it's no problem. And the road from Van to Dogubeyazit doesn't close at night so you can drive back late in the afternoon. You could even visit Ani one day and then visit Dogubeyazit the next day on the way back."
Berzan's last comment caught both of our attentions. The 10th century Armenian capital of Ani was initially high on my list of places to visit in Turkey, but its remoteness along the Turkish-Armenian border far to the northeast made it seem a relatively unlikely place for us to v
