Another digression…
I interrupt your regular programming…
The fact that I keep interrupting my writing process says something about the process, doesn’t it? Sigh. But I’m off on another tangent. I’ve just left Turkey, and it has left me a lot to think about.
We have said good-bye to the bus, not without some sense of relief. Four to five hours a day for two weeks is a lot of hours on a bus. But it did enable us to see a great deal of the country. So how to sum up?
Many of the other tour participants kept journals, which was quite necessary as we saw so much in such a short time. The danger is that you can’t remember which ruin was which. But one of the ladies was an art teacher, and her journal did much more than that. It was a pictograph of images of the country; things we’d seen, people we’d met, jokes we’d shared. The coke bottles on top of chimneys, indicating that inside was a young lady looking for a husband. The thin-waisted tea glasses; the kerchiefed women; our bus squeezing through narrow cobblestoned alleys. The ongoing argument between the Greek woman on the tour and our Turkish guide as to which country owned Santa Claus (you had to be there!) Mostly the drawings were hers, but additions were made along the way by Turks we met and other tour members. Her diary ended up being the most accurate compilation, as Turkey was really a series of images rather than a storyline.
After two weeks what I have are images of a modern secular republic that can boast 10,000 years of history. Of rainbow staircases in Istanbul and cave dwellers in Cappadocia. Of safe streets, good wine and friendly people. Of lots of rock – Bronze Age rock fashioned into fantastic cities, eroded stone chimneys that hid the persecuted Christians, rocks that break your ankles and modern women working around it in the fields. Of feral cats, shepherds, backgammon and storks swirling over olive trees. Add images of the evocative lifestyle: the sultans, the harems, the great riches and the near constant wars to keep it all.
The exotic place names left me reeling with an overwhelming sense of history and strategic importance. Turkey shares a border with Bulgaria, Greece, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. All names from history; all names in the news. When we were in Konya listening to the Turkish fighter jets overhead, the bombing in Aleppo felt very close.
Even the waterways sound exotic: the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River. And from Grade Four social studies, the historic names: Mesopotamia, Ephesus, Heliopolis, Troy, Constantinople and Gallipoli. Add the people: the Apostle John, the Virgin Mary, Alexander the Great, Suleiman, Rumi and Ataturk. And finally, Turkey’s contributions to the world in literacy, philosophy, politics, law and of course, their gift of tulips.
The images whirl. Did I mention the Dervishes?
