Thinking about Turkey

I was up at four and soon out into the dark and walking. Istiklal was still and shadowy under pale streetlights, occupied only by a few stray cats and, farther up, street cleaners with a vacuum truck and a water truck. At a cross street a man standing beside his yellow cab said, "taxi," more as a statement than an offer, and I shook my head and waved my hand forward.

The walk this morning was different, each step a leaving step, the city around me, the country already disappearing.

Up Istiklal, in the restaurant and bar district, I began to come upon more people, some sitting on the stoops of closed shops smoking and talking, some walking along with the tired gait of all-nighters. Loud music still came from a few of the bars; a few teashops had already opened. A number of police drove or walked up and down the street, and a police van was parked in front of a still open doner/sandwich shop; a small crowd had gathered and a young man was sitting in the back of the van. A little further up the street I came upon two men shouting at each other and then they fought; their friends pulled them apart repeatedly, but each time the two antagonists came together again, flailing at each other's heads and yelling.

Just past Taksim Square I reached the small office for the Havas airport shuttle and got on the five o'clock bus. At the airport I split up my gear and checked a dufflebag, and a sleepy Turkish official stamped my passport and only half the stamp hit the page, which disappointed me.

I was early and I ate breakfast at my gate, pouring the last of the precious Kaş honey on pieces of bread. On the plane at the first beverage cart pass I asked for çay, and the flight attendant repeated my request, "çay?" as if I was cute but a little affected for using the Turkish word rather than just saying "tea." But, I wanted to tell her, I have been in your country for all these weeks.

I flew to Amsterdam and waited for four hours and then flew on to Minnesota. Most of this time I was thinking, thinking about the last month and a half, about the places I'd been, the days of the walk, about awayness, and about what I had noticed, the details that seemed important or telling or that just stuck in my head--

In pensions and houses the shower was almost never a separate part of the bathroom but just a faucet and nozzle on the wall; everything would get wet, the toilet, the sink, the mirror, the walls, the door (but not the toilet paper: the holders usually included a small shield).

Always, even often in the cities, there were chickens and goats. Roosters always crowing wherever you go, which I like.

In every town of any size ATMs are everywhere (which is why the lack of one in Çiarli was surprising); they are way more common than seems necessary, but then they were often in use and sometimes thronged.

The Turkish people like to shake hands. Whenever I arrived at a pension, or just went into a store, a handshake with the proprietor came first (and again last), and I would shake hands with anyone else present too. Children in the villages would come up and take my hand. Goat herders or old men I met out on the trail would stop and put out their hands. The grip was always gentle, never strong or even firm.

The Turks' demeanor is gentle too, mostly. I found them easygoing, quiet, usually patient (though sometimes apparently indifferent). Even when confronted with silly questions, or repeated requests for information they had already given, they remained imperturbable. One exception stands out, mostly because it was so unusual: at the pension in Finike, the middle-aged owner, Ali, had patiently shown us several rooms, negotiated a price, and answered all our questions. But after he had gone downstairs Tom remembered another question, about laundry, which he yelled down three flights. From below Ali said, with some exasperation, "No to the shouting, please!" and then he trudged back up the three floors to provide an answer.

Bottled water is ubiquitous, to be found in every small shop, in sizes from a pint to ten liters (one and a half liters being the most common), but no one carries a water bottle of their own.

Further, water was always a focal point in the arid places where I traveled, signified by the community tap in small villages, the wells and cisterns in the mountains, the small irrigation troughs bringing water to gardens and orchards, the terraced olive groves built to catch the winter rain.

Almost all houses, whether in cities or villages or in the countryside, had gardens, even if sometimes that meant just a small strip of ground. Any open space was given over to growing vegetables, and small trees provided fruit or nuts. No one bothered with a law). More plants, often herbs and flowers, grew in big square olive oil cans with the tops cut off, all in a row on steps or along the side of a house or along a walkway.

In the mountains and along the coast of the Teke Peninsula I rarely went a day without seeing ruins of some sort. And not just at big places like Xanthos or Phaselis, but scattered about on hilltops and in fields; everywhere, the tumbled remains of ancient necropoli and aqueducts and forts, the massive stones of the Greeks and Lycians and Romans, the smaller, less impressive stonework of the Byzantines and Ottomans. The locals hardly seemed to notice and why should they; the rubble was just a part of the landscape.

Contemporary Turkish architecture is all about cement. The houses and apartment buildings are ugly going up, and though paint helps, ugly forever after. And they won't last long. The advantages of cement are its low cost, ease of use, and malleability. The last could also be seen as a weakness. Often the walls of rooms (especially bathrooms) aren't quite true, but the attitude seems to be, close enough, and if problems ensue more cement can be applied (patches are everywhere).

I met more women traveling alone in Turkey than men. I also met a number of European and Australian women who had settled down in Turkey, mostly with Turkish men. None of these women had any intention of ever moving back to their home country.

Which brings me to a question I thought about on the flight home: would I want to live in Turkey? Without hesitation I would answer, no. I much prefer Minnesota—the greenery and culture and seasons, including the cold, snowy winters (though it does get cold and does snow in the high mountains where I walked). So I didn't really understand why the expatriates I met had been drawn to Turkey....

Which led me to think about the difficulties with Turkey, for me, but also what I liked. First the former:

I never could get used to the trash everywhere. But it does not seem to bother the Turks. Only in Istanbul and Antalya did I see any institutional effort to clean up, and then only in the posh or tourist districts. I suppose what bothered me was the lack of orderliness (which says more about me than the Turks), but also just the stark ugliness of rubbish scattered about in so many places.

The stray dog and cat situation was also intolerable. They were everywhere and not particularly shy. And I just didn't get it, since the Turks also often seemed bothered; but they were also much more tolerant than I.

As a traveler, I struggled with the often aggressive attentions of people who wanted me to buy something. The tension between the desire to please others and the desire to please one's self is particularly fraught when, as was so often the case, the other seems to need your money more than you do. But still, I just like to be left alone to make my own decisions, and that's not how it worked in Turkey. Also, a lot of the attention was couched as friendliness, when clearly it was all about the money, and while I understand the strategy as a strategy, it's still a creepy sort of exchange. Part of what might explain the onslaught method is the over-supply of tourist services—the almost innumerable pensions and hotels, restaurants, excursion boats, carpet shops, and so on—and that over-supply is explained by the opportunity to make good money, in a country where apparently such opportunities are limited.

Another difficulty: peanut butter was hard to find, and then usually it was a sort that was composed of half peanuts and half sugar (and which was thus nearly inedible).

I experienced another minor problem: when swimming at Olympos, some sort of small fish kept biting an open cut on my shin. Which hurt. It's hard to swim with one hand holding your lower leg.

More seriously, I did not like the Turkish landscape aesthetic, or what seemed like a lack of such aesthetic. There were practically no parks in the cities, no public spaces in smaller towns (except the mosques). The few national parks in the mountains were not well protected, and any development seemed to be undertaken solely by concessionaires, and in a manner little different than in the resort towns. As for those, the beaches were strictly commercial, the best spots "private" and claimed by big hotels; the public beaches were strewn with trash. I know that here I'm applying a western aesthetic, showing up with my own ideas of beauty and land use, which maybe don't make sense in Turkey.... But still.

The last, and most significant, difficulty I had was with the place of women. First I should say I of course don't fully understand that place, and it seems women's status is as complex as the relations between Islam and the secular state in Turkey.... But what I saw was often women in the back, men in the front, literally, for those working in shops and cafes, and more figuratively as a general vibe. Women just didn't seem to matter quite as much. Part of my un-ease too, I think, was the separateness of men and women. Myself, I like a mix of company, and from what I saw, especially in the villages and smaller towns, there wasn't a whole lot of that in Turkey.

Along with all of these reservations, I can also name much that I liked and appreciated:

The food was lovely. Good bread was to be had at every little store, always in its own glass case out front, and I ate a loaf each day, big hunks by themselves but then sometimes with honey or peanut butter or jam or tomatoes.

I have never consumed so much tea; I particularly enjoyed the presentation in small tulip glasses, which maybe for me anyway encouraged the drinking of one after another. Part of the pleasure of tea was its role in hospitality, as it was always the first offer made when coming into someone's house.

The fruit and vegetables were beautiful, in appearance and quality and taste. I ate apricots and peaches and oranges and apples, cucumbers and tomatoes and carrots and peppers....

Breakfast was my favorite meal, almost always the same but never old: tomato wedges and cucumber slices, green olives, white salty cheese, hardboiled eggs, good bread and honey, and tea. I would eat and eat.

I also ate at least a dozen Magnum ice cream bars, always the "beyaz" variety (meaning "white" a single word to indicate the white chocolate coating over vanilla ice cream; I will miss these, I will really miss these). The ice cream case was always out front of the small stores too, next to the bread case (but while the bread was cheap, about forty cents a loaf, the ice cream bars were usually a dollar and a half).

I liked the kösks for sitting and being social, both the big platforms often found beside mosques, and the pillowed variety, with low seats and small low tables, at pensions and restaurants. I would like to build one in my backyard under the silver maple tree.

I loved the giant plane trees stretching over the kösk at so many mosques, and I liked the shady mulberry trees, the pale olive trees, the massive and striking flat-top trees (Lebanon cedars) high up over one thousand meters, spread out and towering on the steep bouldery slopes.

I liked the friendliness of the people I would come upon each day. The children, practicing their school lessons, would shout "hello!" and "goodbye!" and "very nice to meet you!" The old men would nod from their porches, or pause on their morning constitutionals, and say "merhaba," and I would say the same back and feel welcomed.

I liked the people who wanted to practice their English with me, Fatma in the village of Belen, the young agricultural engineer in Mavikent.

I liked the Turkish language too, though it was also often a source of frustration since I knew so little. But I did learn some words, like "iki kiz" for two daughters and "iki torun" for two grandchildren ("oğlan" for boys (the "g" is silent)), and "hayir kari" for no wife. I could say hot (sicak) and cold (soğuk) and sun (günes) and beautiful (güzel). My favorite word was üç, or three, pronounced, "ewch."

I came to like the call to prayers, which gave a pleasing rhythm to the day and seemed to connect me to the life of a place. And I liked how it sounded a little different in each place, depending on the skill of the imam, who might be older and a little wheezy, or who might have a deep and booming and perfectly pitched voice.

I liked the Lycian Way, the trail, more the second half than the first, but really the whole way, every stage. I liked walking those miles along the coast and through olive groves and up valleys and in the mountains. The walking was the very best part of all.

A few other things I liked, included living out of my backpack, heading up on the mountain stages with enough fruit and bread and honey and water to last a few days, managing with a small wardrobe, sleeping in the tent. I liked the small rooms of my own at pensions. I liked writing about each day, in my notebook and later on a pension's lone computer or in an internet cafe with young men playing war games. I liked my hiking companions, and felt a particular affinity with Chris and Addi, and came to appreciate Tom, who I decided is the sort of person who is always who he is and who doesn't, or can't, change himself to fit in with others or changing circumstances, and that's not necessarily a problem....

On the plane I left off my ruminations for a time and watched a movie, The Hangover, and then I thought about Turkey some more, and then I watched another movie, The Last Station, about Tolstoy and his wife in their old age, and then I went back to thinking about Turkey. We passed over Greenland and I looked down on huge glaciers and large brown mountains, and then coastal islands and icebergs.

Two days before I had walked from Sundance camp up to the coastal road and taken a dolmuş to Antalya, a night bus to Istanbul; I had walked about the city and then the next day taken a bus to the airport, a plane to Amsterdam, and now I was flying over Greenland, and soon I would land in green green Minnesota.

I like walking best, but the technology of modern travel is pretty amazing. It was bringing me home, and I was glad to be coming home, and glad to have gone away, and glad to have learned so much and to have so much to remember and to think about.