by Paul Theroux
Just before I left the Seabourn Spirit, Jack Greenwald took me aside and gave me a gaily wrapped present. Inside was a Turkish lapel pin and his Household Cavalry tie.
“Wear them both,” he said. “The pin will be useful here in Turkey. The tie is helpful everywhere.”
“I’ll feel like an imposter wearing this tie.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“And isn’t it an insult to your regiment?”
“Not at all,” he said. “My regiment wasn’t half as impressive as that one.”
“Jack, do you mean you weren’t a member of the Household Cavalry?”
“Oh, no, I was in another regiment—you wouldn’t be impressed by that one,” he said. “I only wear ties from fancy regiments. I get good results too. I’m always being saluted when I’m in London.”
14
The M.V. Akdeniz: Through the Levant
Leaving the comfort of the Seabourne Spirit was so much like a secular version of the Expulsion from Paradise that I thought I would brood less if I moved straight on to Syria. It seemed a prudent move, too. For all its physical beauty, Istanbul was passing through a turbulent phase. A recent bomb in the Covered Bazaar had killed many people, including three tourists. That at once caused an immediate eight-thousand-visitor cancellation to Turkey. The Bazaar bomb might have been the work of Kurds of the Kurdish People’s Party (PKK). But there were other bombers, fundamentalist ones, from the Great Raiders of the Islamic East and the Devrimçi Sol—the Revolutionary Left. Liquor stores were a frequent target; so were banks, because they charged interest on loans, and it is written in the Koran that “Allah hath blighted usury” (11:276).
There had been a rocket attack on the residence of the United States Consul General. It missed, but if it had hit its target the building would have been demolished. Ten armed men guarded the house now, and the Consul General, and most foreign diplomats in Turkey, did not stir outside without a bodyguard.
Istanbul, even under siege, was still magnificent. Never mind that W. B. Yeats had not actually seen the city—it was everything magical that he had written about it in his two greatest poems. It had known three incarnations, as Byzantium for a thousand years, then Christian Constantinople, and finally Istanbul of the Ottomans. It was a labyrinth, ringing with the voices of hawkers, of ferry horns, of muezzins and of the plonking music that was called “Arabesque.” As Yeats implied. It was a place where there was no real distinction between life and art, it lay on both banks of the Bosporus, one continent nestling next to another—just a stretch of water, a ferry ride from Europe to Asia.
And though Turks moaned about the dangers in Istanbul, they were warier of the Turkish hinterland. My plan was to get a Syrian visa here, take the train to the south coast city of Adana and then trains and buses to Iskanderun, Hatay, Antakya (Antioch) and into Syria and down the Syrian coast.
“That is a bad area,” I was told.
“Which area?”
“Every place you mentioned.”
“But that’s my route,” I said.
“May it be behind you!” It was a Turkish expression: Gechmis olsen.
Soon after arriving in Istanbul, I checked into a third-rate hotel and applied for a Syrian visa. Feeling sentimental, I walked down to the Asian side of the Galata Bridge and looked for the Seabourne Spirit on the quay at Kadiköy. But it had sailed away. Another ship was in its place—Turkish, rusty, slightly larger, no one on board.
I seriously considered swimming the Hellespont.
Ömer Koç had swum the Hellespont, though he, of all people, could have found an easier way of crossing that stretch of water. His was the wealthiest family in Turkey. I looked him up, because I had an introduction and because my Syrian visa was taking a while to come through.
“I’ve also swum across the Bosporus, to Europe, and back,” Ömer said. The Hellespont swim was in homage to Byron. “It can be a long swim—three miles or more, because the current takes you.”
“I was thinking of trying it.”
“This isn’t the month to do it,” he said.
A handsome young man in his late twenties, Ömer spoke with an English accent acquired as a student in England. He helped run the family business, Koç Holdings. The walled compound of Koç Holdings was something of a landmark, in that its grounds had been scattered with Greek pillars and marble ornaments and statues. They had been gathered by his father, Rahmi, from sites all over Anatolia, to make it look like an ancient site.
“He had a wonderful sarcophagus, but in the end decided not to put it on the lawn,” Ömer said. “He decided that it would be frightfully morbid.”
Ömer lived on the Asian side of the Bosporus in a palatial Turkish house known as a yali, a summer house. It was the narrowest point on the Bosporus, where Darius had built a pontoon bridge and marched his army across in the fifth century B.C. On its carefully chosen embankment, the yali epitomized the great absorbing tendencies of Turkish culture—an appreciation of light and land and water, and a blend of East and West; the Ottoman house in its maturity.
Ömer’s yali, built a hundred years ago, had been occupied by a princely son of a khedive, one of the Turkish viceroys of Egypt. When Ömer’s father, Rahmi, bought it in 1966, it had fallen into disrepair. Rahmi Koç totally revitalized it.
“I was very small when we moved in,” Ömer said. “I spent my childhood here, and I still live in it most of the time.”
I wondered whether Ömer had been intimidated by having been brought up in this pristine house with its delicate furnishings.
“My brothers and I realized that it was ornate, but my father didn’t worry about us making a mess,” Ömer said. “He’s not bothered by that sort of thing.”
He and his brothers, Mustafa and Ali, romped in the basoda—the formal living room, where guests were received—and climbed all over the banquettes, called sedirs. They especially loved being so close to the water, Ömer said. They dived off the landing stage, where their boat was moored, and this proximity to the Bosporus turned them into great swimmers.
Like his father, Ömer was a collector, a passionate bibliophile. His library was stocked exclusively with books on Turkish subjects. Evelyn Waugh used to joke that his relative Sir Telford Waugh’s book, Turkey—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, “sounded like Boxing Day.” Ömer owned that book, and a thousand more rare volumes, along with old maps, weapons, incunabula, and treasures, such as Sultan Abdul Hamid’s personal letter opener, a simple dagger.
“This is interesting,” Ömer said to me, and showed me a copy of Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur inscribed to Sultan Abdul Hamid (1876–1909). And he explained that Lew Wallace had been the American Cultural Attaché from 1881 to 1885.
Ömer’s grandfather, Vehbi Koç, now in his eighties, was the patriarch of the family and a noted philanthropist. He had been called “the father of Turkish private enterprise.” His name was as familiar to the average Turk as Henry Ford’s was in America, and significantly Henry Ford II wrote a foreword to Vehbi Koç’s autobiography. Ömer gave me a copy. The book was not a rags-to-riches story, because the Koc family was not indigent. It was a modest Ankara family which, like most others in Anatolia, had no lights or running water. A real bath was “a public bath. This was a monthly expedition.”
In accordance with Turkish tradition, family members found Vehbi Koç one of his own cousins for him to marry. This arrangement was intended “to preserve the family fortunes, and with the hope that they would get along together.” He saw his wife for the first time at the end of the marriage week when, on the seventh day, his bride, Sadberk, raised her veil.
As a youth, Vehbi went to Istanbul and served an apprenticeship. “I noticed that the minorities”—the Greeks, the Jews, the Armenians—“led a better life. Their standard of living was much higher than the Turks’, so I decided to go into business.” He progressed from being a contractor, to manufacturing, to the production of foodstuffs and steel, to the making of cars (Fords and Fiats) and railwa
ys. He became by his own report a frugal billionaire and his book contained, among other things, advice on how to stay healthy. For example, “Find the right weight, and stick to it for life.”
“The best entertainments” from his youth, Vehbi Koç wrote, “were marriage and circumcision ceremonies.”
“Oh, yes, circumcisions are great occasions in Turkey,” Ömer told me. And it did not take place immediately after the boy’s birth. His own sunnet, or circumcision party, occurred when he was two and a half—and was a joint one, shared by his brothers Mustafa (nine) and Ali (seven)—and was celebrated at the yali on the Bosporus. It was an enormous party—four hundred guests—and his parents indulged their sons.
“Normally the party is held the same day as the ceremony—to ease the pain, as it were,” Ömer said. “But my parents wanted us to enjoy it, so it was held fifteen days later.”
As we talked, and drank coffee, I felt I was experiencing an aspect of culture on the Turkish Mediterranean that had not changed in five hundred years. This was the ultimate country house. It was hard to imagine a more peaceful setting, a greater harmony of both natural and architectural elements, or—in this waterside culture of caïques and yachts and ferries—an easier place to reach, from almost anywhere. I had fulfilled the old Turkish idea of fleeing the city of shadows and hawkers’ cries and music, and finding peace in its opposite, light and silence; sitting in comfort at the edge of Asia and contemplating Europe.
Frustrated that my Syrian visa was taking so long, I went back to the ship I had seen moored at Kadiköy, the Akdeniz, a Turkish cruise liner. Was it headed somewhere interesting? I found the agent in a nearby office.
“Where is this ship sailing to?” I asked.
The man’s English was inadequate to frame a reply, but he handed me the printed itinerary: Izmir, Alexandria, Haifa, Cyprus, and back to Istanbul. Perfect.
“What day is the ship leaving?”
“Today—now.”
“Now?”
He tapped his watch. He showed me three o’clock.
It was now noon. I explained that my passport was at the Syrian Consulate, three miles away. If I could get it back from the Syrians, and check out of my hotel (two miles away), was there room for me on board?
Plenty of empty cabins, he indicated. The price was thirty-four million Turkish liras—cash. This was $940, not bad for a twelve-day cruise. I wondered whether I could get aboard. I decided to try.
What followed was a bullying drama enacted by mustached men in brown suits, chain-smoking and muttering in broken English. It was also manic pursuit through Istanbul traffic. The Syrians complained about my insisting on having my passport back prematurely. The hotel complained that I had not given them prior notice of checking out. The post-office money changers were on strike, and so I went to a usurer who laughed at my credit card and took nearly all my cash. Eventually I had my passport, my bag, and the money. I was panting from the effort, and I had less than an hour left to buy my ticket, buy an exit stamp from the police, get through customs and immigration, and board the ship. Then the police complained, the immigration officials complained, and so did the agent. The counting of the thirty-four million in torn and wrinkled bills of small denomination took quite a while.
Amazingly, just before the gangway was raised I was hurried aboard the Akdeniz and given my cabin key.
“My name Ali,” the steward said.
That was his entire fund of English words; but it was enough. He was a short bulgy man, forty or so, in baggy pants and stained white shirt. He seemed glad to see me, and I thought I knew why.
A large Turkish suitcase had been placed in my cabin. The suitcase alone filled the floor space, and bulked in my fears. I imagined my cabin-mate. He would be called Mustafa, he would snore, he would smoke, he would natter in his sleep, he would get up in the middle of the night so often I would nickname him “Mustafa pee,” and he would retch—or worse—in the tiny head. He would toss peanut shells onto the floor. He might be antagonistic; worse, he might be friendly. Indeed, he might not be Mustafa at all, but rather a big tattooed biker called Wolfie, with scars and a blue shaven skull; or a ferocious backpacker; or a demented priest, or a pilgrim, or a mullah with wild staring eyes. At these prices you got all kinds.
Ali was outside the cabin, waiting for me. He knew what I had seen. He knew what was in my mind. Ali may have had an infant’s grasp of English but he had intuition bordering on genius.
“Ali, you find me another cabin,” I said.
He understood this.
“One person—just me. This ship has plenty of empty cabins.”
Just to make sure there was no misunderstanding I whispered the password, baksheesh.
He smiled and showed me his dusky paw: Welcome to the Eastern Mediterranean.
He narrowed his eyes and smiled and nodded to calm me, to reassure me that he was going to deal with this matter immediately. Give me a little time, he was suggesting.
I looked at the rest of the ship. It reeked of rotting carpets and sour grease and damp Turks and strange stews and old paint and tobacco smoke. There were about a hundred passengers, all of them Turkish. Not a single backpacker, or German tourist, nor any priests or pilgrims. The Turks on board, in thick shawls and brown suits, were drinking tea and smoking and fretting. And men and woman alike, all bespectacled, had that Turkish look of uniform disguise that resembles someone wearing fake glasses attached to a false nose-and-mustache.
I was not alarmed by any of it until the Turks themselves began to complain about the ship.
“I was not expecting this,” Mr. Fehmi said. He had worked at a NATO base for sixteen years and spoke English fairly well. “This is a great disappointment.”
We were among the few drinkers on the ship. We were soon joined by a ship’s officer who explained that the Akdeniz was experiencing difficulty leaving the quayside. It was a forty-year-old ship, with no bow thrusters, so a tug had to snag a stern line and spin the ship one hundred and eighty degrees to the edge of the Golden Horn, and only then could we get away.
But in this slow turning the whole skyline of Istanbul revolved, gray and golden in the late-afternoon light, the sun setting behind the mosques and the domes and the minarets. I counted thirty minarets and a dozen domes, and with the ferries hooting, and the fishing boats and the caïques and the freighters dodging us, everything at the confluence of these great waters—the Bosporus, the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara—sparkled and rang with life. And then we were truly under way, passing Topkapi Palace and the city wall that still showed breaches where it had been blasted open by the Ottomans in 1453.
In a stiff wind, we passed Haydarpasa Railway Station, where I had planned to take my train to Ankara and Syria. But that was yesterday’s plan. I had changed my mind, and I was glad of it, for wasn’t the whole point of a Mediterranean grand tour voyaging among the great cities—from here to Izmir to Alexandria and onward? And I liked being the only yabançi—foreigner—on board. It was as though, among all these Turks, on this Turkish ship, crossing the Eastern Mediterranean, I had penetrated to the heart of Turkey.
I went back on deck to look at the last of Istanbul—“Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour”—and saw Ali creeping towards me. He signaled with his eyebrows, he pursed his lips, he dangled a key. That meant he had a cabin. He beckoned, and I followed him to a new cabin.
This is all yours, his hand gestures said. And when I passed him his baksheesh, he touched it to his forehead in a stagey show of thanks, and then slapped his heart, and I knew that as long as my money held out he was mine.
Then I was drinking fifty-cent beers in the smoky lounge and congratulating myself. It had been a frantic but worthy impulse, like leaping aboard a departing train for an unknown destination. Never mind the cigarette smoke and the filthy carpets and the Turkish muzak and the TV going at the same time. I found a corner to make notes in and read a few chapters of Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope (scandal and hypocr
isy in an English village), and then just as night fell I went on deck and watched the Sea of Marmara widen into an immense sea that might have been the Mediterranean.
Having my own cabin meant that I had a refuge. And because it was on B-Deck I was entitled to eat in the Upper Class restaurant, The Kappadokya, where the captain and other officers dined. The captain was a pinkish Turk with confident jowls in a tight white shirt and white bum-bursting trousers, who looked like a village cricketer whose uniform had shrunk. He sat with six Turkish spivs and their preening wives. It was Upper Class but like the Lower Class dining room on the next deck down it was the same men in brown suits and old veiled women and frowning matrons in fifties frocks. Some of the older women looked like Jack Greenwald in a shawl, and their big benign faces made me miss him.
I was seated with an older Turkish couple. We had no language in common, but the man tapped his finger on Greenwald’s Turkish pin that I had in my lapel, and he smiled.
“Afyet olsen.” That was from my small supply of Turkish phrases. “Good eating.”
But the phrase was misplaced. The meal was not good, and a palpable air of disappointment hung in the room—silence, and then muttered remarks. It was generally a hard-up country, and these people were spending a large amount for this trip. We had that first meal: salad, pea soup, fatty meat and vegetables, and a third course of a great mass of boiled spinach; then fruit and cream for dessert. It was Turkish food but it also somewhat resembled an old-fashioned school meal.
The shawls, the brown suits, the felt hats, the clunky shoes and dowdy dresses and cigarettes were all part of the Turkish time-warp in which the Turkish middle class was still finding clothes of the 1950s stylish. Even the shipboard dishes of pickles and potato salad and lunch meat and bowls of deviled eggs were from that era, and appropriate to the old Packards and Caddies and Dodges that plied up and down Istanbul. (In a week in Turkey the average middle-aged American sees every car his father or grandfather ever owned.) It was a sedate cruise so far, the nondrinking Turks all well-behaved, very placid, and so Turkish that it seemed like mimicry, a big smoky lounge of dour Turks in heavy clothes, heading for Egypt.