We lounge, talk books, and nap. I admit my weakness for the Aga Saga, the English tempest-in-a-teapot novel of domestic life, often written with Austen influences of skill and restraint. I pass one on to Bernice. She falls into it immediately and doesn’t look up again. Cumulatively the hot days and little sleep make me want a few hours to read my hero, Freya Stark. She mentions finding myrtle tied to tombstones.
Hiking in the full sun this morning, we heard a loud boom. When we got back on board, Mustapha said we had had an earthquake.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6: FETHIYE/LYDAE/CLEOPATRA’S BATHS
Into the small resort of Fethiye for a stroll among trellised houses with vines shading the street and pleasant small squares with fountains. The people are everywhere warm. Big smiles, and they touch you. They’re eager to shake hands. A hand on my shoulder surprises me in a Muslim country. I buy several alabaster soap dishes and a T-shirt with a Medusa head on it. The Di Rosas help us select good snorkeling masks. Now we are really equipped. At the market Enver buys fish, and we find enormous loaves of rustic bread.
Mustapha takes us up the coast to the spot where Anthony and Cleopatra are rumored to have cavorted in the baths of a small harbor. No perfumed sails and poop of beaten gold here. Their little ruin sank long ago in an earthquake. A squalid settlement remains, where a beached rowboat has been strangely fitted out as a bread oven and various nasty chickens and dogs roam, peck, and snuffle in the bare dirt. A black pot sits in coals near a sign for Amigo Restaurant, now defunct, which is fortunate for the health of all concerned. We see no one, but a terrier comes wagging and follows us into the hills.
Up, up as usual from sea level to a peak, along a stony path, with Bernice saying, “I am not a goat.” We enter a forest of Aleppo pines, heavily scented, cross more rocky terrain, and meet a Yürük (nomad) family with their daughters, ages one and two, tied onto donkeys. They’re moving a herd of goats with assistance from two dogs. One girl has on an evil eye necklace. Enver has met them before, and they graciously allow us to photograph them. The girls are shy, but the mother smiles confidently. Her husband follows the ridge, calling to the goats. Soon we pass their dark tents. Following a high path, we arrive at an empty green valley, where we find a domed cistern, then another, quite intact. Channels trap the rain, which collects below. Several partial structures loom against the sunset sky. I step on a marble torso, the navel and drapery easily identifiable, and other marble pieces broken and lying around. Enver calls to another nomad, asking him if he has found any coins lately, but he has not. The man stares as we pass. We look weird to him. Possibly zoological.
On through woods scattered with rocks and ruins, so many that I can’t tell them apart. A few stone tombs and views of Robinson Crusoe coves of emerald water.
Back for a golden light swim.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7: DALYAN CAUNUS
Boarded a riverboat piloted by a sinewy young man and his eight-year-old boy, who can’t keep his eyes off us. These glimpses of how pale-faced and odd we must look amuse both of us. We travel a few miles up the Dalyan River, around the bend from where we moored. Slow old river—Moses in the bulrushes! Big turtles, kingfishers flashing blue, rock-carved temple tombs on the hills high above. Because one was left unfinished during the Persian War, I can see the method of construction. First smooth the rock face, then carve the house-shaped tomb into it so that it’s freestanding except at the bottom, where it’s anchored in rock. These rock tombs are eerie and also fascinating because they mimic the temples or domestic architecture of the ruling class of that time. Peaked roofs, columned entrances, friezes, and carvings over the doors reveal a sophisticated aesthetic for the living and the dead.
Marshes on either side line the milky jade waters. Marshes are my favorite landscape. Not water. Not land. Childhood summers along the Georgia coast with its vast Marshes of Glynn imprinted the serene watery beauty in my psyche. I loved the subtle shifts of color in the grasses and the sudden flop of an alligator from a log into the water. In this area the preservation of the loggerhead turtle is important. We see several sunning on mud banks, oblivious to the fuss made about where they lay their eggs. We tie up, and Enver leads us to a hot sulfur pool—very stinky—where we soak among warm rocks, then slather each other with green mud. Rheumatism and gynecological abnormalities will be cured, and male potency enhanced. So tonight the boat may rock with a power over and beyond the tides. Many photographs ensue, since we all look like the night of the living dead. Soon the mud dries to silver, and we each emit a big rotten egg smell. Karl, who is handsome and partially bald, looks the scariest.
We dry as we motor to the large lake of Köyceğiz. I wonder but don’t ask if this is the Lake of Leeches I read about. I don’t fancy jumping off the boat into the murky water, but I do. When I climb back up the ladder, I still have a sheen of mud on my back and legs. I jump in again. We’re all soothed and smoothed by the healing properties of the mud. Still, we look bedraggled in the garden restaurant, with our snaky hair and scoured faces. We don’t care and enjoy a long lunch of grilled shrimp, lamb kebabs with spicy yogurt, tomato salad, and fresh humus on sesame pita that we picked up in the village of Dalyan.
Enver keeps us moving. In the afternoon we hike to Caunus, a site where extensive roads have been uncovered. I’m attracted by a round “measuring platform” in stone, about thirty feet in diameter with concentric markings. The practical explanation may be right, but to me it looks like an astronomical layout. I’ve heard nothing about astronomy in any of the ruins, but surely these brilliant builders of cities wondered about the skies. More goats graze. They think they’re in an astronomical zone.
The low landscape and reedy water look like Asia. Small fishing boats with awnings could be in the Mekong Delta. From one we buy a box of blue crabs.
I’m shocked to realize this is our last night on board. Life on the water, never familiar to me, has come to seem divine. Wouldn’t my ex-husband be surprised? A sailboat figured largely in the breakup of our marriage. All Frank wanted to do was sail, every weekend. As a child he’d built his own sailboat in Pensacola, and I remember well the picture of him at six sitting in it, a sheet for a sail, his determined, intelligent little face. His father had a large sailboat, the Mignon, with its own china, and the loss of that in some financial fiasco involving a gas well reverberated still. Sailing was in his genes. But he was the captain, and I was the one running all over the boat hoisting the jib, trimming the main, throwing the anchor, plus cooking down below on the stove with two saucer-size burners. Some days were sublime. But San Francisco Bay is cold, rough, and often shallow. Sometimes we ran aground when the sonar malfunctioned, and one New Year’s Eve when we were stuck and had to wait for the tide to rise, I had a little epiphany: I would sail no more.
The privacy and freedom to maneuver this squiggly coast has been a great gift—the small coves where we slept to the calls of five kinds of owls and awoke to a visitation of bees at breakfast. Warm waters, the moon’s paths of wavering light, the boat’s billowing sails and little creaks—I’ve adored the life on board. I even find myself nodding agreement when Fulvio talks about buying a boat. We could sail for six months. Have I gone mad?
Tonight the crab feast, a huge mound in the middle of the table, with couscous enlivened by parsley, raisins, and nuts, and the “priest fainted” eggplant, imam bayildi, rich with concentrated tomatoes and onions. Ali concocts a flaming tower made of fruits for a finale.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8: KUSADASI
Cast out of Eden, we disembark at Marmaris, what a lovely name, and drive forever (three hours is forever in a bus) to Aphrodisias, one of the earliest settlements of Asia Minor. We pass sesame fields just harvested, the shocks gathered into upright pyramids for drying.
The layers of shards found at the site start in 5800 B.C. Overwhelming. This is where I am hit with Stendhal’s syndrome. So much of the ancient world has been given to our eyes. The difference between this and all the other ruins is that Aphrodi
sias was a sculpture center, because of a white marble quarry nearby, where artists from all over the Roman provinces came to study. The site abounds with carved surfaces and soaring fluted columns, an astonishing number of them. This approaches a paradisiacal city with a pleasure garden—the most ancient garden I’ve ever known about. A circle of marble seats surrounds a decorative pond, where one could sit with baby and friends. My dear symbol, the bull, was important—a whole pediment of bull heads lies along a colonnade, and a “changing room” in the theatre is full of others. Is the site more simpatico because it lay in a fertile land where they worshiped the great mother—who later became Aphrodite? Even the theatre seats are marble, many with drawings and Greek writing on them. The upturned stones are carved with the familiar figures of Pan, Medusa, Pegasus, and putti. We’ve seen so many theatres, but here the personal touches of the writing and symbolic figures bring the reality closer. There’s more—much. The stadium—astounding. University of Florida could play Georgia there tonight. The huge ellipse of stone seats is undamaged by the centuries. Very easily I visualize a chariot race. We could not pull ourselves away from all the wonders and so lost the opportunity to see the museum, which closed at five.
Again we board the bus for two hours to the port city Kusadasi, where we check into a 1970s hotel. Our suite is shades of turquoise and blue, all of which have seen brighter days. The place is truly dreary, after the freedom of the boat with always the exquisite water and fresh coastal view. We have dinner outside, the only bad meal we’ve had in Turkey. Buffet is a bad word anyway, and here, partly because we are eating late, everything oversimmered in the stainless-steel bain-marie has toughened and saddened. The only consolation is that the hotel garden faces the harbor in front, with the lights of the town stretching beyond.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10: KUSADASI AND EPHESUS
But we sleep. A real bed. And wake at ten. Out the window the leafy tropical garden and the sea resemble a Matisse painting. To Ephesus this afternoon!
The site we’d seen before on a sizzling August day with mobs. Spoiled we are now by hiking to remote ruins. Even with few tourists at Ephesus this time, the experience is so vastly different. Of course, this is one of the most interesting and arresting of the ancient sites, but the sense of discovery feels missing. All has been laid out, pointed out, explicated. The effect of “main street,” a marble street lined with astonishing houses and temples, even a public toilet room, cannot be overstated. The grandeur of the ancient world lies beneath our feet. Still, no shard to turn over with your toe, no torso in the weeds. And the end of the trip.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11: KUSADASI/ISTANBUL
Seeing that we are rug mad, Enver takes us to the workshop of his friend, Dr. Ögül Orhan. We’re given tea and a show of antique kelims, as well as the process of making silk thread from cocoons. Women are weaving under an open-walled room. This is a school that preserves the traditional dying techniques and provides training for village women. The owner is also a motorcycle collector, and Armand would like to take off on a vintage Moto Guzzi. We find a few primitive weavings and have them shipped to California. “World very small. The rugs will be home before you will,” Dr. Orhan tells us.
We have lunch outside a Greek village, which looks as if it landed from some Aegean island. We have a stewed seaweed, and hot crispy spinach filo with feta, and a wheat gruel with onions, something you have to have acquired a taste for in early childhood. My favorite bread of the trip is their sesame pan bread made with garbanzo flour.
From Izmir, old Smyrna, we fly back to our little hotel in Istanbul. After much confabulation about the best kebab restaurant, we take an insufferably long taxi through traffic to a strictly local but enormous restaurant. It is mediocre, after all the trouble.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12: ISTANBUL
Enver goes off to see friends, and a young guide takes us to the Blue Mosque, the Byzantine Cistern, and Hagia Sophia. We did not see the cistern when we were here before. How dangerous, our assumptions. I’d thought, Oh, a cistern; we have one at Bramasole. This cistern is up there with the wonders of the world—a columned temple of water underground, formerly the city’s drinking water. There are fish and low lights and a feeling of being in the afterlife. Many of the 336 columns were recycled from other places. Some are Doric, some Corinthian. One is based on an enormous head placed sideways for the right column height. “This must be the ultimate in improvisation,” Bernice remarks. I see Greek writing all over one, and a teardrop design on another.
Topkapi is half the size of Monaco, six kilometers around the walls. As I child I collected postcards and Viewmasters. Although I’d been nowhere farther than Atlanta, I was a traveller in training. The first book I remember reading on my own was Sally Goes Travelling Alone. The moral of the story was, Don’t forget your belongings. Sally had four items and compulsively counted them. The lesson did not take; I frequently leave voice recorders, underwear, even jewelry behind. One of my Viewmasters—you inserted a disk of tiny slides in a viewer and clicked from scene to scene—was of Topkapi. I wonder now where I acquired such exotic sights in my shoebox full of treasures. I would like to whisper to the child way down in rural Georgia, Someday you will see Topkapi.
Sometimes you get a new glimpse of a friend just from a throwaway remark. Aurora walking in the garden at Topkapi says, “In my neighborhood in Torino I walked to school down a street lined with sycamores.” And suddenly I have a vision of her, a small blond girl with long legs, shy and beautiful, the drying scent of the leaves, and the gold light of a Torino autumn. The day to day of childhood, how long it lasts, then how it turns to a few memories that stay. How we wish we could reclaim memory. And now so many years later she’s a lovely mother chasing her boy around the big trees on this first autumn day at Topkapi. I see hundreds of faces in the white hydrangea.
If I could choose one gift from the Topkapi trove, it would not be a big emerald that the sultans were so fond of, or the mirror of twisted gold wire, or even the blackamoor the size of a votive with his pearl pantaloons, turban and jacket of rubies, anklets of diamonds, and his foot on a diamond pillow. I wouldn’t take a rose-water sprinkler—my goodness, they are divine—or the little trees of pearl, or even the eighty-six-carat diamond found in a rubbish dump and sold for three spoons. But I would take one of the gold writing boxes all bejeweled. Hidden inside, there must be precious indigo and bloodroot inks and sheets of vellum large enough for a love letter or a poem. To open it and write—what would be the words? Maybe only the essential ones, salt, star, stone.
While we were on the boat, the season changed in Istanbul: mid-September. Today a light rain falls off and on. We have lunch in the greenhouse of a historic Ottoman-style hotel. This is my third visit to the city, and a sense of being in place begins. Sitting here in the watery light with friends, through the glass roof I can see minarets against the gray sky. The music piped in takes me back to high school, “Stranger in Paradise,” augmented by a trickling fountain. Take my hand, I’m a stranger in paradise. True. The waiters are touchingly attentive as they serve pasta stuffed with veal and a cream sauce of dill and pepper oil. A kitten pounces around and sweeps her body around my legs. A place, and a place like no other.
Briefly I get to see Guven, whom we met on our first visit here. He has been to California twice since then. He’s handsome in an Armani-style suit, his black curls long over the collar. He takes us and our friends to look at some rugs, but we are rugged out. With true Turkish fierceness, he has adopted us as friends. When he came to California, Guven hid something in the house to protect us. He worried about us in violent America and asked if he should send an uncle to guard us.
As a farewell, Enver arranges for a boat to take us up the Bosporus to a restaurant. After all the hikes in T-shirts and big shoes, we look fresh in nice clothes. I take pictures of houses along the shore. Like everything in Turkey, they are a mix of charm, interest, decay, and improvisation. Some dark wooden restored houses look as if they co
uld be on a lake in the Adirondacks. Some look as if Tolstoy or Chekhov is inside writing something immortal, a distinctly eastern, dacha cast. Others have a gingerbread Victorian trim, but one frame off, the way nineteenth-century houses look in New Zealand. Others are simply on the verge of collapse. This must be one of the most fabulous places to live in the world. The architecture reflects what a crossroads these waters always have been. They face the choppy Bosporus always hacking at the shore, and the long history of those who have passed this way.
We pull up to a seafood restaurant and are all surprisingly subdued for our gala goodbye. We want to arrange to meet later with Guven, to sip a little tea somewhere, but our phone does not connect with his. We all give Enver notes of thanks and books and little gifts. He is an inspired guide and gave us great joy by revealing his country to us.
Back in the bridal chamber, I dream of walking down steps in ruined Greek theatres, and then before the early call of the muezzin, which I am awaiting, there are other dreams of watery colors and patterns—hooks, snakes, scorpions, ram’s horns, and göz, the eye, a rug motif based on the belief that the human eye is the best protection against the evil eye. Especially if the eye is blue. I think of Willie’s clear, clear gaze and hope it always protects him against evil. He has the lucky darker ring around the iris. When I said to him, “You have my mother Frankye’s eyes,” he looked surprised and said, “Why?” And I whispered to him, “Because she told me to pass them on to you.” At two he understands. If my mother and Atatürk had married, I still would have inherited blue eyes. Her gene for them was stronger than his black eyes. I wish my mother had sailed in the afternoon on his caïque, admiring the lacy Crimean houses over his shoulder. That they had laughed when she told him her grandmother’s name, Sarah America Gray. No, impossible. Sarah America Gray was my father’s grandmother, and my father has not yet entered this picture. For now, it’s only Frankye in shorts and a white sailor top, and Mustafa Kemal who whispers to her, “America, America.” He smells of the carnations of Iznik, his lips are wet with salt water, and the sun rains down a silver sheen over the mosques . . .
A Year in the World Page 38