A Year in the World (42 page)

At dusk we meet Bernice and Armand from Baltimore, who have just arrived. Ed and I met Bernice on another sailing trip around the boot of Italy two years ago, and we have seen each other since in Reston, during the Washington sniper days, when I was giving a talk and Bernice and Armand bravely came to see me. Armand, tall and scholarly, looks as though he should be a senator. I love the way Bernice pays attention to everything. She doesn’t talk a lot but you wait to hear what she will say when she does. We had such fun exploring the boot of Italy on the other sailing voyage that I e-mailed Bernice immediately when we decided to go on this trip, “Are you ready for Turkey? Almost every day we will moor and hike to a different archaeological site.” She responded within the hour saying that they would love to join us. They have a farm in Virginia where they garden and raise exotic chickens. She and I have corresponded over the past two years about roses. We meet in the lobby just as the hotel waiter wheels in a cart with a birthday cake for Aurora, somehow forgotten yesterday, and fruit drinks in goblets.

After
an endless taxi ride, our increased band of merry pranksters arrives at Marina Restaurant, perched over the waters of the Bosporus, miles from everywhere. We choose fish from a tilted marble slab as we go inside. Large open windows, varnished as on a boat, let in the scent of the night and the water. Soon we are ravished by sole on skewers threaded with lemon and bay leaves, and by grilled scorpion fish steamed in broth with potatoes and tomatoes and sprinkled with oregano and red pepper. En route home in the taxi, I glimpse along a wall photographs of Atatürk. The taxi driver says we are passing the palace where he died. You see this great reformer in Istanbul the way you see the Virgin Mary in Italy, a prevalent presiding presence in banks, restaurants, hotels, everywhere. I wish we had an Atatürk in America now. He had force and vision and a deeply familial love of his country. He’s most known for banning the fez and discouraging women from the veils, but his most sweeping change was the adaptation of Latin characters for the alphabet. Imagine our president decreeing that henceforth we will use Cyrillic or Greek letters. I’ve found it hard to take kilometers and the metric system. But Turkey did forsake Arabic, and that change brought them into the western European neighborhood, enabling him to create a secular Turkish nation. I like his jaw and his eyes that look as though they see what you don’t see.

Our flower-filled room must be the bridal suite. Although they are fake, I like the impulse. The bed draped with curtains looks romantic, and the cloth petals scattered across the floor stick to my feet. From the entrance you pass into the bedroom through filmy gauze curtains. Bedside lamps with the lowest wattage possible do not encourage me to read my guidebooks, and since we are too exhausted for a honeymoon night, I lie awake. The phrase
when Mother married Atatürk
keeps floating across my mind, as though a memory would be uncovered. But he was married in 1923 and divorced by 1925, too early for my mother. His true wife and family were Turkey. Rare for a strong-arm president, he had the interests of the people at heart.

We
depart at six for a short flight south to the sprawling city of Antalya along the sharply delineated blue Mediterranean. We’re met by our guide, Enver Lucas, a Turkish American who strides up to us in T-shirt and shorts, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He’s forthright and friendly. He looks like someone you want to hug. His legs, I notice, are muscular enough to hike to any location. We meet Cheryl and Karl, a couple from San Francisco, and Ian and Sara, a Canadian who recamped to New Orleans and his fifteen-year-old granddaughter. Ian took this same trip with Enver years ago and wants his granddaughter to experience his memories. Enver escorts us out of the airport, into humidity and heat and onto a bus in minutes. “There is a lot to do today, folks,” he announces, and somehow I have a feeling we will be hearing this every day. He wastes no time in heading to Perge.

I’m unprepared for the first ruins. I expected a piece of amphitheatre, a few fallen columns, and some stone foundations. But Perge extends as far as I can see. The city axis, a long colonnaded street with cuts from chariot wheels, ends at a fountain, where the water source from the hill above poured over a statue of a river god, then entered the city. No water now, only weeds. I lean to pinch leaves for their scents of thyme, oregano, and mint. The heat bears down harder than history. We stand in clumps of shadow while Enver tells us of the Greeks who settled here in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The baths must have been Las Vegas–spectacular. Walking the ledge around a deep pool, I see traces of the green marble that once faced the surfaces. The raised floor of the columned
caldarium
, the hot bath, still exists enough to see how they channeled steam to heat the floor, and how part of the heat was shunted to the
tepidarium
. We are the only visitors at first; then we see three others. The smell of crushed herbs and dust must be somehow the smell of time. I have the sense that I am actually
discovering
the site. No ropes, no signs, we’re free to amble, scramble over blocks of carved stone to see the others behind them—portions of friezes and porticos, bases of columns, keystones. Some are carved with nine, ten layers of egg and dart, acanthus,
denti
(tooth pattern), and vegetal motifs. One, lying in the dirt, is exquisite: a border of Etruscan wave design with clusters of grapes between. When I push aside weeds with my foot, a Medusa face stares back at me. How many standing columns are there? I lose count.

We then drive to the huge theatre at Aspendos, still used for performances. I start to learn the names of some of the features of these ancient theatres:

diazoma
: horizontal aisle in the
cavea

cavea
: the auditorium, from the act of digging it out like a cave

parodos
: the area between the
cavea
and the stage

And a
vomitorium
is not what I’d always heard but a covered exit from a theatre. How little stadiums have changed really, except to close the oval: the same seats with someone’s knees in your back, the same narrow access aisle at a steep pitch. Of course, everyone claps to hear how fine the acoustics are.

Half a day, and we’ve already seen two stupendous remnants of history. I hope that the scrapes and battles of the Persians, Lycians, Greeks, Romans, and various others who set sail toward this coast will at last reach some kind of coherence during our travels. Alexander swept by and had an enormous impact, killing and conquering, but I’m not too clear on his itinerary. Right now I’m content to slip into a state of awe.

In the late afternoon the curator of the Antalya Museum shows us the statues archaeologists found at Perge. Such finds usually get carted off to the capital, but the museum has managed to keep them. The beauty of the statues makes me wander away from the group, double back, and visit them alone. How eloquent those early people were. Perge was a wonder of a city, with extensive carved facades and fountains. What happened to town planning in the modern era?

We park the bus one more time at the outdoor market. At the strictly local scene I get to see hundreds of Turks shopping for dinner and visiting with friends. One gnarly man with a single tooth has picked all the apples from one tree and sits cross-legged behind a mound. We smell, then see a whole area where fishmongers display the catch of the day. The local women all wear “harem” pants in dark prints, capacious to permit bending or squatting. Barkers sound as if they’re about to commit murder but only are extolling the virtues of their garlic braids, peppers, fantastic melons, and tomatoes that we call heirloom at home but are simply tomatoes here.

All these stops are a long buildup to boarding the boat, our home for eleven days. And at last we meander out to the marina where the
Cevri Hasan
is docked. Enver decided to use a marina outside the hubbub of town, and he does not say but I imagine he was influenced by last week’s bomb in the Antalya marina. A small incident, but to wary travellers four hundred miles from the raging Iraq war, possibly a source of worry. Mustapha, the captain, welcomes us along with Ali, the chef, and two shy young men who will crew. The
gulet
, about ninety feet long, is spacious, with a long dining table and inviting tangerine-colored cushioned lounging areas on deck both fore and aft. The galley kitchen has marble counters. Under the window Ali grows pots of basil and oregano. What a fun place to cook. A bookcase of paperbacks abandoned by previous voyagers tempts me immediately. For bad weather, a comfortable salon/dining area adjoins the kitchen. The cabins below are small, each with a minute bathroom. If you were obese, you would get stuck. We have twin bunks, hard as pavement, probably like beds in jails. Not that I expected a stateroom—but this is challenging. There’s nowhere to put anything, except for a small shelf and a foot-wide closet. We stuff everything in, and I resign myself to mingled heaps of mine and Ed’s clean and dirty clothes. I am the sort of person who has my drawers arranged by color—all light T-shirts in one drawer, medium and dark colors in the next two, all sweaters in plastic bags, socks paired, my underwear folded a particular way, my nightgowns very, very tidy. I will not be spending leisure time in our cabin. Also it is hot as the hinges of hell down below. We stow everything we can and burst back upstairs for air. Soon Ali is passing champagne, and we’re on deck in the slight breeze; then we have our first dinner on board with Turkish white wine flowing and Ali presenting a variety of mezes and roast chicken. Enver barely gets to eat because everyone has questions for him.

Tomorrow I will start my ship’s log. I loved reading Colombus’s account of his voyages. The idea of a captain writing at his desk each day, gimbaled lantern overhead and a draught of rum near the inkwell, appeals to me. Although this trip is a bit minor in comparison to those crossings of unknown seas, all trips are voyages within as well as without. A log: “the record of a ship’s speed, progress, and shipboard events of navigational importance,” according to the dictionary. I will keep one, although I won’t know speed and navigational information. I will simply record what becomes important to me as we progress along the edge of the Mediterranean.

We motor along the quiet coast for a while after dinner. See, I am not an accurate logger—that “a while” is quite imprecise. But after the long dinner that will have to do.

The Log

MONDAY, AUGUST 30: TERMESSOS

A stony trail, up, up Rose Mountain for almost two hours, harder than climbing the Empire State Building several times. The original inhabitants spoke a language all their own—easy to understand why. Once up, you’d stay put. The not-easily-thwarted Alexander gave up his attack here, saying, “Let’s move on. I have a long way to go and cannot waste my army in front of an eagle’s nest.” We’re scrambling over fallen stone columns and cornerstones and arches, looking up at spooky tombs cut into the rock face of the mountain. They’re smaller than one-car garages, with bas-relief columned doors and simple trims. Some have faces carved on the sides. Wild roses cover the carved stones, along with carnations and oak-holly. This is not just a stony path; the stones littering the way actually are part of the ruined fortress city of Termessos. The theatre rivals Machu Picchu for dramatic setting. But this is more impressive because we are alone on this perch, and Machu Picchu’s crowds dilute some of its majesty. This aerie overlooks backdrops of distant mountains through arches of the ruins, the vast landscape dropping behind the theatre’s walls. As Enver lectures in the top rungs of the stone seats, I imagine a spectacle performed below. What did they see? Music and poetry? Surely no wild animal fights and gladiator events in this sublime place so close to heaven. Huge tumbles of stones lie in piles where they fell when the earth shook.

We continue climbing over columns, immense sarcophagus lids and building blocks, up higher to the
odeum
, the covered theatre, and to a necropolis of enormous tombs cut from single stones. Someone chiseled each one for months. We come upon a carved Medusa head and a pair of wrestlers worked into the flat end of one sarcophagus. Most have circles incised, where I imagine some metal or wooden disk was attached. These monumental tombs—any museum would covet one—litter the hillside. This is one of the most impressive places I’ve ever seen. We are all elated at discovering tombs, arches, houses, temples. The sensation of newness seems ironic on such ancient ground.

Enver describes this as a “Pisidian” city. Now who might they be? Simply the tight little wad of people who lived in this area even earlier than the eighth century
B.C.
Enver sketches out Alexander’s path along the coast in 334
B.C.,
the Lycian war in 200
B.C.,
then moves onward hundreds of years later, when under Imperial Rome the city flourished. No one knows exactly when or why it was abandoned. Dreary, dreary history—so many wars. And why do we make no progress? I pick up bits of marble and terra-cotta shards. An impressive stone gate for Hadrian survives the loss of the rest of the structure. Piles of stones make me wish for Superman strength; I’d like to lift them like pick-up-sticks and see the carvings no one has seen in centuries. Enver once found a marble foot and hid it in the bushes. I kick up pieces that are clearly rims and handles of ancient pots. We’ve been cautioned to take nothing, and fearing
Midnight Express
scenes, I leave all my finds in a pile near the gymnasium, the school complex.

The most frequent word on the hike is “Look!” I remember the end of the Rilke poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo”:
You must change your life.
His surprising reaction, after looking at and contemplating the beauty of the marble fragment, was that it must prompt you toward change. This impulse begins to seed in my mind. This place alters the currents in my brain waves.