An Unexected Treat

Today was the last day of finals. I spent the entire day administering and grading exams and entering data into an interminable number of spreadsheets. We learned yesterday that there would be a concert of traditional Turkish music on the campus this evening, beginning at 5 PM. I tried to get some pictures, but it was difficult. At the end of the concert the group disbanded quite quickly, and I was a bit self-conscious about photographing during the concert – even though others were doing it.

The gentleman in front of the Turkish flag is playing the Baglama. On the left is the Ney. The drummer is out of sight on the far left.

The ensemble consisted of a drum (Bendir ), and recorder-like wooden flute (Ney), a violin (Keman), a zither of some sort (Kanun), a guitar (Gitar), a strummed instrument similar to the Ud but with a very long, thin neck (Tanbur), and another lute-like strummed instrument (Baglama). The guitarist and the baglama players were also vocalists. They played some songs that everyone knew, and a lot of their must made you want to get up and dance. The concert was recorded, and we’ve been told we can get a CD.

The instrument on the far right is the Tanbur.

The ensemble consisted of a drum (Bendir ), and recorder-like wooden flute (Ney), a violin (Keman), a zither of some sort (Kanun), a guitar (Gitar), a strummed instrument similar to the Ud but with a very long, thin neck (Tanbur), and another lute-like strummed instrument (Baglama). The guitarist and the baglama players were also vocalists. They played some songs that everyone knew, and a lot of their must made you want to get up and dance. The concert was recorded, and we’ve been told we can get a CD.



One nice thing was the stage. They set up lanterns, copper vessels and traditional table clothes in front of the musicians. It made me think of a couple of restored Gaziantep houses of the early 1900s – kind of homey. I’d like to hear more live performance of this kind of music.

This is the Kanun player. If you click on the picture, you will see the two metal picks on his fingers. He was really amazing.

Here’s a link to web pages depicting many of these instruments.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=tr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.turkmusikisi.com%2Fcalgilar%2Findex.html&anno=2

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=tr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.turkmusikisi.com%2Fcalgilar%2Findex.html&anno=2

Last Day of Classes

The academic year in the English language program here at Zirve is divided into five, eight-week terms. We only teach seven of those weeks. The eighth week is reserved for finals and then scheduling students and teachers for the term that follows – no break between terms except between term two and three. Today was the last teaching day. I got pictures of my two classes. There is one student missing from each picture; one was absent and the other didn’t want her picture taken. Here they are.

Antakya: Being There

The bus station in Antakya looks more like a Dolmush station. It’s just a very big parking lot with a long, low, single-story building in the middle. It seems all the dolmush companies have a little office in that building. All sorts of people came up to us wanting to take us to a hotel, etc. We just told them we had a hotel and hot-footed it out of there. We actually had found two possible hotels in our guidebook and went looking for them.

We finally found the main street. Actually, it wasn’t too difficult. The Asi river (formerly Orontes river) runs through the center of Antayka. The older part of town is on the same side as the bus station, and that’s where the hotels were. Also mountains rise quite steeply behind that side of town. If you stay between the mountains and the river, you can navigate quite easily. It’s a bit like Albuquerque. If you can see the Sandias, you know where you are.

(The place with the slanting red roof, large cedar tree behind it, is where we ate künefe. The cedar tree is actually in the courtyard of the mosque)

The first of the hotels we were interested in wasn’t too far from the bus station. We checked it out, found it quite acceptable, dropped our belongings and left. We wanted to find the mosaic museum, which was on the other side of the river. Antakya claims to have the largest collection of Roman mosaics in the world – can’t confirm that, however. We hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, so we stopped in a Mado’s on the way to the museum. Mado’s is a chain restaurant that serves what they claim to be the best ice cream in Turkey. I wrote about it in an earlier blog (“second attempt”). Ice cream for lunch is good, right? Actually, on the menu was a slice of ice cream and three bite-sized pieces of baklava. What could be better! If you want to know more about the ice cream they serve in Mado’s, go to this link.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-192329-keep-the-winter-chills-at-bay-with-a-warm-cup-of-sahlep.html

Frankly, the museum was a bit disappointing. They do indeed have a very large collection of mosaics. Most came from Roman villas at Harbiye, now a suburb or Antakya but a holiday resort in Roman times when it was called Daphne. I was there that the water nymph Daphne was turned into a laurel tree (or bay tree as we know it) to save her from the unwanted attentions of Apollo. Antakya is known for laurel products, particularly soap made from laurel berries and leaves. But back to the museum. The Gaziantep museum has far fewer mosaic but they are better displayed. And the signage is quite helpful. It is also possible to buy little books on the mosaics at the Gaziantep museum. In Antakya there is a small plaque next to each mosaic, giving the name of the figures depicted in the mosaic. That’s it. Not even a postcard. However, you do have to be impressed by the size of some of them and the fact that they have been around for 2,000 years.

What wasn’t disappointing was the feel of Antakya. It has an aura of openness. I can’t explain it exactly but somehow the atmosphere felt a bit lighter. And it has quite a venerable history. Founded in the 3rd century BC by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, the city quickly grew to a multi-ethnic metropolis of a half-million – it’s only slightly more than that today. Until the rise of Constantinople (Istanbul), it was the premier city in the Mediterranean region. It was also the terminus of or jumping off point – depending on whether you were coming or going – on the Silk Road. A series of earthquakes in the 6th century BC severely damaged the city. Then it was besieged by the Crusaders in 1098; they subsequently ruled for nearly 200 years until the Egyptian Mamluks sacked the city. From then on it was pretty much down hill. When the French took over after World War I, it wasn’t much more than a village. And it was the French who laid the groundwork for the modern city. You can still see French colonial-style buildings all over town. And it was one of those buildings we sought out after we left the museum.

The second hotel that had caught our eye when reading the guidebook was in a restored French colonial mansion. After some wandering we managed to locate it. Lovely place and not really too expensive. Next time, that’s where I’ll stay. There was a restaurant we wanted to try somewhere near the hotel. As we stood on the sidewalk trying to make sense out of the map in the guidebook, someone came up and asked us – in German – if he could help. It turns out he lived in Frankfurt for 39 years and his 3 sons are still there. He has an apartment in Ankara and was in Antakya. to get some major dental work done. He took usto the restaurant saying he would come back, which he actually did do but not until we were nearly finished with dinner. He chatted with us for a long time, offering to take us here and there. We declined and actually called it a night.

(View from the road up to St. Peter's Church.)

The next morning we got up and out early, after a good breakfast tomatoes, olives, cheese, bread, hummus and a local specialty, a spread make of ground walnuts, pepper paste and some form of bulgur – I think. It was delicious. There were few people and no cars on the streets. It was wonderful. We sought out two famous mosques, the Orthodox church (there was a Sunday service in progress) and a synagogue. The synagogue was locked, and all you really saw was a star of David over a door. We then hiked up to Saint Peter’s church. It is a church built into the side of a cliff above the city. The disciple Peter is said to have preached there. It is also said that it was in Antakya that the Christian community was first called “Christian.” Previously they had been known as Nazarenes. And one assumes that Paul also preached in the same church.



(This facade covers up the entrance to the cave church. It fell into disrepair but was restored a couple hundred years ago. Napoleon even contributed to the project.)

After all this walking, we were ready for lunch. We walked back through the old bazaar. Most of the stores were closed, as it was Sunday. The food vendors were open, and we saw one mysterious item in many stores. It looked like a skein of angel hair pasta. That didn’t seem very Turkish, but that’s all we could think of. Anyhow, we finally found a little hole-in-the-wall establishment that came highly recommended. They only had two items on the menu: hummus and a local specialty called bakla. We ordered the hummus, since we thought bakla was probably related to baklava and we didn’t want anything sweet. Serving the hummus wasn’t just a matter of spooning it onto a plate. The owner did spoon it onto a plate, but then put the back of a ladle in the middle of the hummus serving and turned the plate. This created a rim around the edge of the hummus. He then carefully poured in olive oil and I think some lemon juice. On top he sprinkled parsley and a little red pepper. He then cut up a tomato and served that on a separate plate. Then came a third plate with pickles and a serving of pickled cabbage. All this served with delicious flat bread. While eating we discovered what bakla is. It turns out to be a thick soup or stew made of fava beans. It’s ladled into a bowl and then mashed with a large pestle (as in mortar and pestle). After that the cook/proprietor stirred in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley and other spices – probably hot pepper. Supposedly there’s tahnini in it too. It’s also served with flat bread. Next time I’ll have that.

We finished up our 26-hour stay in Antakya with dessert – what else. We wanted to try the local specialty künefe. We didn’t know exactly what it was, but there are künefe shops all over and we’d seen people eating it. We now know that it’s a dessert made from shredded wheat. A small layer is put in a pan. A layer of white cheese that gets stringy when heated is put on that, topped with another thicker layer of shredded wheat. It’s not certain whether sugar syrup is put in the pan first and everything else on top of it or whether the sugar syrup is added after baking. Whatever. It’s baked until the top layer is golden and the cheese soft. It’s delicious. They offer it to you with ice cream on top, but that seemed like overkill. You don’t really need it. And by the way, that angel hair pasta? That was the shredded wheat used for making künefe.

So that was our trip. We collected our belongings at the hotel, hiked back to the bus station and took a dolmush home. Great two days.

Antakya: Getting There

Last weekend my colleague Judy Isacoff and I traveled to Antakya (Antioch) for the weekend. We needed a break from our lives here and wanted to do a little sightseeing. Antakya was within striking distance so off we went.

The only transportation other than private car is a dolmush (In Turkish the "s" has a little tail and there is no “h” but I wrote it so you would know how the word sounds.) These are vans that run between two destinations but stop whenever someone wants to get off or on. The dolmush we took down was officially a 20-person van, a row of double seats on the left and a row of single seats down the right side. The one remarkable feature was the overhead lighting. There were almond-shaped lights – a little big longer and narrower than almonds -- placed crosswise in the ceiling. But the fun part is that they were fringed. Yes, about three-inch red fringe all around – a hint of bordello. And I must say, I wouldn’t have been disappointed if the ride had been the only thing we did that weekend. It was quite an experience. But back to the beginning.

When we arrived at the very large bus station in Gaziantep someone working there came up and asked if we spoke German – whew, I could actually ask a question and understand the answer. We told him we wanted to go to Antakya, and he guided us to the right place, a good thing because it's no small bus station. We then went into the station itself looking for a restroom. I was astonished. It was immaculately clean. The actual building is circular and there were all sorts of little shops in a smaller concentric circle inside the terminal. You had to pay one lira to use the restroom, but it was very clean and there was an attendant on duty. How different from your average Greyhound bus station.

When we pulled out of the bus station, there were only four passengers, plus a young man whose job it was to collect fares from people as they boarded along the way. There were also two other people sitting in the front seat with the driver -- don'gtknow who they were. Anyhow, I thought the fares from the four of us would hardly cover gas money. It was about $12 one way. I need not have worried. We drove very slowly through the city, picking up passengers here and there, and by the time we passed the city limits, the van was full – and not only with people. At one stop, a group of men loaded six extremely large bags of corn, still in the husks, onto the van. Three of them fit into the luggage compartment but the other three came right into the van. Two were wedged into the passenger seat behind the driver and the other right inside the door. Never would have passed muster in the US.

The bus stopped here and there. A father and son got off at a dirt road leading up to a village – we figured they might be visiting grandparents for the day. An elderly woman got off in what seemed the middle of nowhere. There were some houses on the other side of the four-lane highway. Who knows. I felt like someone should have seen her safely across, but we just drove on.

After driving through a hilly, dry, rocky landscape for about a half hour, we began a very steep descent. For those who have driven I-5 north from California to Oregon, it reminded me of the descent into Ashland. I was surprised to see that the hillside to our left was treed, lot of healthy looking long-needled pines. Then the view opened up. I was awestruck. Far below us on the north side was a vast agricultural valley. You could clearly see the individual fields. Further north were mountains, and if you looked carefully, you could see snow on the top of the chain of mountains behind. It was quite a view, and so different from what you see around Gaziantep.

As we got closer to the valley itself, you could see the peppers and/or tomatoes drying on the rooftops. People had obviously put down rectangular tarps and filled the tarps with the red peppers because the red patches on the roofs were perfect rectangles. A bit later I actually saw peppers drying on a tarp spread out in a cemetery. Some people had built bowers over part of the roof. Somehow the secured four uprights to the roof – they looked like the trunks of saplings – and then created a shelter or sunshade out of leafy branches. They reminded me of the sun shelters you see on the Navaho reservation. Later we saw similarly constructed shelters along the road – perhaps designed for people waiting for rides.

After a good hour we came into a town called Nuragi. If we had continued east we would have ended up in Adana, a port city known to most Americans because there is a big US air base nearby. However, we headed south, hugging the mountains on the western side of the valley all the way to Antakya. Just after we exited the traffic circle in Nuragi, the bus pulled over to the side of the road. A man with a tray of breads shaped like large round pretzels topped with sesame seeds came aboard. I’d noticed him running across the traffic circle when we pulled through town. I thought he was just in a hurry somewhere - dodging traffic quite adriotly - but he was meeting our bus. Actually, these rolls are sold all over, and they aren’t at all like pretzels. The bread is soft and really tasty. I bought one for about 35 cents. Good deal.

I have no idea what is grown in that marvelous valley, but I assume it’s mostly the produce that ends up in our local markets. Most of the fields had been plowed or looked like they might have been left fallow. We did see some people picking cotton as we got closer to Antalya. We also saw some lettuce fields – there’s a lot of romaine in the markets. There were also fields of corn – the stocks all dried. I image it's intended for silage. People got on and off all the way south – some in small towns along the way and others in places where not even a house was in sight. Sometimes entire families climbed aboard and were accommodated somehow. Sometimes the young man who collected fares and was generally in charge of the passengers would ask someone to move so that a devout Muslim female passenger did not have to sit next to a strange man.

Sadly, we finally had to leave the agricultural scene. I had to chuckle. The highway into Antakya is lined with about every car/truck/van dealer you could things of – the Germans, Japanese, French, Koreans and Americans were all represented. I guess it’s a sign of having joined the industrialized world. And we had arrived at the place were Christians were first Christians and Paul had begun his missionary work.

Life on the Roof

As I mentioned in a previous posting, my west-facing windows are about level with the roof of the house behind our apartment building – a bit higher actually, so I can see over the three-foot wall around the entire roof area. It has a fairly large square structure on one side. Part of it is the stairwell from the house below, but there is a second door. It’s a bit smaller, and I can actually only see the door opening, not the door itself. I had wondered what that was for, but read on. You’ll soon know, too. On top of this structure are the ubiquitous solar panels and water drums. This area is accessed by a rickety ladder. (Click on the photo below and you'll get a sense of what I see from my desk.)

I am usually at work during the day and often out of the weekend so I don’t see too much roof action. However, a couple of weeks ago I was working at my desk one Saturday morning. Two young women came up with a couple of pans of what looked like either cut up vegetables, vegetable scraps or a mixture or both. One went in the mystery door but came right out. She seemed to be indicating that she found something in there distasteful. The other went in and emptied the pans. She also brought out a plastic basin, which seemed to be filled with something grain-like. Then out waddled the two geese. Mystery solved. I’d thought they lived in the garden below, which is where I’d first seen them. The two girls filled a very large plastic basin with water – there is a hose on the roof, which is turned on and off using a spigot next to the solar panels. The geese jumped right into the basin and had a grand old time splashing around. The white goose soon tired of the activity and hopped out to wander around the roof. However, the gray duck with the black head and white ring around its neck stayed in for the longest time. It was fun to watch him.


This morning the woman who looks like someone right off a rural farm came up on the roof. She let the geese out, and they are now wandering around. It rained yesterday, so there are lots if nice puddles. She also hung out some laundry.

Watching this little scene reminded me of a conversation I had with the Turkish teacher sitting next to me on the bus trip to Zeugma and Halfeti. I commented on the shape of the houses. Everything is built out of cinder blocks; the final structure is plastered then on the outside. The houses are all rectangular. The rooms must have fairly high ceilings, because they are taller than your average two-story house. I think of our Hamilton house; if it had had a flat roof, it would have been about the same shape.

I commented to the Turkish teacher on the flat roofs. True, this area doesn’t get much rain so flat roofs don’t represent much of a problem. However, her answer was enlightening. She said: the roof is very important for us. She went on to explain how it’s used to dry peppers, eggplant and cucumber. (Yes, that’s what she said, but I think she meant a gray-green zucchini-shaped vegetable I see in the markets. They do have regular cucumbers.) They also have picnics and cookouts on the roof – and that’s also where they hang their laundry. I’ve seen some houses that have a raised corrugated metal roof. It’s got the traditional peak and slanting sides. One of my Turkish students called it a “tent” when he described such a house. There are no walls so you could sit up there on a hot summer day and enjoy a breeze while shaded from the sun. However, you wouldn’t be able to dry your peppers on such a roof.

Hasan Suzar Ethnography Museum

This is really a continuation of my Soup and Ethnography entry. As I mentioned, a very helpful gentleman led us to the museum. When we finally came upon a sign directing us to the museum, it turns up a narrow, somewhat windy cobblestone street. Not far from the corner was what appeared to be a door in a wall and a couple of small windows on either side. Above the door was a brass plaque with the words “Hasan Suzar Ethnography Museum” (in Turkish, of course). The door led into a hallway with a room on either side; one was the ticket-selling area and the other was an office of some sort. The hallway opened into an beautiful courtyard – see photo below. The building is really a three-sided rectangle. The fourth side is simply a wall – there is a tree growing against it in the picture. The stairs in the photo lead to a large room denoted “Sister-in-Law Room.” Below were the servants' quarters.


The museum is really a three-story house occupied by an upper-class Gaziantep family during the 1920s and 30s. The back of the long side of the rectangle is along the street. The second and third floors have balconies opening onto the courtyard. On the second floor of this long side is a very large room – actually a double room as there are glass doors across the room that could be closed. It’s was labeled “Mother-in-Law’s Room.” Both my colleague and I agreed we could be quite happy in a room like that. The mannequins they had set up in the room were all women and one on-line description I found of the room called it the “harem section.” The same website refers to “men’s quarters” which we didn’t see – or if we did, they weren’t identified as such. But it does hint that even as recently as 1930, even in private homes life was somewhat segregated along gender lines. There was also a living room, in which there were mannequins of both sexes.



In one of the rooms there was a beaten up old motorbike. A short review I found on a travel website claimed that it once belongs to Lawrence of Arabia. Who knows, but it makes a good story. Note that the male mannequin I wearing a traditional fez. Atatürk banned them when he came to power after the First World War.

Perhaps one of the most interesting areas was the cellar, accessed directly from the courtyard. It was hewn out of the bedrock and was significantly cooler. I had obviously been used for food storage and there was even a well down there as well as several jars – each probably about three feet high -- that had been used for storing olive oil. Frankly they reminded me of the jars you see in photos in Biblical archeology books. The were along a wall above a trough and each jar had a little spigot near the bottom. Another item of interest was a very large basis – maybe four feet in diameter and a foot high. It was used for stomping grapes. However, the juice wasn’t used to make wine but rather something similar to our present-day fruit leather.

It was certainly worth a trip out in the rain. And we got our bay leaves as well.

Soup and Ethnography

Soup and ethnography may seem like a strange combination but read on. On Saturday morning one of my fellow teachers and I went around the corner to a pastry shop to get something to eat. Actually, most of the pastries are savory, even the ones that don’t look like it. Last week I ordered something that looked like it was filled with nuts and it turned out to be ground meat of some sort. Oh well, it was good.

After our little pastry feed, we went across to Oli’s, a smallish supermarket which is part of a local chain. What did I see in the produce section but fresh leeks. Since it’s been raining and a bit chilly, I immediately thought of leek and potato soup. I have a great recipe at home, which I remember called for cream. But I couldn’t remember much else. I thought I’d better go home first and find a recipe I liked on-line and then return and buy the leeks. You can imagine what happened. I went back and all the leeks were gone. I “asked” the produce man if he had any more (by asking I mean I looked up the word for leek in the dictionary and pronounced it while I pointed to the empty box.) He responded with a flurry of Turkish and energetic gestures which I understood to mean “no” but he’d get getting more. I couldn’t tell whether he meant that afternoon or the next day. But I was hopeful enough that I bought the other ingredients, except bay leaves, which they didn’t carry.

When I returned to the apartment complex, I ran into our super on the terrace. I showed him my paper on which I had written the Turkish for laurel tree; I hadn’t been able to find anything for bay leaf or bay tree in my dictionary. With my thumb and forefinger showed him the shape of the leaf. He wrote something else on the paper, which I think might have been “leaves.” He told me Oli’s wouldn’t have it and gestured in the direction of downtown. He talked for quite a while and I didn’t know exactly what he was saying except I got the feeling he said he’d take care of it.

I was a beautiful afternoon – high clouds that often broke for sun. Familiar Seattle sunbreaks. I decided to walk up to the big Migros at the top of our hill, a trek of about 45 minutes. It was worth it. The view was wonderful and you could see so much sky. I did find leeks but no bay leaves. I was certain I would because they carry so many spices – in fact, they even have soy sauce. And didn’t the Greeks make wreaths out of laurel leaves? However, an English-speaking employee said they didn’t carry bay leaves and the only place I would find them would be in the spice market downtown. Sigh. No soup that day.

True to our pledge to do at least one “cultural” thing on the weekend, this same colleague and I took off Sunday morning to visit the ethnography museum. She had heard it was very small but worth the trip. We armed ourselves with her guidebook and a rather large map of Gaziantep. We’d located the museum on the map in her book and on my map and rode the bus until we were fairly close. As we stood on a corner under our umbrellas – it was raining steadily by then – trying to figure out where we were on the map, a gentleman came up and asked if he could help. He told us the museum was rather far from there. After trying a couple of times to explain how we’d get there, he said he’d simply walk there with us. It turns out English is his hobby and he welcomed the chance to speak with us. (I’ll write about the museum later as this posting is getting way too long.) After the visit I pulled out my little “laurel tree leaf” paper and asked him if he knew where the spice market was. In fact, we weren’t too far. He took my little paper to a couple of vendors – the third one actually had bay leaves. He asked how much I wanted and I said just a little bit. A “little bit” turned out to be 100 grams, which cost 2 lira, about $1.25. You know how much 100 grams of bay leaves is? A lifetime supply!

Well, the soup got made and was enjoyed by all. Here’s the clincher. When I arrived home from work on Monday, the super came striding across the terrace with a small bag for me. He’d brought me bay leaves – a second lifetime supply! And he’d only paid 1 lira. I think I’ll be making a lot of leek and potato soup – and anything else I can put bay leaves in.