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.

Fall Has Arrived

Leaving work on Monday afternoon we all noticed how chilly it had gotten. Granted, the sun had gone down, but still there was something different. What it was became apparent at about ten that night. Thunder and lightening, wind and rain. It was just wonderful. I sleep right next to the window, which I keep open all the time. I couldn't help but smile. I've been waiting for this for a long time. The air smelled so good this morning; it had been cleaned of the dust. There were still clouds around but there was sun too. It was a beautiful morning but I had my umbrella just in case. Sometime around mid-afternoon the entire scene repeated itself, only this time we added hail and it was daylight so you could watch the front move through. By the time we left you could see the moon. I think the heat is finally past.

Birecik Bird Sanctuary

It was already dark when we left Halfeti. We’d been late leaving that morning and then we went off daylight savings time, robbing us of an hour of light. We all assumed we were heading back to Gaziantep. However, we found ourselves bumping along a road next to the river, clearly in some sort of town. The driver pulled into a gas station – we thought he was lost and was trying to get onto the freeway. It turned out he was looking for a famous bird sanctuary. The station was right next to the sanctuary, but it wasn’t obvious how you got in. I’d read about this sanctuary in exploring possibilities for birdwatching in Turkey. It’s the only place in the world with bald ibises. The bird almost became extinct. This refuge began with one breeding pair, and now they have 109 birds. When they hit 100 they bought a satellite and inserted some sort of transmitter in each bird. Now they know where they all are all the time. Bald ibises are migratory birds that winter on the Nile. Most of them travel through Syria and Jordon to get to Egypt, but some fly over the Mediterranean. Sadly, it was too dark to see them, but I bought a couple of photos. It seems like a good cause to support, even if they are singularly ugly birds.

Halfeti

From Zeugma we bumped north through pistachio orchards to a little village on the Euphrates. At this point I was reminded of the Columbia River gorge. The cliffs rose quite steeply on both sides of the river. The little village hung on the slope above the river. We learned later that part of it had been submerged by the water backing up behind the dam. It is obviously a local tourist attraction. Tied up on the shore are a half dozen covered barges that serve as restaurants. There are also a number of little putt putts that give short tours up the river. The Turkish teachers who were with us went to all the restaurants bargaining for the cheapest group rate. We ended up at the first place because they were willing to throw in the boat ride.

While our fish kebabs were being prepared, be chugged up river. We way the remains of a Roman fort atop one of the cliffs. We then went into a little inlet. I saw a minaret sticking up out of the water right on the shore. I innocently asked where the mosque was – not having understood the explanation (in Turkish) by the driver that the village had been submerged. He took us close to the shore and we could see the roof of the mosque about a foot under water. Think Yangzee River. The Turkish government paid the residents to relocate to a new village built on higher ground. There were a couple of groups picnicking on verandas, but they’d had to get there by boat – or so we were told.

We chugged back to our barge where we were served truly delicious fish. It had been prepared with some sort of spicy rub and grilled. Yummy and a nice change from the usual meat kebabs. I was quite impressed that the barge was lit with compact florescent light bulbs. In fact, they even had them in red, blue, yellow, and green. I don’t think I’ve seen those in The States.

I did take my binoculars along in hopes of seeing some sort of bird life. I may have seen an egret on one shore of the river. However, it was far away, and I was also able to identify plastic shopping bags posing as birds (joke – there was a lot of junk around) so I’m not sure I was actually seeing a living creature. I also saw one gull and one black “duck” – looked a bit like a scooter. That was about it.