Sure Beats Drinking Bull's Blood

Approximately 90 km west/southwest of Ankara, near the modern village of Yassıhüyük, is the ancient site of Gordion, capital city of the Phrygian empire I wrote about two posts ago. We took a day trip there last Saturday to get out of the city, but also to show the girls and Lizzie's parents the so-called Tomb of Midas, which holds the bittersweet distinction of simultaneously qualifying for most amazing and most anticlimactic archaeological experience in Turkey.

King Midas is often dubbed a "quasi-legendary" figure because although his factual existence is attested and roughly dated to 700 BC, both by Assyrian texts and an account in Herodotus about him dedicating a throne of ivory to the oracle at Delphi, most of the information we have about him comes down to us from Greek myths, vague inscriptional references, and locally varying legends. The most widely known of these, of course, is the curse of his golden touch. It also appears the name "Midas" was so common among Phrygian royalty that it might very well have been more of an honorific, like Caesar, so it's unclear whether we're talking about one man or a succession of kings.

The ancient Phrygians honored their noble dead in one of two ways: either they carved a tomb directly into rock or they built some sort of burial chamber and then piled a bunch of earth on top. In both cases, the actual space where the dead were laid to rest was usually designed to model a gable-roofed house. Scholars like Lizzie are still working out all the whys and wherefores, but which method was chosen was likely a matter of resources and topography. We saw a bunch of the former in the Highlands, where soft and dramatically situated rock outcrops are plentiful. The latter, called tumuli, are much more common on the relatively flat plateau between Ankara and the Highlands. They're also very common in Lydia, the ancient kingdom to the west that eventually supplanted Phrygia as the dominant force in western Anatolia.

Besides the effort required, another problem with burying your dead beneath a massive dirt mound is that it makes it pretty obvious where to go grave robbing. No need for a treasure map when a man-made mountain marks the spot. The Phrygians had surprising prescience on this front and often offset the burial chambers in an effort to fool would-be thieves. Nevertheless, the discovery and proper excavation of a burial mound that hasn't already been looted is pretty rare. The so-called Tomb of Midas at Gordion is the largest intact tumulus ever excavated. Rodney Young was the man responsible, along with a team from the University of Pennsylvania, which has been sponsoring excavations at Gordion for the last sixty years. They used a well drill on top to locate a cavity in the mound and then tunneled toward the cavity from the side.

Inside was oldest standing wooden building ever found--a large gable roofed house, with no entrance or exit, constructed sometime around 740 BC of massive (and I mean massive) logs of old growth juniper. The flooring was cedar, the inner walls pine. All the earth atop it, as well as several layers of gravel and a sort of clay casing, had created a hermetic, temperature-regulated environment and the first people to see the burial chamber were greeted with the horrifying sound of all that ancient wood cracking from the in-rush of moist air. After stabilizing everything and building a concrete frame, they cut a rough hole through one wall. Inside were the human remains, laid inside a log/coffin, along with an incredible assemblage of grave goods that suggested a great feast had been held and then all its implements--the tables, the bowls, the cooking vessels--had been placed inside before sealing. Gold and jewel-encrusted grave goods are impressive to some, but the hobbyist woodworker in me finds the beautifully inlaid tables and screens from the so-called Tomb of Midas (now on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilization in Ankara) to be the most impressive ancient artifacts ever found. The skill they exhibit, the level of craftsmanship, is absolutely magnificent. One can only imagine what that ivory throne at Delphi must have looked like.

By now, you've no doubt noticed my repeated use of the phrase "so-called." Most scholars now agree it isn't the tomb of Midas. Even Rodney Young, once he had excavated it, thought the tomb probably contained the remains of Midas's father, Gordius, after whom both the city and the legendary knot was named (a topic for another day, perhaps). There are two main reasons why: the age of the tomb, first and foremost (done via dendrochronology, or tree ring dating), but also the history of what happened to Gordion. The Cimmerians sacked the city sometime around 700 BC and Midas would have been too busy dealing with that to build himself an expensive grave monument. Legend has it that, like Hitler, he committed suicide when it became clear his city was about to be taken. However, times being what they were, old Midas opted for drinking bull's blood instead of cyanide or shooting himself in the head.

Few non-classicists have ever heard of Gordius, though, so perhaps we can forgive the Turkish Ministry of Culture for continuing to call it the Tomb of Midas. That's one reason I say it's a bit anticlimactic to go there. The second is that after the drama and suspense of entering the tumulus through an elaborate gate and walking down a long narrow tunnel to the burial chamber, you are now greeted by an iron fence that keeps you from going inside or even seeing much of the structure. Both Lizzie and I recall at least walking around it when we were there in 2000 (possibly due to special treatment afforded the group we accompanied), but it certainly makes sense to protect this national treasure from the tourist hordes. In any case, you can still gape in awe at the massive logs used to build the oldest wooden structure in the world and the tunnel itself is a very cool feature (in every sense of the word).

For anyone who might never have the opportunity to get to this part of the world, but still wants to experience a little taste of the Phrygian high life, there's always Midas Touch, a beer made by the pioneering craft brewery Dogfish Head with the help of Dr. Patrick McGovern, a U. Penn Archaeological Scientist, who analyzed the molecular remains of a serving vessel found inside the tomb and came up with a very accurate recipe. Curiously enough, one of the key ingredients in the brew (along with honey and white muscat grapes) is saffron, which currently holds the title of most expensive spice in the world. Fortunately, I picked up a jar of the good stuff for a reasonable price in Safranbolu and plan to whip up a batch as soon as I get back to the States. It might not be quite as delicious or authentic as the original, but it sure beats drinking bull's blood. 

Sense and Sensibility in Safranbolu and Amasra

When you stop to think about it (and we too seldom do), perception is a funny and deeply flawed thing. The very same five senses that secure our survival and seem to give us an accurate measure of the world are also the organs of our everyday prejudice and bias. The eye is also a blinder. The ear is also a muffle. The tongue that gives us so much gastronomic pleasure is also the gatekeeper that stops us from enjoying every taste that nature has to offer. Technically, of course, what actually impairs us is the complicated bundle of experience, influence, and preference that serves as middleman between our senses and our brains, but I would argue that in most humans these interpretations are so instantaneous and automatic, so ingrained and unexamined, that distinguishing perception from preconception becomes a moot point. Despite all the advances in physics and psychology that tell us everything--literally everything--is relative, as a species we still too often cling to the comfort of certainty. Not only the certainty that our subjective reality has an objective Truth, but that we have a natural right to impose it upon others or judge those who perceive another.

On a recent road trip north to the Black Sea, with Lizzie's parents Mike and Julie Paulette gamely in tow, our senses were treated to the full Monty. We stopped first in Safranbolu, a Unesco World Heritage site and one of the only urban areas left in Turkey where the Ottoman architecture and lifestyle hasn't been paved over with concrete and progress. One could liken it to Colonial Williamsburg, but a close examination of the differences provides a good example of what I alluded to above. Whereas Williamsburg is a prettified and whitewashed simulacrum of history, staged with actors and props, Safranbolu is a living breathing town, with all the texture and grit that entails. To Western sensibilities, it might seem a little cluttered and claustrophobic, a little imposing and precarious, especially if you arrive in a not-so-mini van on a rainy day in late October. The streets are narrow and extremely difficult to navigate, as are the cupboard-size bathrooms in the period-accurate hotels. A deep gorge cuts through the town, and some of the tourist shops are propped over its mouth with foolhardy nonchalance. Nighttime lighting is sparse, stray animals are everywhere, almost no English is spoken anywhere, and finding the "attractions" requires an intrepid foot and a keen eye.

Flipped on their heads, all of those descriptors are actually what makes Safranbolu so worth the trip. That full sensory wash--the acrid smoke of the fires that heat the hamam hanging heavy over the valley; the closeness of the quarters, outside and in; the creaking floors and wood-grain gloom; the patina of humanity in every handhewn inch, every perilous step up or down the sloped stone streets--all of it is exactly what makes visiting this 700-year-old town so transportive and charming. Nothing is spoonfed or sanitized. Even finding the Kaymakamlar House Museum (a gorgeous Ottoman mansion, complete with heirloom kilims and creepy mannequins) felt like a mini adventure. The townspeople are welcoming without any of the pandering or tourist baiting so common to other postcard destinations. We met a master locksmith who showed off his work (highly prized and featured in historic renovations all over Turkey) without ever once trying to interest us in a sale. Our meal that night at Imren Lokum Konak (good wine, an incredible köfte stew, a regional type of mantı) was among the best I've ever had in Turkey, but it was served simply, in a building you might never find if the affable but no-nonsense owner of your hotel doesn't happen to recommend it. Once a key stop along the caravan route, and famous all over the Ottoman empire for the quality of its namesake spice, Safranbolu certainly left a colorful, full-flavored impression.

Much the same can be said for Amasra, a small port town on the Black Sea about an hour and a half north of Safranbolu. The road there led us over a series of mountain passes and river valleys with enough fall splendor to rival anything in New England or Virginia, and then down a 12 degree incline into town that felt more like falling than driving. Our trusty GPS tried to send us down a narrow back alley en route to our pension, but our preconceptions once again got the better of us until Şennur, our gracious and indefatigable innkeeper assured us that it was in fact the way to go.

As in Safranbolu, nothing in Amasra (besides perhaps Şennur) makes an overt effort to impress or be anything other than what it is. Its charms--fresh fish, pretty views, a picturesque Roman bridge and citadel--are either enough for you or they are not. It's no skin off their backs if you expected Cape Cod or the Riviera, or you are disappointed by a Rabbit Island with no visible rabbits. During our walk around the citadel, we came across a friendly little man in his seventies who was happy and proud to give us an impromptu tour of the Byzantine ramparts and point out all the decorative architectural fragments used more practically in walls and arches. He had no self consciousness about walking us through his cluttered yard, where both the trash and the chickens lived free range. Nor was he doing it for a handout. When I tried to slip a ten lira note into a handshake, he pulled back and refused it, only accepting when Lizzie made it clear how much we appreciated his local perspective.

The morning we were leaving Amasra turned out to be Republic Day, a national holiday akin to our 4th of July. There was to be a parade through the central square later that morning, and after we checked out we found our little back alley parking lot was blocked by several fire engines. With no choice but to stick around, we milled around the edges of the crowd and listened to too many speeches we couldn't understand until the girls grew bored and restless. (Truth and Reality are most certainly relative, but one universal fact is that parades always take too long to start.) I walked Callie and Ella around town again and by the time we got back the parade was finally ready to begin. Police cars and fire engines filed out after all the civic groups on foot, then a contingent of construction equipment, and finally some utility vehicles. Bringing up the rear was a lowly street sweeper who must not have been paying much attention because no sooner had he begun to move when he smashed into the vehicle in front of him and shattered his oversized windshield. I have little doubt that in America this accident would have caused a small scene, with heckling spectators, police reports, official condemnation. Here in Amasra, however, the embarrassed driver just backed up enough to turn around. Then he turned on his brushes and cleaned it up. Because, after all, that's what street sweepers do.

Old Friends in High Places

The Road to the Highlands

A few weeks ago we attended a gathering of international faculty here at Bilkent. Small talk shifted to what everyone was planning for Kurban Bayramı, a.k.a. the Feast of the Sacrifice (in Arabic it's called Eid al-Adha). The holiday honors Abraham's religious devotion, immortalized by his willingness to sacrifice his son upon God's command. Interesting side note: Muslims believe it was Ishmael, Abraham's firstborn, whose head was on the block that day, while Christians say it was Isaac. Thankfully, both religions agree that a lamb was ultimately substituted for the boy when Abraham called God's bluff.

In any case, schools are closed and everyone gets a long weekend to celebrate. Traditionally this entails butchering a goat or a lamb, keeping a third of the meat for your own feast, sharing a third with family, and giving a third away to the poor. Less fundamentalist families simply donate food to charity and get together for a big meal like the American Thanksgiving (children often get candy and small gifts as well) but a substantial number of devout Muslims still adhere to the old practice. This can get pretty messy in a city of over four million people, so in urban areas the butchering is done by professionals, often in mobile slaughter houses that station themselves all over the city and lend the holiday an unintended touch of the macabre. Technically speaking, it's now illegal in Turkey to do your own killing and cleaning for Bayram, but we saw dozens of instances in rural areas that prove that law is not strictly enforced.

Unsurprisingly, given their love of animals, Callie and Ella were horrified by the whole idea, and don't eat lamb at all (except when they don't realize what they're eating) so we figured it would be best to get out of town. At the faculty picnic, we mentioned that we were planning to visit the Phrygian Highlands. Despite their collective years of working in Turkey, few people within earshot had even heard of the area, and those that knew of it just shook their heads and laughed at the kind of place archaeologists (and their spouses) consider a vacation spot.



Phrygia was a fairly large kingdom in west-central Anatolia that probably reached its peak in the late 8th BC. It is most famous for two of its legendary kings: Gordias, whose namesake knot was cut by Alexander the Great, and Midas of the golden touch. The Phrygian Highlands are a distinct subregion within the western part of the kingdom, roughly delimited by the triangle formed by Eskişehir, Afyon, and Kütahya. The area is unnervingly remote, sparsely inhabited, and perfectly haunted.

I first visited the Highlands with Lizzie fourteen years ago, during the year we lived in Athens and she attended the American School of Classical Studies.
It was a bus trip, organized by the school and rigidly scheduled. Even within those awful confines, my mind was blown to smithereens. Imagine a place with all the geological beauty and grandeur of Zion National Park but add in some of most enchanting, mysterious, and least frequented archaeological sites in the ancient world. That one visit to the Highlands left such an impression on me that fourteen years later I find myself writing a novel that is largely an effort to process the experience and do justice to this landscape. It goes without saying that Lizzie is both the spark and fuel of my fascination; she's been back three times without me while researching her own book. She did all the driving, all the talking, and makes one hell of a guide.

While we were excited to share our love of the Highlands with our daughters, we were both worried that things might have changed in the intervening years. Turkey is in the midst of a big economic push and, as in many other countries, decision makers seem more concerned with promoting tourism than good taste or proper preservation. The spirit of a place too often gets trampled in the process of that adulteration. We were thrilled to find that very little had changed; the Highlands are still raw, pure, and overlooked. The holiday timing of our trip practically insured we'd have the sites to ourselves. For me, this is everything. I need solitude and silence to grok a special place. I find it impossible with tourist hordes and would rather skip a destination if crowds are an unavoidable component. Fortunately, all it usually takes is a little extra effort to leave most people behind. The Highlands are a perfect example.

Yazılıkaya

OK, enough preamble. We rented a little diesel Hyundai and drove three and a half hours west/southwest out of Ankara to Yazılıkaya, a village out of time that sits in the shadow of Midas Kenti (or Midas City). "City" is a bit of a misnomer here, as the site is more of a cult sanctuary than a simple settlement. Cars are no longer allowed in the village, at least according to new signage, so we parked outside and took a walk through its atmospheric streets where every building is made with mud and timber framing. It's almost impossible to overstate the awe I felt when I first caught sight of the so-called Midas Monument, an elaborately patterned rockcut facade that rises six stories and recreates a pedimented temple on a red stone wall. The girls were equally struck and raced forward to climb into the niche where a statue of Cybele, the Mother Goddess, likely stood. A dedicatory inscription in Old Phrygian containing the word "Mida" has long been interpreted to mean the monument was carved to honor King Midas, but Phrygian is still poorly understood. It's possible that the word is a epithet for Cybele. Within a stone's throw from the Midas Monument is Kırkgöz, the Cave of Forty Eyes, a fantastically pockmarked outcrop with spaces for the living and the dead. The girls wasted no time in turning Kırkgöz into a playground for their imagination. 

Those two features alone are worth the trip, but they are just the beginning. Midas City is an archaeological wonderland that we took half the day to explore. It has dozens of rockcut tombs, deep dark cisterns, ancient staircases, hidden inscriptions, mysterious thrones, step monuments, zoomorphic outcrops, and much more. It was hysterical to see the two other visitors that day arrive, take a quick photo of the monument, and then leave within five minutes. We shared the humor with the mayor of the town, who also acts as a sort of docent for the site. I wish we had taken a picture of him, because he was a lovely man, proud of his home and appreciative of those who honor it with careful attention.

Later that day, as we made our way to Yuntas Gazligol Kaplica Isletmesi, the historic hotspring-fed hamam/hotel (with the tiniest bathrooms and in-room kitchens known to man) that would serve as our lodging, Lizzie insisted that we stop in the small village of Kümbet and drive up through its winding, narrow streets to see the Arslan Kaplan Kumbeti. I have to admit I was a little fried by that point. We'd been at it all day, had two more days of sightseeing ahead of us (that would take us to the equally amazing sites of Arslantaş, Arslankaya, and Aizanoi) and the girls were already losing their enthusiasm at the idea of trekking to yet another rockcut tomb. As much as I was intrigued by the idea of a tomb existing smack dab in the middle of a village, I was also worried about getting stuck. The village "roads" were nothing but deeply rutted dirt tracks and they went straight up. Ever since all this ISIS craziness started, I've had a (somewhat) irrational fear of getting ambushed by wacko fundamentalists. The sight of a woman driving (with a man for a passenger, no less) is weird enough in the rural regions of Turkey to draw the attention of every single villager. A rental car full of Westerners with Ankara plates takes the cake. My anxiety wasn't exactly alleviated when we made a wrong turn and hit a dead end, but Lizzie calmly turned around and found her way. I am so glad she did.

A commonly held belief posits that people living in rural, pre-industrialized societies must have experienced the passage of time differently than we modern ADHD folk do. How else to explain their ability to undertake Herculean tasks with humble nonchalance, whether those be hand crafting timeless monuments from solid rock or tilling a field with a donkey and a stone-age plow.

A strange and haunting proof of this theory was provided by the old man whose modest home abutted the tomb in Kümbet. Feeling self-conscious about our intrusion, I tossed him a sincere merhaba as we passed by. The greeting, at least when I use it, is as often met by a hostile stare as a friendly response, so I was surprised to see him spring forward and follow us. He gave me a long searching look when he caught up to us that I ascribed to the simple coincidence of us wearing a similar outfit, but when he let loose with a flurry of emotional speech I knew something else was up. I apologized and told him I didn't speak Turkish but that didn't seem to phase him one bit. He just kept talking, getting more and more animated. He offered me a cigarette. At several points he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. The gesture was so brotherly that I ended up doing the same, though I had no idea what he was saying. Fortunately, I had Lizzie there to translate.

If everyone has a superpower, mine is the ability to look exactly like someone else. Evidently I don't have just one doppelgänger, though. I have hundreds of them. I couldn't begin to recount the number of times I have been approached by someone who thinks they know me when they really don't. Sometimes this is funny (I'll admit to occasionally playing along, when the mood strikes), sometimes it is extremely annoying (who wants to look like everyone?), sometimes it is both (like the time a completely spaced out dude at the urinal next to me at the Fillmore West absolutely insisted I was who he said I was), but until this weekend it has never happened in a foreign country and it has never touched me on a deep emotional level. This old guy really truly thought I was a fellow he knew from when he worked at the air force base in Incirlik, half his life ago. The trippy part was he appeared oblivious to the paradox that he had aged but I hadn't. He asked my name twice, just to be sure. He got so choked up talking about this guy that I kind of wished I was him. We chatted a little while longer. I told him how beautiful his homeland was (I can say that much, at least). He bemoaned the general state of affairs, with all the young people moving away. He talked about the terrible things happening in Syria and Iraq. He seemed to want to keep talking forever. In the end I shook his hand with as much sincerity and warmth as I could, wished him good afternoon and happy holidays, and went on my way. I never did explore the tomb, but hopefully I made a friend in Kümbet, in this life and the last.

(Click the link below to see the entire photo album.)

The Phrygian Highlands

Gazoo from Penn-Seal-Vahnya

So we made our way back into Mordor this morning, armed with four pink folders and a letter from the Bilkent rector. With any luck the Eye of Sauron would be gazing elsewhere and we could escape unscathed with our Precious residency permits.

Lizzie was up at 5:00, and out the door shortly thereafter, but such simple tactics don't work against necromantic bureaucracies. For every minute earlier you arrive at the Emniyet Müdürlüğü, the line is just that much longer. Fridays are the worst.

I again arrived later with the girls. We had a minor scare when our taxi driver took us way out of the way, in the wrong direction. When I reiterated our destination, he assured me this was the faster way. I didn't bother telling him the rate we ended up paying was way more than we'd paid the two previous times, but whatever, we got there.

When we found Lizzie she had already presented the letter and paid her application fee.

So far, so good. Step two of four was in the books.

The crowds were pushier today, more desperate. When we finally muscled our way to the counter, the chair was empty. The Man we had to see was nowhere to be found. I told the girls we'd just have to wait a little while and they gave me that wonderful preteen look that says "your word is worth nothing to me now."

People kept pushing, trying to dislodge us from our pole position. At one point, I felt pretty sure I was getting pick pocketed. Fortunately, I'd moved everything of value to my front pockets. In time, The Man appeared. The Man was in no hurry, and I didn't blame him. Honestly.

Lizzie explained that this was our third straight day of this. The Man couldn't care less.

He looked through my pink folder first. Lizzie's was already in the system somewhere. Every ten minutes or so a secretary would scurry through the room, carrying twenty pink folders, for deposit in some other wing of the building that I can only assume rivals in size the secret government depot at the end of the Raiders of the Lost Ark. He asked Lizzie a bunch of questions. She answered as best she could.

The Man said something was missing.

The Man said I had no proof of financial means.

Lizzie indicated our bank statement, with a healthy cash balance, thanks to a timely infusion from another grant Lizzie had earned. She said she was here on a Fulbright, which covered our housing, which came with a stipend.

The Man said, this is in English. And it's not enough money.

The Man said, I don't know what a Fulbright is. And your folder isn't here to prove it.

The Man said, in any case, that's your money. Where is his money? 

My eyes started twitching. Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man" started looping through my head.

Lizzie and I have been married for eighteen years. We've had one, joint bank account that entire time. Hell, we had a shared bank account before we were married. Everything we have ever earned has been shared equally, and spent frugally. There is no her money, or my money. It is all our money.

The Man started talking about coming back another day, after getting our bank statement translated and notarized. Lizzie said, it's just a number. Look at the number. The Man said, it's not enough.

Lizzie took out her phone to call the Fulbright Office. In the meantime, the man flipped through my passport, which expires in November 2015. Technically, your passport has to be valid for six months beyond the date you leave a foreign country. It's a weird rule, but it's supposed to keep people from becoming undocumented wards of the state if their departure is delayed. We leave in June. Technically, my passport was a problem.

I braced myself for the worst. This was the end of the line.

Instead, The Man said, Pennsylvania. Only he pronounced it like Bela Lugosi saying Transylvania.

Penn-Seal-Vahnya.

He said it like it was the name of his first girlfriend. Like it conjured a sense memory of a long forgotten delicacy lovingly made--just for him--by his dead grandmother.

He was reading where I was born. He said it again. Penn-Seal-Vahnya. Suddenly I pictured The Man lying on a blanket under the fall foliage at Valley Forge. I pictured him sinking his teeth into his first cheesesteak. Running the steps of the art museum. Hell, I don't know, hugging Elmo at Sesame Place.

I have no idea what made him say it that way but from that moment forward The Man was playing on our team. The Ambassadors of Enmity had traded him to the Ambassadors of Compassion and for once a Philly fan had made out on the deal.

Sure, it still took a lengthy, haranguing phone call from our contact at the Fulbright Office. Sure, Lizzie will have to go back down there on Monday, for the fourth goddamn day in a row, with another letter from the Fulbright vouching for our financial health, and pay an exorbitant sum to initiate our application, but at least we have a stamped little piece a paper that says: A) They've seen the girls and won't have to again, and B) We started our application within the required 30 days.

My older brother Dan has a little guardian angel he has always called Kazoo. Origin myths in our family often amount to nothing more than someone saying something strangely or incorrectly one time (ask me some time about Spiegel, the Grimleys, Bvandals, or the Bears in the Woods). Kazoo has come through for us countless times. Yesterday, we discovered together that all this time he actually meant The Great Gazoo, that little green guy from the Flintstones. In any case, Dan emailed me to say he was sending Gazoo over to help. Gazoo from Penn-Seal-Vahnya.

Well, he got here, brother. He got here just in time.

The Emni-Not-Yet Blues

We are extras in the movie adaptation of a José Saramago novel, as directed by Terry Gilliam, starring the Marx Brothers. There are subtitles running across the bottom of the screen, but don't ask us what they mean.

We woke the girls well before dawn yesterday morning to begin what will hopefully be our hardest day in Turkey--the presentation and processing of our residency application. You have 30 days to do this or risk deportation, and due to delays on certain documents from the Fulbright Commission, we were attempting this on day 27. Our liaison at the Fulbright Commission had advised us to arrive at 7:45 at the Emniyet Müdürlüğü, a kind of DMV, police station, and immigration building all bundled into one. Roll that combination around in your head a moment, toss in about five hundred confused and scared fellow immigrants from all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and imagine what kind of FUBAR operation we were about confront.

The girls now call it Mordor.

We decided to play it safe and get there well ahead of the appointed time, but stepping out of the cab we found a line already wrapping around the building and only getting longer as new arrivals with a less Euclidean understanding of the word "line" slipped into whatever spaces ahead of us our fellow applicants were silly enough to leave unfilled.

This first line was only to get a number and it didn't start moving for nearly another hour. By then the girls were already exhausted and demoralized and our day(s) in hell had only just begun.

Once inside, after a security check, the line cutting continued until, maybe two hours after arrival, we finally reached the little deli-style kiosk that was dispensing them. 

Our number was 418.

My one previous experience with this process was in a much smaller municipality and it took them all day to process a handful of applications. If we didn't see someone today, we would just have to start all over again tomorrow, with a new line to get a new number. 

The existential terror I felt is difficult to overstate.

Fortunately, we had a helper of sorts with us from the Fulbright Office. She arrived late, but at least she arrived. I say "of sorts" because she was savvy enough to demand a lower "family" number for us (217), for processing in a different set of lines, but not savvy enough to keep us from missing that number's passing through the system while we sat in an overcrowded cafe. When we got back to the office, they were on number 225.

So then we were given a new number: 246. As frustrating as it was to miss our number (and anyone who knows me understands I was going postal by that point) we knew only twenty one cases stood between us and success. Or so we thought. It took another two hours for us to see someone, who then told us, no you cannot apply in the family line. Lizzie (as the Research Applicant) must apply first, and then the rest of us could apply as a family. Not only that, but we must have four separate application packets, not one. 

Lizzie had painstakingly prepared our packet weeks in advance. It contained our passports, passport photos, original birth certificates, an original marriage certificate, FBI background checks on both of us, health forms for the girls, proof and explanation of health insurance, bank statements, a letter of invitation from the chair of the archaeology department at Bilkent (corrected and printed three times), a letter from the Fulbright office, etc., etc., etc. All of which we had to get translated into Turkish (at modest expense) and then notarized (at obscene, are-you-effing-kidding-me expense).

So then we were back to our original number: 418. At this point they were somewhere in the mid 200s. So while we waited, Lizzie got into another line for the one copy machine in the building. 

All this time the girls were absolute champions. Sure they complained, and asked what on earth was taking so long, but at least they weren't crying, like the two dozen babies in attendance, or racing around the overcrowded space and cranking up the overall annoyance factor for everyone. Instead they lay on the floor and read their books, or played games on my tablet.

Right about the time Lizzie finished copying our documents and assembling them into their special pink folders, the lights went out in the building. This meant get out, it's time to leave. The whole operation shuts down for an hour long lunch break.

The number stood at 305. Odds of seeing anyone were long, but not outside the realm of possibility.

The one silver lining in this entire experience was the opportunity to meet and spend a day with Hafez Modirzadeh. Hafez is a professor of music and ethnomusicology at San Francisco State. Born in the U.S., with Persian heritage, he's also one hell of a saxophonist, has been on the jazz and world music scenes and playing around the world for years, and knew Chet Baker personally. Hafez is here in Ankara on a Fulbright to study with an aging master musician (whose name I never caught) at Başkent University. Hafez was in the same boat as us.

Hafez was so indomitably positive, friendly, charming, and funny that he turned an unbearable, interminable situation into a cosmic joke. The universe was just having a laugh, and it would take care of us in time. I loved this idea. I wanted to believe in this idea. Just wait until you hear the punchline.

After lunch, the minutes seemed to stretch a little longer and everyone's spirits dipped. It took forever for one number to change on the counter, the place was still completely packed. Babies were still crying, women were now crying, men were pacing, whole families arguing and spread helter skelter. Every available window had dozens of people around it, pleading pitifully, demanding an audience. Professional greasers were everywhere, trying to exert their influence on behalf on the poor, deluded people who had hired them thinking they'd bought special treatment. Once thing was certain. I would lose my mind working in that place for a single hour.

With fifteen minutes left before closing time, we still had eight numbers to go. We were never going to make it. But wait a second, the numbers jumped! Some people ahead of us had bailed. We were going to get our audience after all. At exactly 4:00 (closing time), I kid you not, our number finally came up. Lizzie raced to the window with the Fulbright helper. He looked at our documents for a long while. And then he delivered a verdict: You must pay this amount at that payment office around the corner. 

But what the hell did that mean, you might ask? 

It turns out, the entire rigamarole... nearly nine hours of waiting, was simply to get a figure and a piece of paper that said we owed said amount to START the process. Not only would we have to come back tomorrow--the payment office was already closed--but after Lizzie paid for her application, we'd have to go show proof of that payment and then we could start applying as a family.

Just wait. It gets worse.

Before we left the Emniyet, our Fulbright helper had the good sense to insist someone behind the window check over our documents and decree that they were in order. She was going on vacation and wouldn't be around to help us finish the process. The head guy behind the window did so, and said everything was kosher. 

This morning Lizzie woke up even earlier and arrived alone at the Emni-Not-Yet a good 40 minutes earlier than we had yesterday. The line was even longer, but fortunately she didn't need a number. She just had to go pay. The girls and I came later. I successfully directed the taxi driver where we needed to go (in truth I handed him a piece of paper on which Lizzie had written the instructions). When we made it through security and found Lizzie, she was in tears and screaming into her cell phone. 

Never a good sign.

Turns out one of our documents wasn't sufficient. Instead of a letter from the chair of the archaeology department, we needed a letter from the university rector. 

Three separate people had checked and signed off on our application: a Fulbright program officer, our helper, and the guy behind the window. 

It's a thirty minute cab ride to the Emniyet. The girls have now missed two days of school. We've only completed step one in a process with at least four more steps. We have only one work day left to do it.

Please wish us luck.

Frazzle fried in Kızılay

Time has already begun to quicken with the pulse of daily habit. Nearly two weeks since my last entry, with little to note but the hours spent working on the novel. Last Friday brought something new but unwelcome in the form of our first sick day. Callie had thrown up at school and needed to be retrieved just twenty minutes after Lizzie dropped her off with the taxi. This necessitated a return trip in another taxi after catching a bus home. Poor thing was down with a stomach bug, but after hearing a few teachers and fellow students talk about the "polluted" tap water mentioned on the news, she was convinced an errant sip of it had done her in. Bottled water from here on out, I guess.

She was feeling better on Saturday, and Lizzie was itching for an excursion, so we decided to brave the big bad city again in search of an elusive brand of recorder specified as requisite by their music teachers and, if time remained, more robust sneakers specified as requisite by their gym teacher. (Chuck Taylors don't cut it evidently. Are all private schools so picky with their supplies? Their art teacher demanded certain brands as well.)

We took a bus to Kızılay, a shopping district, and walked many blocks down crowded streets, pausing now and then to locate our position on the map. The first two music stores we found were dead ends, but the third delivered the goods. (Across the street, a heavily doctored actual size poster of Taylor Swift looked down on us with beatific approval.) We were elated enough by our own success to stop at a cafe and celebrate with milkshakes and smoothies, but fate had other things in mind.

A table in the back offered good shade and we took it despite the tarp hanging nearby and the workmen beyond it doing god knows what. Puffs of plaster rained down on my neck, but scooting in seemed to solve the problem and we set about scouring the menu for our rewards.

No sooner had we made our selections when a loud explosion sizzled over our heads and a corner of the building burst into flames. A workman had errantly touched a metal pole to a live wire and caused an electrical fire that quickly threatened to engulf our side of the building. Amazingly, almost no one else reacted with any degree of alarm. The workmen kept slapping wet plastic on the fire, which only succeeded in turning the flame a chemical blue. Finally a waiter arrived with a fire extinguisher and ended the crisis. 

We moved across the restaurant, evidently still alone in our concern, and sat down again to order. Alas it was not to be. The fire and/or explosion had killed the power to the building and they could no longer offer us milkshakes or smoothies. Might we want some tea?

If only that was the last disappointment of the day, we might have retained the trust of our children. Hours later, after braving sketchy, subterranean shops with grey market knock offs and a subway station that looked like an outtake from World War Z, we finally acquired the necessary footwear. Surely another celebration was in order, right? Surely we must reward the children (and ourselves) for their endurance. So off we went by foot to the mythical Beer Garden, tales of which had been tickling our imaginations and teasing our palettes ever since our arrival. Besides, they supposedly had legitimate cheeseburgers which are as rare in this country as window screens and good beer. Speaking of which, there was little to be had at Ye Olde Beer Garden. Sure, they had bottles of Miller, and Corona, and Becks, Heineken, and Carlsberg. They even had a Guinness, but all of them were so overpriced it would have required a total rewiring of my brain to order one, and none of them (barring perhaps Guinness) are any better than Efes (the national swill) anyway, so we ordered two giant mugs of that, along with a double cheeseburger for me and three singles for the ladies. 

Alas, Lizzie forgot to specify "just meat and cheese"—a normally automatic qualifier drilled into our brains with countless, desperate reminders from the kids. No one remembered this time though, at least not until said cheeseburgers arrived encased in an inextricable coating of mayo, pickles, lettuce, mustard and tomato. The look of abject horror and hopelessness that fell across Callie's face was enough to drive any man to drink and drink I did. And drank some more.

(Dis)Orientation

Before the impressions fade, a quick accounting of other memorable events since our arrival:

Ella locked herself in the bathroom at the first grocery store we found and shut down the entire operation as first the lone check-out girl, and then an assistant manager, and finally the big bossman was summoned to help extract her. I failed my father test that day and yelled at her for causing a scene, but soon realized it was my own embarrassment I was reacting to and apologized. For her part, Ella took it in stride and never got upset until I yelled.

Later that day, in an act of startling metaphoric appropriateness, I unknowingly blew every fuse in our apartment by plugging in an American power bar with a suitable adapter, in the hopes of lessening the number of additional adapters we would need. We had just filled our fridge with groceries of course. Three calls to the housing office finally produced a friendly electrician who patiently and diligently tested each outlet and fuse until he found the offending equipment. He threw me a nettled look but I apologized as best I could and he seemed to accept it.

Beyond that we are still struggling to acquire an internet connection and the proper IDs needed to initiate a whole host of other critical processes.The clock is ticking on our residence permits and there is so much left to do.

Our frustration reached a fever pitch at the middle school orientation yesterday, when we realized we hadn't been informed about a slew of events, options, schedules, requirements, books and other school supplies. This was doubly surprising given the cost of the place, and its alleged reputation. We have no experience with private schools, and no other option here, but it's kind of ironic our daughters had to move all the way to Turkey to experience elitism.

We also discovered the Bilkent shuttle bus would fail to get the girls to school on time. Looks like we'll have to catch a cab every morning. The only other option was an expensive private bus service with security guards. This is probably standard operating procedure at private schools everywhere but seemed ridiculous and unnecessary to us. Still, we worried that the girls would miss out on an opportunity to make friends and get labeled the poor outsiders and so we eventually capitulated to paying through the nose.

I have seen my wife tackle bureaucracies at the highest and lowest levels in this country, most often in their own tongue, but even she was stymied by the byzantine requirements and registration process of this stupid bus service and the rude young woman who served as its face. (Who is your emergency contact in a country where you know virtually no one, and certainly no one capable of helping in an emergency?) We finally managed to complete the multiple forms necessary but they somehow disappeared while the woman was dealing with other parents.

"Where are they?" Lizzie asked, and was shown absolute disdain, as if she was an idiot instead of a PhD and not competent enough to keep track of four pieces of paper. She began to panic because her phone had died by that point and it held all the information needed to redo the forms. She asked again, "Where are they, they were just here?" and looked to me, as if I might know. Only when it became clear that we weren't going anywhere did this woman go retrieve them from the trash, where she had "mistakenly" thrown them. I can understand being tired and frazzled by a long day dealing with clueless parents, but this was clearly an intentional act—this woman was definitely an ambassador of enmity. She then asked for nonrefundable payment, up front, for the entire year. We produced four different credit cards and she refused to take them all. 

The Turks have a way of saying no that involves throwing their heads back in apparent scorn and making an tongue click against the roof of the mouth and although I know better I've always found it to be one of the more offensive gestures I've seen. When this ill-mannered young thing showered Lizzie and our lowly credit cards with several such responses it was I could do not to fire back with some offensive gestures of my own. Overcome by my own helplessness, I stalked away before I made the situation worse. This turned out to be impossible. In the end, we took the taxi option and saved ourselves a significant bundle of cash in the process.

In truth, this bus fiasco was only the last in a day of chaos that made the car line at the Ankara airport look like a Japanese train station. But I'll refrain from "going there" and end this here.

A Room with a View

09/01/14: Lojman 79, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

Gazing out the generous, great-room window of our ninth floor apartment, in one of the two tallest buildings atop this university hill site, I see a land of layers and contrasts. Military helicopters and the occasional fighter jet shatter the vast expanse of blue otherwise populated by a parade of lazy, well-fed clouds, troublesome pigeons, and brief invasions of acrobatic swallows. 

In the middle ground, abstracted and romanticized by distance and soft focus, sprawls the modern city with its bands of right angles stacked and overlapping in cubist contrast to the bare brown hills that rise above them and rim the scene with hints of the ancient hinterlands beyond.

In the foreground and directly below our window crouch an unfortunate regiment of single-story factories, fronted and commanded by a furniture company. Two mass graves of cut logs lie disrespectfully displayed to the abutting crowds of pine trees mourning their fallen brethren from beyond a barb wire fence. As if to drive home the allusion, several times an hour, a smokestack beside these log piles belches a five-minute measure of black smoke that rises like a ominous signal fire into the sky. I am thankful for how quickly this stain on the horizon dissipates, thankful for the nearly constant breeze that banishes it westward, so very thankful for this wind that rushes into any open window or balcony door to cool my overheated core. I spent an inordinate percentage of my first days here trying to devise methods and systems to prop and secure these windows and doors in such a manner that they will allow entry to this welcome air without getting slammed shut on its equally imprudent exit. My kingdom for a simple, Western window, screened and sashed for my convenience. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous use of concrete and plaster in the building and framing here make traditional wood windows unlikely if not impossible and screens a lavish afterthought.

But at least there's the view. I've never been as cognizant of the air over my head, as awed by cloud formations. The vast majority of the photos I've taken so far are of the view through our apartment window, hence the title of this blog. If nothing else, I'll leave this place a sky gazer.

 

 

Sofia?

Our trip was mostly uneventful and fairly painless, in light of the red-eye timing and great distance covered. Not that I managed much sleep during the Atlantic Ocean leg, but we found enough space to stretch out a bit and relax during a six-hour layover in Munich. The seats around us gradually filled in, first for a flight to Sofia and then our own to Ankara. Many others took the opportunity to steal some sleep as well. One doughy Bulgarian gent in particular (I guessed his nationality from his features and apparent destination) fell so deeply asleep that he missed all four announcements for his flight. Thinking back to the kindness of our head-scarved check-in agent at Dulles, who mercifully ignored both the weight and number of our bags, I felt a desire to extend such empathy and begin our family adventure on a good karmic footing. On the other hand, I envied and respected his ability to lose consciousness in such a noisy and unnatural environment. I couldn't be certain this was his flight—maybe, like us, he was waiting for the next, or some other. In the end, hearing the final boarding announcement, and its included call for one final passenger, I took a chance and gently placed a hand upon his knee.

He was slow to wake but quick to register alarm. "Sofia?" I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder. He scanned the empty gate for a second and popped up like a game show contestant named from the audience. Sprinting to the closing door, he had no chance to thank me, so the smirking gate agent did so in his stead.

An hour or so earlier, I had asked Callie to pull in her feet as she lay across two seats, so that this fellow had enough room to properly relax. He heard my fatherly admonishment and raised a hand to say "No worries." I mirrored the gesture to say "No bother," and he smiled a little smile that seemed to say (in my ever reflexive monologue), "Perhaps these Americans aren't so ugly after all."

I like to think of this fellow seated on the plane, jangled nerves of the narrowly averted misfortune cooling into deep relief and perhaps the peerless balm of going home, and I picture him smiling that same little smile and mentally thanking his nameless Samaritan. No doubt I overthought the entire encounter. Anyone who knows me will say I do it all the time. But that doesn't change or undermine the fact that we are all ambassadors every moment of our lives and the only borders of substance between enmity and compassion.

A Supplication

08/27/14  Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C.

About an hour before boarding, en route to Ankara, a family of four sit lost in thoughts of new beginnings. Alternately excited, nervous, bored. Like all humans, each utterly unknowable and intimately familiar. Facing a year abroad, in a land on the verge of reversion, they are moving both forward and backward in time—mirror images, slightly askew. They are also twins in fact and twins in purpose; the girls to expand and grow, the parents to write and shepherd, protect and liberate. Lofty goals for a capital city, landlocked by provincialism and petty  bureaucracies,  not to mention a leader with aims at crypto fascism. They will exist and operate both outside and within these perimeters, as undercover tourists and conspicuous agents of human exceptionalism.

Sing gods, and sail them home.

A Disclaimer

Before we left for our year in Turkey (a result of my wife landing a Fulbright Grant to further her archaeological research) I was asked by a few friends whether I planned to keep a blog of the experience. At the time, my unspoken answer was always no, for a whole host of reasons. First and foremost, I'm here to work on a novel and need to keep my distractions to a minimum, especially those that might sap my willingness to sit for one moment more in this uncomfortable chair and stare at this computer screen. On the one hand, I know damn well that every writer of every stripe is now expected to build an online presence and market themselves ad nauseum. On the other, I've always found blogs to be terribly self-indulgent (especially my own) and in any case, a travel blog would only tangentially relate to my novel in progress or the other books and stories I've published. I already keep a private travel journal—always have. Why make it public?

 Another thing holding me back was my abominable track record. I've started at least four other blogs in the past. Two have already been voluntarily expunged from the public record: a scatterbrained place to store what limited DIY knowledge I have acquired just being the cheap, foolhardy bastard that I am, and a passably enjoyable channeling of my daughters' thoughts on the twenty days we spent travelling Western Turkey and living in an excavation house in 2011. (My ever-respectful wife, and the whole reason we were there in the first place, asked me to delete the latter for fear it might supplant more serious, less irreverent websites about said excavation in Google searches. I only discovered after the fact that I could, at least in theory, hide a blog from Google's all-seeing eyes.)

The other two are still out there, flapping in the wind. What We Fear began as Thirty Days of Night(mares)—a self-indulgent account of my self-indulgent experiment in October of 2008 to watch thirty horror films in thirty days, with breathless updates on my sanity and abbreviated reviews of each. I meant it to be finite (and facetious) from the outset, but briefly resurrected it three years later as a general consideration of all the many things that frighten people. At its peak, I think it had four subscribers. That well ran dry, or I lost the energy to lift the bucket, and I abandoned it. Imagine my surprise when I logged into its user panel just yesterday and discovered it had over 7,000 unique visitors. A paltry number, as these things go, but enough to make me wonder whether I had underestimated the blog, if not as a marketing tool then as the perfect place to indulge my self-indulgence.

My one current "blog" is the only thing besides my children, my wife, my fiction, my homebrew, my old diesel pickup, my garden, and my work shed that gets any attention from me these days. And it falls at the very end of that list. Nonetheless, the growing collection of oddities and curiosities that I curate at Wondercabinet.net continues to plug along, pulling in between 1000 and 2000 unique visitors every month. Earlier this year it attracted a record 14,000 visitors in one day, thanks to a chance mention on reddit. (Are you listening agents? Are you counting those ducats?) Compared to Grumpy Cat or the million other memes-of-the-week that number is still absolute peanuts, but hey it's a start, right? I think the reason Wondercabinet has succeeded, at least on a modest level, while the others have failed is that it isn't a blog at all. Not in the usual sense. Its author is more or less invisible and the content does all the talking. Twisted, often creepy content, yes, but at least it's something beyond one person's internal monologue.

All of which is a long winded disclaimer and non-explanation for why I decided to go ahead and do another Turkey blog after all. What changed my mind? I'm not sure, exactly. Maybe I need something that isn't so weighted down with lofty expectations. Maybe I just want to share our experiences with family and friends. Sometimes thing really are that simple.

The following entries will be transcribed more less verbatim from my travel journal. They will likely be sporadic. They will certainly be purple and over earnest. My style leans that way anyway, but positively falls head first into a vat of overheated purple goo when I stop editing and let myself go. You've been warned. Abandon snark all ye who enter here.