We spent the first part of the morning in Kütahya, going to yet another archaeological museum (every city of any size has one, and Lizzie wants to see them all) and wandering around the old part of town looking at the Ottoman houses. Except in isolated wealthy enclaves and a handful of cities with identities and economies tied to their preservation, these beautiful buildings with ornate woodwork and projecting upper floors or cantilevered rooms are quickly becoming a rarity in Turkey. Well-meaning but ultimately paralyzing preservation laws have left them in the no-man's land between heritage and habitation. They are expensive to restore and regulations dictate that it must be done in a prescribed manner. On the flip side, there is a strong disinclination and in some cases legal restriction against leveling them. The end result is that they are often left to rot, and the oldest sections of many cities are littered with decomposing edifices to a lost era. I have to admit a certain affinity for beautiful decrepitude, but it's sad to think that within a generation or two these buildings may be gone and cement apartments will likely go up in their place.As we left Kütahya our Garmin was suggesting we take a mountain pass to our next destination instead of the highway. It's always a toss up what to do in this situation. This particular GPS, in this particular country, has probably resulted in more wrong turns than rescues. No doubt this is partly due to our slightly outdated maps but I'm inclined to believe (as I suggested in my last post) that this problem mostly stems from the fundamental disconnect between Anatolia and any fixed notions of time and space. Newtonian physics, timetables, and satellite triangulation just don't always apply here. One of my favorite pieces of fiction from the last decade or so is a short story by China Mieville called "
We pulled into Çavdarhisar late morning. On its surface this humdrum hamlet gives no sign that it houses the spectacular ruins of ancient Aizanoi or once served as a popular destination for 18th and 19th-century travelers. It's a one-horse town, with no stoplights, no accommodations (least nothing open this time of year) and only one gas station. Zero tourists were there besides us--just the way I like it. We'd already visited once before, during our fall trip through the Phrygian Highlands, and toured the Temple of Zeus and the unique underground chamber beneath it that was consecrated to Kybele (one of the mysteries surrounding the Great Mother is how a supposed fertility goddess can also be chthonic and related to death and the underworld. Which goes back to that quantum fluidity I mentioned in my last post).
The only reason we'd come back was to take a second stab at locating an even more unique Kybele sanctuary situated about four kilometers outside town that factors into my book. On our first attempt, to my great frustration, we had failed to find it. In retrospect, this isn't all that surprising. Lizzie is pretty damned versed in this stuff and it was news to her. Only one other archeologist that we mentioned it to had ever heard of it before. But this time I had GPS coordinates, Google Earth satellite photos, detailed drawings, even a plan of the site. I just had to get there. Only problem was, as with most Kybele sanctuaries, a river runs nearby and that river had swelled with the spring runoff and turned the dirt road we needed to take into a quagmire.
Which brings us to the present. We are driving a rinky dink Hyundai. Lizzie drives about a hundred yards and says no way Jose, this is stupid. Unfortunately, I am very pigheaded about such things, and refuse to take no for an answer. There's no way I am going to fail twice at finding this place. So I make her get out and let me drive. Because she can read the Turkish signs, knows the country very well, is comfortable driving within its shall we say unorthodox traffic conditions, and because insuring an extra driver costs extra money, up until this point I'd left all the driving to her. Which is incredibly emasculating, but hey I'm the kind of guy who can handle that. But I figure now is the right time for me to assert my manliness. I am going to step in and get the job done. Well, within another few hundred yards it becomes obvious we are going to get miserably stuck if I go any further. In fact, there is a very good chance we are already stuck. I somehow manage to get us turned around and then try to get us out of there. You need a little speed to get through these situations, I think to myself, and so I give it a little gas. Enough gas to send us fishtailing through the deepest part of the muck and nearly into the river. Lizzie closes her eyes. No problem, no problem I get us straightened out. Yeah, just in time to hit the only sizable rock in our path. THUNK! goes the underside of the car. EXPLETIVE! goes the idiot behind the wheel. But hey, it's cool, we got out of that mess, right, how bad could it be? For about ten minutes we consider just parking the car at the end of this washed out road and walking back the four kilometers and change to the sanctuary but it's lunchtime and we think, let's just grab a bite in town and then do the hike.
It's a good thing we did. It's also a good thing I had to parallel park, because otherwise I might not have noticed the trail of oil leaking from our car. Oh no. Maybe it's not that bad. We leave the car, walk to the one gas station and confer with some guys there. Is the oil pan aluminum or iron? No idea. Let's go check. By the time we get back it's a moot point, the oil leak is not the type you can patch with some JB Weld. It's a geyser. We aren't going anywhere and this particular rental car has done it's last fishtail for a while. My daughters look at me like I just ripped open their favorite animal lovey and ate its stuffing. Again.
I guess now is a good time to mention that all the priests of Kybele, a.k.a. the Matar, were eunuchs. Not just eunuchs, though. Self-emasculated eunuchs, in ritual, bloody fashion. I now knew the feeling.
It's a little after noon. Lizzie spends an incredibly frustrating length of time on the phone with the car rental company. We had gone with Turkish Hertz for a change, thinking we needed a national outfit for our cross country trek. Fortunately, they had talked her into buying damage insurance at the last minute. Ha ha, jokes on them. Unfortunately, Turkish Hertz isn't exactly like American Hertz. For one thing, they don't answer their phone. For another, there's just the one office in Ankara, 4-5 hours east of our current position. When they do finally answer the phone, they keep trying to pass the buck and give us the runaround. They want us to try and get the car fixed on our own. Not possible, we say. It's Sunday and there are no shops here or open. Turkish Hertz mentions the communal junkyards/tool depots outside most rural Turkish towns where people go to fix their own cars. Are you kidding me? We can't drive this thing and I'm no mechanic. That's why we bought the insurance. OK, call the insurance. What? You're the insurance! No, actually we're not, you have to... ARE YOU KIDDING ME! OK, OK, call Hyundai. Hyundai? Why? Because they made the car. What? Yeah, call Hyundai. So we finally get some guy from a Hyundai office a few cities away to say he's going to come look at it. Supposedly, this guy is something like roadside assistance. Supposedly. That guy takes a few hours. In the meantime both our cell phones die. We can't really leave the car. We have lunch and then sit. And sit. And sit. The guy from Hyundai arrives and I know right away he's going to be no help whatsoever when he steps out in fancy shoes and lots of rings on his fingers. This guy is affiliated with Hyundai, but he looks more like a used car salesman than a mechanic. He spends exactly five seconds looking under the car and at the Exxon Valdez-size oil spill, gives us the hairy eyeball, and then says this car is broken. Then he gets on the phone. He wants nothing to do with this situation.
It is now mid afternoon. Lizzie goes off to charge her phone at the gas station. Half the town has walked by the car and asked us if we know we have an oil leak. Yep, thanks for the heads up. Turkish Hertz, when we can finally get them back on the phone, tells us to get a room for the night, it's Sunday and nothing is going to happen today. But Çavdarhisar has no hotels, motels, pensions, or hostels. We begin to pull the kid card: we're stuck out here with our children, please help us out. Don't strand us here. Please. It's getting cold (the truth). Alright, alright, said Turkish Hertz at last. Sit tight and we'll send a guy with another car. When? Four to five hours. You sure? Sure. Awesome.
It's late afternoon. It will be dark in an hour and a half, it's raining lightly, and the temperature is dropping fast (this is all happening in March.) I briefly toy with the idea of heading out alone to try and make it to the sanctuary before the sun sets, but A) I have no idea how long that will take, B) I'd have to walk back in the dark and we only have the one flashlight, and C) What kind of jackass leaves his wife and kids alone with no flashlight in a foreign city to go do book research after stranding them in the first place? So instead we decide to take a walk as a family. The skies clear. By now all the stress and adrenaline of the experience has left us kind of loopy and we actually have a blast on a sunset stroll through this little town in which absolutely everyone knows our business. Grandmas wave and smile; men on bikes wish a pleasant evening. We walk around the back of the temple, down the street that leads to the quagmire, and check out the old village houses. This brings us full circle from the morning, as these houses are the village equivalent of the old Ottoman city houses in Kütahya. They're beautiful and broken and a little pathetic, sort of like our predicament. We run into a herd of goats led by one wearing a pretty blue necklace. We watch the sun set from a crumbling theater and look back at this incredible temple that has withstood wars and earthquakes and a thousand other things worse than we are experiencing. We grab dinner at the only open restaurant in the town. They have basically one thing--kofte (meatballs) and rice. To me it tastes great but Callie and Ella insist they put something in the meatballs that dries out their mouths. What? Ok, don't eat it. Eat the rice. We get back to the car thinking we managed our time really well and we should only have a half hour or so before the new car gets here.Wrong.
We sit in the car, in the dark and the cold, fogging up the windows. The girls finally lose it. They begin crying and shaking, like they might actually be going hypothermic (probably not, but we'd stupidly left their winter coats at home, not expecting to be outside at night), so I take off my fleece and wrap it around them. I pull some of my shirts from my suitcase and tuck them around their feet. It doesn't help much.
In every town or village in Turkey, no matter how small, is at least one teahouse. Devout muslims abstain from alcohol, but men are men wherever you go and they're going to congregate and shoot the shit somehow, so in this country that means party at the teahouse. It just so happens that our car bled out directly across the street from Çavdarhisar's one and only teahouse. So as the night deepens just about every man in this town walks by our car. They all know what happened because half of them asked us and that half told the other half. The four of us are sitting there and we are tonight's entertainment. Well, maybe more like tonight's diversion. Twenty guys are sitting outside and they're all talking about us. Eventually, they confer and send the teahouse manager over. He motions to open the window and when we do he invites us inside.
It is hard to know how to respond to this. Turkey has seen a lot of social change over the years, but one thing that is immutable is that the teahouse is for men only. No women. And for damn sure no female children. But here is this fellow telling us to come inside and get warm. We accept.
Inside the teahouse I have the most intense culture shock I've ever had in Turkey. Conversations die the minute we walk in and only some of them pick back up again. They seat us right next to the stove and I get that weird tunnel vision you sometimes get when you go too quickly from freezing to hot. Nobody is talking to us, nobody is quite staring at us. We are the elephant in the room. Lizzie orders some tea. I hate tea, unfortunately, but this isn't the time to quibble. The girls have juice. The discomfort of the situation never lessens. I know this is largely due to my own self-consciousness but it just feels weird to be in there. Lizzie agrees. After one more tea we ask for the check. They are aghast. We don't need to pay. We are their guests! We feel terrible. We thank them profusely and go back to sit in the cold car. The crisis has passed. The girls have recovered a normal core temperature. They fall asleep.
I get out of the car hopeful every time a vehicle pulls through town, ready to flag it down. I do this a dozen times. Each time it is not our man. Cars stop passing. The teahouse begins to shut down for the night. A few men linger, talking amongst themselves. No doubt they are drawing straws to see who must offer us a room. Being inhospitable to waylaid strangers is unforgivable in Islam. I begin to think our guy has abandoned us. What does he care? Who are we to him?
He finally pulls up after I nod off. He's nice enough but is clearly not happy that he had to drive all the way from Ankara on a Sunday night. I have no idea where he will stay, or how he will get there. I finally get it and understand that this too, all of it in fact, is my fault. I express my thanks in the most polite, most effusive way I know how. For good measure I also give him a 50 lira tip. We wake the girls and load everything into the new car. It's so nice and warm inside. Lizzie signs a few papers. The final teahouse stragglers wander over and we share a laugh with them. They, and we, are very happy it didn't come to imposing on them. All's well that ends well, they say. Something like that anyway. We thank them again. And drive off into the night.
p.s. I did eventually make it that sanctuary, two months later (I'm stubborn that way) but that story will have to wait for another time.
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