navigate:
Tuesday 2004-05-18 - Şanlıurfa, Turkey
“We nice to meet you”
First we (Thom, Carla and I) have lunch together, and while we chat a little afterwards, one of three girls next to us asks if she can practice her English with us (a question we’re to hear more often). Of course she can, and she immediately joins us at our table. At first the words come hesitatingly but gradually Döne gets over it and starts talking better; the other two girls, Songul and Esin, join us, too, and since they don’t speak English, Döne starts translating both ways. All three girls have several older sisters and study biology here, like one of the boys we met yesterday staying with family in the city; they have a small grant from the government, dad pays the rest and though their families are well off, they don’t have much money to spend. Tomorrow they’re going on a tour to Mardin and Diyarbakır: they spent the last of their savings on the tickets.
We talk a lot about various subjects. The European union (Döne, with an obvious strong sense of identity, isn’t enthusiastic about joining, and also — with some justification — seems worried Europeans look down on the Turks), relations between Kurds and Turkish people (Songul is Kurdish and the three girls are the best of friends, but surprisingly Döne says she doesn’t like Kurds - a strange contradiction we’re to encounter more often), are we rich? (depends), music (they know European stars, why don’t we know Turkish singers?) and so on.
We offer them a drink and chat on. Döne also writes down a lot of useful Turkish words for me in my little notebook. When we finally separate, we find we spent all of four hours just sitting near the pond chatting - and practicing Döne’s English. In my notebook she writes: “We nice to meet you. Thank you for everything. We love you too.” We had a great time with them.
A visit to the mosque around Abraham’s cave and the citadel overlooking the park complete our visit to Şanlıurfa.
Wednesday 2004-05-19 - Mardin, Turkey
Early Christian history
Our final destination for today is Mardin but to get there we have to go back to Şanlıurfa first: there is no other road. Once on our way out of Urfa again, the landscape gets gradually greener and after riding through the beautiful valleys we arrive at Mardin, an old city built hugging a mountain side. It’s now a little after 2 in the afternoon, and we have somewhat empty stomachs. Asking around for directions, we find out that our hotel is not in the city at all, but in Kızıltepe, 20km back! If we go there first, we won’t have time for our goals in Mardin, so we decide to do the tour before going to the hotel - and skip lunch.
That was a lucky decision: when (after quite a bit of searching through the confusing narrow streets of the city — all curving to follow the contours of the mountain) we arrive at the Antioch Syrian Orthodox monastery outside of the city at 3:10, we find it closes at 3:30! The monastery (Deynulzaferan) built like a fortress on the top of a mountain is interesting, but we cannot even see all of it any more — and the place is packed with day trippers: unfortunately we picked a holiday to arrive late… Still, we do get at least an impression: enough to want to spend more time on exploring this interesting complex and its history if we ever get back.
From there we go to the Antioch Syrian Orthodox church in the center of Mardin. Here a priest who speaks passable English gives us a nice lecture about the early history of Christianity and and all its different branches. The Antioch Syrian Orthodox and Alexandrian Orthodox churches were early branches, like the two Catholic ones, one of which became the Roman Catholic Church, the other Greek Orthodox. The Armenian Orthodox church (of which we visited a small church in Damascus) is a later branch off of the Syrian orthodox church. I hope I got all that right… The church building itself is very nice — and old — with many paintings, icons and embroidery, some of it obviously made by children of the community. The effect is almost homely.
Thursday 2004-05-20 - Diyarbakır, Turkey
Kurdish capital
The ancient city of Diyarbakır, situated on the banks of the river Tigris and inhabited for over 5000 years, is the Kurdish capital in Turkey. We arrive already at eleven at our hotel within the old city walls after a trip from Mardin through a gradually more green landscape with rugged mountains and some agriculture.
After a short visit to the mosque (essentially closed to us since a prayer service is starting) with market stalls in the courtyard and lots of noise around, we decide to walk along the inside of the city walls on the way to another Christian church. We end up walking through the poorest, and not the most pleasant quarter of town. 90% of inhabitants of Diyarbakır are Kurds, and while Kurds are among the poorest in Turkey, the poorest of them in Diyarbakır live here in tiny houses below the old city wall.
The children are quite irritating, constantly begging for money, grasping your hands and clothes. Apparently more naive tourists have taught them that if you keep asking, ultimately they will give money — just to get rid of you. That’s a good way to create beggars out of children. We try instead to just ignore them but that isn’t all that easy: they also like to jump in front of the camera when you want to make a picture — not to be in the picture, but just to get in the way.
Luckily the grown-ups are mostly friendly, especially after you greet them first. A small group of women is baking bread in an outside oven, and they invite me to have a closer look and take a picture. Farther on, a girl sits in a doorway with her friend crocheting a fringe for a shawl. She’s quite happy for me to take a picture of her. I compliment her friend about her shawl and she tells me its fringe was also made by the other girl who then shows me her samples. Obviously she does this for others who can pick a pattern from the samples, a way to make a little (extra) money. Mother also wants a picture, and a small boy writes down the address.
A young man who’s accompanied us uninvited since the mosque turns out to have a small shop with carpets and jewelry; he invites us for a cup of tea in his shop. On the way, he tells us he’s half Kurdish - something not very common here.
