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Wednesday 2004-03-17 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Turkish music
Back to Barry’s bazaar; the Turkish music seller soon sees me. Alas, he explains, he wasn’t able to find anything on such short notice. But, he has a tip: there’s a Turkish video store in the Kinkerstraat that also sells music. He gives detailed directions for where to find it. That’s great! I’d never have thought to look for music in a video store! This time I stay for a cup of coffee, and tell him about my trip. He also tells me there are Iranian stores on the Rozengracht; at least one of them should have music. I should have realized: with so many nationalities in Amsterdam, there should be an Iranian store somewhere.
Off to the video store then; I find it easily with his directions. Once there, it takes some explaining what I’m looking for (traditional music, not pop) but the man is incredibly patient, comes with all sorts of suggestions, and lets me listen to everything. One CD has a nice picture of a shaded pool on it that reminds me of Labi Hausz in Bukhara: it’s in Urfa, he tells me; the CD title also has Urfa in it. I buy three CDs, all very nice, and all different in style.
When I get home I do some googling and find that Urfa is actually the same as Şanlıurfa: I’m delighted I actually found music from one of the places we’re going to visit!
Monday 2004-05-17 - Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Tea near the holy carp pond
After a ride through a beautiful landscape of rolling hills with vineyards and orchards, grain and strawberry fields we arrive at two in Şanlıurfa (or Urfa for short). The three of us go looking for the tourist office first, because (of course) I want a map of the city. Two boys approach us, wanting to help and practice their English: they offer to walk us there. They’re very nice, and their English is surprisingly good. Chatting all the while, we end up in the pleasant park around Abraham’s cave where there is a small office of the tourist police; they’re friendly and give me a nice brochure of the area, but they don’t have a map; the friendly officer writes down the address of the real tourist office for me, so we can go there later (or tomorrow).
We invite the boys to share a tea with us near the pond with the holy carp, and they tell us a little about their life. We’d estimated them about 18, but both turn out to be only 15. Both have a number of brothers and sisters and come from outside the city. One, whose parents are separated, stays with his grandmother; the other lives in the school’s dormitory where they both study mathematics. Life at the dormitory is “boring” but both boys are obviously quite serious about their studies and practicing their English.
It doesn’t matter that we haven’t found the actual tourist office, because now we know the way to the park, overlooked by the citadel (yet another one), where some of the main sights of the city are. We decide we’ll come back here tomorrow, and the boys take their leave. A while later we walk back to the hotel, with a very nice impression of the friendly people of Şanlıurfa.
Tuesday 2004-05-18 - Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Medieval atmosphere
This morning, Carla and I first roam through the curving alleys of the old town of Urfa with its medieval houses. It’s a veritable labyrinth, no right angle, no straight street, beautiful bow-windows and some houses actually built right over the streets, and — not suprisingly — a lot of interesting doors for my photographic collection.
We end up near the river (an open sewer) where Kurdish people have a market of second-hand clothes. It’s quite obvious the Kurdish people are among the poorest in Turkey, even though we’re here in Kurdish territory.
On we go along the vegetable market and through the bazaar until we end up near the carp pond where we meet Thom.
“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.
