Kapadokya (Cappadocia) Part 4

The next day I wake up in a cave with pictures on my camera holding a rifle and someone else's rental car parked outside.

After more of Jacky's breakfast and coffee we jump in the car, pick up the owners (who turn out to be our French friends from Bursa) and drive to another extraordinary phenomenon of Kapadokya. Beneath the villages, caves and fairy chimneys is a network of three underground cities. We drive through barren winter plains to Derinkuyu, where our guide, Mehmet, illuminates the sometimes desperate, mostly hopeful and always ingenious lives of the ancient troglodytes. In times of invasion, and in Turkey there were many, the people of this land would descend into a world unto itself. Down here in the deep black depths, despite the lack of sunshine and ensuing skin problems, the townsmen were able to live up to 6 months at a time and fend off bulky-armored warriors, who would otherwise decimate the population. No invaders ever took the entire city.

Not only a haven for defense, this was a fully functional town, complete with classrooms, churches with corridors designed as a cross, a morgue where bodies were hoisted out through vertical tunnels, a well, a winery, a torture chamber, false tunnels to deceive the enemy and a ventilation system where any smoke would immediately find its way to the surface. There was even a wedding tunnel, where the bride and groom would run in and out 7 times and be married. Then the lucky couple would head to the "honeymoon suite," a romantic little hole, where a donkey would be tied up nearby, whose breath provided cozy warmth.

But alas! that is a time long gone and for warmth and comfort tonight, we head to the hamam. The sweat, the humidity, the vapors, the splashing water, the man scrapes big black slivers of dead skin from my entire body, a big belly behind his stocky arms muscles out the tension from my spine. I lay swallowed on the hot marble by a big cloud of bubbles. Rinsing off with tin bowls and sitting down on a lawn chair with some tea and candles, my entire skin is as soft as the ass I was born with.

My thoughts leave my body on that chair in central Turkey where rocks have been massaged by time and elements to create a visual wonderland with hotels, clubs and gift shops sprouting from the foot of the canyon to support and lavish its visitors. Here, a man and a woman haul their relationship to further explore it, inevitably continuing their life sagas and their chapters together. The rocks and people and wine and cold winds pound upon their worlds affecting it as they will. In turn, I can sleep here wondering how the elements, the people, and the rocks are shaping us.

Kapadokya (Cappadocia) Part 3

A creak, a scrape and a bump opening the door and -- "Whoa!" -- a sunny, cool cavern morning. The shadows and spirits have been chased away by the dawn and the people, critters and chimney smoke are stirring. It's time to go out and play. But not before Eda opens her eyes and we charge ourselves up with some coffee and french toast, courtesy of Jacky, Mustafa and Elif of our pension, the Elif Star. Eda gets up.

"Where are you going?" I ask lazy-eyed, fat and happy.
"I'm going to watch some stones."

From here on out it's rock, boulders, stone and more rock. This is Kapadokya. A region of underground cities, eroding caverns, and alien rock formations -- indeed, there is even a UFO museum here which I assume attempts to describe some extraterrestrial goings-on. But a more rational mind will accept the scientific explanation of what is undoubtedly the Grand Canyon on acid.

Millions of years ago one or more volcanoes spread hot ash and rock called ignimbrite across the region. Layer upon layer of ignimbrite piled upon each other, the hardest layer being at the surface. The water, wind and erosion sculpted many strange formations in the region. The oddest and arguably most entertaining of all, depending on your humor, must be the fairy chimneys. These rock towers have eroded faster in the softer middle and bottom, leaving a larger and wider "hat" on top. The continuing process of erosion and the elements have also produced rocky mushrooms, dunes, slopes and columns.

We watch all these stones on an embattled, bickering walk from Goreme up through a cavern to Uchisar, where a large fortress oversees the land. Eda describes the hike as "hard paths which you have to walk like your ass off."

But you never feel alone. Man and pigeon's presence can be seen to this day, as the initial visitor will notice all the holes of various sizes in the cave. Men have built churches (the area was Christian before it was Muslim), food depots, and homes for pigeons in the rock. The pigeons are valuable to the farmers for their fertilizer. Today most villagers have built homes, pensions and nightclubs for themselves and for the blooming tourist industry. As we take several wrong turns, and get lost more, pass a camel-leg next to a scorched patch of earth, we traverse through hibernating wine vineyards, the produce of which awaits us at the Museum Restaurant in Uchisar.

Ahh, the wine. We would bring some back to Bursa with us, but we can't help ourselves. Once you settle in a nice wine state, the bottles easily flow and who cares? Our favorite is a bottle of Turasan Okuzgozu (Bull's Eye) Eda loses in a game of tavla (backgammon). The winner is happy to share this and his personal plastic bottles of home-made raki with us, too. After that I forget that I didn't care about what I couldn't remember in the first place. Only echoes of laughter, smoke, confusion, I think two boys just walked by the window carrying sacks of animal parts, blurry golden light, fuzzy final drinks.

Kapadokya (Cappadocia) Part 2

I love the bus from Bursa to Istanbul. I love it because it parks on the ferry in Yalova in order to cross the Marmara Sea. I can sit in the cozy bus if I want, but I prefer to get out with the wind and waves and the seagulls. Sometimes, the boatmen will throw crusts of bread into the air, playing catch with the incredibly agile seagulls following the boat. They're more coordinated in the air than people on two feet. I don't usually run into anyone I know, but this morning I run into one of my students and his proud father.

"Jack Teacher!"
"Well hello Kemal!" I shake his and his father's hand. A moment of weird silence follows as we all try to figure out if we're going to speak English or Turkish and do we actually know each other's language? My girlfriend chimes in.
"So, you're the famous Kemal!" she says. Then turns to me, "Is he in your strategic class?"
Kemal's father smiles, hinting at some acknowledgement of the joke. But I can't really tell.
"Why, yes he is. Where are you going, Kemal?" I ask. He is unusually, but not surprisingly with his father, exhibiting calm behaviour.
"Istanbul." he says, looking around. The conversation doesn't really go anywhere after that, and they walk up to the canteen. Eda finishes her cigarette. We see them again and politely say hello but I'm totally focused on "tost" -- a hot pressed sandwich of cheese and "socuk," lamb sausage. It's just a minor snack before we gorge ourselves on Istanbul, a tradition every time we have the opportunity to come.

Gorging consists of thick cappuccinos, shopping Istiklal St., Taksim tea gardens, simplistic dilapidated coffee shops -- the kind where a thousand revolutions never gained momentum -- terraced beers and candle-lit dinners overlooking the Bosphorous River where thousands of seagulls harass the minarets of the golden mosques. We take Istanbul like a shot of tequila and a lime: lick it, slam it, suck it. Because we have to catch a plane. "We're going to Kapadokya!"

It's getting dark now and that means more cold. It's a chilly climb up the stairs into the plane. It's even colder in Kapadokya as we search for a way to get from the Kayseri airport to Goreme at midnight. We realize as we stiffly throw our bags in the trunk of a taxi, that we are in another world of cold. My toes are little icy flames. Eda and I smash together in our swishing nylon coats in the back seat. I only have gloves, so I wear one and she wears one. It's stupid but it keeps us laughing. And that's a good distraction. Another good distraction for Eda is the taxi driver. I have no idea what they are talking about. Evidently, it's interesting and funny. But my mind is cashing in. It's one cold, dark, barren 100 YTL ride to our cave pension.

We arrive in Goreme in the quiet shadows. I can't see much, but I know that there are many and large shadows cast. These must be from the fairy chimneys I read about. I hear nothing. It's been a long time since I've been to a place on Earth where there's nothing to be heard. I only see the dark holes of my room carved into the round slopes of the rocks. A ghost jumps out of his warm bed in all white pajamas and leads us to our room. Then our spectre disappears, leaving us to our cave. we turn on the lights and find the walls draped with carpets (for sale) but we only want to jump into the bed that we find pleasantly heated. Wondering how it it's heated I look under the mattress. I'm fantasizing about some ancient technique still employed -- a pile of steamed rocks under the bed maybe. It's not until the next morning that I see the cord snaking out of the mattress into an electric socket.

Kapadokya (Cappadocia) Part 1

At the start of the Bayram holidays, when some people kill a sheep, a cow or a camel and offer the meat to the less fortunate, at a time when over 3000 US servicemen and women and countless Iraqis have been killed in Iraq, as Saddam is hanged, as 2007 looms, I sit down at my quiet Saturday morning eggs in my apartment in Bursa before stepping out in the gushing cold air. Today I'm headed to Kapadokya.

It's the cold, early morning hustle and bustle with people going places and me too. It's a chilly wait on the metro station bench, an awkward seat on the train with stranger stealing glances from stranger, and an exposed moment among the Turks when my girlfriend calls me and I'm speaking English. Then, it's a hop on the endless circulation of the city's shared taxis to the long-distance bus terminal. And there, surrounded by the random collection of characters and personalities that only a long-distance bus terminal could cluster I order a tea, a warm cup of familiarity in an otherwise sea of strangeness. My adrenaline is pumping. I am alert. I am traveling.

I am waiting for my girlfriend, who is being dropped off unwittingly by her parents. They think she is traveling alone to meet with a group of college friends in Istanbul. I feel like I'm in one of those French films in the 60's waiting for a secret rendezvous in a European train station. But no, I'm actually here waiting for a secret rendezvous in a Turkish bus station.

The minutes digitally increase on my cell phone. I'm holding it in my hand because I can't feel it vibrate in my pocket. Also, it's cheap, so the ring is annoyingly stupid. Where is she? More tea? No, it'll just get my heart rate up and make me more anxious. Where is she? BRRRRRRR. The table rattles as if the plate-tectonics under me are shifting. No, that's my cell phone.

"We're going to Kapadokya!" She sings in a fairly boppy little tune. "We're going to Kapadokya!"

And with that a new hit single is born. It will continue to play on the airwaves in our minds for the next few days. We're going to Kapadokya.

Eda arrives with a kiss for both cheeks and her luggage. Days later, in "a couple moment" she will accuse me for not bringing soap or shampoo, depending on her to carry it, which may or may not be true, and come to think of it, not a bad idea. But of course, being a good southern gentleman, I'm happy to haul one of her suitcases through bus stations, airports, and across the city of Istanbul. But all that's foresight, because now "We're going to Kapadokya!"

Birth of Chimbo (1)

"Merhaba! I'm Chimbo please keep me for 5 minutes in the water. Everyday soak me 2 - 4 times. My hair will starts to grow after about one week. You can cut my hair in any style you want."

kompost@kompost.com.tr

Whose funeral could bring together Kid Rock and Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul?

In 1923, Ahmet Ertegun was born the son of a diplomat and close adviser to Ataturk. Indeed, before the Ottoman Empire collapsed, his father was sent to ask the founder of the Turk Republic not to resist the Allies. He was quoted by his son years later as saying to Ataturk, "Now I've done my duty to the sultan and if you need my services I am ready to resign from my post and join you."

A much different kind of revolution was to occur within young Ahmet when, having grown up in embassies throughout Europe, would be led by his older brother, Nesuhi, to a London concert featuring Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. "I had never really seen black people except I had seen pictures of great artists," he would say in an interview years later (slate.com). "And I had never heard anything as glorious as those beautiful musicians, wearing great white tails playing these incredibly gleaming horns with drums and rhythm sections unlike you ever heard on records... So I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter."

After his father moved to Washington D.C. as ambassador to the US and died 10 years later, Ahmet and his brother stayed as the rest of the family returned to Turkey. Ahmet Ertegün was studying classical philosophy at St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, then at Georgetown University, though he was more interested in hanging out in nightclubs and record shops. "I was totally unemployable," he explained (news.independent.co.uk). "So naturally I decided to go into the music business."

With his friend, Herb Abramson, and $10,000 loaned from the family dentist, Atlantic Records was founded. "We started Atlantic simply because we wanted to sign a few artists whose music we liked, and make the kind of records that we would want to buy. I honestly never imagined I would be able to make a living from doing something that was so much fun. I am very glad I was wrong."

Very wrong, he would be credited not only for discovering and propelling the career of Ray Charles among countless others, but with bridging black music to white kids, thus contributing to the de-segregation of the 50's. In the 60's, he introduced a long list of white rockers to the world's youth, most notably Led Zeppelin, and personally negotiated with Mick Jagger to begin a 14-year working relationship with Atlantic. He also co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 80's and would be inducted himself a few years later. His brother, Nesuhi, whom also worked at Atlantic, would become the first teacher of a jazz course at an American university.

On October 29th, Ertegun fell into a coma after suffering a head injury at a Rolling Stones concert. He died on Dec. 14th and was buried today in Istanbul after a muslim ceremony. As far as his own views on Islam, he once said: "Well, look I'm Muslim by birth—and the rest I'll have to explain when I write my autobiography."

above photo by Fred Prouser/Reuters

The Laz

One day, Cemal calls Temel from New York to tell his friend, "You must come and work over here! There's so much money here you'll be sweeping it off the streets!" So, Temel flies to New York and when he steps out of the airport he notices a $100 bill. Without picking it up, he continues on, saying to himself, "I just had such a long flight, I'm tired, and I don't want to start work just yet."

With such jokes, the Laz are often stereotyped as amusingly stupid. Because the name Temel is like the John of this ethnic minority from the Black Sea region, jokes almost always feature this gullible character. When I first heard these jokes, which run from the silly:

Temel is drinking too much. To show him the harm, his friends throw a worm into his glass of whiskey. When the worm dies, one of his friends says, "Look Temel, what can you learn from that?"Temel looks up blearily. "You should drink whiskey if you have worms in your body," he says.

to the sexual:

In a state of high anxiety, Temel telephones the doctor. He can hardly get the words out, "Doctor, doctor...Our baby just swallowed a condom! Come quickly!" The doctor drops everything and hurriedly readies his instrument case. As he starts running out the door, the phone rings again. Once more it's Temel, but his voice is relaxed and cheerful as he says, "You can take it easy doctor. All's well. You won't have to come. We found another one!"

to the sexist (Western for religiously conservative):

Temel's teacher told the class to rewrite the following sentence using different words but retaining the meaning: "The young girl opened the window without her mother's permission, looked outside, and smiled." As the teacher watched his students thoughtfully scribbling on their paper, he noticed Temel just sitting there doing nothing. "Why aren't you writing?" the teacher asked. Temel replied, "But teacher, I've finished." The teacher looked at his paper and read merely one word: whore.

...I thought it might be irreverent discrimination. But now I realize it's more like a nicer Polish joke in the States. Irreverent at least, but considering the people around me don't know any Laz personally, it's hard for them to have the opportunity to discriminate.

However, while it's perhaps easy to laugh them off, organizations like the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, don't let the government off so easily. They accuse the government of squashing minority rights in an effort to "Turkify" the republic. One such technique is to restrict their access to the media. Only 5 minority languages are allowed to be broadcast on Turkish television, and the Laz language, which has only recently been recorded in written form, is not one of them. One recent example of this, according to freemuse.org, is when a well-known Laz musician, Birol Topaloglu, was invited and then not allowed to perform on a TV musical special.

The Laz are considered to have a rich musical tradition, a style that features the keremche, a long thin fiddle played upright, and the tulum, a bagpipe. By this description, perhaps you're thinking Scottish Bluegrass. Um, I don't know what that is exactly, but that's definitely not the Laz sound. Check it out for yourself and learn a little more here.

Paradoxically to the irreverence, it is said that the Laz are sharp businessmen and used to fiercely command respect as great and terrible warriors. Lonely Planet also says the Laz, dressed in black, were handpicked by Ataturk to be his personal bodyguards. If anyone can offer any more information regarding this info, please post a comment. I'm open-sourcing this paragraph. The only thing I have found was a reference to a Mohammed Laz-Oglu, picked by an Egyptian ruler to protect the throne while the latter was out of town conquering places.

As for other stereotypes, the Laz are said to have big noses, cook a million recipes with hamsi, Black Sea anchovies, dance wildly, and speak with a bizarre accent. Although, they are the butt of jokes, the best ones are supposedly created and told by the Laz themselves. My only personal experience with the Laz was as follows, which I'll italicize because it might as well be my own Temel joke:

Last Sunday, Eda and I were riding the ski-lift up Uludag mountain, when suddenly we saw a cell phone sliding down the steep slope. We mused over the misfortune of someone in a lift in front of us. Suddenly, a man flat on his back with a pained look on his face flew down under us. Seemingly to follow them both was a brown wallet. And not long after that another man. As we continued riding we saw two men below watching their companions' journey down the mountain. As they were speaking and I was laughing, Eda told me their accent wasn't typical Turkish. "What was it?" I asked, still amusingly confused at the sequence of events.

"Laz," she replied.

Oh Class with Eda

One day she came to my class. It was the first time since that first time.

I had a couple other newcomers so I did my stock-standard introduction: ask why they came to the US and why they're studying English. I can focus my lessons to their needs that way. Until I actually did that, I was going to talk about what I wanted: living together before marriage, crazy laws in our countries, cultural taboos, multi-cultural relationships. Today I was going to make them customs officers giving or withholding green cards from each other. We went around the room and I got the stock-standard answers.

"I want to get into an American university."

"I need to improve my TOEFL."

"I need to improve my English to get a job."

"I want to be an airline stewardess."

"The shopping at Union Square is good!"

"I'm here to take the TOEFL, get a masters and introduce my father's products in a trade show." She says.

"What are your father's products?" I ask.

"Press machines."

"Like dry-cleaning?"

"No."

"Who knows what dry-cleaning is?" I ask, attempting to keep the class involved.

"They shape car parts."

"Oh really? Who knows what "to shape" means?

"A circle?"

"Yes that's a shape, but this shape is a verb."

"It means to make something into a circle." Some student says.

"What shapes do they make?"

"Not shapes, a press. Here, I'll draw it." (She goes to the board, class snickers)

"Like a mold?"

"What's a mold?"

I draw on the board, but I have no idea what this shit means -- but for some reason my students expect me to know every word in English no matter how specialized the industry.

"Ah, yes. And he makes laser machines."

"Who knows what a laser is? (silence) What's a laser? (silence) It's a hot light. It cuts things. Like Star Wars. You know, Star Wars? Light sabers? Who has seen Star Wars? Anway, so what kind of cars do you mold things for?"

"We don't mold things for companies, we sell the machines to companies."

"What are the parts?"

"Parts?"

"Yes, what do the machines press or mold?"

"Oh-- doors to cars and buses."

"So you work for him?"

"Yes, but I don't want to."

"Really, what do you want to do?" (what lesson? what class?)

"By the way do you know where trade shows are given in San Francisco?"

"No, but I will definitely get back to you."

"Get back to me?"

"Yeah, um, I'll tell you tomorrow."

"Okay thanks." (smiling at me, half-suspcious, half-amused because she can tell I'm interested. Girls can always tell.)

"No problem. Let me know if you want to know anything about San Francisco. Ok class is over. (no reaction) Class is over. Sorry. Class is finished. We're finished. Go home!"