Armchair Traveller

A Land between Tradition and Modernity

Klaus Reichert, Eugene H. Hayworth

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781909961098
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

This book, available for the first time in English, is an exhilarating journey through Turkey's history and a perceptive look at the interactions between secularism, religion, and multiethnic identity.Without a guide and driven only by his own curiosity, Klaus Reichert travels to Anatolia, Istanbul, and the Aegean coast. He explores the strip of land where Adam and Eve are said to have settled after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and where Moses struck water from stone. While following in the footsteps of the brilliant architect Mimar Sinan and investigating the mysteries of his mosques, Reichert speaks to an old stonemason and a young teacher, visits one of the last remaining colonies of a rare breed of ibis, and walks the wide expanses surrounding the archaeological sites of western Turkey. Finally, he draws parallels between Kilim weaving, minimal music, and modernity as a whole. Under Reichert's gaze, what is seen and learned becomes a colorful and provocative collection of images and patterns.A one-of-a-kind travelogue that touches on Turkey's traditions, natural history, and political divisions, Turkey Rediscovered shows us a new side to a land we thought we already knew.

Anatolian Journal

Monday, 17 March 2008 On the plane from Frankfurt to Istanbul

Three days ago I bought a pair of running shoes. Camper. The young vendor is a Turk. When he ties my shoe, I see that he does it differently from us: first a loop, then through it he pulls a second one, resulting in a double bow (not a double knot). I ask him why he does not tie the bow ‘like we do’. “Oh, there are twenty ways to tie a shoe. I learned this bow from my aunt. She died and I could not go to her funeral. Every time I tie this bow, I think of my aunt – a hundred times a day…” I tell him where I am going to spend the next four weeks. He says: “In Urfa there are köfte, the best meatballs in the world.”

Turkish Airlines, first row, window seat. The view outside: dense, sunlit clouds, a polar landscape. Sometimes turbulence. Below: green or brown flat rectangles, when the blanket occasionally opens up. But no mountains, no sea, in spite of the already two-hour flight.

Now, nearly three o’clock our time, only a few clouds can be seen. We are over the sea, and there emerges an almost perfectly straight coastline. Sand; furrowed sea; hilly, forested land; and, in between, lakes. Very cramped settlement, a forest of houses. Now something comes into view which has to be the Sea of Marmara. Many ships.

In Istanbul Fügen Ugur, from the Goethe-Institut, picks me up. She speaks flawless German. A two-hour delay, during which she tells me about Urfa. There is a very active group of young women who are committed to the rights of women directed against men – fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins – against the ‘code of honour’. Urfa is the centre of huge dams that have caused many problems. Kurdish villages were resettled, their areas flooded. The recent irrigation resulted in salinisation of the soil, and therefore barrenness.

One-and-a-half hour flight to Urfa. Arrival in the evening. Şenay Karakoc, the interpreter who is to accompany me for the four weeks, also arrived. Long journey by car through pistachio plantations which are not visible in the dark. The Hotel El Ruha – the Arabic name for Urfa, City of the Winds – a new five-star castle, in the style of the old, demolished houses of the city that are built with the local, white-yellow stone, Urfa tas., Urfa stone. There is no alcohol in the hotel, located across from the grotto of Abraham’s birth – the Prophet Ibrahim – because it is a holy place, apparently surrounded by concentric suburbs. The view from my window looks across to a huge, elongated citadel, crouching on a high cliff like a primordial animal. About ten o’clock, after the late dinner (kofte!), we walk in the direction of the rock through a park, to the famous pond where carp swarm in the light of the nearly full moon: holy carp. Steps down and up, old walls, a Koran school for girls. Everything spotlessly clean, will be swept again even at midnight; flagstone paths are awash, so that you can easily slip and fall. Somehow spic and span – unlike how I imagine an Anatolian province city – but perhaps all fake. Between two minaret towers a green neon sign vacillates, blinking on and off, ‘City of the Prophet’. I want to know who but Ibrahim is still counted here.

In one single hotel there should be wine. The waiter makes a dubious face, says yes, but the refrigerator was broken. That did not matter, and his face is even more dubious. Half an hour later he comes back and places a bottle in front of us. Could he not open it? He has no corkscrew; neither do we. After another half an hour he has found one and leaves us to open the bottle ourselves. Is the influence of the prophets so drastic that even touching the wine – the potential contact, the smell – would contaminate the faithful? Probably the completely mistaken night thoughts of a traveller who has prepared himself to find every gesture strange, and therefore meaningful. The waiter is probably just tired or lazy.

Tuesday, 18 March 2008

With Fügen and Şenay, down the hill to the park that looked so much like a mediocre Disneyland last night. Certainly, the stones of the walls blaze yellow-white and look like new in the hot sun, but almost everything is old, just unexpectedly well maintained. A mecca. Two mosques dating from the twelfth century; another, even older, from the eighth; one from the seventeenth. Here once stood the cathedral with the bones of doubting Thomas, which were transferred in the third century from South India to Edessa, as Alexander named the city.

I remember that Thomas was called the twin of Jesus, and that he, because he was the only one who had physical contact with the risen Jesus, was the recipient of the secret words of Revelation. Şenay says that the sick King Abgar of Edessa had written a letter to Jesus, who had sent an answer because he believed in him, without seeing him, that he would heal him. “Your city will be blessed, and henceforth the curse will no longer prevail over it.” Jesus also sent his image, and it should still be here somewhere, “the oldest icon of Christ,” Şenay says. Afterwards, Thomas later sent an apostle, Thaddeus (or was he himself the one who journeyed forth?), and founded the church in Edessa. On what ground here do we stand?

To enter the grotto of Abraham’s birth I have to remove my shoes and socks, and duck through a narrow wall opening, crawling more than slipping through. In the hazy, small room, separated from the grotto by a glass wall, men kneel in a position of prayer. The grotto is full of water which, it seems, gushes into the room through a concrete basin. The men drink the holy water from metal cups and nod their heads rhythmically. As I am leaving I see a servant with a large thermos bottle, who replenishes the water in the basin. It is noticeable to the newcomer that the sacred, the miraculous, and the utterly profane not only do not disturb, but are quite normal.

Back outside, the Müezzin sings the noon prayer with the climax of the sun. A lot of men, but also women, hurry into the mosques, swiftly throwing away cigarettes. At the same moment the paths paved with Urfa stone are full of people who simply walk, ignoring the Müezzin and feeding the fat carp: thousands of carp that cannot be eaten because they are holy. For all their holiness they are scrambling around a bit in an earthly way for the food that, in portions sold in aluminum tins, is snatched greedily, especially by the fattest ones. I would like to know if they dispose of themselves, the carp, when their hour has struck. But what else can they do? Where can they go?

Next, on to the market which is considered the finest in Turkey. Everything is well ordered: meat with meat, vegetables with vegetables, fabric with fabric, coppersmiths with the coppersmiths. Not a single souvenir or gift shop. No merchant is trying to draw anyone into his shop; the stranger is not even approached. The dealers are proud of their merchandise; they explain the difference between freshly roasted pistachios and those from last Autumn and we can taste the difference. The best paprika (biber) is made when the pods are dried in the sun for a long time and then mixed with oil. Prices are in lira, not in dollars or euros. Everything is busy and quiet – but slow and thoughtful at the same time, as in the days determined by the everyday needs of people, both those living here in the city or in the surrounding villages.

Suddenly the alley of the covered market empties out into a sweeping, square, two-story courtyard. Routine Renaissance architecture, not at all ‘oriental’ – no battlements, no steeple, no domes – built by Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century. Old, very tall, weathered Sycamore trees, many tables where men sit across from other men and play chess. Or Tavla: Backgammon.

Şenay explains: 30 pieces for the number of days in the month, 4 times 6 wedges for the 24 hours, 12 white and 12 black wedges for day and night, 4 zones for the seasons. This is the basic measurement of time that is given us. But we Westerners must blindly roll the dice in order to play our game of life, and the system gets muddled by laws that only the goddess of fortune knows.

A man with a tea tray walks through the rows and shouts “Chai”. Many children with shoe cleaning kits. Another man runs around with a scale and shrilly offers his services. A big, heavy man lets himself be weighed and the weigher takes the weight of all the parts of his body, which carries too many pounds. Content, the fat man dismounts: his corpulence is complacently comfortable. No one can say to him, “Weighed and found wanting.”

We rush back to the hotel, because we have an appointment with a young lady who cares about the rights of women. Hanan is 29 and has brought her 11-year-old daughter, a lovely child who listens attentively. ‘Violence against women’ is the focus of the organisation that Hanan heads. She attended the eight-year primary school, is a trained felt maker (for all intents and purposes a man’s job, which requires a great deal of strength), and is at the same time currently completing her high school diploma and then wants to study art. She says that over the past five years a lot has changed in the province – girls are now allowed to attend schools and study without opposition from their fathers, uncles, brothers or cousins; husbands have permitted their wives to work. Perhaps that had something to do with the work of women’s organisations? Certainly. But there is still so much to do. There are still the well-known forced marriages, but much less, and affairs of honour. (She does not talk about honour killings. I will have to ask her about that the next time.) Have there been problems with the Kurds due to the resettlements, or is it that just a few kilometres further east in northern Iraq, the Turkish Air Force is fighting the PKK? “No, absolutely not. Urfa had a Kurdish population of more than 40 per cent. They lived together with the Turks and Arabs, often in the same houses, in a completely ordinary neighborhood. We respect each other’s differences across so many similarities.”

At half past three we head off to visit the governor of the province of Urfa, who has offered to receive us. In the end it was the Turkish Ministry of Culture which paid for the German authors’ travel and accommodations. Mr. Yavaşcan is an elegant, gracious gentleman ‘in the prime of life’ and he is excited about the treasures of his city and his province – near here is the Garden of Eden where the pomegranate trees still stand; not far off was Noah’s Mount Ararat, and the gazelles which had suckled Abraham – (surely we would have already visited the grotto of his birth?) – still grazed in the area; Isaac and Rebecca had married here; the oldest of all mankind’s sculptures had been unearthed here; the ‘Urfa Man’, which we must absolutely view tomorrow at the Archaeological Museum, is here again after it was lent to Karlsruhe last year. He proudly displays the poster. He takes time for us, wants to understand one thing or another, drinks tea with us, gives us gifts (baskets and mats, catalogs, a CD about Urfa) and has only one complaint: There is no tourism. I do not say: “Allah’a Şükür! Be glad, because then your proud Urfa would be lost. Don’t even let it become an insider’s tip, because we know the fate of insider’s tips.” I do not say anything. He is a politician, and I do not know the economic condition of the city and the province except that of the dam, which presents insurmountable problems. With an “lnsh’ Allah” we diplomatically take our leave.

Wednesday, 19 March 2008

After breakfast we want to go up to the fortress and we choose the underground tunnel, a winding staircase with very high, steep steps cut into the rock. By the hundredth step I must calm my pounding heart. Above, a wide view on three sides overlooking the never-ending city on the horizon. The vast fortress plateau has few remnants of ruins, just two columns on the rampart facing the city, seventeen metres high, with Corinthian capitals. The columns are said to have been the catapult from which Abraham, that pious man of God, was hurled down into the fire, which then turned into the water with the carp. This was the time of King Nimrod – ‘He was a mighty hunter before the Lord’ (or should that read ‘Against the Lord’?) – in the third millennium. The columns date back to the fourth century BCE and bear the inscription of an Aramaic king who described himself as a son of the sun. I cannot remember who built everything up here, destroyed, expanded, rebuilt, and destroyed it again – Stone Age people, the Sabians, the Hittites, the Assyrians, Alexander, the Sassanids, the Syrians, the Greeks, the Romans. From Roman times, the area was part of the northernmost province of Mesopotamia. One of the cruelest emperors, Caracalla, was murdered here. During, or after, the Second Crusade Baldwin of Bouillon, the brother of Godfrey, fortified the castle and established a county here that existed for more than one hundred years. Then the Mongols came, led by Timur the Lame, and destroyed everything.

On the side facing town a fortified moat several metres deep safeguarded the stronghold against attacks from the east. (Therefore the Mongols could only take it by treachery, as previously the Romans had taken the Volscian and Ernici castles that were fortified by colossal walls.) On the other side of the moat a settlement was created from the stones of the fort. The garbage is disposed of over the wall of the settlement – stoves, refrigerators, televisions, car tires, the usual plastic waste – I see it for the first time in the otherwise neat city, accumulating there among the fig trees.

Descent into the valley over wide stone steps. Cypresses, pines, palm trees, plane trees, eucalyptus, pines, even osier. A small, brownish pigeon flies in circles around a flock. The pigeons are sacred to the prophets; when the prophets were on the run the pigeons built a nest for them in a cave.

To the market with Şenay in the late afternoon. Along the carpet and kilim road all the stores but one are already closed because today is a holiday; home in the evening, when every believer prays for forgiveness of his sins. Children carry baked goods to the neighbours. The shops all look the same: a single small cavernous room. The merchant sits in his Aladdin’s Cave between and in front of pillars of folded, uniformly-stacked kilims that glow in all the colours of the Orient. He displays kilim after kilim like illuminated manuscripts in front of us, and has yet an even more lavish one to display, names the places of origin (according to colours, patterns), the age, exciting himself and us with the colours, the irregular patterns. Foreigners do not come to him; they do not exist. He has taken over the business, where he has worked since he was 8 years old, from his father. One son has a large carpet business out by the roadside, the other studies philosophy and sociology in Istanbul. Şenay says: “We are his Kismet – all the other shops are closed because of the holiday.”

About ten o’clock, at the top of the hotel terrace. The nearfull moon is high in the east, at an estimated angle of 60 degrees to the earth. It is white and starkly bright, with a very wide corona in bright spectral colours: a painting by Turner. A single star still above – which one? Scattered stars all around, but no recognisable constellations because of the exceptional brightness below and above. An icy southeasterly wind blew all day.

Journal writing. Now, about one o’clock, the moon has moved towards the south. Its corona has dissolved; jagged clouds surround it. The city, noisy during the day and into the evening, is silent. In the distance a barking dog, a raven, the wail of another bird; I think I can even hear the jumping carp in the waters of Abraham. Then, a street sweeper with his rattling metal trolley.

Thursday, 20 March 2008

Driving southeast by car in the direction of Syria to the old city of Harran. In the west, elongated mountain ranges; in the east, open country with cornfields that are already green – the once barren land is crisscrossed with concrete trenches which receive their water from the dam. Around Harran the region is barren, stony, chalky, wasteland, desert. From the city, that existed a long time before the Assyrians, and was eventually conquered by them, there are preserved remains: city walls; one of the four gates; the remains of the mosque that was previously a church, and which before that was the temple of the moon god Sin, the two-gendered god, who was worshiped under a full moon as a female and under the new moon as a male deity. (Harran was the centre of the Moon cult; Sin is the highest of the Assyrian gods. The reigns of dynasties were each under the patronage of one of the planets – when Venus ‘reigned’, Nineveh was the capital – but at the end of time the moon would complete the cycle and reign for all eternity. But before the Assyrians, Sin was the god of the Sabians and originally the god of the Nomads, who covered their caravans at night. Cults layer after layer on top of each other.)

Abraham and Laban were here until the brothers parted because there was not enough room for the herds. Abraham moved on. Alexander one or two thousand years later, the Seleucids, the Arnmäer, the Romans, the Caliph. Where has all the glamour gone? Perhaps, except in our minds, it is still lying under the debris left behind by the Mongols, which no one has removed in the past eight hundred years and which we now walk over on goat paths? There is still a tower, an observatory, which allegedly belongs to the University, the oldest of Islam, which was founded by the Sassanids. Here Battani calculated the distance of the moon from the earth; here Jabir ibn Hayyan suggested the idea of atomic fission: a single part of an atom could destroy a city like Baghdad; here the doctor Zekeriya Razi said he believed in God but not in the Prophet, and he was allowed to say that. All these things happened in the ninth century, while we were still struggling in the West, learning to read and write. Debris, meager grassland, a few lost sheep and goats.

Two women in colourful loose robes are sitting on the ground: a heavyset old one with a round moon face, and a slender one, no longer young. We greet them and they invite us to join them for tea. They send the inquisitive boy who has been accompanying us the entire time to the mud huts, which are not far from here. We ask about the piles of brush that are stacked everywhere – cylindrical structures that narrow from the bottom up, similar to the Trulli houses next door. (Why have the people here devised forms that are equal to each other in diameter and height and yet – in what way? – are distinct, recognisable in their own right, precious stuff that must last over the winter? Distinguishable thanks to their location? In relationship to the huts? To the points of the compass? But where does the ‘will to form’ this form come from? The pile as a serial form? Giving order to anything that is arbitrarily lying around, like Richard Long.) These were cotton-wool brush piles separated by families, the only combustible material, because they had no cow or camel dung to light.

The women speak only Turkish that is difficult to understand. They are Arabs: “All of us here are Arabs!” I a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Anatolian Journal
• Aegean Journal
• Mimar Sinan: the Euclid of his Age
• Something about Kilims