Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  Çerkeş, like most Turkish cities, sits a good distance back from the main highway. Before entering the city, I skirt a huge food processing plant specializing in meat exports. It’s the chief employer in this large town of ten thousand inhabitants. Prosperity brought by the factory made it possible to construct, on the edge of the old city, garishly colored multifamily housing. In the streets in the center of town, the small traditional wood and adobe houses have been abandoned and are falling apart.

  The hotel is comfortable, and the night would have been a good one if, at 5:00 in the morning, I hadn’t been awakened by a charivari. Within a very small perimeter, Çerkeş has twelve mosques and just as many imams. When it is time for prayer, each one tries to prove he has the best radiophonic voice to draw in the faithful, so they crank up their sound systems. No sooner has one begun to chant the first verses of the Qur’an than twelve other loudspeakers break in wailing, each one louder than the other, as if those who flubbed their song’s first lines wanted to make up for it in decibels. Their song? What am I saying? No doubt that in former times, muezzins actually had to sing from atop their minarets. Today, however, it’s no song, but a medley of screams, a mishmash of notes, an uproar, a tumult, a screaming contest. The sounds spilling from the top of one minaret clash with those of the minaret next door, and they bound back and forth until they all converge in my room. Allah, looking down from the heavens, must plug his ears. Both of us can hardly wait for the silence of prayer to follow.

  Shortly after noon, the truck traffic increases. No longer able to bear it, thirsting for some peace and quiet, I leave the highway and veer south. I’ve spotted a shortcut on my map, parallel to the main road, that runs from village to village and heads cross-country. Too bad for my still-delicate feet, I’ll be treading gravel roads once again. I stop in to see the first bakkal I come across and buy a few cookies and some juice for my lunch in a short while. There’s not much variety there, it’s true, but I intend to make up for it in town.

  I have no difficulty finding my way. The main roadway, a few kilometers north, is easy to keep track of with its procession of trucks, the noise of which, considerably muffled after being carried by the breeze, reaches my ears every now and then. To my right, a massif constitutes a barrier that no roadway dares climb. I scan the terrain for a spa town indicated on my map. Nothing. At the spot where it’s supposed to be, I find piles of stones. Ruins, no doubt. I love ruins. They get me dreaming. I can rebuild as I please the walls and columns damaged by the hands of time. I opt for a small detour to see them up close and to stop there for my light meal.

  Off to the side, a flock of sheep is lying in the grass, digesting a meal. Neither herder nor dog in sight. It’s as if they’re guarding themselves. Probably for a simple reason: they can be seen from a long distance away on this featureless plain. I move closer. The ruins are the collapsed walls of former houses. These jumbles of large stones still delineate the square shape of the dwellings and the alignment of streets. In one spot, four walls have been reassembled, and branches lay atop of them for use as a shelter. A small donkey with a packsaddle on its back is grazing among one pile of ruins. It’s a charming scene. I set down my haversack, take out my camera, and approach the animal, which raises its head just long enough to check me over, looking neither friendly nor ill-natured, then goes back to what it was doing. I’m about fifteen meters (50 feet) away when I freeze, petrified. Out from the middle of the flock, two light-haired dogs have sprung to life and are charging toward me, barking. They’re almost the same color as the sheep, which is why I missed them. They’re enormous, and there is no mistaking them: Kangals!

  These fearsome dogs are one of the prides of the Turks. It’s illegal to sell them abroad. Powerful and aggressive, they’re sheepherders trained to attack wild animals, such as wolves and bears. To keep these animals from biting them in the throat, they wear protective spiked steel collars. A Frenchman once told me he had been chased by a Kangal while driving his car. The beast had no trouble keeping up with him, his speedometer reading 70 km/h (43 mph). And now these monsters are running straight for me. I look around frantically. Where’s the shepherd? In the branch-covered cabin? I call out, but there’s no reply. I dash over to my backpack, calling out once again. My voice is high-pitched, choked by fear. I have my camera in my right hand. Without letting it go, I grab my walking stick with my left. There’s no point fleeing, I cannot run 70 km/h. My only choice is to confront them. They’re coming straight on, looking as big as the donkey I was about to photograph. My mouth is dry, and I feel as if my heart has stopped beating. I can almost feel their teeth ripping through the flesh of my bare arms and legs. I can’t even get to my knife, diligently stowed away as it is deep in some pocket in my backpack. But even if I could, a knife the size of a single Kangal fang wouldn’t be of much use to me now!

  My friend Alexis briefed me at length about how to calm a dog. Aim the stick at him, without threatening him, so as to establish a distance and keep the animal at bay. He didn’t say what to do if there were two of them. So I improvise, gauging just how different theory is from practice. I move so that the wall is to my back and brandish my stick in turns, first toward the one, then toward the other. I shout, “couché” (lie down). They clearly don’t speak French. They get each other worked up and start foaming at the mouth. They’re wearing those infamous iron collars spiked with shiny points, sharp as their fangs and nearly ten centimeters (4 inches) long. They fortunately remain next to each other, so I can fend off both attacks at once. The defensive-cane theory turns out to have worked. They belch and drool, lips drawn back revealing glaring fangs, but they maintain their distance.

  I begin to have, if not a little serenity, at least a glimmer of hope, and it’s then that I get a crazy idea. Since I have my camera right there in hand, why not snap a picture? That way, if they tear me to pieces, at least everyone will know what happened. While keeping a firm grip on my walking stick that I hold out level with their chops, I point the camera as best I can and press the button. The sun is in my eyes, and my camera is a modern, “smart” model, which refuses to take backlit photos. So off goes the flash. The dogs, a little startled, back off for a moment. They’re still barking but are less determined. One of them falls silent, takes two steps back, lunges once again with a bark, then leaves. Emboldened, I take another shot, this time aiming a little more carefully, but without letting go of my cane, of course. Off goes another flash. They back off several meters.

  I stand perfectly still. The last thing I want to do is to hamper their retreat. They’re still agitated but move away. They head back to their flock, then lie down between me and the sheep, ready to protect them. All is calm. I take a deep breath and curse myself. What a fool! And yet I’d been warned: “Keep away from sheep, for Kangals are never very far.” I owe my mistake to the fact that I’d come to believe, without anyone ever saying so, that these monsters were as black as hell. So, I scanned for black near the sheep. I had always seen sheepdogs remain with their masters, away from the flock. I therefore never imagined that the dogs would be sprawled out right in the middle of the very sheep that are supposed to fear them. As for their color, aside from their dark muzzle, they’re almost as white as the sheep. Later on, in Kurdish regions, I’ll spot other Kangals whose ears and tail have been cut so that wolves and bears can’t easily grab onto them with their teeth. These two, though, the first of these beasts I’ve seen, have magnificent long tails that curl like a sideways question mark, and their ears are intact.

  Danger has wandered off. I sit down on a stone in order to catch my breath. I ought to get going. But first, I’d still like to snap a photo of the little donkey. He misled me, too. With his packsaddle on, I thought that the shepherd was somewhere nearby. I slowly approach him. I’m about ten meters away from them when the two Kangals charge me once again. I stop dead in my tracks, half-terrified, half-amused.

  “Okay, okay, I’ve got it. You’re defending him, so I give up. After a
ll, I’ll get by without a photo of a dumb old Turkish ass.”

  Holding my stick out in their direction, I back up until I reach my gear, never taking my eyes off them, and I let them settle back down. Having stowed my camera, I harness my pack and turn my back to the ruins and the beasts. At that very instant, someone calls out to me: it’s the shepherd. He had gone off mushroom hunting. The Kangals, contrary to my expectation, do not go over to greet their master. We chat. His name is Adem. Under his protection, I can finally take a picture of him beside the little donkey. I attempt a few close-ups of his fearsome sentries—from afar, thanks to my zoom lens. With Adem holding him by the collar, I carefully inch over to Karakaş, one of the monsters. A growl tells me that I’d best keep my distance. These huge guard dogs hold nothing sacred, not even their masters’ orders.

  The shepherd points me to a clear water spring bubbling up in the middle of the prairie. It’s the hot spring. We share my cookies and drink from the spring, the virtues of which he no longer remembers. It’s probably best for curing Kangals of their compulsion to attack tourists.

  In the next village, and for the very first time since my journey began, a couple kids beg me for gifts. I give one of them the little pin I’m wearing on my vest, and to the other, the last of my cookies. The countryside is magnificent, but I nearly step on a redheaded snake slithering across the path. It would almost have made me happy. Once you’ve confronted Kangals, you’re not about to wimp out in the face of such a small enemy, not even one that’s poisonous and meaner than sin. I feel cheerful, happy to have survived one of the dangers that I’d been menaced with a hundred times as much back in France as here in Turkey. From now on, however terror-stricken I may be, I won’t give in to panic should I ever run across them again.

  In a small village, as I am walking along the river that traverses it, the sound of laughing women from behind a low wall catches my ear. There are seven or eight of them, seated in a circle in the shade of the wall. In the center is a large sheet piled high with a mountain of billowing sheep’s wool. They converse while carding the wool by hand. I wave to them, and they respond cheerfully. Emboldened, I go over to them, although I’m a little uneasy, because, once again, “one should not talk to women, especially in the absence of men” was what I’d been told. There’s not a single man in the group. Two young girls in sweats step out of the house next door. Schoolgirls in their early teens, they are thrilled to put to use the various English words they’ve learned in class. The women are all wearing scarves over their hair and neck, and two of them, as I approach, rumple the cloth so as to also cover their mouth, a self-conscious gesture that I will see more and more often as I go east, where traditions are more deeply rooted. Several of them are in their forties. The youngest is the mother of the two little girls. She gets up, goes into the house, and comes back a few minutes later with a carafe of ayran, a refreshing beverage, and she offers me some with a smile. I linger and chat for a while. They tell me that when they have finished carding the wool, it will be used for a mattress. An atmosphere of simple happiness prevails here, and I am moved. The women show themselves to be no less curious than men: “Memleket? (Nationality?) Nerede? Nereye? . . .,” the usual questions. I happily answer them. The encounter with Kangals lets me strangely feel more relaxed than I would usually be. “Je suis Zen” (I’m at peace), as my kids would say. I grow bolder yet and photograph them for a series of portraits, to which they agree, laughing.

  “Where are the men?”

  “Farther on, they’re busy working on the village square.”

  So that’s where I head, guided by the two young girls, delighted to have the foreigner all to themselves for a little while. In the time it takes to cover five hundred meters to where the men are, they bombard me with questions.

  The men are hard at work. Pickaxes, shovels, and trowels in hand, they’re building a waterhole for their animals next to a small communal building with a terra-cotta tile roof. The older villagers are seated in the shade of the oaks bordering the square, solemnly commenting on the work’s progress, leaning on their canes or their backs against a tree trunk. A universal scene, familiar on every continent: the council of Elders, the wise men conversing in the shade of the largest tree on the village square. All just as cheerful as the women. And, of course, just as curious. Once again, I have to answer the same questions. The patriarchs are curious, too. A young man shouts to one man in the group, who is a little deaf:

  “He has come from Istanbul on foot and is going to Erzurum!”

  The old man points his cane to my calves, in disbelief, then utters a word that I will come to hear over and over again later on: “Maşallah!” (mah’-shah-lah).

  The expression is used to convey surprise or admiration. It has its origins in the ceremony at which young Turks are circumcised, between eight and ten years old, and which marks their entry into manhood. They wear white clothes and parade about, followed by friends. Later, seated on their bed, they welcome visitors and receive gifts following their circumcision, which is conducted in public. During the procedure, they have to prove their bravery by neither screaming nor shedding a tear. The outfit they wear includes a silk belt embroidered with a word their friends repeat over and over again: “Maşallah,” or literally, “See the marvel that God has desired.” I’m pleased that my calves are one of the “marvels that God has desired.” But it’s not His work alone. I did my share as well, kilometer by kilometer, building their muscles!

  One of the men hails another, “İsmail!” and then points to me. The man in question comes over to me and says:

  “You’re hungry.”

  It’s not a question, but an affirmation. It’s true that my frugal snack with Adem is long gone. İsmail Arslan asks me to grab my pack and follow him home, across from waterhole square. No sooner do we sit down than his wife places in front of us some cheese börek and tomato pilaf as if prepared expecting I would come. İsmail takes from his pocket a small leather bag from which he proudly pulls a copper stamp. He explains that he is the muhtar. The muhtar—in France, we would say the le maire (the mayor)—is elected along with four assistants to manage the town. The copper stamp, the unmistakable sign of his vested powers, serves to authenticate the official acts of his creation.

  The meal is delicious, the tandir bread is fresh and has a wonderful aroma.

  “Are you the baker?” I ask.

  He smiles proudly.

  “Yes, it’s me . . .” He hesitates for an instant, then adds, “. . . my wife, actually.”

  She’s dutifully seated on a sofa, silent and listening.

  “And the yogurt, do you make that, too?”

  “Yes, I . . . well . . . yes, she does.”

  When I get up to leave, I shake the muhtar’s hand appreciatively, then reach out to shake the hand of his wife, thanks to whom I have these tasty dishes. Arms dangling, she throws me a confused look. I’ve made a social blunder. I withdraw my extended hand. I’ll try to keep this in mind: Turkish women can sometimes be spoken to but must never be touched.

  This is the first time I’ve come across so much collective good humor in a village since my journey began. The memory of it will remain with me as a rural idyll of happiness. It has reminded me that the Silk Road I seek to follow is not that of trucks, but that of men and, given my experience in this village, of women, as well.

  Nevertheless, I have to head back toward the highway, since the leaf of my map that I had in my pocket must have fallen out while I explained things with the Kangals, and, without it, I have no other choice but to return to the main road.

  I don’t like these busy thoroughfares, it’s true, as for me, they are completely lacking in charm. Functional, practical, while they don’t make a complete mess of nature, neither do they let it be; these are neutral states that, for me, will never inspire the slightest reverie or thought.

  But since life has more than one trick up its sleeve, it’s here, on this dreary highway lined with inexpressive poplar
trees, that I have a most astonishing encounter. Visualize, at a junction of roads that seem to head nowhere, an old man sitting cross-legged, rooted to the spot not far from passing trucks. Set out in front of him is a basket of six eggs. The man is blind, and yet he has exceptionally bright, although inexpressive, blue-green eyes. He launches into a speech, and, as usual, I don’t understand a thing, except that he wants to sell me his goods. I wouldn’t know where to put them in my pack! I buy them from him but don’t take them. He feels awkward and for a few steps tries to follow me to get me to take his treasure but finally gives up. The vision of this old man with angel eyes still haunts me today. No doubt because the marvelous holds our attention best. After all, what kind of a prankster god managed to concoct such a perfectly improbable scene on some lost Anatolian highway: an old man looking skyward, holding out eggs as if offering them up—where were they laid?—to a man who has walked from Paris!

  A little farther along, a large man wearing a wool cap, with a striking white beard on a face leathered by the sun, is conversing with the donkey on which he is riding. The animal is already heavily burdened with long, thick branches. The scrawny donkey, barely visible under the limbs and the rider, is climbing a steep trail taking quick, deliberate steps and twitching its big ears, as if it didn’t want to miss a word being said. A respectful distance back and taking small steps, his wife follows them, a slight woman, hunching her shoulders. The scene beckons me, I can’t say why. Perhaps because it epitomizes a bygone era, like a picture book containing little dreamy shepherds, reapers painted by Brueghel, a mother seated in the grass who smiles at her little girl lying nearby; in short, a picture book in which nature is present and alive, whereby humankind’s relationship with nature is one of equals, a relationship that is physical, a relationship of love. The picture book of a world in which old injustices still survived so tinted by time that we’d grown accustomed to them or artfully worked around them, and that we even came to consider as part of the landscape’s virtues.