Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  When, at long last, the bag is empty, the soldier and his superior walk around it purposefully and cautiously as though it were some malefic entity, finally feeling the stitching with their fingers. They pat it down: looking for what, for heaven’s sake!? And then the officer tells his subordinate to put everything back. Whoa! There’s no way I’m going to let them transform my neatly organized pack into a chaotic jumble. I myself set about putting each object back in a plastic bag, then each plastic bag in one of the compartments. Blue-Eyes, who has now completed his search, and the other snooping soldier watch on as I silently put everything away. I exact a little payback by going about the process as slowly as possible. While stowing my knife back in a pocket, I can’t hold back a little provocation:

  “Did you notice that I’ve got a weapon?”

  Then, when I’ve finished:

  “Well, are you satisfied? You’ve seen for yourselves that I’m not a terrorist. Are you going to take me back to Alihacı?”

  “No. Tomorrow if you want. In any case, it’s a dangerous place. Between now and then, I suggest getting some rest, and so will I. It’s late.”

  “Couldn’t you have searched my pack in Alihacı and left me there?”

  “. . .”

  “Would you be willing to take me to a hotel?”

  “No. You are our guest. I’m going to . . .”

  “But I don’t want to be your guest!”

  “. . . Someone will take you to your room. We’ll have to lock the door. I’m also going to keep your camera, since you’re on military soil and it’s forbidden to take photographs. I’ll return it to you tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re keeping me against my will and you’re locking me up. Whether you say so or not, I’m under arrest.”

  “Let me say it again, you are our guest . . .”

  He’s about to get up, but then stops:

  “Are you angry?”

  I’m taken aback by his question. After having infuriated me, now he has the nerve to ask if I am angry! At least, that’s what I think he said.

  I don’t hold back, and since he asked, after having tried so hard all the while to contain my exasperation, the dam finally breaks.

  “You want to know if I am angry? You bet—I’m angry to have been pulled out of bed like a criminal even though I did nothing wrong. Yes, I’m angry that you lied to me, telling me that we were only going four kilometers, when in fact you’ve taken me fifty from the road I’m traveling. I’m angry that I’m not allowed to call my consulate, angry at the hypocrisy of pretending that I’m not under arrest when I evidently am, and am being held against my will, angry to be traveling in a country that claims to be a democracy, though the term habeas corpus apparently can’t be translated into Turkish. I’m angry because, although I grant you the right to ask for my papers and tell me I’m risking my life by going into dangerous villages, I don’t recognize your right to decide for me. I’m of lawful age and can make choices for myself. As a tourist, you can warn me, and even take measures to ensure my security. But you have no rights over me, provided I abide by your country’s laws, and that’s what I’ve done.

  In the presence of the two stunned military men, one who understands and the other who doesn’t, I let loose all the resentment that I’ve been holding back now for too long, I come close to yelling, purging the fear and anger I’ve endured since this morning. I conclude with a few general considerations, feeling that I’m at the top of my form:

  “. . . and you want to join the European Community? You might first want to take evening classes to review the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man.”

  “But . . .”

  I cut him off, as I’m not done:

  “I’m a French tourist, on vacation in your country. I have rights, you owe me some consideration. The first step should have been to call the French Consulate. They would have told you who I am. But you’re denying me this right. Stop wasting all your money on propaganda and claims that you’re a vacationers’ paradise.”

  The grunt, who doesn’t speak a word of English and for whom this deluge of grievances must completely overwhelm, leaves in the middle of the storm. Blue-Eyes finally manages to get a word in edgewise:

  “But all I wanted to know was whether you were hungry,” and this time he clearly aspirates the h.

  Blue-Eyes had in fact very politely asked if I was hungry, but he had pronounced it “are you angry?”!

  I realize my mistake, but I’m glad to have spit out all my anger at him. In any case, there’s no way to take back everything I said. I continue, now in a softer voice:

  “No, I’m not hungry. But I am thirsty. A beer would be great, since I can’t go into town to have one.”

  “I don’t have beer. It’s forbidden here. But I do have some whisky.”

  “Then let it be whisky!” He serves me a tall shot that I drink in small sips. It’s my first taste of alcohol since leaving Istanbul. My anger subsides, fatigue sets back in.

  Before handing me off to a soldier who’s going to show me to my room, Blue-Eyes tells me, as if to apologize, that the people of Alihacı thought I was a terrorist and that it was his job to check the situation out. I agree that he had a right to do that, but not to bring me here.

  Still in a bad mood, I refuse to lock my door. The soldier, who I don’t want to be too hard on, has his orders. If I don’t lock the door, he tells me, he’ll be punished. So I lock the door, chuckling to myself at the absurdity of the situation. What are they afraid of? That one of their recruits might rob me, or maybe knock off the supposed “terrorist”?

  It’s all very exhausting, and most of it is beyond my powers of comprehension. Just like I find it hard to understand the lack of experience or perhaps naïveté of Blue-Eyes and his sidekick. If I had compromising documents, I surely wouldn’t hide them in my backpack. I would have kept them with me. But the idea of patting me down never even occurred to them.

  I fall asleep just as the loudspeakers of the mosques nearby start broadcasting the call to prayer. It’s 5:00 a.m., and this is a June 16 that I will not soon forget. After putting one thousand kilometers behind me this morning, the attempted robbery at the hands of the three scoundrels on a tractor, and then my arrest in Alihacı, I’ve had enough excitement for one day.

  I’d like to think that this was nothing but a string of bad luck and that, once my carefree attitude is restored, I’ll continue serenely on my way. Just before I give in to my dreams, though, I’m no longer all so sure.

  * TN: Mercenaries. The term refers to Algerian soldiers who fought with the French during Algeria’s War of Independence.

  CHAPTER IX

  CARAVANSARIES

  It’s 7:30 a.m. when my soldier-valet comes knocking on my door. I’ve slept very little, and, probably because of the fatigue, I’m still angry.

  “First Lieutenant Gökgöz would like you to come to his office.”

  “Once I’ve had breakfast,” I tell him in a haughty tone.

  The grunt panics. Used to obeying Blue-Eyes’s orders, he’s caught off guard when I don’t. He heads off to find out what he should do and comes back a short while later with a platter. I had fallen back asleep. I take my time eating. I wait out the clock, dragging my feet: ’tis the weapon of the weak. When I’ve finished, he picks up the platter and asks if I would be so kind as to get dressed and join him downstairs.

  “I’ll shower first.”

  Once again, he goes for instructions. While I wait, I observe what’s going on the garrison grounds outside. A noncommisioned officer, motionless in the center of the training area, is demonstrating how sadistic he can be in trying to wear down a squad of young soldiers by putting them through firearms drills, running races, and push-ups. I smile as I recall the answer I was given by the young soldier seated next to me while they were driving me to Sivas. Having asked where I was from, I tried to explain walking to him, and the Silk Road. Something he said gave me pause, so I asked: “You know what the Silk Road
is, don’t you?” “Of course. It’s the paved road.” And I thought to myself that the commanding officers ought to teach them their history instead of making them run in circles like donkeys round their waterwheel.

  Seeing that my soldier-valet hasn’t come back, I go out into the hallway, crowded with jandarmas biding their time, and head off in search of the shower room.

  It’s after 8:30 a.m. when I go into Blue-Eyes’s office. He has been waiting for an hour. Across from him is seated a young ranking officer who speaks very good English. The lieutenant has no intention of repeating last night’s pronunciation mistake: he has brought along an interpreter. We have a cup of tea. Then I decide to go then and there on the offensive.

  “I got to thinking last night. You may be right, and I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. So I’m going to skip the two or three villages past Alihacı. So let me suggest that you take me back to the road I was on, but a little farther, to Yeniköy. But first, as we agreed last night, I want to place a call to my consulate.

  “We’ll see about that,” Blue-Eyes replies, in a conciliatory tone. “But first, the commanding officer is going to decide . . .”

  Before he has time to finish his sentence, I pounce.

  “What? Decide? Decide what? I’m not a soldier, I’m not even Turkish. Your commander can decide what he wants for you, you’re his subordinate. But for me, he has no say. And I insist on having my consulate on the phone before anything else, as you agreed last night. If I can’t do that, I won’t have anything to do with your commanding officer.”

  Blue-Eyes throws a weary and expressive glance at the young soldier who hasn’t said a word. It means: “You see, you can’t talk to this guy.” Without a word, he gets up and leaves. Nearly an hour goes by before he comes back.

  “We’re going to hand you over to the Alien Police Service.”

  So Blue-Eyes and his commander have decided to get rid of me and to hand me off to someone else. A different soldier takes my pack and leads me to a chauffeur-driven car driven waiting in the courtyard. Ten minutes later, we’re on the premises of the “polis.” I’m still angry. To Mustafa Kaçar (ka-char’ ), chief of the Alien Police Service, I repeat what I kept telling Blue-Eyes.

  “I want to call my consulate.”

  “Of course,” he says. “While we wait, would you like tea or coffee?”

  “Since last night, I’ve taken it that I’m under arrest. With you, am I free to go where I please?”

  “Of course. Furthermore, I don’t understand why no one informed me. I’m the one in charge of everything regarding foreigners, so the jandarmas should have called me right away last night.”

  The man is calm, pleasant, and expresses himself in excellent English. In addressing his subordinates, his manner is such that they’re clearly happy to do whatever he asks. Our conversation reflects the man’s concern for me; it’s both courteous and intelligent. Mustafa tells me he’s originally from the Dardanelles region.

  At the French Consulate in Ankara, a man and a woman take turns speaking with me over the phone. It would be an exaggeration to say they’re ready to rush to the aid of their fellow countrymen. This is what stands out from their explanations: there are danger zones; I managed to go poking around one; the jandarmas do whatever they please; there’s no point in arguing with them. Consequently, they have no intention of filing a complaint on my behalf with respect to the way I was arrested or how I was searched. If I wish to continue my hike, I should expect to be stopped again, arrested, and even put under surveillance—for a day, a week or even two—if that’s what the jandarmas want to do. Clearly, for them, my trek across Turkey is little more than a source of potential hassles. They want a fax of the first few pages of my passport, since the consulate in Istanbul didn’t forward them my file.

  While they’re sending the photocopy to Ankara, Mustafa and I pick up where we left off. He’s a pleasant, cultured man, keenly interested in world affairs. Unlike most Turks I’ve met, the reason he speaks such excellent English isn’t simply part of his culture, but the mark of the great interest he has in all things foreign. He is also well aware, having traveled a great deal, of the deplorable image that Turkey has among Western democracies. When his assistant comes back to tell us that that the fax has been sent and hands back my passport, Mustafa wants to know what my immediate plans are.

  “Since I’m here, I’ll tour Sivas, which was a very important stopover city along the Silk Road. And tomorrow morning, since First Lieutenant Gökgöz offered as much, I’ll ask him to have someone drive me back to my original route.” Mustafa reaffirms that the mountainous region I’m heading into is very dangerous. The jandarmas are continuously patrolling the area. PKK militants lie in wait, fire a few shots in the late afternoon, and then vanish into the countryside, which they know like the back of their hand. He suggests I avoid the zone beyond Alihacı, places a call to reserve a room for me in a hotel downtown, negotiates the rate, discounting it by half, and drives me there in his own car. Before leaving, he gives me his personal phone number and urges me to call him should I run into any difficulties in the Sivas district.

  The night was short and turbulent. I can’t help but think, before giving in to a restorative nap, that I’ve met two men, Blue-Eyes and Mustafa Kaçar, who represent rather well the two faces of modern Turkey. Mehmet Gökgöz is the direct descendent of days when “Turk” was synonymous with “soldier.” This was in the Asian tradition of warfare and regalian law. He’s one of many who represent an army that, in reality, rules the country never doubting its impunity, resorting to the use of force and sometimes even a coup d’état when things are not headed in a direction that it considers consistent with its views. Mustafa Kaçar, on the other hand, is opening the way for the many college students I’ve met, or the young middle schoolers in Amasya, whose openness to the world and hunger for foreign languages and travel stand as proof of their generation’s special fascination for Europe and America.

  Central Sivas holds several beautiful architectural treasures from the Seljuk period, mosques and Qur’anic schools having survived earthquakes, multiple invasions, and—more devastating than even the worst acts of barbarism—the pouring of cement. Visit, photos: I’m a bit of a tourist for the day. But my mind is elsewhere. I can’t get last night’s adventures off my mind: have calamitous times finally come?

  Crossing over the one-thousand-kilometer mark, the attempted robbery, and the intervention of the army are events that capture perfectly the dangers caravans faced for over two thousand years. Sitting on the second floor of Sivas’s caravansary, now converted into a salon de thé, I muse on the following five plagues that traders and camel drivers so feared: ill health, injuries, natural disasters, thieves, and war. The Silk Road is strewn with tombs. Death hung over the mountains and deserts, striking without warning. Is it any wonder that, when the Polo brothers and young Marco returned after having been gone for twenty-five years, they had been presumed dead and their estate divvied up?

  It’s by way of the Silk Road that the plague arrived in Europe, spreading death in stopover towns along the way. Yesterday, I completed the one thousandth kilometer, it’s true, but who’s to say whether I’ll make it to the two thousandth? Aside from my sore feet, I haven’t had any health issues thus far. I’m fit as a fiddle. But there’s still a long way to go. And the conditions in which I’m traveling, sometimes in blatant disregard of basic nutritional or bodily hygiene, by no means guarantee that I’ll arrive in Tehran well rested and raring to go.

  Theft was a constant threat on the Silk routes. My adventure yesterday proves that it still is. Gangs would lie in wait for the caravans at narrow passages, ambushing the merchants, steeling their bundles and animals, taking the gold and sometimes the travelers’ lives. The silk, spices, and precious merchandise that paraded by day in and day out right before their eyes aroused envy in the sedentary populations. I too, quite unwittingly, stir up those same desires. In poor villages like Alihacı, I look li
ke a wealthy man from a land of plenty. From that perspective, perhaps it isn’t just a stretch to think that my pack conceals stores of treasure. No one actually did anything, though, until the tractor incident on the road to Alihacı. Although my watch is now tucked away deep in my pocket, it looked a lot like a portable computer, arousing envy. I’ve already been asked several times if I wanted to exchange it for a cheap bazaar timepiece. Two young men suggested I simply give it to them.

  Bandits thought twice before attacking thousand-camel caravans, as they were accompanied by a hundred men practically looking for a fight. The lead caravanner also paid several armed men (usually Armenians) to ensure the convoy’s security. Inside the caravansaries—veritable fortresses—security was good. When there was a particularly serious threat, the paşas lent escorts, consisting of dozens of lancers, to accompany the travelers for a certain distance. Revenue from the Silk Road was the local lords’ chief source of income, so they had a vested interest in providing security; otherwise, the caravans would change routes: farewell, then, to all the taxes levied on those transporting precious bundles. Their concern for the merchants’ peace of mind was so great that the authorities of the day invented insurance. If, despite all the precautions, a traveler were robbed, he would submit to the paşa a list of the stolen merchandise and would be reimbursed, either by the paşa himself or by the Sultan. Today, of course, gangs of highwaymen are a thing of the past in Turkey. But alone and unarmed, I’m an easy, tempting target. It wouldn’t take fifty people to steal my “treasures.”