Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  Osman Kurt, the town’s mayor who is having tea out on a teahouse terrace, says that about a month ago, on a bus headed to Istanbul, he saw me walking along the road near Ismetpaşa. To now find, sitting next to him, the very same oddball that he was astonished to see from the bus makes him gush with emotion: his disbelief soon turns to excitement. This is no everyday occurrence, and he realizes that he’s now at the center of a story whose narrative he already finds utterly delightful.

  My informants were both right: there’s no hotel, but there soon will be. The mayor proposes that I sleep there even though it isn’t entirely finished. Constructed by the municipality, it won’t be open until the end of the week. So I’m the hotel’s very first guest, and Osman Kurt refuses to let me pay, insisting that I’m his guest, neither for dinner—he’s the owner of the restaurant—nor for my room, which has been hastily furnished with a bed for me to use. The shower is not yet working, but my host has gone through a lot of trouble, so I’m not about to be difficult.

  In the morning, I take a shortcut across the meadows to rejoin the highway. From atop the hills, I survey the artificial lake of Gölova, and the small natural lake adjacent to it. The countryside is beautiful. After walking for two hours, I stop under a flowering acacia tree besieged by insects. And there, I am like a bee too, but instead of pollen, I glean colors and scents, giving in to the sweetness of living. Then it’s back to the main road. After a brief lunch, I settle into a secluded lane for a nap. A woman spots me. A few minutes later, two brawny loudmouths show up out of nowhere to make inquiries. Their wariness quickly fades, but they tell me time and again how careful I must be: there are plenty of terrorists in the area.

  Yes, indeed. The only traffic I encounter in either direction is either armored vehicles packed with soldiers carrying assault rifles who shout loudly at me as they go by, or trucks full of camouflaged jandarmas. After Altköy, I enter a spectacular narrow gorge. Here, as I’ve seen several times before, the rushing stream, helped here and there by bulldozers, has carved a deep channel into the rock. The high walls on each side are stunning. The soldiers whose job it was to protect the caravans must have shuddered at the sight of such danger zones. In the middle of the valley, I see one of the armored vehicles hidden in a depression in the road. The machine gun is pointed higher up, which a soldier is scanning through a pair of binoculars. They call me over, offer me a cola, and question me about my journey and my age. “Maşallah!”

  The Refahiye Hotel is one of the filthiest ever. There is no shower, just a sink whose original color disappeared long ago beneath the grime. When I turn the faucet on, ice-cold water spills out onto my feet on account of a missing basin plug. There’s a puddle of urine in the water closet. The electricity is not working. I grope my way over and lie down on a grimy bed on which I’d unrolled my sleeping bag. On the floor below, the restaurant, open around the clock, is playing popular songs over a sound system cranked up to full blast. Out back, machine shops and body repair garages operate through much of the night. In bed before sundown—in spite of all the racket—I sleep well.

  I wake up before five o’clock and wolf down a çorba, hoping that the kitchen is cleaner than the bathroom. Inşallah! In this steppe landscape, there’s not a tree in sight. It’s cool out. I don’t feel the least bit tired, since yesterday’s short walk allowed me to recover from the one the day before. Two hours into an uneventful journey, I take a break in a small roadside restaurant. Once again, my arrival has quite an effect on the people around, and I’m cross-questioned by an armada of truck drivers. When I tell them that I’ve come from Istanbul, they line up, one after another, and ceremoniously shake my hand, a gesture accompanied by a little bow of respect. The manager refuses to let me pay for my soup, and one truck driver insists on buying me a second bowl.

  So, it’s with maximum energy—and a full belly!—that I begin the climb up toward the narrow gorge and mountain pass at Sakaltutan that will take me from 1,600 to 2,200 meters (5,250 to 7,200 feet). Four kilometers from the summit, two jeeps jammed with soldiers come to a stop. An officer demands to see my passport in a voice devoid of diplomacy. I ask him if they happen to have any water, since my jug is empty and the climb has been extremely tough. He rebuffs my request: “There’s some further on” he says, full of himself. It takes me nearly an hour to reach the summit and locate a source of water and a restaurant. I’m famished and happy at the chance to order some grilled meat, but here again I’m unable to pay, since the people at the next table over with whom I was conversing paid for my meal. As I have lunch, the crews of armored Toyota jeeps equipped with machine guns on turrets come to drink tea, while a minibus packed with soldiers patrols the road. In a few words, the atmosphere seems tense, suspicion reigns, danger cannot be far off.

  On the other side of the pass, the towering, majestic landscape has colors like those of a naive painter’s palette. Arid soils and chalky rocks, grays, browns, and reds and, here and there wherever a spring allows, the dark green of tiny grassy pastures for grazing sheep. Off in the distance glisten the everlasting snows atop Mount Keşiş Dağı. And there, down below, a grove of poplars at an intersection provides some shade, a rarity at this elevation. By 3:00 p.m., I’ve walked forty-five kilometers, but there’s still no village in sight nor on the map. I’m moving along at a good pace. Soldiers regularly stop and ask for my papers, and jeeps on patrol pop up again and again. They’ve strongly advised me not to be out on the road after 5:00 p.m. I want nothing more than to stop, but where? At 5:30, I’m still eighteen kilometers from the next city, Erzincan (ayr-zeen’-djan). I’ve walked sixty-two kilometers and climbed over a mountain pass at 2,200 meters (7,220 feet).

  This is now my new record since leaving Istanbul. My legs are heavy. The cliffs on each side of the road seem ominous. When a truck stops to pick me up, I finally cave. Irfan, the driver, stops five kilometers farther along in a roadside hotel-restaurant. Had I known it was so near, I wouldn’t have gone back on my vow to never rely on a motor. The room is packed with soldiers waiting for nightfall to start their patrols. I have a cup of tea with Irfan. He tells me that he earns eighty million liras a month, but that his cigarette habit alone costs him eighteen million. How can he possibly provide for his four children and keep a roof over his head? He “gets by.” His answer leaves me baffled.

  The hotel is almost as filthy as the one in Refahiye (reh-fah’-hee-yeh), but it’s better in that it offers hot showers—albeit for a price—in the basement. In the morning, I stop a truck headed in the opposite direction and pick up my hike at the spot where I met Irfan. I don’t want to miss out on a single kilometer of my Silk Road journey. I know: scruples like this might seem like the compulsiveness of a madman, the bookkeeping of an old stickler. But that’s how it is, and my conscience is now at peace, even though my feet rail against the eighteen kilometers standing between me and Erzincan, and that seem awfully long after the previous day’s protracted stage.

  The city projects an unusual image. In 1939, a devastating earthquake killed thirty-five thousand people, one-third of the entire population. Another, in 1992, caused six hundred more deaths. Nevertheless, and even though there is plenty of land, buildings were reconstructed to stand four stories tall. The city’s inhabitants seem to be calmly awaiting the next quake. But developers are not the only culprits. Turks consider it tacky to live in a house, whereas apartment living is the ultimate in chic. Needless to say, not a single old stone has been left standing. The head of the tourist office has no information on the Silk Road, despite the fact that this was an important stopover city. But, he tells me, he’d be delighted if I were to invite him to see Paris.

  The sun is blazing hot. On a shady bench in a public park, I watch women as they stroll lazily by. How do they manage in such extreme heat? How much clothing a woman wears depends on the sect her husband belongs to. A husband’s religious rigor is revealed first and foremost by the quantity of fabric covering his wife—and second by the way he himself is cloth
ed. The more tolerant men impose a simple chador. A long robe I can understand, but a cloak? In this heat? That’s only for the first degree of religious fervor. Fundamentalism demands even more. Under the long, black canvas called the çarşaf (char-shahf’ ), some women reveal only their eyes and hands. I spot one woman in dark glasses, walking suavely along and shouldering beneath a dark-brown cotton garment all the mystery of the world. An even more radical sect requires women to go out of the house in a kind of coarse brown blanket through which they likely see only shadows along the way. Even their hands are hidden under wool gloves. The Western eye has to learn to rediscover the imaginative possibilities occasioned by what is suggested, far from the practice we’ve come to accept of revealing everything. May imagination once again regain its former prestige, and may we be guided by our dreams: such are the thoughts that come to my mind as I observe this dark, evocative figure.

  Out in the city’s main square, I’m drawn to a large gathering of police officers. A banner appears, which, obviously, I can’t read. I inquire: why are these police officers demonstrating? My question is answered by looks of incomprehension and surprise, even laughter. Contrary to what I thought, the officers aren’t there to demonstrate but to keep an eye on a gathering of factory workers demanding more pay: all that can be seen of them is their banner.

  I feel extremely tired. So I rest up for much of the afternoon in the city’s best hotel. After a very long night, it’s 10:00 a.m. the next morning by the time I set out.

  The army’s presence seems to have increased. Over the course of three hours, I count about fifteen armored vehicles on patrol, each one equipped with a machine gun attached to the roof or the roll bar. Not a single one stops to ask for my papers. On this main thoroughfare, it must be that I look like a tourist and my presence here seems normal. The plains of Erzincan are fertile and planted with cereal crops and apricot trees, but—to my great regret!—the fruits are not quite ripe.

  At noon, I’m “invited” to lunch by five men who work in farm irrigation. They tell me that they are Shiite, partisans of Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. In this mostly nationalistic and conservative country, their views are more to the left, and they tell me, furthermore, how much they admire French socialists. The youngest one in the group is about to hand me a plate of bulgur when he freezes, as if some doubt suddenly occurred to him:

  “Are you a democrat or a fascist?” he asks, point blank.

  Those terms don’t mean the same to them as they do to me. They launch into a drawn-out criticism of the Turkish regime, which they label as “fascist.” The Turkish government is clearly not that, but I eventually realize that for the one using it, the term simply refers to anyone who espouses a different political viewpoint. As I’m a partisan of democracy and say so, the cracked wheat drops into my dish.

  As evening approaches, I cross the Euphrates (Firat Nehri), which, along with the Tigris and the Nile, witnessed the birth of the most ancient civilizations. Lost in thought, I contemplate for a long time the water rushing over the stones. But I have to keep going, as night is not far off. My plan was to stop in a small village shown on my map: Taniyeri. I think I’m almost there when I stop in a gas station to buy a bottle of juice. The manager tells me that the village I seek no longer exists. And there is no other inhabitation for another fifteen kilometers.

  So I prepare to bivouac on the parking lot beside the station. As I’m pulling my gear out to prepare my campsite, four armored jeeps, two operated by jandarmas and the other two by the army, pull into the station. Both groups question me for a long time on my itinerary. They are clearly impressed. As we drink tea, they tell me that they’ll be out on patrol all night long. They never once set down their weapons. There are, they tell me, terrorists in the area. Judging by the density of policemen and soldiers since leaving Tokat, these must be tough times for terrorists.

  As they are about to leave, one of them comes over to me and, pleased with himself, whispers in my ear:

  “I know how you achieve such a high level of performance: you do drugs.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “My buddy saw you put amphetamine tablets in your water bottle.”

  I show him the pills in question, which I use to sterilize the water I drink, but it’s no good, I can’t change his mind. As he and his companions see it, everything now makes sense. My performance was “abnormal.” But since I take drugs, everything is now once again “normal.”

  I have a hard time sleeping on a bench. The cold, the clouds of mosquitoes, the merry-go-round of trucks filling up with diesel fuel, and above all—above all—the music playing at full blast in the station to lure in god-knows-who while keeping the night watchman awake prevent me from getting any shut-eye. Just as I’m about to drift off, a storm blows in. I take refuge in the shop with the attendant.

  Twenty-five years old, tall, and thin as a fence post, Metin works eighteen hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, for he’s trying to put some money away in order to get married. He chose January 1, 2000, despite the fact that that as a Muslim that date means nothing to him. He takes out his wallet and shows me photos of his fiancée, a plump little woman who looks a little feisty, as well as of his brothers, parents, and himself when he was a soldier whom I obviously can’t recognize with his head shaved alongside twenty-five other shaved heads; credit cards, civilian and military ID cards, and various other documents. All of Metin’s life is summed up here in pictures.

  A loud noise on the road suddenly gets us to look up. I believe it to be some mythological creature. In a way, that’s what it is, for it’s a tracked tank that emerges from the night, sparkles for a few seconds beneath the station’s spotlights, and then disappears heading east in a clatter of clanking steel.

  * From Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier: qu’il a fait en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes, Volume 1, 1681, p. 13.

  † François de La Rochefoucauld.

  CHAPTER X

  WOMEN

  From behind the sandbags, a helmet pokes out; then the barrel of a rifle glares at me with its black eye of polished steel. The soldier aiming at me yells something that needs no translation. It can only be: “Don’t move!” In a calmer voice, he calls out. An officer comes over to me and barks at me to show him my passport. I’m about to hand it to him when a burst of laughter comes out of nowhere. It’s a truck driver who, without stepping down from his cabin, shouts to the officer: “It’s the tourist who has walked all the way from Istanbul!”

  The officer looks at me with surprise, and then interest:

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the grocery.”

  “Do you have Turkish money?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay then.”

  I tuck my passport back into my pocket; he never even opened it. It’s a decidedly wacky scene. But after all, it serves me right. Metin, the gas station attendant, when I left him early this morning, tried to dissuade me from leaving: “It’s very dangerous to be out walking before 7:00 a.m., you have to wait until the army has cleared the road.” But I had hardly slept, and my stomach was screaming for food. So I left, opting for a short distance today: twenty-six kilometers to the town of Sansa. Little by little, the wide valley has turned into a narrow gorge. Near a bridge straddling the river, I noticed a grocer’s shop alongside a teahouse, and I really wanted to stop there. But I hadn’t seen the small blockhouse hidden in the ditch, from which sprang the soldier.

  In the teahouse, people look me over with curiosity and not without a hint of suspicion. Despite several attempts on my part, no one wants to talk. There’s a sense of discomfort, heavy and indefinable. I take my time eating and unwind. There’s no reason to rush today.

  About ten kilometers farther, as I head into the narrow pass, I face another military blockade. On the left is a tank with its gun pointed toward the top of the ribbon of roadway. On the right, an armored car covering the oth
er side. The crews are at their posts. A soldier calls out at me, he orders me to approach and wait. Another goes into a small, half-collapsed structure and comes back out accompanied by a baby-faced junior officer. Tall and fat, he’s like a sausage in his camouflage fatigues, giving him the look of a roast ready for the fire. He struggles up the slope separating the shelter from the road and asks for my papers.

  “You can’t get through this way,” he tells me.

  “Why? With all the soldiers around here, is there still a lack of security? Are there terrorists?”

  “No.”

  “So if there are no terrorists, then I can keep walking in perfect safety.”

  “No.”

  Finding his answers to be overly curt, I protest, explaining my journey and how important it is to me. The soldier who went to get his supervisor comes to my aid:

  “Paşa . . . ”

  He has no time to say any more. With a quick command, the officer shuts him up. I try to make sense of it all. Paşa means “leader” in Turkish. Are these then orders from the leader? But why, since, as the officer said himself, the zone isn’t dangerous? I try to break free and continue on my way. I seize my pack, but before I can take four steps, on their commander’s injunction, two soldiers stand in my way. One of them grabs my gear, and they drag me manu militari, quite literally, back to the officer who never budged. On his field telephone, he asks for instructions. Ten minutes later, he has his answer. I won’t be allowed to travel through the gorge, at least not on foot.