Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  They stop a truck. The soldier holds a briefing with the driver that must relate to me, since he points at me several times. The soldier hoists my pack up into the cabin, and then the officer turns to me, asking to see my map. He points to a village, Kargin, twenty kilometers from the spot where we’re standing. My understanding of what he said to me must more or less be: “The driver has orders to drop you off in this village. Don’t try to get out before then, or you’ll be in serious trouble.”

  And he shows me his two joined wrists, podgy like those of a baby. It’s up to me to grasp the meaning. And I do. So, with a heavy heart, I climb up into the cabin. I’m tired of these jandarmas who keep giving me unwanted rides. If this continues, I’ll have crossed a third of Turkey in a bus or truck. I know I’m exaggerating, but at this point, I feel like thinking the worst.

  The driver tells me that every week he travels from Ankara to Tabriz, in Iran. He offers to drive me all the way; he’ll be there in just two days. No thank you, I’ll get there, but on foot, stubborn as a mule perhaps, but more bent than ever on achieving my goal now that they’re throwing obstacles in my way, trying to persuade me to give up.

  Five kilometers past the blockade, I finally get what the word “paşa” meant. What they’re so jealously guarding is the camp where their commander—the paşa—of antiterrorist forces is headquartered. It’s located on a tiny plot between the road and the river. It’s actually an encampment of collapsible tents and barracks enclosed by a barbed-wire fence. Twenty or so tanks are all perfectly lined up, the eye of their cannons looking straight at us. The paşa wants to get a good night’s sleep. Even an innocent foot traveler like me is not allowed to get anywhere near. I’m still a bit surprised by the lack of rigor in the inspections, for, while the soldiers were busy blocking me from entering the pass, a half-dozen trucks went through without being stopped. I’m no specialist, but in my opinion the paşa should be a little more concerned about a truck driven by a suicide bomber that, filled with explosives, would reduce his HQ to dust, and less about an innocent foot traveler, whose bag is easy to check.

  The paşa chose to take up residence near where I was planning to spend the night, in Sansa. All I can do is longingly watch out the window as we drive along this magnificent route, which my boots won’t have the privilege of treading. I ask the driver to drop me off after we’ve passed the HQ, but with his index like a windshield wiper that says “no,” he makes clear that he’s sticking to the stout soldier’s orders.

  When I set my feet back on the ground, I’ve unintentionally traveled much farther than planned this morning. The next city that I expected to reach two days later is now only a few hours’ hike distant. Between here and there, there’s no village where I can stay. So I decide to push on all the way to Tercan (ter’-djan), which will mean a forty-one-kilometer (26-mile) walk, not counting the truck ride. So much for an easy stage.

  As I’m hoisting my backpack onto my shoulder, a horse-drawn cart with two men and one woman on board comes trotting along the road toward me. Behind it, the mountain ridge offers a sumptuous backdrop. Naturally, I want to preserve this scene for all eternity—and I do—by taking a photo with the cart in the foreground. Furious that she didn’t have time to cover her head with her scarf, the woman spits as they go past me. Her image belongs to her alone, and I have stolen it: I will try to remember this in the future. But between those who want a photo and those who see it as theft—or even rape—how am I to tell the difference? This is one of many things I have yet to learn.

  Even before reaching Tercan, the pillars of an old bridge dating from the twelfth century and were not knocked down is a promising sight. Have authorities here been more careful to preserve the treasures of the past? Tercan is the city of “Mama Hatun.” She was quite a personality. In this male-dominated country where being born a woman is considered a calamity, in 1191, Mama Hatun inherited the principality belonging to her father, İzzettin Saltuk II. This Turkish Joan of Arc led an army against the Ayyubid invasion. For a period of ten years, she had to fight, weapons in hand, to defend her position, which her hot-tempered nephews wanted to wrest from her. El Adil, the sultan who ruled Syria and Egypt at the time, tried to find a worthy husband of equal rank for her. In vain. No one was eager to be under the thumb of this firm-handed princess. In the meantime, she had several buildings erected that are, even today, considered some of the most outstanding examples of medieval Ottoman architecture: a mosque, a caravansary, and a hammam, and, later on, the most grandiose and original of all: her mausoleum.

  Mama Hatun disappeared one day in the greatest of mysteries. Was she assassinated, or locked up by her nephews until her death? Was she even inhumed in the edifice she had so beautifully built for herself for that very purpose? No one has the slightest idea. Her marble catafalque also disappeared, which Evliya Çelebi, the great Arab traveler, was able to admire when he passed this way in the middle of the seventeenth century. Although the mausoleum is typically closed, I’m fortunately able to visit it. The small building consists of a circular wall inside which were constructed twelve niches or eyvan; these are sepulchers for Mama Hatun’s inner circle. In the center, a small tower, capped by a meçit (small mosque), holds, in its basement, the false sarcophagus designed as a replacement for the original. It’s all capped by an umbrella-shaped roof divided into eight sections, every other one indicating a cardinal point. The entire ensemble exudes exquisite harmony. After a long search for the keeper of the keys, I succeed in touring the caravansary. Its restoration is almost complete. Small in size, it nevertheless has two immense vaulted stables. The hammam built by Mama Hatun has been less fortunate: Turkish concrete has once again left its mark.

  From Tercan to Aşkale, the journey affords neither surprises nor lunch. A very intense storm blows in, but Lady Luck is in my corner. Just as I start to be completely drenched, an abandoned tunnel provides me with shelter where I wait for the sun to return, drying my gear and snacking on a few pieces of dried fruit and a hunk of bread. I must look just like a homeless person. Despite all the exercise I get each day, these light meals are all I need. I’m expending a huge amount energy—my pack is no feather on my back—and yet one full meal a day is enough. Caravan travelers, for their part, generally carried water skins and a little dried meat. They found everything else they needed in the caravansaries.

  Is it because I visited Mama Hatun’s monument? I can’t help but notice that Turkey’s women figure prominently in my thoughts. The feminist “revolution” initiated so magnificently by Mama Hatun was nipped in the bud. But that hardly diminishes what she accomplished. In the male-dominated Middle Ages, how could an army have agreed to be led by a woman? Everything in this country’s religion and culture represses girls and wives. The country’s as-yet-insufficient economic development allows it to get by without their help and keeps them from having any domestic or political power, under the full financial control of men. They are refused education and culture. Of course, legally, men and women are considered to have equal status. The country has even had a female prime minister. But in villages and Turkish households, I’ve been able to observe the extent to which women remain subcitizens: exploited at will, hidden, and clothed according to rules dictated to them starting at a very early age and that repudiate their bodies. Of course, in large cities, I saw young women who had apparently broken this dress code, wearing European-style clothing, a tangible sign of independence. How long, though, will it take for these winds of reform to reach the villages of Anatolia?

  Besides Mama Hatun, other women rulers have left their mark on the history of this land. But that was under the Eastern Christian Empire. Helena, Irene, Theodora: each had a great influence on her time.

  Helena was an innkeeper’s servant, sufficiently crafty to seduce the emperor Constantius Chlorus. Their son, Constantine, rather than lazing around in Rome, founded a city on the site of former Byzantium and named it for himself: Constantinople.

  In the eighth century, I
rene reigned over the Eastern Empire for nearly twenty years as her son’s regent. When he was of age, assuming the power that was his right, this delightful mother had his eyes gouged out and enjoyed, as the result of this infamy, five more years as ruler.

  It is said that Theodora was of very loose morals before she married Justinian, Constantinople’s greatest emperor. Having become an irreproachable spouse, she even gave her husband a lesson in power. When he planned to flee when an especially violent revolt had sparked a bloodbath in the city, Theodora told him, in essence: “When you have worn purple (a symbol of royal power), you should be prepared to be buried in it.” They stayed put, overcame the revolt, and would later die in bed.

  These three women, it’s true, were Christian. Mama Hatun’s accomplishments are all the more impressive in that she was born in a Muslim land.

  Each day, I am appalled by the fate of Turkish women living in villages. They’re programmed from birth to be self-effacing and to work hard. I’ve noticed that when I take pictures of children, little boys are delighted and turn to look at the camera, while little girls hide behind the boys. The daughters of Fazil, the villager I met on the morning of June 16, are not allowed to continue their education past elementary school, as their brothers do. They, too, hide so as not to be photographed. And, at the very heart of village life, they can only enter the mosque if they take up their assigned place: behind men. This kind of education works: before long, women freely and rigorously apply to themselves the law imposed on them from childhood.

  I’ve fortunately encountered some exceptions. The granddaughters of Behçet, the old wise man of Hacıhamza, seem to be exempt from these rules. But I dined alone with him, glimpsing his wife only before I left, when she said “farewell” from the balcony. In Istanbul, and in Turkey’s largest cities, most young women who went to school and then on to college hold the same professions as men and enjoy equal status. But they’re the trees that prevent us from seeing the forest. Turks are very proud of having granted women the right to vote in 1934. And that year, indeed, nearly 5 percent of elected members of parliament were women. But the proponent of reform, Atatürk, died four years later. Ever since, the status of women has steadily declined. Today, thirteen out of five hundred and fifty elected members of parliament are women.

  Turkish tempers flare if you tell them that in their homes, women are second-class citizens or even second-class human beings. But in practice—and in villages—that’s how it is. They’re the ones pulling weeds on their knees in beet fields, making bread and cooking dinner in the shadows, wiping their children’s backsides while their husbands reinvent the world in the teahouse or seek salvation at the mosque. An association called Ka-Der has been founded in Turkey, seeking to prepare women to assert themselves politically. These women made a tremendous observation: interest and participation in political life are functions of education. Access to parliament hinges on a university education. But who’s going to send them there? For the moment, kept in ignorance, indoctrinated, monitored, and dominated by their men, Turkish women stand no chance of gaining independence. Each time I attempted to broach the subject, I ran into a wall of silence. And with respect to the Kurdish part of the country, I was warned for my own security: do not speak to women.

  As I walk toward Aşkale, my heart goes out nevertheless to the women with whom I was able to exchange a few words: the joyful ladies carding wool near Ilgaz, and Şükran, the Caucasian who cooked börek for me. And I often think of Kürşat’s little sister, who gave me such a big, spontaneous hug in Tosya.

  The city of Aşkale, once located along the Silk Road, has lost even the memory of this past. The hotel, located over a teahouse, ranks solidly in the top three of the filthiest I’ve ever seen. I grope around for ten minutes searching for the switch for the light in my room. I finally find it . . . at the other end of the hallway. But I’m so tired that I’d sleep on a pile of garbage if I had to—which, in fact, is not far from the case; I’ve just walked three hundred and forty kilometers (211 miles) in nine days without getting any real rest. Today, once again, I must have logged my forty kilometers (25 miles). If I were reasonable, I ought to stop for a few days or shorten the stages. But that ever-present force keeps urging me to walk, and to walk some more. Each day, I come up with excellent reasons to keep going. Since this morning, I’ve felt as though I’ve entered the home stretch: after tomorrow morning, in theory, I’ll be in Erzurum.

  It’s a city I’m drawn to like a magnet. From the outset of my journey, so as not to trigger disbelief among my interlocutors, I stopped saying I was headed to Tehran. I told them Erzurum was my final destination. And now I’m almost there. This accomplishment is like wind at my back. But I won’t cover the sixty kilometers separating Tercan from the largest city in Anatolia all at once. I’ve done some foolish stages over the past nine days, and the results are in: I can’t handle it. So I’m going to stop in Aşkale (ash’-kah-leh) tonight (thirty-eight kilometers/twenty-four miles) and tomorrow in Ilıca (uh’-luh-djah). Then, all I’ll have left is a twenty-one-kilometer (13-mile) leg. Especially since the final stair I have to scale to heave myself into the city is a high one, given that I start at 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) and end at 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) with, between the two, a mountain pass at over 2,000 meters (6,500 feet).

  The one thought that helps me keep walking is that I’ll soon be able to get some rest in a comfortable hotel room. I truly sense I’ve reached the end of my rope. The filth and lack of comfort in the hotels in Aşkale and Tercan did me in. And in the pitiful state in which I find myself, I don’t want to ask for room and board from private individuals, as I don’t feel up to the three or four hours that I’d have to devote to the duties of stardom. Being popular is no easy matter: you always have to please your fans, and you could actually wind up enjoying it, in which case, all of a sudden, you’d find yourself stuck with obligations that you always loathed; in a word, you could become completely enslaved if you’re not careful. And then, to make yourself likeable, you have to feel good. On top of it all, even though I don’t really want to admit it, I’m still traumatized by the way the inhabitants of Alihacı brought out the army, while putting on a good face and assuring me that they appreciated having me as their idol. The episode gave me a new perspective on the virtues of Turkish hospitality. A hotel, apart from all its filth, lets me feel I’m in a familiar and relatively safe place.

  Aşkale-Ilıca, my next-to-last leg before Erzurum, is off to a bad start. My joints hurt; I feel a constant pain in my left thigh. My body, for the first time since finding my rhythm, has started protesting. I promise myself, without too much confidence, that I’ll take a day off each week from now on. Exiting Aşkale, I leave the newly constructed highway heading east and take the old road. There are a lot of potholes and few cars, plus an occasional tractor: it’s the kind of road I like, and, to boot, it heads through a landscape of pastoral majesty. This is the steppe with its wide-open spaces, where not a single tree is visible on the horizon. With the elevation and the sun, it’s delightfully cool, the weather splendid. I forget my hardships for a while. Herds of cows and flocks of sheep process over the hills. I had read that the Turks sacrifice two and a half million rams each year for the feast of Kurban Bayrami. And I wondered where they came from. Here they are, by the thousands, clinging to the slopes, specks moving across the soft green steppe, watched over by teams of shepherds, backed up by their fearsome Kangals.

  At Kandilli, two societies, one civil and the other military, exist side by side without mingling. Under broad hangars, armored cars and all-­terrain vehicles are lined up in perfect rows. A nursery school was even built for the military’s offspring; the other children, the village kids, are deeply engrossed on the square in a soccer game that’s being played with a tin can.

  Shortly thereafter, I’m battered by a violent storm. I go for shelter under a small bridge that allows herds of livestock to pass beneath a railroad line. How thrilling to watch the long veils
of rain sweep over the gentle hills. The clouds are so low that the black sky seems to fuse with the green grass. Less than an hour later and back on the road, I see another squall coming my way. It’s still far off, and I look for anything that might provide cover, but there’s nothing. Not a single tree, not even a wall, and the railroad track is far away, meandering down in the valley. For fifteen minutes, I’m dowsed with an ice-cold shower, and it even starts to hail. My big waterproof poncho, snapping in the unstoppable gusts of fierce wind, is of no use. In just a few minutes, I’m drowning beneath a shell that’s supposed to provide protection. The cold rain runs down my neck, making my pants stick to my legs, and trickles into my shoes. I’m wallowing in water; the hailstones sting my face and hands. Finally, the storm moves off. A dark veil, a wall of water pursues it across the landscape. And out of all this, in the lowlands, near the river, emerges a train, as if coming out of a tunnel. The temperature has plummeted. I try running to warm up, but it’s no good; my clothes are soaked, and I’m chilled to the bone.

  In the past, caravanners covered the bundles of goods with special cloths made of wool and other animal hair, tightly woven and covered with fat. The silk and paper, the dried fruit, and all of their precious and fragile goods were thus protected throughout the journey. They also knew how to use herbs to keep insects from nibbling away at their earnings. I’ve heard that in many Turkish villages, these herbs are still used. Basil, for example, is grown in leftover pots to keep away ants and insects.

  Five kilometers from Ilıca, probably brought on by the cold or perhaps by some poorly washed apricots as well (I had been told: only buy fruit that you have to peel!), a sudden and violent bout of diarrhea wrings my stomach. Where can I go to relieve this sudden urge out here on the boundless steppe? I’m not about to put my buttocks on display in a land where just exposing your lower leg is considered a violation of common decency. I manage nevertheless, by way of clever calculation and sprints that have less to do with my fitness and more to do with sheer necessity, to protect my privacy in a small depression in the terrain, or among the tall grasses.