Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  I hope to reach the stopover very quickly, so I can rest up in an inn, but one of the locals I meet up with dashes my hopes when he tells me that there’s no hotel in Ilıca. Can I stay in someone’s home in this condition? I have a hard time picturing that. My spirits down, it takes me over an hour to travel the final kilometer, making ten emergency stops to pull down my pants. I enter the city taking baby steps, stiff from having to squeeze my sphincter shut.

  Just to be sure, before looking for somewhere to stay, I ask around. Hallelujah: there is a hotel in Ilıca after all. Hallelujah once again: it’s also clean. Located atop a bakery, a wonderful scent wafts through it whenever batches of bread are pulled from the oven. I pay extra to have a room for two all to myself. There’s no shower, but there is a hammam across the street. I’m there in no time flat and gleefully take a dip in the large circular pool. The color of the water in which a good twenty of us are steeping suggests that it hasn’t been changed since the days of Atatürk. But pleasure precedes hygiene, as any child will tell you. Feeling relaxed once more from the bath, I wolf down a çorba, then head up to my room.

  In the morning, my diarrhea has been cured. The Ilıca-Erzurum stage is one of the shortest that I’ll do since the very start: twenty-one kilometers. It will be a simple formality, a walk in the park. As I leave the village, what’s like a two-lane highway runs east, straight as an arrow. It’s the only access road to the big city. The series of storms of the past two days have cleansed the air. The sky is crystal clear, engendering a certain lightheartedness. The plain is so flat that, near the sign indicating that the city is eighteen kilometers away, I can already distinctly make out Erzurum’s houses backed up against the mountainside. It’s as though I were already there.

  That is, unfortunately, without taking into account how tired I am, how weak I feel after yesterday’s bout of diarrhea, as well as a total lack of motivation. Whenever I’m just about to reach a goal, I lose all interest in it. It’s the next one that motivates me. Erzurum is about halfway between Istanbul and Tehran. Over the past few days, I’ve looked over the information I have on Iran several times, and I’ve already given some thought to how I’m going to tackle the second half of my trek.

  Erzurum keeps running away from me. I think that, although it’s the shortest stage, it’s the most difficult one since my journey began. I walk slowly, arduously. I feel crushed beneath my pack. The city seems to take malicious delight in running farther away every time I think I’m almost there. After three hours, my legs giving way beneath me, I can go no farther: I sit down and fall asleep with my back against a chain-link fence. I empty my water jug and nibble on the dried fruit I have left. Once I’ve regained my strength, the city seems farther than it ever was; the warm, blurry air makes it float above the horizon, as if it were only a mirage. That’s what it’s truly starting to become for me. Three hours later, I finally reach the first buildings, which belong to Atatürk University: several concrete cubes planted on lawns that irrigation trucks rescue every morning from burning to a crisp. Male and female students, some wearing chadors, wander about campus walkways, a book under an arm, or hunched over under the weight of their backpacks full of knowledge.

  People ask me questions. I’m not very talkative today, so they decide to take me to the tourist office, which, when I finally see it, is of hardly any interest to me. I’m keener on getting rest than obtaining information. But since it was destiny’s wish, and since, for the time being, I have almost no willpower at all, let’s go. Perhaps I’ll glean something that reinvigorates me. Muhammet Yokşuk, the director, a big man, says the same thing I’ve heard everywhere else. “The Silk Road? No, I don’t have anything on it.” But he’s interested in my travels and asks a thousand questions, so I share my story. As I talk, he places several phone calls. When I’ve finished and am ready to leave, he motions me to come back.

  “Your story is unique. I just called several journalists for a press conference.”

  A few minutes later, correspondents from the three national newspapers ask questions, take pictures, and even film me. All three promise there will be feature articles in tomorrow’s editions, and a telecast on local TV.

  Muhammet, delighted that I was willing to endure all the trouble he put me through, proves very helpful and shows me where I can find a recently opened hotel. He assures me that I’ll find it comfortable and not too expensive. I walk there taking baby steps. At first glance, there’s nothing special about the city. Stone and concrete buildings, five or six stories tall, line wide avenues crisscrossed by a steady stream of pedestrians. The hotel is as promised: new, clean, functional, and reasonably priced. It’s also in keeping with the others, since a pipe spews water out onto the tile floor. In my entire journey across Turkey, I cannot recall a single bathroom where there wasn’t a gurgling leak somewhere. After a long shower, I plop myself down onto the bed and sleep until nightfall, wanting to visit the city at its best. In summer, cities in the Orient only reveal themselves in the evening. In the lower city, dominated by the well-preserved citadel, hundreds of shops show off their treasures in the dim light of miserly lamps, more suited to vigils or discussing private matters than to conducting business. It takes traveling to the Orient to understand that business here, having been conducted for two thousand years, is based on the art of conversation. Here, each time a customer enters a shop, the merchant looks as much forward to the joy of a good discussion as to any financial gain. When I started traveling the world, I was captivated by the game that merchants in the Orient play with each potential buyer: a game of cleverness, seduction, high diplomacy, craftiness, and tactics often worthy of the greatest strategists, which Westerners tend not to like, in the name of the sacrosanct principle of openness, or transparency, as it’s called today. But upon closer consideration, it’s in this face-to-face, person-to-person experience that souls reveal themselves, trustworthiness or treachery is expressed while looking each other in the eye, business between beings takes place in the light.

  Muhammet Yokşuk put me in touch with a French professor at Atatürk University. Mehmet Baki arranged for me to meet with three history professors interested in the Silk Road. Selahattin Tuzlu wrote his dissertation on the caravan route between Trabzon, on the Black Sea, and the Iranian border, from 1850 to 1900. Mehmet Tezcan is interested in the Silk Road from the third century before Christ to the third century after. Finally, Dr. Kevan Çetin has limited his research to a great caravan market in the center of Turkey—Yabanlu, near Kayseri—during the Seljuk period. Leaving our three-hour-long conversation, Mehmet, who provided the simultaneous translation, is exhausted. We were so impassioned by the topic that a national television crew, which had come to interview me, tiptoed out, not wanting to disturb us.

  The journalist left me a note indicating that he’d come back to my hotel tomorrow morning. In the evening, I realize that he won’t have time, since that afternoon comes the announcement of the verdict of Öcalan’s trial. The leader of the PKK is sentenced to death. Westward, among the Turks, people must be celebrating. Eastward, among the Kurds, people must be weeping. Here, in Erzurum, in this place straddling two worlds, the news puts people in a stupor.

  I’m not surprised by the verdict. Everyone was expecting it. Öcalan’s trial traveled with me throughout my voyage, for it began just as I was setting out. Every day, in restaurants or at people’s houses, I was able to see the face of the PKK’s leader in front of the judges, protected from a possible gunshot by bulletproof glass. Obviously, I didn’t understand the commentary. But more than once, the images were sufficiently explicit for me to realize that television wasn’t erring on the side of excessive objectivity. I remember them showing a lineup of the men killed in PKK attacks: when a close-up of each face was shown, it changed into a huge blood stain showing the date on which each one died. On the other hand, I never saw anything on the burning or bombing of Kurdish villages by the Turkish army, whose purpose is hardly to conduct humanitarian work. And during th
e trial, the daily presence in the courtroom of the mothers of soldiers killed in combat, each with a photo of her child pinned to her breast, did little to ensure that debate would remain civil.

  How are the Kurds, whose territory I’m preparing to enter, going to react? After having observed a truce for the duration of the trial, is the revolutionary party going to launch a series of attacks? Are the Kurdish villages I’m about to visit going to boil over? Unsure about the situation, I decide to remain an extra day in Erzurum as a cautionary measure. It will help my worn-out body recover, too.

  I dine at the Guzelyurt, the best restaurant in town, with Huseyin, the friend of a friend from Istanbul. He’s a pharmacist here. He’s about fifty years old, with an open and warm personality. A lover of pleasures and of gambling, Huseyin doesn’t abide by the prohibition on alcohol, but he’s still a man of great faith. Half in English, half in Turkish, our conversation centers, of course, on Öcalan’s sentencing and the status of the Kurds. Huseyin orders a bottle of Turkish wine. Tasting my first glass of a liquid high in tannins and slightly too acidic for my palate, I realize that I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since I left Istanbul, with the exception of Blue-Eyes’s whisky, which I gulped down joylessly.

  As we are bidding each other farewell, Huseyin utters a phrase that is, to put it mildly, surprising, given what he said during dinner: “I believe in two things, my God and my Army.” From this perspective, he’s aligned with the vast majority of Turks. I’ve already expressed how positive the image of the army is here, except for the youngest generation. I don’t know exactly why this is. It’s true that, led by Atatürk, the army gave the country back its soul and its pride when, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the “question of the Orient” was raised, and Europe was preparing to divvy up the spoils of a Sultanate in disarray. Is this where the Turks’ veneration of soldiery comes from? Or does it have its roots further back, in the military traditions of the Ottoman Empire? Or further still, in the bellicose past of the nomadic tribes that came from the far reaches of Mongolia? Whatever the case may be, respect for the military is everywhere. God, the State, and the Army: for many, they are one and the same.

  At the post office, I pick up my mail, including what had remained undelivered in the lockbox in Suşehri. On the other hand, a box of ten rolls of film has vanished. The man at the window tells me a story, and, as usual, I understand nothing, except that the package was supposedly returned to France. When I finally pick it up in Paris, only three rolls of film remain. The others vaporized. Fortunately for me, after running around to every photographic shop in the city, I manage to find five rolls of the type that work in my camera.

  I also use this unplanned downtime to assess where things stand in my journey. Arriving in Erzurum, I’ve traveled one thousand four hundred and fifty kilometers (900 miles). I’ve covered just over half of the Istanbul–Tehran route. And I’m approximately ten days ahead of the schedule I established before setting out. From a physical standpoint, on which the rest of the journey hinges, things are almost perfect. My boots have done quite well on their diet of tractor grease and are now getting along marvelously with my feet. I’ve lost three kilos (6.6 pounds) in a month and a half. I’ve had to tighten my belt three more holes and have gained muscle mass, especially in my legs, thighs, and shoulders. My resting heartbeat is fifty-six beats per minute, and its rhythm of between eighty and ninety during exercise is proof that I’m in great shape. I have to simply be careful not to overdo it to avoid chronic fatigue. My recovery times, almost immediate, are evidence that from a physical perspective, I’m working out like an athlete getting ready for the Olympics.

  The cultural and historical aspect of my journey is not as satisfying as I’d hoped. My inadequate understanding of the language is a real handicap with respect to gathering information. But the strong relationships I’ve managed to establish, especially with families who took me in and who, speaking the language of the heart, had little need for vocabulary and syntax. And in the end, that’s all that matters to me.

  I also capitalize on these two days off to “improve my look.” My pants and vest—worn from all the rubbing, soaked day in and day out with sweat, and rinsed a thousand times but still dirty—are in tatters. But since none of the clothes I find are as comfortable, it’s Zühtü Atalay, a joyful tailor who is delighted by my traveling attire, who mends the most visible tears. Plead as I may, he refuses to take even a small coin in payment. All he wants is to hear about my journey; and so, for a good half-hour, that’s what I do.

  Two of the three news stories written by the journalists never appear in print for lack of space. Öcalan’s conviction is the big news. The newspaper headlines confirm what one academic I met on campus told me: “The press wanted his hide, now they have it.” In this country where democratic traditions have not yet been permanently established, where political structures are weak, he told me, the press “invents” public opinion at will. Eight columns wide, in block capitals, the papers don’t beat around the bush: THE DEATH PENALTY FOR THE TRAITOR; THE MARTYRS CELEBRATE; THE BABIES’ REVENGE, proclaim the headlines, accompanied by photos of a dead baby, women dancing for joy at the rendering of the verdict while hugging the photos of their sons, or of soldiers’ funerals, their coffins cloaked in the red flag stamped with a crescent. It all smacks more of revenge taking or a settling of accounts than an act of justice. The authorities did, nevertheless, attempt to adhere to the rule of law, concerned about the reputation of the Turkish brand on the eve of a fresh request for membership in the European community. But all of that hardly makes me feel any better knowing that, starting tomorrow, I’ll be pushing into a territory where traditions of violence go as far back as anyone can remember.

  I’m at once worried about getting caught up in this cycle of heightened debate that might be sparked by the verdict, and eager to see and hear for myself the Kurdish point of view. For up till now, I’ve only dealt with Turks, whose views on the matter amounted to a simple finger gesture pretending to slit someone’s throat.

  I check over my gear, buckle my pack, hop in bed, then sleep a dreamless sleep.

  On July 1, I leave Erzurum on a highway heading east. War is in the air: on the right and on the left, there are nothing but army camps. Over here, men are training, shouting in guttural voices behind a palisade fence. Over there, other men are running obstacle courses. Farther on, they’re doing maintenance work on their trucks and armored vehicles. The roads seem to be traveled by army vehicles only.

  After walking ten kilometers, I veer south on a dirt road that was once the Silk Road but that has now been abandoned for a brand new paved road. I’m back to peace and quiet . . . and a new army base with chairlifts behind it. Is it a place for soldiers to relax, or a training base for the mountain division? I ask the grunt on sentry duty about it, and he calls over a ranking officer, whose only answer is a blunt order to keep on walking. Here, everything is “classified.”

  The road rises to a mountain pass at 2,000 meters (6,560 feet). I victoriously hold out against two soldiers who try their damnedest to give me a ride in their truck. People here are decidedly obsessed with lending the solo hiker a hand. After the pass, a stunningly beautiful valley, enlivened by a small river, offers me the shade of a willow grove: an ideal spot to stop and have a snack. Beyond, the road continues on, paved with loosely interlocked stones on which the old iron-rimmed wheels of chariots have left their marks. This road, like most caravan trails, was used as a strategic road all the way up to the last war. The army maintained them to carry its cannons and wagons full of supplies and munitions, should a conflict erupt with Persia or Armenia.

  On the hillsides, dozens of abandoned bunkers cover the meadows. They all face the northeast, a reminder of the days when Turkey was one of NATO’s forward military bastions. At the West’s front line, the country stood at the ready—albeit not overanxiously—for the Soviet ogre to invade. The Russian danger has passed. The bunkers, now useless, were left to
the winds of the steppe; never again will thunder rumble from their gray, wide-open mouths. I discover several masses of flowering rhododendron. Michèle Nicolas, a researcher in ethnobotany at the CNRS,* told me that the Turks call honey made from the nectar of rhododendron and azalea “mad honey.” It’s said that Xenophon’s army was defeated because his soldiers had partaken of it and were unable to fight.

  The wheat is still green here, the result of the region’s elevation. At noon, in the deserted village of Korucuk (koh-roo-djook’ ), I walk in circles in the small streets lined by earthen houses. The roofs are circular, and they, too, are made of soil. A few thin weeds have sprouted from them. A woman lets me glimpse part of her nose and chador from behind a half-collapsed wall. I head in her direction to ask whether there’s a store in the village. But when I draw near, she disappears.

  After a fruitless quest, two young, timid girls show me where the bakkal’s shop is, a windowless earthen building that I’d mistaken for a barn. The door is partially opened. I give it a push and discover three men in the shadows. The grocer has nothing edible to sell me. I’m finally persuaded to take a can of juice. They ask me to tell them about my journey. One of the men is the imam. He goes out while the bakkal spreads a piece of cardboard on the ground, performs his ablutions, and spends a long time in prayer. As I’m about to get going again, the cleric invites me to have lunch.

  During the meal, he and the bakkal speak only about religion. The bakkal wants to know what my religion is. I answer him with a little white lie, saying I’m a Christian. His lips curl in disdain and, I suspect, in disgust, as though I had said, “I am the devil.” The imam knows nothing about the rites of Catholicism, and he asks me about them. I answer as best I can. While walking with me to the edge of the village, he tries to convince me to convert to Islam. If I were to tell him that I’m an agnostic, he’d be horrified. I noticed, for the first time since I began entering people’s homes in Turkey, that there was no portrait of Atatürk on the wall.