Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  I keep telling him, to no good, to give me back my map.

  I have no choice but to follow him, and that way I’ll find out what he wants from me. The kids behind us are snickering. They already know what he’s up to. The rascal, waving his arms, steers me between two houses, then leads me toward the steppe. There’s no sign of a road, just a kind of crevice in the flat landscape with a few small live oaks growing at the bottom. I stop dead in my tracks.

  “Where’s the road?”

  “Over there, farther on . . .,” and he points to the horizon, out beyond the pastures. At the same time, he picks up stones and throws them at the kids, yelling at them to clear out. He asks me what I have in my pack. It’s now obvious that he’s intent on robbing me by leading me into the ravine, where no one can see us. The kids stay far enough away so as not to get hit with stones but stay put. They don’t want to miss the show, and—who knows?—they probably hope to come away with a few scraps of loot.

  Paying no attention as he insists that I follow him, I head back toward the village. I realize that as long as there are witnesses, he won’t dare make a move. Increasingly jumpy, the man tries to hold me back by the sleeve, swearing that the road is this way. Some women have come out onto their doorsteps. They’re amused by the spectacle and are probably wondering how Mr. Jumpy, as I call him, is going to swindle this tourist. As I make my way back to the road—this is becoming a habit—I angrily curse myself. Once again, I walked straight into a booby trap. And I can’t say that I hadn’t been warned. There has been one sign after another since this morning. Now I’m trapped. There’s no “village lord’s house” here, only a dozen poor shacks, more like huts than houses, nestled in a low spot in the terrain.

  I have to quickly come up with a solution. If I head back toward Ağrı the way I came, then, in the solitude I hiked across this morning, I’ll be handing this ruffian exactly what he wants: a secluded spot where he can plunder me at will. So long as I remain in sight of the villagers, I’m more or less safe. I recall that, on my map, two groups of houses were rather close to each other. I climb the small incline heading south. From the top, I spot the other hamlet, about two kilometers away. I immediately decide to go for it. It might be worse over there, but Inşallah! To make matters worse, it’s in the exact opposite direction to the one I need to travel, since the rest of my journey is to the north. But right now, the urgency is to escape the danger posed by this man. So, with a decisive step, off I go, and the fellow gives chase at a pace to match mine. My decision to make a run for it was motivated by another idea that came to me. Should it come to a power struggle, I’ll at least have a chance to get away. If I stay put, as demonstrated earlier by the behavior of the women and children, village solidarity will play into his hand. Rather than one burly fellow against me, there’ll be ten.

  This is really not my lucky day. No sooner have I walked a hundred meters past the last house than a young man runs up to join us. Friend or foe? He must be seventeen or eighteen years old. He has an open face and greets me with a friendly smile. I especially take notice of his handsome, honest eyes, and I convince myself no treachery could ever come from someone like him. Although they’re speaking Kurdish, it’s clear that Mr. Jumpy is trying to persuade him to help him out. The other, on the other hand, seems to be trying to calm him down. He speaks to him in a calm voice and doesn’t shout. Changing tactics, Mr. Jumpy, who’s walking next to me, suddenly reaches his hand into my pocket. I block his arm and with a heavy shove send him to the other side of the path. Adrenaline courses through my veins, and I’m ready to pounce on him, outraged as I am. Fearing that I’ll strike him, Mr. Jumpy keeps his distance. So, the young man, with his index finger at his forehead, motions to me that “he’s crazy.” You’d damn near think I’d become a magnet for village idiots.

  Dropping the idea of fighting, I press on. Mr. Jumpy, a little subdued in the face of my determination, has gone over to the young man. He takes my map from his pocket and shows it off with pride. I’ve noticed on many occasions how this mysterious object holds something magical for these simple country folks who’ve never seen one. While for me it’s purely of practical value, for them, it is a book within their grasp, since even people unable to read can decipher a map by identifying surrounding cities and villages. I’ve closed the gap between me and my thief. Paying too much attention to his loot, his guard’s down. I suddenly snatch it out of his hands. His eyes flare with rage. This time, we’re going to come to blows. But then no, since, just at the right moment, the young horseman I saw earlier comes riding up at a full gallop. He’s a robust fellow riding bareback on a handsome dappled horse. Mr. Jumpy speaks to him in Kurdish. I avail myself of this brief respite to tuck my map safely away in my pocket. And once again, I ask myself: friend or foe? Unfortunately, I quickly have the answer. He speaks only to Mr. Jumpy and ignores Honest-Eyes. His first sentence lets me know where things stand.

  “Your pack is heavy, I’ll put it on my horse.”

  They take me for a complete imbecile. But the horseman’s arrival isn’t helping my situation. Given that I’m in good physical shape, I stood a fair chance of escaping Mr. Jumpy. I could keep him at bay with my stick, as I did with the Kangals! And walking at full tilt as I’m able, I could have exhausted him rather quickly, because, young though he is, he hasn’t been training like I have. But now that he has the young rogue to back him up, I’ll have to kiss that stratagem good-bye.

  During this time, I’ve made headway, and we’re midway between the two hamlets. I’m very focused, tense; the rush of adrenaline nearly has me running. I’m not afraid. I’m simply furious. First with myself, then with the local culture, according to which there’s a fellow ready to rob me in each village. The horseman speaks rather crudely to Honest-Eyes. He clearly is trying to get him to go back to the village. I have no intention of letting my only ally get away. I go over to him, put my hand on his shoulder, and say “arkadaş” (ar’-kah-dahsh) (friends). He smiles at me, but he’s clearly somewhat worried, for the two rogues will make his life miserable after today’s events.

  Mr. Jumpy keeps trying new tactics. He pretends to have a painful headache, and, saying that he needs to find something to help, he tries to open one of the pockets of my pack. A little later, he slowly nudges me toward the horse, and the horseman comes near, probably getting ready to jump me. I move away. A tractor towing a trailer comes toward us in the direction of the village that we left. If it’s going beyond it, I’m saved. The man driving it looks friendly. I raise my hand and he stops about twenty meters (66 feet) or so away. I run toward him, but as soon as I’m about to put my hand on the trailer, he starts back up. Clearly, my two rascals must have motioned him behind my back not to give me a ride. I’m out of luck. I start back up toward the small town, which is now not very far away. The horseman, a little sharper than the other, realizes that if I make it to the hamlet, I just might get away from them. He tries a ruse.

  “There are terrorists in that village. We’ll protect you as you travel through, and afterward we’ll show you which way you need to go.”

  The way I need to go is right here, to my left. But to head that way with an escort like this, risking it in the countryside would be suicidal. I pretend to go along with the idea. I have to reassure them and get them to drop their guard.

  In front of the second shack, a man lethargically digging up his yard takes advantage of our arrival to take a break and watch us. I suddenly turn in his direction and ask him where the muhtar’s house is.

  He turns to look toward the road leading west along the side of his house and begins to raise his arm, then suddenly stops. Behind me, Mr. Jumpy must have motioned him not to say anything. So he says nothing, but the initial gesture was enough. I turn onto the road heading west. This is clearly the right thing, because the three dodgy customers, after a few steps, stop, then watch as I move away. One hundred meters farther, to two unschooled little girls standing hand in hand, I repeat my question. They giggl
e and point to the house right in front of me, behind a wall closed with an iron gate. Back in the distance, the two clowns haven’t budged. When I knock at the door, they turn back and head off. I feel a huge relief. If they didn’t think I’d find an ally in the person of the muhtar, they wouldn’t have fled. So there’s a decent chance I’ll be in good company.

  In the courtyard, a young, veiled woman is busy washing clothes. She is in her early twenties and has twinkling eyes. The muhtar is not home, but I can come in.

  What am I going to tell these people? As I go up the stairs leading to a veranda, which opens out onto a large room, I cobble together an explanation. I don’t want to cause an argument by accusing Mr. Jumpy and the horseman. After all, nothing happened, and they’d find it easy to categorically deny all my accusations. The relationship between two villages so close to each other must be good, and a foreigner, if there were some conflict, would surely serve as an excellent scapegoat. But there’s no way I can keep heading south; that’s not my road. If I return north, I’ll have to go back through Mr. Jumpy’s village. I have to therefore return to Ağrı as quickly as possible and, this time, stick to dreary State Road 100 to limit the risks.

  In the vast room that—as always in these houses—serves as the living room, the reception room, a room for just passing through, and a meeting place, ten women or so and just as many children are seated on cushions filling the air with their chatter. “Above all, don’t speak to women” was the recommendation of the Kurd I met in Paris. But how, in the present circumstances, can I do otherwise, since there’s not a single man? A rather heavyset woman steps forward: she’s the muhtar’s spouse.

  “I’m lost. I want to return to Ağrı, but I’m too tired. Can you call a taxi?”

  “Of course,” she says, asking me to set down my pack, while offering me some tea.

  I agree to everything, I’ll go for anything, provided they don’t throw me out of the village with an escort of thieves. A young boy picks up the phone and turns to me gesturing comically: the telephone is out of order; there’s no dial tone. No problem, I’ll wait for it to come back. The women form a circle around me and ask me to tell them about my odyssey. I take my time, embellishing the story. But I avoid mentioning this morning’s two hoodlums. The plump woman, waxing eloquent, tries to tell me about life in this microcosm, managed by her husband. The bulk of her lesson escapes me, but I understand that most of their husbands work in Germany and return only once a year.

  Little by little, in this pleasant gynaeceum, I let things go. I’m transported back to the warm, soothing environment in which childhood revels for a time and that is so very comforting, as long as you don’t fight it, to experience once again as an adult. Time passes slowly, the telephone remains silent, everything seems to be put on hold. As we are finishing our tea, the dial tone finally reappears, and the outside world reasserts its rights. They translate for me. It’s all set; a car will be coming, but not right away. I’m in no hurry. A young man of about thirty, radiating authority and righteousness, joins the group. He’s the son of the house, Selattin Akbalik. He asks me to tell him about my journey and wants to know all about Paris. The women, at all times efficient, capitalize on the opportunity to prepare a meal. Growing bolder, I offer to take a picture of all the women present. I expect them to turn me down, at least some of them, but they surprise me, and they all agree. The women of Doğutepe (doh’-hoo-teh-peh) definitely enjoy liberties that, in Turkey, I’ve only observed among city dwellers. The moral of the story: when man is away, woman feels she can fly.

  Selattin and I allow ourselves to be served by the rotund woman and her daughters—it only takes two men to reestablish subjugation—a meal of diverse vegetable dishes that are both delicious and filling: rice pilaf with caramelized onions, incredibly flavorful eggplant, and this yogurt that would delight any palate . . . True comfort food that melts in the mouth, food made for childhood. Yes, women definitely know how to work magic.

  When we’ve had our fill, Selattin asks me to step outside the room with him, since the women want to eat and we cannot be with them during their meal. I follow him out onto the veranda, where, as though in a smoking room, we continue our conversation.

  After the “second service,” one of Selattin’s sisters comes to ask her brother something in Kurdish, which he translates for me: the women want me to photograph them again. I’m delighted to be able to do this for them. With great seriousness, they go back to the same places that they had assumed for the first snapshot. Does the order in which they stand correspond to some hierarchy that exists among them, to an age spectrum, or are they simply taking up position based on the affection they have for one another? I noticed earlier how important their positions seemed to them, and I admired how quickly it all took place: they made me think of a group of young boarding school girls out on a field trip who’ve been reminded to get back in line and who silently comply, frightened like baby chicks. After all, this camera, even if they boldly confront it, must nevertheless seem to them like some magical box in secret league with some kind of sorcery. And, as everyone knows, when the devil’s close at hand, it’s best to obey and lie low.

  Around 5:00 p.m., the muhtar and his brother-in-law come looking for me. They’ll taxi me to Ağrı themselves, provided that I pay for gas, since it’s very expensive. We fill up in town, and they warmly thank me, whereas I’m thinking how I’ll never be able to thank them enough for having saved me from the damned booby trap that, stubborn old ox that I am, I walked straight into.

  So here I am, back at my starting point and, this time, definitively cured of my desire to go off on little excursions into the villages. Tomorrow, reconciled with State Road 100 that I’ve been snubbing for the past one thousand six hundred kilometers (990 miles), I’ll begin the final kilometers that will lead me to Iran.

  * TN: Danielle Mitterrand (1924–2011), the spouse of former French president François Mitterrand, is sometimes referred to in Kurdistan as the “Mother of the Kurds” for having championed their cause on several occasions: in 1986, she came to the defense of Mehdi Zana, the mayor of Diyarbakir, sentenced to a fourteen-year prison term for having given a speech in Kurdish. In 1988, she pleaded for international intervention when Saddam Hussein’s forces attacked Iraqi Kurds. She traveled to Kurdistan several times, most recently in 2009 for the opening of a school in Erbil that bears her name.

  * “You are French.” / “How do you know?” / “People told me . . . From what city?” / “Paris.” / “I worked in Créteil. Do you know Créteil?” / “Yes.” / “I was there at the same time as Mitterrand. Did you know Mitterrand? And Danielle? She’s a friend of mine . . .”

  CHAPTER XII

  DOWN ON HIGH

  It’s Friday, July 9, and in front of the door to my luxury hotel, passengers are getting on a bus headed to Doğubeyazıt, the border town. Just for a second, I want to hop on board. The banditry to which I almost fell victim yesterday shook me more than I can say. This is because, more than just the events, the atmosphere of mistrust and the fact that I constantly have be on my guard are sources of discouragement and disillusionment. I’m tempted to drop the whole idea. Stirring up dark thoughts, I teeter between despondency and anger. Quite simply, I have no desire to get back on the road. I walk toward the highway, but I’ve lost my nerve. In a lokanta, and even though I just ate a copious breakfast at the hotel, I have them bring me a piping hot çorba in which I dip half a hunk of bread. My father used to call this a “soupe de maçon” (a mason’s soup). Made right, it was so thick a spoon would stand straight up in the bowl. That’s what I busy myself trying to do. I have the sense that I’d do just about anything to waste time, like the class dunce in the morning before heading off to school. I’m in a rotten mood as I leave the restaurant. The temptation to take the bus disappeared as I watched it drive off. The sun is barely above the horizon. The happy owners of automobiles are busy washing them like they do nearly every day. It strikes me that they’d be well advi
sed to save water, rare as it is here. I tell myself that if they spent less time washing their cars and a little more time scouring their washrooms, there’d be a little less showing off, but improved hygiene. Farther along, yet another army garrison gets me thinking that if the money spent on tanks were instead used to build farming schools for Kurdish children, they’d be more willing to use their pencils than their fathers’ rifles.

  I’m sore at the whole damn world. The weather reflects my mood. The ground is soggy from yesterday’s rains. To make matters worse, a pain from nowhere, in my left leg and ankle, is making it tough to walk. Looking down at my shoes, indifferent to the scenery, I push on, while images from yesterday parade before my eyes, and I’m completely obsessed with those of the horseman and the thief with one shoe tied up in string. Add to this my anxiety about crossing the border into Iran, and my mind goes wild with all the troubles that lie ahead of me. Why would the situation be any different there, in an even poorer country than Turkey? Swarms of mosquitoes in the marshlands and thirst in the arid deserts lurk ahead. Will people there, too, take me for a millionaire, a Martian, or perhaps a terrorist? My eyes on the pavement, I don’t even look up at the trucks honking just to have a look at this madcap’s face, or who offer, waving their arms, to take me on board.

  What am I doing here? Around the world, in Europe, in the United States, in the Alps or in the Rockies, there are fairy-tale settings, just as beautiful as those here, where walking is a pure joy. There are other legendary roads where you can wander without risking your hide with every step. I vaguely regret not having chosen other itineraries I considered. The Pan-American Highway, for example, in the footsteps of the Inca, or the long walk of America’s pioneers heading to the legendary West on the Santa Fe Trail. Why did I opt for this country, where my life is at risk? What is the meaning of this journey as the prospect of arriving safe and sound is seeming increasingly unlikely? After all, I’m under no obligation to be here. I didn’t undertake this journey for financial gain or in a spirit of competition. My pension is enough for me to live comfortably, and, were I to return home tomorrow, no one could throw stones or hold it against me because I chose not to die in Anatolia. Often, when taking side roads, as was the case on several occasions, I was well aware that I was getting lost so as to best go in search of myself, to see what I was made of. Isn’t this an illustration of what Josée said to me jokingly before I set out, that my project could be boiled down to the formula: “Here’s to the two of me”? But there are stupid gambles. As it has been unfolding over the past two weeks, isn’t this journey one of them? And though I’m not adverse to the thought of losing myself in strange lands, since Erzurum, I’ve had enough keeping company with so many crackpot or half-wit oddballs.