Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

A society stuck in time? Not exactly. Information society is rife here. And this change is visible in every home, for one very specific piece of furniture has made its appearance, identical everywhere. It’s a large sideboard with a glass-enclosed upper section containing a few photos or trinkets. The lower section contains the household dishware. And in the middle sits the television, the reason this piece of furniture was purchased; but the remote controls are kept within easy reach of the head of the house. Oral transmission, the importance of the spoken word, is still at the heart of Anatolian culture and has easily blended with modernity, embodied in the cell phone, which Turks call a “pocket phone.” The success of Internet cafés is the result of these same mental processes.

  As for social organization, in Kurdistan more than elsewhere, whether in terms of the relationships among men alone or the status of women, it has maintained the hierarchical and clan-based structure of ancient tribes. It’s only in the larger cities, in well-educated families, that the influence of Western culture has changed ancestral traditions. People sit around a table to eat and sleep in a room reserved for that purpose. And the bonds that ensure submission to the “lord” are relaxed among the undifferentiated masses of city centers, such as in Ankara, İzmir, and Istanbul.

  This morning, in my mind, I am already in Iran. Two weeks ago, a truck driver told me that the border was closed. Why? The fellow couldn’t say, but he was very assertive. In Erzurum, over the Internet, I asked a friend in Paris if she would look into it at the Iranian Embassy. They told her very graciously that the information was false. So my mind is at ease with respect to that matter: Iranians, irrespective of their political concerns, want foreigners to visit along with their dollars, and so they keep their borders wide open. In a Turkish newspaper lying around somewhere, I saw a photo and a headline related to Iran. Something’s going on there, but I don’t know what. I’ll find out when I get there.

  As is often the case in Anatolia, the city of Diyadin is a distance from the highway. It can be reached by taking a road running southeast. At the turnoff for this road, an ultramodern hotel complex is going up for the spa-goers who want to avail themselves of the hot sulfur water springing up from the ground. Unfortunately for me, it’s not finished. So I continue on to Diyadin, reaching there around 4:00 p.m. It’s a small city with dirt streets scattered with manure. The hotel, whose exterior appears dirtier than most, has been closed for a long time. I go into a neighboring teahouse to have a glass of juice and glean information. A schoolteacher—yet another one—comes over to talk. He tells me that if I’m interested, five kilometers to the southeast there’s a hotel with its own sulfur spring spa. I’m hungry, so I decide to first go in search of a restaurant. No need to spend much time looking: there’s only one. Stepping into the dark, one-room restaurant where several men are seated, my foot slips out from under me. Encumbered by the weight of my pack, I narrowly avoid falling. The floor is made of rough-hewn wood planks covered in a greasy layer of an unknown substance that you have to skate through if you want to keep your balance. I’ve never seen a restaurant so squalid, but who knows what I’ll see between now and my journey’s end? And, in any case, it’s not like I have a choice. In the hope that greater attention is given to the food than to the housekeeping, and once again placing my trust in my lucky stars, I order an eggplant ragout that—lo and behold—isn’t bad. The question now is whether my stomach will tolerate it.

  As usual, the figure of five kilometers is very approximate, as it takes me nearly two hours to get there. Along the way, to my surprise, I see a car stop, and out of it steps the muhtar who, the day before yesterday, drove me back to Ağri. He asks me many questions as though we were old acquaintances and can’t seem to let me go. He’s a friendly man, and I tell him, as best I can, what a pleasant time I had in the heart-warming gynaeceum and the interesting conversation I had with his son.

  Along the road, in several spots, wells are being drilled. The local water is reputed to heal skin ailments. I see an enormous pipe hiccuping as it spits steaming, yellow water in spurts out into a field. A pipeline under construction will soon carry it to the nearly completed resort near the state highway.

  The spa consists of two small resort houses, one private and the other public. They’re surrounded by one or two stone structures and a dozen round tents forming a kind of temporary encampment. What the schoolteacher from Diyadin grandly calls a “hotel” is in reality a single, windowless room, with cold, wet fieldstone walls that the wind passes right through. They crammed in four beds, whose sheets might, at one time, have been white. Three of them are occupied by men already fast asleep even though it’s still light out. The manager offers to rent me the fourth at a perfectly prohibitive price.

  Just as I’m about to begin negotiating, four men beckon me to come over. They’re the electric company employees I ran into just before my last encounter with thieves. We drink some tea. They tell me that they’ve come to bathe in the miraculous water and invite me to join them. The spa is a small structure built around an open-air cement basin about four square meters in size.* In it, splashing and jostling one another, are nearly thirty strapping lads, like herring in a barrel. There are no changing rooms; everyone just hangs their clothing on nails mounted on the walls around the basin and bathe in their boxers or briefs that they then let dry by simply slipping them back on. The water has the same brown color that I’ve seen in many hammams, when it’s saturated with too much accumulated dirt. It’s boiling hot. After ten minutes, we’re asked to get out, since there’s only one basin and it’s the women’s turn.

  Getting out of the bath, my new friends introduce me to a young man, Yakub, who runs a small shop under a canvas tarp. During the season, he sells juice and cookies to spa-goers arriving in a steady stream of small buses. He’s a happy businessman. He has one associate and an assistant, a university student who works with him during summer vacation. They have a lively business. Given the elevation, the season here lasts three months. Before and after, snow and cold take hold of the premises.

  “And what do you do the rest of the year, Yakub?”

  “Nothing, I work on my car and visit friends.”

  What a fortunate man, for whom three months of work provides enough income to get him through an entire year.

  The young Yakub, who returns each evening to his home in Diyadin, offers to let me spend the night in the tent where his shop assistant and associate sleep. It’s very roomy, and they have an extra mattress and large blanket. For dinner, his shop assistant takes out some split pea soup from a small freezer set up in a corner and drops it into boiling water. With a little water drawn from a pump and a bit of bread, we dine as we watch the last spa-goers shiver as they climb out of the sulfur bath and back into their minibus. Sundown sets the far-off hills on fire, offering a fabulous show. We go to bed as soon as it’s dark out.

  I fall asleep quickly but am wakened by the cold. I had completely forgotten that we are at an elevation of over 2,200 meters (7,220 feet) and that night is ice-cold. I quickly take my sleeping bag from my pack but can’t seem to warm up. I tremble for hours until finally, I remember that, at the bottom of my bag, I had stowed a survival blanket just in case. I had never used it. Why am I so absent-minded? In the dark, so I don’t wake up my hosts, I wrap myself in the thin plastic film and then slip once again into my down bag, pulling the blanket over me. I finally warm back up, but I foolishly spend three hours shivering and by the time I fall asleep, the sun is already coming over the horizon.

  Our camp comes back to life, the minibuses that spill out streams of spa-goers shortly after dawn drive me all too soon from my at-long-last-warm bed. We’re nibbling on hunks of bread that we wash down with tea when I have to make a run to the bathroom adjoining the hot water basin. I make a return trip, my backpack cinched, just as I am about to leave. But I don’t see any reason to be worried. It’s the third time since leaving Istanbul that I’ve come down with a case of the runs. In two days, I’ll have fo
rgotten all about it.

  When I begin to walk, the sun is already high. The traffic is relatively light. I’m already looking forward to the pleasures that lie ahead. In a few kilometers, ten, perhaps twenty, I’ll have my first glimpse of Mount Ararat. In the Middle Ages, Armenians had the custom of making the sign of the cross whenever this sacred mountain came into view. The reason is that there is an enduring legend that it was on the slopes of this ancient volcano, whose summit reaches 5,300 meters (17,400 feet), that Noah’s Ark ran aground. Several scientific expeditions claimed to have found vestiges of the sacred ark, but each time the wooden debris was dated, their hopes were dashed. Nevertheless, a small village on the Russian side bears the name of Nakhitchevan, which, in old Armenian, means “People of the Ship.” Personally, I rather like the idea that Noah ran his Ark aground at the foot of this sea of marvelous blue mountains.

  The road ahead gently climbs to a mountain pass topping out at 2,500 meters (8,200 feet). I try to ignore that dinner and breakfast have begun to dance a crazy waltz in my unhappy intestines and try to concentrate. But, between my belly and my head, it’s a lopsided contest. What’s going on in my tortured bowels outweighs my every thought. Fortunately, the road is built on a kind of embankment, such that, on either side, I can duck out of the view of the passing cars and trucks to relieve the severe bouts of colic, which force me to make increasingly frequent sprints, at the end of which I drop my pack—and my pants—in a mad panic. I’ve never had such a severe case of turista. The road continues to climb, and I find it harder and harder to walk. A severe headache grips my forehead. I blame the sun, which has grown fiercer, and I put on my hat. It makes no difference. All told, in the six- or seven-kilometer climb to the top, I have to stop nearly ten times to relieve a bout of diarrhea that’s knocking me out. The headache was the harbinger of a fever that soon has me shivering in spite of the heat. At the summit, a small stone structure shelters a group of soldiers. Two Kangals are chained outside. One soldier, hidden behind some sandbags, sees me and hails their commanding officer. The officer, a young man with a shaved head, intrigued by my getup, shouts to me in a voice blending both amusement and curiosity: “Gel, çay!”

  Even though I still have a long way to go before Doğubeyazıt, I’m quick to take up his invitation. I feel terrible, weak and incapacitated, and the fever is getting worse. The soldiers invite me out of the sun, into a kind of blockhouse. It’s a strategic location. From here, they can monitor the road below for ten kilometers or more from west to east. Before entering, the officer points to the cloudy summit of Mount Ararat. But I’m barely listening, and I have no desire whatsoever to contemplate anything, for I feel utterly awful. I plunk myself down onto a bench and wait for tea. The officer and I are seated at a small pedestal table, while over at the central table, several soldiers are busy carefully cleaning their weapons, which they’ve disassembled and whose components glow in the dim light. The officer has a good laugh when he hears that I’ve come from Istanbul. He says to himself that as soon as he saw me, decked out as I am, he took me for a strange bird, and in that he was not mistaken. Ah, ah, ah! Istanbul! Tehran! I don’t understand a thing he says, except that he finds me an inexhaustible source of mirth and that there are “problems” in Iran. But none of that alarms me. I’ve seen my share of “problems” from day one. A few more no longer frighten me. On the other hand, for the moment, I’m cold and I’m sweating, both at the same time. When a soldier brings me some bread and cheese, I feel like throwing up. I have a very hard time convincing them that all I want is to drink a bit of very hot tea. Little by little, after many cups of the beneficial liquid, my discomfort fades.

  I really have no desire to get back underway; I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But first, I must answer the eternal question, “güzel, Türkiye?” (is Turkey beautiful?)—the question is asked with such intonation that it demands an immediate answer. I reply that, of course, Turkey is “çok güzel” (choke gu-zehl’) (very beautiful). The expression works in Turkish like “very nice” in English. A kind of all-purpose “open sesame” that punctuates statements and can be used to answer almost any question asked, and when associated with one’s index finger pointed at just about anything, it can fill awkward voids in difficult conversations. As soon as I stepped foot in Turkey, it became clear that if there were one expression to learn, this was it. But is it because I’m a little cranky on account of the turista that’s bothering me? I hit a sour note in my reply. Yes, Turkey is beautiful, but, I tell him, it’s too bad the country’s in a state of war.

  The young officer gets up to be more persuasive and assures me that they are surrounded by enemies. The Armenians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Greeks, and the PKK: everyone is out to get them.

  I’m aware that the border with Armenia is indeed closed and that the traditional enemy of Turkey is still Greece. As for the smoldering conflicts with the Iranians and Iraqis, they’re the by-products of the fight against the PKK, the Turks accusing their neighbors of harboring Öcalan’s militants within their territory. The Turkish army, moreover, does not hold back and from time to time asserts that it has the right to pursue them beyond its own borders, a practice that doesn’t help relations. That’s the situation outside the country; domestically, the PKK is everywhere, there are snipers in the mountains and bombings in the cities. I imply that when you’re on such poor terms with all your neighbors, you may be partly responsible. That puts a damper on the conversation. The soldiers, all Turks, then want to know what I think of Öcalan’s conviction. I scandalize them by predicting that it’s unlikely he’ll ever be executed.

  “But he’s a child killer!”

  What army hasn’t killed children? If we start judging generals for all the atrocities committed by their armies out in the field, many heads have yet to roll. But I don’t want to argue. So I tone down my antimilitaristic remarks. In the heat of the discussion, which might have, at any moment, turned sour, I somewhat forget how terrible I’d been feeling a short while ago, and the cool of the small structure along with the tea have revived me.

  How I wish I were more fluent in Turkish! I could, for example, tell these slightly naive grunts what I’d been told in Istanbul. Namely, that they should read a recently published book titled Le Livre de Mehmet.* Mehmet is a common first name and designates the average Turkish soldier: in English it might be called The Soldier’s Book. Written by a female journalist, Nadire Mater, it’s a series of interviews with around forty men who were drafted and fought in the war against the Kurds, especially as jandarmas. What these draftees reveal is enlightening. They’re mistreated by their officers and poorly fed, while the sons of good families—thanks to people they know—avoid the drudgery and slaughter: that’s just the backdrop. As for the horrors they face each day: the massacre of civilians on the simple suspicion that they belong to the PKK, the forced evacuation of villages that are then burned to the ground as soon as the last inhabitant has been ousted. And I could go on with this unfortunately now well-known list of the sophisticated forms of cruelty whereby the weak are made to suffer at the hands of those who, thanks to the uniform, think they’re strong. But I keep all of that to myself and simply nod in response to the many considerations my officer insists on meting out to me.

  He’s interrupted by two rascals in rather unusual garb. They’re local peasants. Over their jackets, they’ve donned a kind of vest with many pockets made of camouflage canvas similar to what soldiers and jandarmas wear; pockets that turn out to be bursting with rounds of ammunition. The men are backup soldiers whom the army trained in the villages and who are reporting in. I recognize the same model rifle that the man in Alihacı was waving around in front of my door. Pointing at them, the officer tells me that there are “good” Kurds, and these two are proof of that. I can’t understand the ensuing discussion between the officer and the two backups. And since I’m feeling better, I leave them behind.

  The sun is ablaze as I step back out of the small, thi
ck-walled fort. The road leads gently down toward a valley in which a river is napping. I’d like to do the same. Off in the distance, Mount Ararat is shrouded in mist. It’ll take me four or five hours to get there. I have to stop to relieve myself several times over the course of the next two hours. My water jug, because of my persistent thirst, is almost empty, and I try to hold off from drinking the last few drops. I put my jacket back on because the fever’s back and I’m shivering despite the harsh sun. I dip my hat in the river several times. The sun is beating down so hard at this altitude that in just a few minutes, it’s dry. When I stop beside the road and set down my pack to rest, I miss the cool air of the little fort that’s no longer in sight.

  My legs are increasingly weak. In an attempt to regain some strength, I try to eat a bit of bread. But just the sight and smell of it is unbearable and makes me queasy. As soon as I get back on the road, I stop once again on the berm. My teeth are chattering. The pack weighs tons. I set off yet again but notice that despite all my efforts to walk straight, I’m zigzagging down the flat road that, off in the distance, leads to a low mountain pass. Cars and trucks are fortunately few, as they could easily mow me down. I stop once again and start to crouch to take a seat when my legs, all of a sudden, decide they can no longer hold me up.

  When I regain consciousness, I’m lying by the side of the road, face down against the thick grass, and I’m pinned beneath the weight of my pack. For how long was I unconscious? I’m unable to get up. With tremendous difficulty, I undo the straps so that I can break free from my gear. I sit in the grass. My head is spinning. When I try to pick up my hat, which had fallen, I realize I’m no longer able to walk. I’m going to have to flag down a car and get a ride to Doğubeyazıt.

  It’s one of those small buses that provide connecting services to cities throughout Anatolia. It stopped a few meters away. The young boy helping the driver opens the back door for me. I drag my pack over; the kid grabs it and sets it on the back-row bench, and I get in next to it. The little steward eyes me intently: I must have an odd look. A practical fellow, he reaches into a box, pulls out a plastic bag, and hands it to me without a word. He’s just in time: I bury my face in it and throw up, hiccuping as I retch. Then everything disappears into a pleasant haze. When I finally regain consciousness, we’re in Doğubeyazıt. The minibus has pulled up alongside a sidewalk. The passengers have all disembarked, and the boy is standing in front of me, saying nothing. I hand him a banknote worth one million Turkish liras. I try to get my pack out of the minibus and have almost managed it when he comes over to lend me a hand. He helps me lift it so that I can get a strap over my shoulder. The vehicle’s parked just outside a three-star hotel with a freshly painted facade. I go in.