Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  The ambulance stops on the side of the road. A breakdown? No, the nurse has stepped out, and one of the drivers takes her place. She’s going home. Is she angry with this impenitent patient, or does she think I’m no longer conscious? In any event, she doesn’t even say good-bye. I’m happy to see her leave, because she told me she lived in Istanbul and that means that, this time, we’ve arrived. But the city is gigantic. The last minutes seem to go on forever. We cross the suspension bridge over the Bosporus. Its siren screaming, the vehicle forces its way through traffic that’s still heavy though it’s already late at night. We finally pull off the road and into the brightly lit hospital courtyard. I’m wiped out and let them transport me on a stretcher and then onto a wheeled gurney that they shove into an elevator. A slightly chubby blonde with thick, beautiful braids guides my rolling bed, pushed by one of the drivers, up to a room. The male nurse slips out, eager to get back to his own bed, exhausted by two days of crazed driving. I explain what I’m feeling to a doctor who speaks some English. He examines me, and, upon seeing my rear end, he exclaims:

  “What’ going on there?”

  I can’t see, for obvious reasons.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re burned!”

  “They put an ointment on me.”

  “You’re having a bad allergic reaction. Do you remember the name of the drug? It looks terrible . . .”

  I’ve been spared nothing. A little later, one of the doctors comes back to catheterize me. A nasty moment. And then, alone in my room, I’m finally able to relax. I look up at the clock in the hallway. It took us twenty-three hours to cross all of Turkey. I now know that, after a certain level of suffering has been exceeded, we no longer fear death.

  A sweet lethargy brought on by the morphine envelops me. After all the jostling on a narrow gurney, the hospital bed—although hard—seems deep and soft as a featherbed. I finally sink into a deep sleep.

  It’s 6:00 a.m. when I wake up. I slept very little but enough to regain strength. I have something like a hangover and the unpleasant sensation of having wet the bed. The allergic reaction caused by the dastardly nurse’s ointment has bloated and blistered my skin, and nasty yellowish lymph is draining from the countless pustules. It oozed overnight and dried, turning the sheets starchy. It is incredibly unpleasant, but compared with yesterday’s agony, it’s only a minor annoyance. I have my optimism back and some of my sense of humor. I’m not much to look at, but I’m alive, the sun is shining, and perhaps I’ll find the nurses I hear working in the hallway attractive. What a disappointment: the first person to come through the door is a short, chubby man here to do the housekeeping. His name is, of course, Mehmet, and he completely ignores me. As the days go by, he warms up, his apparent indifference being nothing more than the manifestation of his natural shyness, which I eventually manage to break through.

  Around 8:00 a.m., a cadre of men in white examine me. The verdict in Turkish is translated by one of the surgeons who has a rather good mastery of French, Metin Sayan. The dysentery has caused such a violent and painful reaction that they dispense with the rest of the auscultation. They’ll have to operate, ablating certain veins. Apart from that, I have a prostatic blockage—something I already knew—and an allergic reaction to the miracle ointment. The scientific consensus is that I’ll need several days before I am ready to board a plane, and then I’ll have the operation in Paris without delay. For now, I first have to regain my strength, because I’m too sick to endure the four-hour flight between Istanbul and France.

  The medical faculty now gone, I take an emotional nosedive. An operation? That means several weeks of hospitalization and rest. After such extended inactivity, I’ll be physically at the bottom of my game. During the time I’ll need to recover from the surgery and then begin training again, a lot of water will have flowed beneath the bridges of the Euphrates. My plan to get back underway by the end of August on Doğubeyazıt’s silken road is now much more problematic. What alarms me most is this prostate business, since next year I have to walk in the desert.

  Dr. Günay—the IMA associate—who drops by to see me is a die-hard optimist.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your prostate, it’s probably just a case of prostatitis, which is to say a temporary condition that will quickly return to normal. Aside from that, we’ll get you back up and walking. The staff at Vatan (Homeland) Hospital, where you wound up, are all top-notch. I’m booking you on a flight back to Paris four days from today.”

  I’d like to believe that his diagnosis is correct, since I’m not too keen on the prospect of having long-term problems with my prostate. The trouble of growing old is to a large extent the result of an accumulation of little nothings, physical manifestations that on their own are by no means insurmountable. Failing eyesight, a knee that hurts when you bend it, stubborn low back pain, the last few strands of hair that fall out or go white, an arthritic flare-up . . . so many minor annoyances that pop up and punctuate the long and winding road that leads us, according to an expression I find rather silly, to our “final resting place.” In my travel notebook, right where I broke off, I jot down my war plans: I go back to Paris and have my operation right away. In two months, I’ll be fit enough to get back on the road. I’ll have to get going no later than about September 15 so that I can be out of the mountains before the return of cold weather and the first snowfalls, since, at an elevation of 2,200 meters (7,200 feet), they come early. By the end of October, by November 15 at the very latest, I’ll be in Tehran.

  I receive a visit from the lovely Rabia, my Turkish friend who will soon be marrying lucky Rémi. Her friendly presence, my first interaction with a familiar face in over two months, and the opportunity to finally chat in French, all make it a heartwarming experience. Rabia tells me that her grandfather was Kurdish and that he was clan chief somewhere in the east. She, too, wants the war to end and for Anatolia’s economic recovery to finally bring peace and prosperity to the region. Perhaps, I tell her, Öcalan’s trial may prove to be a unique opportunity to bring the conflict to an end? But members of parliament will need to display a great deal of statesmanship and courage in order to vote against the execution of the man most hated by the Turks and most idolized by the Kurds.

  While talking about her marriage, which will be held in a civil ceremony, I ask her about Muslim weddings. They’re simple services that take place in the presence of three persons: the couple and a third party, a kind of witness, who can be an imam, although not necessarily. The witness asks the groom: “How much is this woman worth?” A price is offered, in gold. They’re married. If the husband changes his mind later on, all he has to do is pronounce the formula “Go away” three times. They’re divorced. The man’s only obligation is that he must pay the price he established when they were married.

  I spend my time drawing up plans for the Silk Road. Between two bursts of optimism (I’m going to shake this off and get back on the road right away, etc.) and of pessimism (you’re nothing but an old man, you’ll just have to settle for tour groups from now on, etc.), I let myself go in the hospital’s soothing environment and start making uncompromising plans and assessments. My dysentery is due, needless to say, to having ingested either polluted water or food. I can’t get that greasy spoon in Diyadin off my mind. It’s now clear: the man who was supposed to clean the floor must’ve also been on dish duty. What I’ve experienced these past few weeks means that I have to be even more careful going forward. On certain days, I clearly overestimated my body’s stamina. Given the state of fatigue I was in, just about any virus or microbe sauntering about the plains of Anatolia just like me would obviously have found me rather attractive. The first amoeba walked by, and, lo and behold, I was headed to a blood wedding. I overestimated my strength. Why? Because I want to avoid growing old? To prove to everyone else and to myself first of all that I’m still a “young man”? That’s possible, anything is possible, although I can attest to the fact that, if so, I was never consciou
s of it.

  I have to face the facts: in failing to reach my destination in Tehran, I’ve lost round one. But the game’s not over. After all, the one thousand seven hundred kilometers (1,054 miles) I covered this year prove that I’m not short on energy or endurance. I have enough left to make it all the way to China. In this long walk—this long, solitary journey—life ebbs and death flows. The former still has a few victories to glean. I know that the latter will eventually carry the day. Meanwhile, I thumb my nose at it. And I’m only at the start of a twelve-thousand-kilometer journey.

  The thought reminds me of a meaningful encounter I had with a little man one evening last year along the Way of St. James, in a guesthouse, only a short distance beyond Le Puy-en-Velay. “At seventy-two years old,” he told me, “I feel my abilities starting to decline. I therefore enjoy those I have left so as to accomplish the goals closest to my heart: hiking Compostela this year and climbing the Mont Blanc next year. After that, I’ll do what I can.” I went ahead of him until the village of Conques, where, taking a day off to rest, he caught back up with me. He had had some trouble with his shoes, which he finally resolved. He seemed to be in excellent shape. He set out ahead of me, and I never saw him again. From time to time, at an inn, I heard tell of a little old man who walked as fast as the wind.

  I’d like to make it all the way to China. And I’ll come back, too, for all those whom I love and for my dear Pénélope waiting for me in our small village cemetery. After that, I’ll do what I can. Life lies ahead of us, not behind. Preparing for and carrying through with this journey has been a fantastic mental challenge, a new birth into a new life. For the entire one thousand seven hundred kilometers or so that I traveled through Turkey, even though I hadn’t anticipated its untimely end, this journey has been absolutely amazing. From the most remote villages all the way to the university of Erzurum, I’ve met so many warm, welcoming people that I’m at a loss for words. My walk through this land, so rich in history, has set me right once again with the world. And all along the way, I was escorted by a host of ghosts from the past: the heroes of the Trojan War—the Golden Fleece—the Ottoman Empire—the troops of Tamerlane, that “scourge of God”—Gordias and his son, the inventors of the Gordian Knot—Alexander the Great, who sliced it in half—Julius Caesar . . . They were all there, somewhere between myth and reality, right beside me with each step and every thought. As for the landscapes, the stark beauty of these vast expanses, mountains, and chasms, of these narrow gorges and of the steppe-land that I trod with my hiking boots: it’s as vivid as ever, as if permanently burned into my retinas.

  However enthusiastic I am about this land’s rich past, I’m more critical of modern-day Turkey. The revolution it experienced under Atatürk is now floundering, mired in a society crippled by the huge gap between the rich and the poor and by the omnipresence of religion. The rich of the country’s west want to be more Western than Europeans are. The poor of the country’s east console themselves with religion or guerilla warfare. The country needs a new Atatürk, but could modern Turkey ever produce one? This is, as far as I’ve been able tell, a society on lockdown, just as it was under the Sultan when Turkey was the “sick man of Europe.” Under the weight of its inflexibility, the regime collapsed, incapable of resolving its contradictions. Today, Turkey is truly torn between the East, where it is geographically located, and the West, where it would like to be. Pulled in a hundred different directions—by its attraction to Europe, conservative society, extreme nationalism, its brutal military tradition, and a tendency to fall back on religion—the country is wavering, hesitating, trying to get its bearings.

  The Turkish-speaking countries of the former USSR would constitute a region of choice for the country to expand its economy and diplomatic ties, but it does not seem to have understood this. In order to establish whether it is situated in the East or the West, Turkey must first carry out agonizing reform. Asia doesn’t begin on the other side of the Bosporus, as geographers tell us. The divide exists in every family with, on one hand, men, westernized and educated, and women on the other, kept under the yoke of daily labor and far from realms of learning. There’s a rift between the degree-holding women of Istanbul and Ankara, their hair blowing in the wind, and the unschooled, veiled women of the villages—whether Turkish or Kurdish—who live in a clan-based society still stuck in the Middle Ages.

  The country has experienced two major events that could, if real debate were to be held within the country, guide it to redefine its positions. The first is the impact of several refusals Europe made opposing Turkey’s entry into the European Community on public opinion and the political establishment. The second is Öcalan’s trial. These two developments, in their implications, clearly focus the debate domestically on peace with the Kurds and externally on peace with Greece. Two of the Turks’ historic enemies. The temptation to resolve these two problems through violence—the army’s solution of choice—can only lead to even greater isolation and increased poverty. The fact that Öcalan has not been executed and the rapprochement with Greece after the terrible earthquake that ravaged the İzmit region in August 1999 are two reasons for hope.

  Of course, it’s easy for me, a Westerner detached from the historical context, to pass peremptory judgment. This is something I try to avoid, for what, in the end, can I truly comprehend? What exactly did I go looking for in those dispossessed villages? I went in search of a past that the poor themselves could care less about, because their awareness is focused on what they don’t have. And what they don’t have, I, a well-heeled Westerner, do have, and yet I’m trying to get rid of it.

  In Room 407 at Vatan Hospital, I play the philosopher, going over my voyage in my mind, planning out the next one, and, in my school notebook, sketching out the road ahead. In leaving, I wanted to understand the world. But does the world let itself be understood? At the end of the road, will I find wisdom? Or will I still be pointlessly waiting for it to come before death grabs hold of me? As a doer both by nature and by necessity, I must seek—along this slow road I’ve plotted out for myself—silence, meditation, and tranquility of soul. They won’t all show up at once, of course. They’re not crouching in the shadows of Xi’an’s high walls, waiting for my arrival to reveal themselves. They’ll appear along the way—on the footpaths and roads, in the cities, with each and every encounter to come, and in the millions of steps I still want to knit together—and help me quietly set the last stone in the wall of my life.

  Before me, no one ever traveled the Silk Road in its entirety on foot. At least not since Marco Polo, you might argue. But still, I don’t think I’m trying to accomplish some great feat or act of prowess. Rather, I’m forcing myself to slowly digest all that my life has been. For all the time that I’ve been looking for myself, has this journey revealed me? I must humbly acknowledge that I feel that I am the same, and yet, in flashes, I sense that I have somehow gained access to the notion of eternity. That’s a big word, you might say. But the vast steppes of Anatolia, where the eye gets lost, are conducive to daydreams in which you find yourself rubbing elbows with the divine. And there’s more: if you seek, as I consistently have, to be unafraid of an occasional brush with death, if you’re willing to go to the trouble to give it some thought, then the doors of the infinite will open more quickly for you.

  After all these days on my own, I have some confirmation that we’re only truly ourselves in perseverance, in adversity, and in the exceptional. But my stoic side has once again won out over the epicurean I’d like to be. To truly slow down, you have to give something up. I didn’t give up much of myself. Even before leaving, I planned everything out: the stages, the stops, where I would go sightseeing. Today, I promise myself that, between Doğubeyazıt and Samarkand, I won’t hold myself to a timetable.

  Samarkand . . . just the name of that city, one that has haunted my dreams since first having read about it, gives me hope. To get there, I will once again confront the mountains of Anatolia and Iran’s mosquito-infested
marshlands, I will traverse Tehran followed by wild, barren deserts, and then I will relax for a time in Bukhara, where the shadows of its despotic, mad emirs still roam.

  In a few hours, my plane will take me away to Paris. But my heart will remain here, in a precise location: by the wayside of the road to Doğubeyazıt, where, in another life, I fell to the ground. In a few weeks or—if I’m sicker than I realize—in several months, I’ll once again leave in the sand at that spot the footprints of my trusty boots. And turning to face the east, I’ll once again take up my walking stick and resume my journey. With, stretching out before me, ten thousand kilometers of the unknown.

  TRANSLATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I dedicate this translation to my father, Stanley A. Golembeski, who proofed the first chapter several years ago. He passed away in 2018 as I was completing the final draft.

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.

  Thank you as well to Jennifer Wolter, PhD, French professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and master wordsmith, both in English and French. I would also like to acknowledge a former student at Grand Valley State University from Turkey, Uğur Çakıroğlu, who kindly answered my questions on the Turkish language.

  I owe a great debt of gratitude to the expert editors who proofed my translation, especially Jon Arlan and Bob Mitchell. Their constructive comments contributed tremendously to the final draft.

  Above all, I would like to express my appreciation to the author himself for having set off on such an amazing and inspirational “long walk” at the age of sixty-two and—what is perhaps an even more arduous journey—for taking the time to put it into words, so it could be shared with others. Grand merci, Bernard!