by Selcuk Altun
Poking my head into the Ortahisar Mosque, I watched the people at prayer. During the thirteenth century, when this mosque was the Church of Panaghia Chrysocephalos, the Pontus kings had held their coronation ceremonies in it. In the row of seven- or eight-year-old children at the very back, a faded and illegible message in English on somebody’s sweater briefly aroused my curiosity.
We then took a break at a café for retired men, where whoever wasn’t duelling with his cigarette was counting his prayer beads very slowly. I was a bit abashed by their universal chorus of ‘Welcome’ when we came through the door, as if they were saying ‘Amen’. Those with prayer beads appeared to be linked up to something between happiness and its opposite, and expecting news. On our way out I saw flyers for a horon dance in the window of a CD shop next to a print shop that declared its establishment in 1901 like it was sending an SOS. A young man in the doorway looked at me with eyes that said, ‘Mistakes will not be forgiven.’
I could express the lightness of being I was feeling in one sentence: ‘I was taken by a royal boat to the monastery complex.’ And a warning that Nomo would not have liked was whispered into my ear: the true task is to master the achievements of both the Byzantines and the Ottomans. In Trabzon I was halfway there. Yet if I was undergoing a test, I was beginning to grow curious about the examination committee. It would be a very Byzantine business indeed if Nomo was trying to wear me down in a duel. It was said that ‘Sumela’ derived from ‘melas’, meaning ‘darkness’ in Greek. I like darkness: every hue of it has a different taste. I know this from poetry.
*
I declared to myself with a sigh that, if I were writing a novel, whenever I heard that Altindere National Park was half an hour from Trabzon I would write down forty minutes. I felt like I was pursuing a protected species when I read that Sumela Monastery was situated inside the park.
I like words made of five letters, and I was curious about Maçka because it was both on the Silk Road and in Xenophon’s Anabasis. I’d forgot that Altindere Park was actually in the Maçka district. I was with Theo Pappas in a two-car convoy driving through the sunny autumn morning. I’d begun to sympathize with this wrestler-like guard who was never offended by my jokes, perhaps because he didn’t get them. I decided not to tease Askaris and so I didn’t say – yet – ’Was this man hired to unguard me?’
The way was charming: full of joy, full of green, under open skies with groups of clouds posing patiently. We saw buildings flimsy enough to belong to a cardboard stage set; maybe they grew out of seeds carried by the wind. We passed a middle-aged village woman with a pile of brush on her back and a bony cow on either side of her. The three of them walked with the same gait and swung their heads to and fro in the same rhythm. They were probably all thinking the same thing too.
As we headed south, the altitude and the quiet both increased. I greeted the sovereignty of silence with respect. I found the ticket-seller’s affection at the park entrance slightly out of place, however. If Askaris had been beside me I would have said something like, ‘This man is like a caregiver who demoralizes the patient.’ We climbed a curving road that grew more ruthless as it rose and came finally to a parking lot. Parked there was a tired minibus from the neighboring town. Altindere was shaded by colossal oak trees. We were caught in a stand-off between massive green and enormous silence. It was thrilling to feel that I could fly if I shut my eyes. Surely the park was the monastery’s terminal of eternity. Just then I came face to face with the mountain itself, rising 4,000 feet above sea level. Sumela shone like a giant painting suspended from the peak. I couldn’t take my eyes off it; was the monastery growing larger, the longer I stared?
It was an architectural work fifty feet high and 120 feet long, with a Gothic aesthetic that harmonized with the environment. Once more I found myself wondering how this structure got itself built on the edge of a cliff over the course of a thousand years; it made me ashamed of my puny diplomas. I knew that I would find the third purple square in one of two venues when I went inside the complex in another half an hour. I’d done my homework. I was coming to better terms with myself as I thought about how the human race, with faith and nails, could remove forty feet of a mountain. If by this means I was receiving some kind of spiritual training, I owed a debt of gratitude to the examination committee.
According to generally accepted myth, the Virgin Mary appeared in the dreams of two Athenian priests and ordered them to establish a sacred site in the Black Mountains of Trebizond. (Whenever Mary’s name is mentioned, it makes me think that Paul of Tarsus, from Southern Turkey, the flag bearer of Christianity, has not been properly honored.) The two priests, who were relatives, were brought by destiny to the foothills of these mountains after a tiring and tortuous trip. There they carved a small church out of the monumental rock and remained there until the end of their lives, dying on the same day. The local monks then took over, and the remote church gradually grew into a regional center. In the sixth century the Byzantine Emperor Justinian threw his support behind it. The period of difficulties came to an end in the fourteenth century with the help of the Pontus emperors. By now Sumela was a worldwide religious center. In the sixteenth century, when Governor Yavuz was injured while hunting in the nearby mountains, it was the monks of the monastery who healed him. From then on Sumela came under the protection of the Ottomans. With the declaration of the Republic in 1923, however, it lost its relevance and the monks moved away. It was natural for it to be forgotten on its mountain until the 1980s, when the beginnings of restoration got underway.
The artisan of the path to the monastery was nature. We headed up in single file, listening to the sound of a spring. It echoed like a warning signal and changed tones with each bend. The path was secured by enormous trees. Their dramatic roots, gripping the earth like octopi, seemed to say, ‘Traveler, every step you take is under our protection.’
I found myself in the Middle Ages as soon as I stepped through the main gate. To the left of the monastery was an open space like a courtyard, and around it were a dozen small buildings in addition to a church and chapel. I could believe that they were constructed out of stones plucked from the bosom of the mountain. First we went into the monastery with its five floors and seventy-two cells. Up close it looked like a small hospital, yet it was not without a library, wine cellar, and prison. With a little investment it could have become the most enchanting mansion on earth. When you looked down from the terrace a thousand-foot drop-off winked at you. No doubt every visitor exclaimed, ‘This must be heaven,’ on seeing the pellucid blue sky under which the sweet symphony of a running stream serenaded the virgin forest.
The passengers of the minibus, whose bumper sticker read ‘Don’t tailgate! You’ll regret it!’ were gathered in the courtyard. They were elderly and white-skinned and not happy with the tour. One of the women was berating her husband for bringing her here. My own short tour started at the chapel and ended at the rock-cut church. There were a total of seventy-two frescoes in the church and twenty more in the chapel. The cramped space meant that they covered the entirety of the two buildings’ stone walls, inside and out, plus the church ceiling. In the course of a thousand years the artists had illustrated almost the whole Bible, like a graphic novel. I stood in the deserted place and studied the images with the pleasure of viewing an art exhibition. They reflected not only the styles of various periods but also the different skills of master and apprentice. Looking at the still un-erased graffiti and the scratched-out eyes of saints, it was clear that the restorers had their work cut out for them.
We finished our warm-up tour. I entered the chapel with a prayer, tightly hugging a reference book analyzing the frescoes by theme. I inspected the whole place, inch by inch, from ‘The Nativity’ to ‘The Harrowing of Hell’. It was obvious that the purple square was not in the chapel. Well then, it had to be in the rock-cut church, which in some people’s eyes was the most symbolically charged space in Christendom. I examined the church frescoes first from
one perspective and then from another. I went over ‘The Transfiguration’ and ‘The Exorcism of Satan’ point by point three times, and ‘Two Lions of the Monastery’ and ‘Doomsday’ four times. Desperately I shone my flashlight on the ceiling and the high walls. I searched until my hands shook and my eyes blurred. It was all in vain.
I thought I would do more homework in the evening and come back the next day, visiting the churches again and the naked monastery for the first time. (The outbuildings were apparently kept locked.) But I somehow felt that I would come away from this expedition empty-handed. All the same, I didn’t want to admit that I’d failed an exam. What came to mind was a conspiracy theory that was probably shared by my grandfather. Whoever passed the exam would become Nomo’s head and carry out the last item in the will, whereupon he could abolish Nomo. It was therefore quite possible that the organization would take precautions to disqualify promising candidates and avoid just such a disaster. I thought also that by finishing off my dream journey in Trabzon, my grandfather’s home town, Nomo was playing their own little joke on me. It was time to end my unpaid leave of absence and get back to my students. And so Emperor Constantine XV, unelected, in exile and exhausted, left the rock church.
Waiting in the courtyard, the team was in an anxious state. I’d already telegraphed the bad news with a head-shake as they swept towards me. On Askaris’ face was that upset expression common to teachers whose students have failed their mid-terms. I said, patting him on the shoulder, ‘We’ll come back tomorrow, but I don’t think my luck will improve.’ Pappas kept his eyes on the ground and looked like he was trying not to smile. I tried to lighten the mood by grabbing his beard in both hands and saying, ‘Hey Theo, did you ask Nomo to disqualify me in my grandfather’s home town?’
After lunch in Trabzon I decided we should drive up the coast and return by way of Artvin, on the Georgian border. I planned to use this Eastern Black Sea excursion to pull myself together. I would review my notes when we returned. But first I wanted to drop by the hotel to freshen up and get rid of my briefcase. When I opened the door to my room and saw the small purple envelope on the night stand, my heart skipped a beat. To my shock and surprise, the purple square was inside! Stashing the envelope in my briefcase, I rushed back down to the team waiting in the lobby. I told them what had happened. We all decided to keep it a secret from hotel management, considering the possible risks. To assess the seriousness of the situation I took the silver box from my briefcase and placed the square in the third slot. There was a click and ten seconds later, in the opposite rectangle, the words popped up, ‘Palace of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, Iznik.’
Was this a royal joke or a trap? I turned to Askaris and said, ‘I won’t go to Iznik, nor even Izmit, until I speak with Nomo.’ It made me nervous to see him exchange meaningful glances with Kalligas. Scolding both of them, I said, ‘I don’t know who you should call, Askaris, Nomo or your master; but I know well that I want some kind of answer right now!’ The horse-faced man clutched his cell phone and walked away from us in order – probably – to talk to one of his superiors. He obtained a reply that somebody would get back to me in an hour. We climbed into a rented van and turned toward Artvin. Just as we hit Hopa we got a call, and Askaris told the driver to pull over. He got out and spoke on his phone briefly. He looked relaxed when he came back.
‘Excellency, they’re asking you to continue. Unfortunately no further information was given to me to pass along to you.’
Seeing my lip curl, he felt the need to go on.
‘Excellency, will you permit me to offer a brief explanation of my own?’
‘If you leave out the phony answer you got from the phone and compress it into forty words, all right.’
‘Excellency, this is my personal evaluation. In my opinion, you’ve been put through a test of character. If you wished, you could have hidden the fact that the envelope was left in your room and you could have taken us all back to Sumela and pretended to find the purple square there. Nobody could have claimed that you’d done wrong. But at the cost of being disqualified, you disclosed the truth.’
‘Askaris, you’ve already said enough. Do you even believe what you’re saying? My reasons to drop out of this game are stronger than those I have to stay in. But I’ll stay, maybe just because I refuse to walk out in the middle of an exam. And maybe too because I wouldn’t mind seeing Iznik.’
I relaxed on our return journey. The mystery of the envelope would be revealed, I supposed, either in due time or by way of a leak from Nomo. When I noticed the team also relaxing, I said, ‘Friends, I want you to hear a poem by Karacaoğlan, who happens to be the greatest poet – past, present, or future – this soil has produced. Askaris will translate it into English, then Kalligas into Greek. And Pappas will summarize what he’s understood. Whoever screws up will find himself in the Black Sea.’
LAMBDA
One issue that vexed me in elementary school was the failure of the seasons to keep up with the calendar. For me it was a scandal that in the northern hemisphere winters did not begin on December 1 and end on February 28. When I made the mistake of asking my grandmother the reason for this, the reply was, ‘These things are decided by the Almighty, not by the calendar.’
In our neighborhood, according to Eugenio, the four seasons consisted of yesterday, today, daytime and night time. Anybody cooking up a theory like this would have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Galatian, of course. But I knew that with this line of thought he wanted to put me in the mood for an exam. And that’s exactly how I started to tackle riddles and puzzles, with myself as my own rival and judge. If our winds had gone nervously slaloming around, I wouldn’t have liked December. But when I was a child, that muttering wind used to be my number two confidant. Naturally I didn’t admit it openly, as Tristan would have been envious. In one of the dreams that I hid from everybody the mother of all winds was the sea and their father was the shadow. The jealous shadow was the love child of the sun and the moon. He repeatedly abandoned the sea, yet he wouldn’t let the wind stay with her either. Yes, they were immortal as long as the sun continued to rise.
Winds were the carrier pigeons of time. They took messages from lakes to deserts, from forests to mountains and, most important of all, from one ancient building to another. As I descended from Galata to Eugenio’s museum-like house my mind was buzzing with these things. The Tower looked a little disappointed because I hadn’t got close to any buildings older than it on my journey.
‘Well, Reverend,’ I said, sidling up to it. ‘Things aren’t how you think. I’m in the middle of a test made up of six questions. The first two were so easy they were a joke, and on the third they forced me to cheat.’
I objected to being put through a stress test, if that was what Nomo had in mind. To get away from it all, I declared December a month-long holiday. The team’s response was something between joy and surprise. I would devote my time until the end of the year exclusively to my hobbies and the town prostitutes.
*
On the night of December 8 I was enjoying a pleasant tiredness after Hayal’s birthday party. ‘You’re the best big brother in the world and you deserve the best girl on earth!’ my sister had squealed as she embraced me upon seeing the Chopard wristwatch I’d bought her. My own stoic inability to feel euphoric was always a humorous contrast to her exuberance. I remembered the night I’d found Hayal, half-naked and crying on the street, and carried her home on my back. The olive-eyed girl had become my daughter and sister both and helped me retain my self-respect. I felt an inner glow as I gave her a hug. And to maintain that warmth I could think of nothing better than a vodka on ice.
Before climbing into bed with Michael Palmer’s Collected Poems, whose cover featured two lions about to cry, I checked my e-mail. Dr Mistral Sapuntzoglu was inviting me to a talk that she would give at the American Research Institute in Turkey on 12.12.08 in the evening.
ARIT was founded by a consortium of a dozen American universities. Its
respectable library held 12,000 volumes in English on Byzantium. More than the half-hearted promise I’d given to Dr Sapuntzoglu, it was this library that drew me to ARIT before the appointed hour. The modest mansion in Arnavutköy, without a view of the Bosphorus, was probably the legacy of either an inefficient or unfortunate Ottoman bureaucrat. I spent forty minutes in the quiet library on the top floor and felt relieved to find no notes from my father in any of the forty books I scanned. Boredom struck as soon as I pulled The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium off the shelf, so I went down to the lecture room. There were seventeen minutes to go before the talk. About fifty people stood around in small groups chatting and waiting. The male-dominated, middle-aged audience darted surreptitious glances at the young blonde woman in front of the lectern whenever they got the chance. She was conversing with a bearded foreigner and Selçuk Altun. I was still in the phase of surprise when Eugenio’s old friend beckoned me over with an insistent gesture.
In his bookish English he said, ‘Evidently you’ve already met Misty, in Mistra of all places. This kind of pleasant coincidence only happens in novels. And you still continue to insist on poetry.’
As I listened to him ramble on about how he had worked with the speaker’s uncle at the London office of an international corporation and how their friendship went back to the 1970s, I studied Mistral Sapuntzoglu with new interest. Apparently the blonde woman who’d assisted my research in Mistra had blue eyes and a pert nose. Her high forehead was a sign of intelligence, according to my grandmother. When I joined the conversation I saw that she was not in fact a cold Scandinavian beauty. She was self-confident and relaxed, like somebody from the Mediterranean. I figured that men put up with her conceited ways because of her beauty. Me, I never did like those ‘Grace Kelly’ types. I planned to sit in the back and sneak out at the second paragraph.
