Full Moon over Noah's Ark

by Rick Antonson

  The timing meant a further parting of the ways. Goran, Ian, Patricia, Nico, and I hugged awkwardly, wanting to say meaningful words. Instead, we mumbled goodbyes: “It’s been great.” “Keep in touch.” “Share those photographs.”

  I heard from Ian, “I hope your snoring heals.”

  Just before he left, Goran took off his Yankees baseball cap and stuck it on my head.

  FIFTEEN

  FISH LAKE

  “You think you understand. You don’t. If you get bad driver at border and get caught with something, my phone number no good for help. You’ll be … the American term? … Screwed.”

  —Ahmet, mountain guide

  “Maybe once a year, two times most, other people from the West come on this road,” Ahmet informed us as he drove out of Doğubeyazit, Fish Lake-bound. I was sitting beside him. Patricia and Nico were behind us, on one of the minibus’s bench seats. We were on a paved road making reasonable time when such a concept mattered not at all. Ahmet waved to bystanders as we passed through a village of twenty homes. Ahmet honked. Kids waved.

  “Rick,” he said once we were through, “that is where you’ll be tonight. My grandfather lives there. It is the way we return.” He suddenly turned off the paved road, admitting, “If you wish, we go straight to Fish Lake. More you should see where I take you first. Then to Balık Gölü!” He laughed to himself, then explained, “That is proper name for you call Fish Lake.”

  It was his whim. He’d talked of Fish Lake being “up the road” from his grandfather’s home. On the dirt road he asked, “Is OK, this detour? It is good road, just not today, as rains. We will slip, but you will see remote Turkey. Do?”

  “Yes,” Patricia answered for all of us. “Bad roads are more interesting.” The countryside eased into greens and ambers. The low-lying fields were spot-flooded, and shallow pools were everywhere as streams spread away from their main flow and formed giant puddles along their course. Rivulets corrugated the narrow road. Stones once laid as part of a gravel base had long since washed away, and traction was tough for the vehicle.

  Hay was stacked in yards and behind stone holding walls in the small village we approached. All this remained from the last harvest and, it being August, new seeding was taking hold in hopes of an autumn season as well. An orange tractor stowed in a yard was the bright spot in the scene.

  “If we can make it higher, the road takes us up,” Ahmet said. “You will see far. But clouds hang over the picture today.”

  Our vehicle’s tires slipped in the soft dirt, not because we were speeding and not because we were slow; it was simply a poor road for this light a vehicle. In response, Ahmet accelerated and the vehicle’s back end slid sideways. We were propelled forward and into another curve, wider than expected. As Ahmed fought to straighten out, the minibus’s rear wheels dipped into a ditch. We shuddered to a stop.

  “I don’t think I’ll forget this little corner of Turkey,” Nico said as he got out to assess the situation. To the assembled faithful he said, “Yup, we’re stuck.”

  We were not only stuck, we looked set to slip further. As Ahmet gunned the motor, his three passengers pushed. We tried a rocking motion, in hopes of a grip for the tires—to no avail.

  “It is that we sit here or not,” Ahmet said.

  “Not,” responded Nico.

  I suggested, “Why don’t I walk back to the farm where we saw the tractor? Ask for a tow?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Patricia offered, and we walked back down the road. After much slipping and almost falling on the muddy road, we reached the farm.

  “Hello!” I shouted into the farmyard. Behind a fence and off the roadway was a brick house, all one level and square, with space inside for two rooms. “Anyone there?”

  Patricia strolled over to the orange tractor and noticed an official-looking yellow light on the top. “Maybe part of a road crew?” she said.

  Across the street, a man in a sweater vest and long-sleeved shirt shouted at us. It was a language I did not understand, but he was pointing at a gritty farmer nearer to us.

  “Can you help us?” I asked the young man. His overalls implied he could do things with machinery that I could not. It was likely the orange tractor was his. “Stuck,” I said. “We’re stuck.” I sang the last bit so poorly that Patricia laughed. The man laughed too. He saw that Ahmet, far behind us, had his arms in the air.

  “Tractor?” said the man. His English was impeccable.

  “Tractor,” Patricia agreed.

  He let her (but not me) into the tractor’s cab with him, and they drove slowly out of the yard and toward the trapped vehicle. Trying not to read too much into this gallantry, I trotted alongside the tractor.

  Ahmet and the man shook hands and laughed through their language in a way that implied, “Hey, it could be you stuck in the mud instead of me.” Or maybe it was, “Yes, she’s pretty, but she’s with that tall guy over there.”

  The man chained his tractor to the minibus and hauled it out of the ditch in no time. His body language said it all, and his Turkish sounded emphatic when Ahmet translated: “Don’t even think of going further. It is worse, and you will get stuck again. And it’s a long walk back to my tractor.”

  We got in the minibus, Nico moving to the rear seat behind Patricia so he could stretch his legs. Ahmet turned our vehicle around and headed down the slope into a valley, onto the pavement, toward Fish Lake.

  “It is not that it is all pavement, I should have said.” Ahmet was describing the end of the paved road to Fish Lake, just as we again hit dirt road.

  Nico sang, “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.”

  Overhanging trees shaded the road from sun-brightened clouds. We slowed as we approached a bench at the side of the road where a man of long years sat with a cane supporting his right hand, in turn supporting his chin. He wore a rumpled suit jacket over a tartan shirt of red and gray. Between these layers was a cardigan vest with its entire button row done up. A beret put a slight shadow over his flinty eyes. If Humphrey Bogart had been of Kurdish stock, he would have looked like this man.

  A teenager stood beside him at the bench and flagged us down.

  Ahmet stopped and lowered his window, interpreting for us. “I ask what they need. And boy says, ‘Old man needs to go,’ and I say, ‘Go where?’ and he says, ‘Go with you.’ I want to say OK. Is that OK with you?” That last was a question to the three of us.

  Nico looked forward at Patricia and nodded back at me and said, “There is room.”

  I got out to help the boy help the Kurdish Bogart into the seat beside Patricia.

  “Phew,” she exhaled under her breath, an unintended whisper in response to the man’s odor that would be unmistakable in any language. Fortunately the old man did not hear her. He smiled, showing a few teeth, all on the upper part of his mouth.

  Ahmet turned to him and asked, “Where are you going?”

  Bogart nodded. Off we drove.

  And drove.

  The old man did not remove his beret. It sat square on his head, inches between it and the minibus’s ceiling. His ears were the size and shape of Portobello mushrooms, hugging the sides of his face.

  As we came to a lake, Ahmet said, without irony, “Fish Lake. Do you want to fish?”

  Whatever his intention, we did not stop, only kept cruising this back road, much to the amusement of the old man. He was happily humming a tune.

  “Do you know what song he hums?” I asked Ahmet.

  “It is an old man’s song. Many songs melted to one.”

  “It’s pretty,” said Patricia.

  As if he’d heard this, Bogart got louder in his humming. Every once in a while, as though his mind was taking him back to a dance party of long ago, he stabbed his cane at the floor in time with his humming.

  Going over a slight hill, we came upon a bay and were gliding toward a few homes along the road. We slowed at the lakeside, entering a village. Ahead was a road full of sheep, led by small boys and pr
odded from behind by a broad woman. She wrapped a headscarf around her cheeks and draped it down the back of her neck. Behind her was a mosque. Ahmet parked the minibus beside the lake, giving wide berth to the commanding flock.

  Six or so young men, all wearing jeans, sweatshirts, and running shoes, shuffled at a roadside work project, but stopped working when they saw us approach. Walking past the young men, I received “Hellos” as I made my way toward the flock of sheep and the other end of town. When I neared the shepherd, she forced me to the side; it was her road and her sheep, and neither moved for a stranger. The animals brushed against me, friendly but directing.

  I wanted to see the mosque up close. It was a fair walk to the aqua-green painted building with a white conical mantle and minaret, or as the Turkish call it, a minare. In any language, it is a lighthouse of sorts, in recognition of its role in the call to prayer.

  After circumnavigating the mosque, I saw that Bogart was out of the minibus as well, and was standing with the young men, though not speaking to them. Everyone was watching the mid-afternoon shuttle of animals.

  With no rush, my walk back to the minibus took me to the stone fence around the shepherd lady’s yard, where she’d marshaled her charges. Her husband came out of their house through a fly-screen door. The lady, now seated on a stool, was about to begin milking their sheep when she looked at her old man, quipped, and he sniggered. She pulled a sheep’s teat to begin the chore. Her husband acknowledged me and then moved, corralling the sheep to within his wife’s yanking range. He signaled me over with both his hands. She said something to him I didn’t understand, but her expression was all invitation to me. I hopped the fence (I’m sure there was a gate, but this leap was to indicate enthusiasm) and walked toward them as though I knew how to milk sheep.

  The man gestured me to bend, to squat in the same stance as his wife. I took it up. The woman demonstrated the simplicity of a downward pinch she’d been doing for half a century or more.

  My bare knees sank into the soft ground under my weight. While her husband laughed, the woman smiled a mother’s worry at me, implying I might not be comfortable. The side-glance to her husband was a reprimand for his giggles. He said something to her in Turkish, probably “Oh come on, Fatima. Looks like he’s from America. Who cares if he’s kneeling in sheep shit and doesn’t know it?”

  From the other side of the fence I heard, “Ah, Riko, when you’re finished milking the herd, you wanna wash yourself off before getting back on the bus?”

  “Nico, come here,” I said. “Ya gotta try this.”

  In a shot he was through the gate (without the fence-leaping exhibitionism).

  “You’re not exactly lowering the average age of local sheep milkers by joining us,” I said. “If you can harken back to your high school years of fondling, Nico, I think you’ll have fun with this.”

  The woman offered us a taste of our work, direct from the bucket of milk. I pretended to take a sip, knowing better, keeping my lips tight to the rim as I lifted the pail to fake my tasting. Then I passed the pail over to my friend with this advice: “Nico, the old man told me it’s best taken as a mouthful; tastes better.”

  “OK,” said Nico, taking a gulp.

  “Nico, I’m so proud of you,” I said as he tried to swallow, visibly torn between courtesy and the urge to spit it out.

  “R-i-k-o,” he spewed.

  At Fish Lake, Nico befriends the shepherdess and her husband in their home corral, then receives a milking lesson.

  * * *

  Ahmet got us into the minibus with the promise of lunch. He said, “I’ve brought chicken to cook. And bread. We have soup to warm up. We will light fire. By the lake.”

  He drove far into a field and parked. He said, “We should eat closer to the lake. It is good to walk there.” I’m a Boy Scout from way back, and any chance to have a campfire is welcome. Ahmet had brought firewood with him in the vehicle, but while we were walking to the lakeshore he told us to search for kindling. We picked up damp branches. He carried a plastic bag of dung chips. It would be a cooking fire, not one that would rouse us to campfire songs, but there would be warmth and heat and camaraderie.

  “Where is the old man?” Nico asked. “Did you leave him in the village?”

  Ahmet said, “I told him, ‘I thought you were going to go out,’ meaning at village. He says to me, ‘I just go with you.’ I think he came for ride. Is all.”

  I turned and saw the man ambling behind us, without his cane. To our surprise, Bogart must have gotten back into the minibus first at the village and fallen asleep on the last bench seat. We had all popped into the vehicle, Nico beside Patricia, and left for the lakeside without realizing he was with us.

  “Hey, wait for him,” I said, turning toward the minibus. “You okay?” He started a smile but caught himself before his lips revealed his poor teeth again, and nodded. We walked, step for slow step, through the grassy field and to the shoreline, where Ahmet fanned smoke, hoping it would become a fire.

  Ahmet unpacked his containers and prepared to cook. The old man was content to watch, and settled into grass near the pebbled beach. Over the next twenty minutes I made my way to an upper reach of land, a finger of a hill alongside this near-bay crescent on the lake. A boat with two men in it was moving well out on the lake. One of them cast a net while the other one rowed.

  When I returned to the fire, Ahmet, respecting Ramadan for himself, and Patricia were dishing out a lunch of cabbage, bell peppers, and spinach, along with skewers of chicken that had the flavor of smoked dung.

  There was no hurry to our meal. Bogart’s appetite matched our own. He spoke sparingly with Ahmet and only gestured to the three of us if he wanted food passed to him. Suddenly he pointed to the boat on the lake and tapped Ahmet on the shoulder. He pointed again. “Tekne.” He could not raise his arms himself, not high enough anyway. Ahmet stood up, waved, and shouted, bringing the tekne to our shore.

  Just before it beached, a lad jumped out, rubber coveralls up to his chest. He took a bowline to steady the craft so his mate could get out. They were like the other young men in town, a bearing of confidence to them. Their first greetings were for the old man, who, it was clear, if he was not family, was held in high esteem in the area. He was why they came ashore. As the real Bogart once said, “I’ve been around a long time. Maybe people like me.” Next, the fishers greeted Ahmet as a long-time friend.

  “You’ll fish now,” Ahmet said.

  Nico, never one to miss a turn of interest, said, “I’m in,” and made for the boat, with me close behind.

  “I’ll stay by the fire,” Patricia said. “Off you go, boys. Promise to bring back fish and I’ll keep the fire burning. We’ll cook it here.”

  Ahmet decided to stay with her. Nico and I each swung a foot up and into the boat, hoisting ourselves aboard. The old man was right behind us, and the fishers helped him up and in. Nico went to a flat landing aft, and the old man signaled him to make room. With Bogart ensconced behind him, Nico looked set to find us fish.

  Once we were out from shore, one of the young men started the inboard motor and set us on a course to a distant point of land. When the water was deep enough, he cut the engine and set me to the oars. I pulled them steadily, my eyes on Nico, who periodically ordered an adjusting tack. When our quiet craft was near the fishing grounds, the lad tossed the net and set it with buoys.

  One young man cocked his head toward another buoy and the other took back the oars. They got me to help the lad pull in the fish net they’d lined out earlier. We pulled together against the weight of water. I watched the master curl the arriving net at his feet, away from mine and into an untangled mesh that would easily spool out later.

  He handed me the net stream, where a large chub-looking fish flopped, hoping for freedom. The fisherman killed and filleted it, and another one as well. He cleaned both fish on board, tossing the guts into the water for the birds and hand-washing the fillets in the lake.

  Nico arm-wrest
led the other boatman on a landing at the aft of our boat. Soon the young fellow was wearing Nico’s leather hat, the wide brims flopping fashionably over his dark skin and clothing. I wondered if he’d won it in the arm-wrestle game, or if their temporary friendship made it a loan.

  In all of our days together I’d not seen Nico as carefree and happy. It was a found day for him, with unexpected adventures and a boat full of friends he’d never see again.

  When the boat arrived near shore, Ahmet and Patricia came within rope-tossing distance and pulled us toward them. The young fisherman bounced out and held the two fish high, pointing my way as if to give me undue credit for catching lunch. Ahmet speared them with sharpened branches.

  The fresh fish sizzled as the fire took hold. The searing was quick but Ahmet let them cook through, blackening the skin and producing a delicious smell. Paper plates were passed around when the grilling was done.

  “Thanks, everyone!” Patricia said, helping herself to a final mouthful.

  “Thank me,” Nico chuckled. “I charted the boat’s course to where I knew the fish were waiting.”

  Nobody wanted the fire to die. No one wanted the sun to hide. I looked over at Bogart, who was enjoying himself enormously. More than any of us perhaps, he knew that all lovely moments end and that he’d soon be alone again on his roadside bench.

  As we headed back in the direction of Doğubeyazit, Ahmet’s grandfather’s house was on the right side of the road. “Here my grandfather was born,” he said. “Not in this house, of course. It is newer.”

  “Where is this?” asked Patricia.

  “You are in Turkish name Seslitaş. Grandfather is Kurdish, he calls it Çaliğa village.”

  We slowed as the road we traveled became the village’s main street.

  “If you need it,” Ahmet began, “when you need it, bathroom outside behind house. You meet my family. There are many. Come for tea. They expect you. Well, expecting Rick. Patricia is bonus. Nico too, maybe.”

  Nico replied, “Maybe they’ll want me to stay instead of Rick.” My thought was they might want Patricia instead of Rick.