Write in a book what thou seest, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.
—The Book of Revelations 1:11
—The Book of Revelations 1:11
Part I: The first church.
I awoke in full darkness on what felt like a twin bed and immediately began to panic. The sane, rational, calm part of me was out back having a cigarette break, clearly, but before I made the potentially rash decision to thrash myself out of my bedclothes and bellow like a birthing water-buffalo, I calmed myself slightly and began to assess my situation.
The question that required addressing first was simple: where the feck am I?
Clues:
I sensed that someone else was in the room. This was confirmed by a heavy, wet sound that was likely a freshly-cut man-fart; the ensuing stench confirmed this. OK, so I'm in the dark, some dude is asleep in here too, and something eggy this way comes. Moments later, there came the sound of something being broadcast on a speaker outside the room where I was laying, attempting valiantly not to leap out of my skin, and it sounded like singing. A dude singing. Singing in Arabic.
Ah. OK, so I'm not in the U.S.
Things fell together quickly from that point. I remembered that I was studying abroad in Turkey, and had been at that point for several months. I was at the home of my Turkish best friend, who was likely the (unconscious) layer of the abomination that now assaulted and violated my person. Finally, we were lying upon two small beds at his parent's home, which happened to be in a small town in the İzmir environs. And, apparently (because the muezzin was calling to prayer), it was dawn.
Dawn meant one thing.
I crept out of the room and the memory of the layout of his family's house flooded back. Quick now, to the damn window, I thought, and it had better not be fecking raining.
The area around İzmir isn't desert, but it's not Seattle, either. I'd come to Ödemiş for many reasons - prime among them a really relaxed and wonderful opportunity to stay with a Turkish family outside one of the country's thundering cities - but I had another, similarly compelling motive. Namely, I wanted to crawl around the Roman city of Ephesus. Wanted may be too weak a word; would PERISH IF I DIDN'T GO would be more like it. Mother Nature, however, was not cooperating with my furtive and increasingly threat-filled entreaties to stop already with the unseasonal rain and general gloom.
"Mother Nature", I'd begin, while beholding a soggy Turkish town at dawn from the parlor window, "I have been kind to you thus far. I recycle. I use, whenever I can, fabric bags at the supermarket. I try to limit my carbon footprint as best I can. But if I have come all the way to Turkey and if I don't get to go to Epehsus, the Star of Asia, I will...break open batteries! Yes! And...throw gum-wrappers out my window! And, um, I'll TOTALLY PEE ON TREES."
From behind me came a soft tutting. My friend's mother was up already, and she'd seen how crestfallen I was. Yağmur yağar, she said as comfortingly as she could, her warm hand upon my slumped shoulder, and she left me with my dejection to begin breakfast preparations. Her words, though, weren't so much with the comfort: she didn't say "it is raining" but "it rains." Like, you know, FOREVER.
When my friend awakened and after meal/shower time, we talked about what we'd do with the whole awesome sprawling Roman ruin thing a non-possibility for the day. Having been a schoolchild in the area meant that he'd been "forced" to go to Ephesus about seven hundred times, but thankfully he sympathized with my nerdy plight and, mercifully, tried to not dwell on the fact that there were precious few days left that we'd be in the area.
At once, he brightened and sat up arrow-straight in his chair. "Well, we could go to this mountain nearby", he said, "and I think that there is some ruin-thing on it." My pulse quickened; he knew that if it was old and decrepit and poorly marked, I had NO CHOICE but to clamber all over it. I asked him - calmly - if he knew the name of the site and, after thinking for a moment, frowning into his (omfg) soft-boiled egg, said that he thought it began with an "S." Finally, after about ten minutes, he blurts out "SART!" and continues sopping up egg-mess with baked-that-morning bread.
Sart. Hmm. Nothing I'd ever heard of, and believe me, between my insufferable nerdiness and the CLASS I WAS TAKING ABOUT ANATOLIAN ARCHAEOLOGY at Bilkent, I'd have known it. Then I remembered: he'd know its name in Turkish, but he wouldn't necessarily know its ancient name.
I said it out loud. Sart. Sart. And then it came: SARDIS.
Mother of god, Sardis. Sardis, home to one of Asia Minor's most active Jewish populations. Sardis, jewel in the Lydian crown. Sardis: HALF AN HOUR AWAY BY CAR.
I tried to not show how excited I was for no other reason than I get a rabid, no-blinking thing going on and I didn't want to frighten my new Turkish family. "Sart", I said faux-casually, "that sounds interesting. And it's open in the rain?" "Sure", he said, "nobody ever goes there. It's in this field near a mountain."
NOBODY EVER GOES THERE. My head nearly leaked.
We drove in silence - well, except for a Whitney Houston (!) cassette in the stereo - through a nearby mountain pass and into a lush and surprisingly verdant valley that was redolent with wood smoke and wet rosemary. I saw the yellow "SART" sign from a distance and began to squirm uncomfortably for a number of reasons.
1) Delerious excitement.
2) Distended bladder.
3) A fear that I would, as resident anthro/archienerd, be forced to provide an excruciating tour of Sardis, a city I knew next to nothing about. Oh, and did I mention that my friend's girlfriend, who spoke about six words of English, was there, too? Then I remembered that one of my mutant powers is my ability to present information in a way that makes it sound truthful; this is fancy way of saying that I can lie with the best of them.
Something else made me squirm, too, and it took a while for me to pinpoint it. Suddenly, seven years of Catholic education pimp-slapped me across my face and I remembered - with dawning amusement and vague, unsettled fear - the Book of Revelations and what we'd been taught were the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse. The less hysteria-inducing name for them was the Seven Churches of Asia, and, as I recalled each of them in turn, I realized for the first time that
ALL OF THEM WERE IN TURKEY.
Suddenly my life had purpose again. Well, I mean other than eating anything Turkish that was put in front of me unless a dead, dead eye was looking back at me. Seven "churches", scattered across Western Turkey. Seven churches...of the apocalypse. I think that we all can agree that it was a foregone conclusion.
Regarding Sardis, where I was soon to be found leaping around like a meth-using, developmentally-delayed ibex in sheer ruin-induced euphoria, it is written:
And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead. Be thou watchful, and establish the things that remain, which were ready to die: for I have found no works of thine perfected before my God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear; and keep it, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
Damn.
I tried not to think too much about that as I spent a lovely afternoon frolicking through nearly abandoned (but well-cared-for) ruins, feeding the guard goat (all Turkish ruin sites have them - dogs don't also serve the dual function of lawnmower) and, in general, praying that my latent powers over the weather would manifest themselves so that I could keep the menacing rainclouds at bay so that I could enjoy at least one damn ruin site. As we were leaving the site, I happened to look over into the ditch and, after a double-take, I told my friend to STOP THE CAR DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD in a voice that may or may not have sounded remarkably like that of a six-year-old-girl.
Snuffling around, oblivious to our intrusion, was a wild hedgehog. Fighting the urge to scoop it up and love it FOREVER, I watched as it snuffled further down the ditch and then disappeared into a copse of trees near the roadside.
The Turks were less than impressed. "Those things are everywhere", said my friend, "and they steal any food that isn't nailed to the floor."
A thief.
I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee, I heard whispering through the swaying cypress trees.
We got into the car and sped away into the darkness of gathering night and endless rain, and I didn't - I couldn't - look back.
One down.
Me at the Temple of Artemis, Sardis (Sart).
Until next week, I remain,
Domonic
