And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
- The Book of Revelations
5:30 AM: New Laodicea.
ALLUHU EKBAR ALLAH EKBER! ALLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHU...
I sat bolt-upright in the darkness, my husk clanging dangerously inside my body and threatening to leap forth from my maw. The singing seemed to be coming from everywhere, including INSIDE MY OWN BODY. My skull was vibrating like a Himalayan singing-bowl and my vision swam.
Hey: did the "shower" - that creepy bolt in the all in the bathroom that emitted a strange mist all over everything EVERYTHING - just spontaneously turn on? Was that ceiling plaster crumbling down upon my body? And, perhaps most critical, what the hell was I doing here?
Flashback: Ankara, two and a half months previous
My first experience with the call to prayer (ezan in Turkish) came not a moment too soon. I'd arrived in Turkey with the promise that the school I was attending would send a gentleman to collect me from Esenboğa Havalimanı (Ankara Airport), but as I cleared Turkish customs - a cursory wave of the hand after digging out my US passport - there was nobody waiting for me. I stood there for a moment and tried my hardest to contain the panic that was welling up within me. Had I known that the school I was heading toward was a full forty minutes away and would have cost be about four times the amount of lira holding court in my sad little wallet, I would have probably spackled my briefs with my partially digested in-flight meal. And and AND, I didn't have the phone number of the woman who was heading this exchange program and even if I did, a cursory look at the alien phones - phones that seemed to only accept flimsy little cards of undetermined extraction- confirmed that I had been, indeed, thrown right the feck under the bus.
Near the terminal there was a small room that looked like a bus-station terminal. The blue haze of a hundred cigarettes partially obscured the features of the gentlemen holding nicotine-y court in there, and a thought - an alien, perhaps-I-have-a-guardian-angel thought - entered my consciousness. He's in there, it whispered. Um, there are like FORTY MEN IN THERE, I countered. He'll be the one in the nice clothes, it said, because you're going to be going to the Harvard of Turkey and he representin'.
Sure enough, upon entering the room (and getting a contact buzz), I noted that only one of the men was wearing slacks and a suit-coat. I walked up to him and said "Bilkent?" in a voice that I hoped didn't come out as it had in my head - shrill and desperate. He leapt up and smiled and grabbed my bags out of my hand. The rational part of me then began to interject. Dude, what if he's a taxi driver?, it asked. You don't know how much this will cost. Also, he could drive you from here to Syria and you'd have NO GODDAMN CLUE. The angel-voice interceded and urged me to look in the back seat of the vehicle parked at the curb. The sad little hand-lettered placard bearing my name was there, sure as shit. I took careful note to mentally french-kiss my guardian angel later and I clambered in.
Seeing as I knew about three words of Turkish at that time, I sat back and watched the Anatolian pageantry - as much as I could, as the driver seemed to feel that speed limits were merely the suggestions of mildly retarded politicians - and became more and more apprehensive. As we hurtled closer to the edge of the city I noted a significant amount of the "scantily-clad children playing with feral dogs and trash fires" phenomenon, followed soon by the "I'm not so sure that your house isn't made entirely of corrugated tin" sector. As the car paused at a stoplight, I looked in all directions and saw only what I would come to know later as gecekondu - a Turkish squattertown - and I thought: Huh. There was a sentient part of me that knew that this was likely only part of the city - I'd seen pictures of the school I was supposed to be attending, and many of the Ankara downtown. However, the part of me that had just been on a plane for seven hundred hours, in a Swiss airport for another three hundred, and then almost got its shit abandoned at the airport asked a polite, delicate series of questions: What are you doing? Did you think you were funny, packing two suitcases to come live in some other place for a semester? Also, did you happen to SEE THAT STUFF IN THE SQUATTERTOWN? BECAUSE SHIT.
A half hour later, we passed through a gate to get into the school, and I was unceremoniously left in front of a large building that I was assured was "Yurt Yetmiş Sekiz", whatever the hell that meant. Upon entry to the building, I was swept past the security checkpoint in the foyer and into a small, dark office where the Dorm Master Dude-Man held court. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, casting a glow that made the DMDM look like he'd been slapped by a flipper from the Porpoise of Incessant Jaundice. His narrow eyes were so blue as to be almost white, and his mustache twitched a little. He spoke no English, so an interpreter was sought. I imagine that the conversation went like this:
DMDM: [lights cigarette, exhales slowly] I'm not really sure why it is that you have come here.
Interpreter: Welcome to Dorm 78!
Me: Thank you for your hospitality. I will assuredly not intentionally set this building on fire.
DMDM: You don't look like an American.
Interpreter: I hope your travels were good.
Me: I haven't pooped in three days.
DMDM: Your room isn't ready because you requested a non-smoking room. [pauses to inspect cigarette, then gently - tenderly - takes an improbably long drag] I don't know why you subscribe to such lunacy.
Interpreter: We're almost ready to welcome you to our community!
Me: I am becoming uncomfortable now.
DMDM: I believe that some unfortunate student has been informed that he has a roommate by now. I hope you're happy.
Interpreter: Let's go meet your new friend and roommate!
Me: Awesome.
The interpreter takes me downstairs and to the threshold of a room that is being frantically cleaned by several young men in various states of undress. There's a bucket, hot water, a vacuum and sponges aplenty. As the high reek of lemony disinfectant reached my awaiting nostrils, I shuddered slightly; one of these men is my new roommate, and moments ago he'd been taken by force from the pleasure of a double-as-a-single and was handed a bucket and a sponge because some American dude was moving in. I wanted nothing more than to just stop living at that point, because really.
I was introduced to my roommate, who shook my hand and immediately left. Apparently, he'd been trying to get to the bus station so that he could visit his family in Gaziantep (a city in Southeastern Turkey) for Spring Break. Like I could have felt any worse; now he'd have to settle for the Antep Red-Eye bus because Spoiled American Dude needed a bed. After he left, I located the bathroom, which consisted of several holes in the floor in stalls. As I tried to figure out the logistics of how to use the hole-in-the-ground crappers, I opened the curtains and looked out at my view of Turkey: a parking lot and a partially abandoned building site. Bits of garbage tattered around in the midwinter wind, rattling morosely.
I sat down on the bed and opened my checkbook. I have enough money to go home, I thought, and nobody would begrudge me that. What was I thinking? Also: can you die from not pooping for this long?
At that, my lowest point, I heard something coming through the open window that sounded like singing. It's not a radio, I thought. And it's... it's coming from more than one place. It took me a minute to register that I was hearing my first call to prayer, and I swooned. No, not from exhaustion, dehydration, or from the pain of what surely was going to be a memorable dump as it moved down the Colon Highway, but I swooned from the sheer beauty of the sound, and - as loath as I am to admit it - from the exoticness of it. I was really here, and this was going to be my home for nearly six months, and every sunset was going to be like this, with men singing. I began to unpack, smiling.
Back to New Laodicea, 5:35 AM
The muezzin finished just as I was becoming convinced that I would be killed by sound and, about twenty minutes later, my heart-rate had finally come down from "methadone-addicted hummingbird getting laid for the first time" to "you'll likely survive." I was in a hotel room - very small, but very neatly appointed - and there could be no question as to where: Denizli, a largish Turkish city nearish to the Aegean. I say "nearish" because Denizli means "with/of the sea" but it is kinda nowhere near the aforementioned body of water, which is vaguely amusing. Amusing and sad.
I'd insisted that I and my traveling companion go to Denizli for two reasons: one, because it serves as a convenient base for exploring not one but TWO insanely awesome ruin sites (Aphrodisias and Pamukkale/Hieropolis) and two, because THAT'S WHAT I SAID NOW GET ON THE DOLMUŞ (minibus). I'd done my research and discovered that a precious hotel/hostel served the greater Denizli area and that the owner, Aslan, was a man of legendary hospitality and warmth and that his wife, Lord protect her, made mucver that would cause you to briefly die with sheer animal pleasure.
Our bus arrived in Denizli at dusk and wearily pulled into the otogar in the city center. I'd noted several things about the city as we made our way through it.
1) Cocks. Denizli is the cock capital of Turkey, and statues of them are EVERYWHERE. Everywhere with the cocks. On the sides of buses. On the civic seal. On the sides of buildings. Cocks cocks cocks. Yes, of course I mean roosters. Guh.
2) There seemed to be a persistent mist hanging about.
3) The one taxi driver lurking near the otogar had a cloudy eye and a pegleg.
The "persistent mist" turned out to be "an intense amounts of dust that, once the sun goes down, rains upon the city as though it were Pompeii. Also, it smells like burning." And I was wrong about the cabbie: it wasn't a pegleg, just a leg that was cruelly misshapen and painfully thin, perhaps ravaged by *urp* polio. I made a mental note to bump up the tip if we survived the ride to the Fantastic Unicorn Palace of Hostely Goodness. We clambered into the cab and gave him the address. He looked at it, looked at me - one milky eye fixed on my sweaty forehead, the other good one in my own dung-brown eyes - and said something in Turkish. He handed the address back to me and sat there. Sat there and didn't move.
OK, what the hell. I knew that some taxi drivers get commission if they bring the foreigners to a particular hotel, but this didn't seem to be about that. As he rolled down the window, lit up and went to Flavor Country, I had a hurried and - might I stress, awesome - conversation with my traveling companion that went something like this:
Me: So what do we do now?
Traveling Companion: Maybe we should draw a picture and write the Turkish word for hotel on it? Wait: do you know what the word is? Also: how are we still alive?
Me: He's a taxi driver, not a retarded six-year-old.
TC: What's your brilliant idea, feckstick?
Me: Let's get out of the cab.
TC: He is going to shank us.
Me. Bring it, bitch. I've always wanted to get tetanus.
We opened our doors, and within moments the startled driver got out and gestured that we get back in. Good times. So we did, and he started the car, sighed heavily, and pulled out into the dusty city, setting a course for the magical home of Mr. Lion.
We arrive in an ordinary city block and pull to the curb. The apartment complex we'd come upon had only one light on inside, and Mr. Cloudy-Eye gestured toward it. Then he pointed to a sad little building across the street that looked like it was once a hotel.
ONCE A HOTEL.
The cabbie, of course, had known all along. I swore under my breath and vowed to take my copy of Let's Go! Turkey! and heave it into the wine-dark sea.
The best part was that there was no "Option B." Denizli is an industrial city that is known throughout the country for good universities, rooster statues and THAT'S ABOUT IT. There were no other hotels listed for the city. Great. Sleeping in my clothes in the bus station. Again.
The cabbie had, by this time, gotten out, heaved our suitcases to the curb and lurched over to the front of the apartment, where he pressed the only lit doorbell on the switchboard. A man came to the window - it was about five stories up - and he opened the screen and yelled down to us on the street. The cabbie and the dude yelled back and forth for a minute, and then the cabbie stood in front of me and said, in perfect English, "May I please have my fare?"
Stunned, I gave it to him - with the handsome tip I'd promised him in my mind - as the man from five stories up came to the ground floor door.
"Hello, I'm Aslan", he said, and eagerly took my hand into one of his giant meaty paws. He looked the part of a lion - shaggy hair, broad nose, and a swagger - and I briefly thought about how people grow into their names. "How can I help you lads tonight?", he asked.
I explained that we were a) foreign and b) retarded and c) poor planners and that we were now in a postion of not knowing where we'd lodge ourselves that evening. Could you, kindly large man who looks vaguely like a big-cat, tell me where we might rest our weary and, might I add again, retarded, foreign carcasses?
He sighed. His hostel/hotel wasn't closed per se; it was now only open on a seasonal basis. And, um, this wasn't the season. He paused and then strode purposefully to the doorbell. This time a woman opened up the window, and Aslan began to conduct a (loud) conversation with the person whom I assumed was his wife.
She came down over the stairs WITH SHEETS AND BLEACH AND TOILET PAPER.
No no no, I began, but Aslan was already stopping me from speaking by standing in front of me in a vaguely felid pose which I interpreted as "shut up." He made tea in the waiting room of the ho(s)tel while his wife CLEANED A ROOM FOR US; we sat looking at the tawny liquid feeling like prolapsed walrus anuses as he talked about how much we were going to enjoy Denizli and the surrounding areas. When his wife was finished, we thanked her very much and she welcomed us graciously to Denizli. *I* would have rubbed my ass on the pillowcases, but hey.
Again, this can't be stressed enough: it was almost 10 PM by this point. And we were strangers. Foreign strangers who knocked on their door and said "Hey, are you a hotel?"
Aslan shook our hands, bade us good night, and retired to his apartment across the street. We sat on our beds, stunned at the hospitality and graciousness. As the dust settled quietly onto the Cock Capital of Turkey, we gratefully slipped into beds whose sheets smelled of sun and citrus and thanked our lucky stars that we weren't having to provide excruciatingly slow manual pleasure to old men in order to secure park benches for the evening.
When the muezzin woke us six hours later, we couldn't be angry. OK, so we resolved to take note of whether or not future accomodations shared a Byzantine wall with a mosque, but other than that, only gratitude.
As we packed and prepared for our trip to Pamukkale/Hieropolis and Aphrodisias, I remembered that the cock-bound, dusty Denizli sits upon the ruins of Laodicea, one of the Seven Churches. The settling dust whispered as it landed indelicately on the roads, on cars, on sad lawns. Over the din of morning traffic, mosque action and simit-sellers hawking their delicious wares, I heard the dust speaking.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
I took that to heart and I thanked Aslan in two ways. One, I hugged him, which elicited an eye-roll from my traveling partner, as apparently he was too patrician to have ever had to wash his pits and undercarriage with a paper towel in a public bathroom after fitfully sleeping on top of his luggage, fully clothed in seventy-five degree heat in a bus station. Two, I paid him twice as much as he asked for - secretly, as I left the rest of the money for his wife to find in the room. Hell, he'd even DRIVEN US TO THE BUS STATION FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. He'd heard our voices, he'd opened his door - and, well, tea isn't food, but it's really close.
We boarded the bus, glad not to be dead. I closed my eyes and drifted off, dreams of the four remaining Churches - Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira and Philadelphia - fluttering in and out of my consciousness like bleached marble songbirds.
Well, until we were abandoned on the side of the road forty kilometers from Aphrodisias. But that is a different story for a different time.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic
