The Seven Churches, part IV: Smyrna.

And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These things saith the first and the last, who was dead, and lived again: I know thy tribulation, and thy poverty (but thou art rich), and the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews, and they art not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Fear not the things which thou art about to suffer: behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
- The Book of Revelations

When first I began to tell people that I'd made fairly concrete plans to spend several months living in another country - another, might I add, Middle Eastern country - I was confronted with a sadly anticipated mixture of wonder, incredulity and, most enchanting of all, thinly-veiled racism.

Me: So, I think I'm going to be studying abroad in Turkey next year.
Older Female Quasi-Relation: Oh my.
Me: What?
OFQ-R: Isn't it, you know, [whispering] completely filthy there? You know?
Me: What?
OFQ-R: And those Moss-lem men will just stone a woman to death in the street for being alive.
Me: What?
OFQ-R: Well, you might as well just slit your own throat. In your own bed. Then rob yourself.

After a while, in sheer exasperation I began to actively lie to people who had heard about my plans to study abroad (likely in conversation with my mother).

Distant Relative Feigning Interest: So, your mom told so-and-so who told what's-her-face who told blahbitty-blahbitty who told me that you're taking off next year for parts unknown.
Me: Yes, I am going to the Congo.
DRFI: Isn't it incredibly dangerous there?
Me: Well, if I escape being hacked to death by a paramilitary death squad for a pack of smokes, I'll likely become a host to a parasite so rare as to not have a classification yet. Worms will burrow unbidden from my skin and my eyes will leak out of my skull. Small pieces of my body's extremities will rain down on the forest floor after becoming dessicated and necrotic. In the end, I'll die alone, sweaty and parasite-ridden, while shitting my pants and moaning like a crack-addled whore in heat. But I think that would be the same anywhere.
DRFI: I'm just going to go freshen my drink.

One soul-crushingly rainy afternoon, my mother and sister and I went out to my grandfather's house in the malarial fens of Orono, Maine, ostensibly for a lovely visit. In the course of the conversation, my mother mentioned that I had gotten accepted to study in Turkey for that following Spring semester. Casually, as if it weren't significant, my grandfather said "Oh yeah, I was there once." And the he moved on to talking about, oh, grout or something. Maybe about chowder. Or his broken electric griddle.

I couldn't help but stare nakedly at him. This was a man who, from the time I moved to Maine, hadn't - to the best of my knowledge - left Penobscot County, and from frequent declarations to that effect had less than no interest in doing so. But he wasn't always like that, my subconscious stated baldly while forcing my mouth closed. Remember: your aunts and uncles were all born in different states. And this wrinkly seventy-five pound man used to be in the Navy. Oh yes.

I interrupted his train of thought to ask him about his time in Turkey after he finished his riveting story about, oh, I dunno, finding the last tube of Gleem toothpaste on clearance at the Shop N' Save.

"Oh, it's a godforsaken place", he said, and shuddered a little. "Hated it."

I was a little crestfallen, but I asked where he'd been in the country. İzmir, he said, and it was a hellhole. I knew I'd be based out of Ankara, but still, I needed to know why the country I was poised to be spending a hell of a lot of time in soon was so repulsive. I pushed further, and he sighed. It was at this time that I closed my eyes slightly to take in his story whilst imagining this sixty-something man in the prime of his youth and wearing what I have to imagine would be a kicky little sailor's outfit, complete with an adorable little cap. It was amusing on many levels and was denaturing the sting from his previous "hellhole" comment.

"So, once we docked in the smelly little harbor, we went on shore leave. I went to a little cafe on the water and got a coffee or something and then I smelled this sweet smell coming from the tables beside me. One of the men asked me if I wanted some of this hubble-bubble thing, and I was like 'sure.' When I woke up three days later we were headed back out to sea. And I couldn't stop shitting my pants."

I was relieved, to be honest. My grandfather had seen about ten minutes of Turkey before he accepted the fragrant hose of what I assume was a nargile filled to the brim with the finest hashish outside of the Afghan lands FROM A PERFECT STRANGER. I could easily and without the subtle ache of regret write off his entire statement with a notation of "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT UM WOW". Expunged. Forgotten.

As we prepared to depart, he took me aside to ask me for a favor. "Could you bring me back some of their funny money?", he asked quietly. "And maybe a postcard?" I assured him that I would perform both tasks and would send his postcard from İzmir herself. It was then that I caught a tiny, fleeting twinkle in his eyes. You filthy old man, I thought with a smile. You loved that hash, didn't you?

***

Many months later, I awoke in the humid darkness of a sleeper coach bus. Something heavy, wet and hot was pressed against my shoulder and I presumed it was my Turkish friend/brother, who had fallen asleep moments after leaving Ankara and had slumped three-quarters of the way into my seat. I had no idea where we might be - we could have been halfway to Belgrade - but somehow I didn't want to wake him despite the fact that I knew my arm would hang dead at my side for the better part of an hour after we disembarked. Shortly afterward the helpful announcer-person came over the bus' intercom and stated that we'd soon be arriving in İzmir. My friend roused instantly and nearly pressed himself through the window in the hope of getting a glimpse of his most favored of cities. After several minutes of mute anticipation we rounded a corner on the side of a large hill and there it was, glittering softly, arcing gracefully around its promenaded, palm-tree-lined harbor.

İzmir, birthplace of Homer.
İzmir, the Pearl of the Aegean.
İzmir, nicknamed "the phoenix" because of the number of times it had been burned to the ground and had arisen, glimmering, from the ashes.
İzmir, formerly Smyrna, and one of St. John's Seven Churches.

I gasped nearly inaudibly.

İzmir isn't usually talked about much in travel literature. When it is mentioned, it's usually spoken of as a convenient, centrally-located place to stay while one attempts to ruin-hop on the Turkish Aegean coast. Admittedly, it is exactly that. However, places like Kuşadası are far more likely to provide the types of services the bleach-bloated Northern European hordes require as they disembark from their cruise ships/rented caiques for Ephesus. You know, services like postcard stores that sell only cards depicting Greco-Roman statuary and their prominently erect phallii. Or restaurants specializing in the preparation of various schnitzels. Or shops that proffer poorly made (and technically illegal) fezzes. And, while emphasizing the convenience of İzmir's location, most books describe the city as one might describe a highway-side Super 8 Motel on the outskirts of Detroit. Mostly clean. Pretty safe. Glue-huffing kids will likely not swipe your wallet. What they almost invariably fail to mention is how absolutely refreshing and charming the city is and how, upon departing from it, one begins to immediately wonder when you might return to it.

I fell for İzmir that night in the otogar, waiting to turn around to Ödemiş. I dared not mention this then, as I felt that revealing undying love without having even gotten off the bus would make me seem, oh, unhinged. Much like the feeling I got in most of Turkey - the feeling that I somehow really, really belonged there - I felt as though the city had already claimed me as its hairy, chunky lover. Or something perhaps less creepy/disgusting, like "From what I saw from the breath-fogged bus windows I felt like I'd lived there before, in a former life or some junk. You know, improbable nostalgia." Wait. That's just as creepy. Forget I said it at all.

Before we set out for Ödemiş from Ankara my friend had indicated a strong interest in having me bring my passport on the trip. While I wouldn't have ordinarily done so (at that time I apparently had a desire to live on the edge), there was an unnatural gleam in my friend's eye that begged both obedience to his will and trapjawed silence about it. I went with it because, hey, a week with a real Turkish family in a very small town in İzmir province is worth that much and more. The day we we set out to go to İzmir he asked me to take my passport with me so that I could, and I quote, "do some special shopping" for him. I was unsure about what kind of shopping would necessitate/be aided by an American passport, and I didn't ask, but the possibilities I formed in my head excited me. Again, this is because Twenty-Year-Old Domonic Apparently Had A Death-Wish. It was after the blissful morning of sightseeing in the old(er) city and vapur (ferry) riding that it became clear to me that my friend wanted me to

TRY TO GO SHOPPING IN THE BX/NEX LOCATED ON THE HARBORFRONT

for Nike shoes.

For those unfamiliar with US military bases both in the US and abroad, there is usually an exchange - fancy word for "a store" - located there for the convenience of the servicepeople. For Army folk, it's called a PX; Navy, it's called NEX, and for Air Force, it's called BX. For those unfamiliar with living abroad, Nike shoes are UNFATHOMABLY EXPENSIVE outside the US due to import markups and the perceived social status associated with them. Owning a pair of them in Turkey meant not only that you could buy and sell all of your friends but that you could sell their mothers, too. Sell them INTO WHITE SLAVERY. I may be exaggerating here, but only slightly. My friend's presumption was, of course, that American shoes being sold to Americans in a little slice of America would have an American price tag, and paying $90 for shoes was better than paying the $320 most stores in the country were posting. And by "better than" I mean "wouldn't suck the root as much as."

Two asides:

- Nike in Turkey is pronounced "NAYK", rhyming with "bike." Turkey is only one small sea away from Greece, a country where Nike, goddess of victory, was worshipped as an avatar of Athena Polias/Promachos. Just sayin'.

- Nike products do nothing for me, like, AT ALL.

So there I stood in front of a nondescript doorway leading into what looked from the outside to be an old airplane hangar, passport in my brine-covered hand, waiting to live, waiting to die, waiting with strangely specific instructions on color, width and style. In a last-ditch effort to spare my own life I tried to convince my friend that being an American citizen and an American serviceman were two very different things; the Special Eye-Gleam, however, compelled me forward.

I entered and immediately I was faced with some sort of turnstyle. Behind it was a woman - a woman in cornrows! - and I noted quickly that about three inches of shatter-proof glass separated us. She looked me up and down the way one looks at a woman in a spaghetti-strap top, sweatpants and flip-flops as she tries to flag down a bus in January in the Midwest: there's a mixture of confusion, horror, and revulsion. I immediately felt the need to evacuate onto myself but I figured that this would complicate things even more. She pressed the So Now You Can Hear Me Through This Glass Button and spoke.

Be-Cornrowed Military Woman: Can I help you?
Me: Um, yeah. My Turkish friends all think that I can shop here. I probably can't. I am wasting your time and now you are going to execute me, right?
BCMW: Lemme guess: Levi's jeans.
Me: Nope.
BCMW: Nike shoes.
Me: Bingo.
BCMW: You can't shop here.
Me: Can I have a note to that extent? Because damn.

As I left, I got a glimpse of the goods, and there was indeed a wall of shoes. After I told my crestfallen friend that they existed, and existed in a dazzling array of colors and styles, he lifted his watery eyes to me.

It must be like a church in there, he said.

Later that night, with zephyrs carried off the Aegean blowing the scent of the sea through the city streets, I asked him what he meant by comparing the BEX to a house of worship. He'd not meant any irreverence, he said, but had wanted to compare it to a place where a particular group of people could go to be safe and together. Of course, I'd imagined the Altar to Indonesian-Made Petroleum-Formed Foot Encasements, and, while it wasn't the synagogue to Satan St. John referenced, it seemed close. And Lord, was that altar FANCY.

Until next Friday, I remain,

Domonic