And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write;
These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;
I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.
But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches;
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
- The Book of Revelations
These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;
I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.
But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches;
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
- The Book of Revelations
7 PM: Behramkale (Assos), Northwest Aegean Turkey
Ahmet and I had settled down into a meal - one that I knew I'd remember for the rest of my life - when his cellphone rang. He looked sheepishly at me and I tried my hardest to pretend like his ringtone - something hideous, like a snippet of some wretched ska song - wasn't ruining the atmosphere of our setting. Five feet away from me, the wine-dark Aegean lapped at what I determined to be a crumbled Byzantine fortification of the tiny port. Holding court on my plate were dozens of tiny octopi, braised in what I have to assume are the smoky-salted tears of angels. The sun was setting over the gilded crest of the Greek island of Lesbos, dim and misty in the distance across an azure slip of sea. Somewhere, a goat bleated and a gull cried.
And then the ringing. Oh, the ringing.
After the third time it rang - each of the previous calls being dispatched via a deft maneuver wherein Ahmet squeezed it through his shorts pocket - I was ready to make some suggestions.
"Ahmet", I said quietly, " for the love of the infant Jesus just answer it. If you do not choose this course of action, I will be forced to assume that I have permission to launch the device into the sea, wherein it will be swiftly set upon by various pelagic bivalves who shall encrust it utterly."
Ahmet and I had settled down into a meal - one that I knew I'd remember for the rest of my life - when his cellphone rang. He looked sheepishly at me and I tried my hardest to pretend like his ringtone - something hideous, like a snippet of some wretched ska song - wasn't ruining the atmosphere of our setting. Five feet away from me, the wine-dark Aegean lapped at what I determined to be a crumbled Byzantine fortification of the tiny port. Holding court on my plate were dozens of tiny octopi, braised in what I have to assume are the smoky-salted tears of angels. The sun was setting over the gilded crest of the Greek island of Lesbos, dim and misty in the distance across an azure slip of sea. Somewhere, a goat bleated and a gull cried.
And then the ringing. Oh, the ringing.
After the third time it rang - each of the previous calls being dispatched via a deft maneuver wherein Ahmet squeezed it through his shorts pocket - I was ready to make some suggestions.
"Ahmet", I said quietly, " for the love of the infant Jesus just answer it. If you do not choose this course of action, I will be forced to assume that I have permission to launch the device into the sea, wherein it will be swiftly set upon by various pelagic bivalves who shall encrust it utterly."
He got up and answered it while I slowly continued to savor my betentacled treat. When he returned several minutes later, he looked rather ashy. At first, I attributed it to the fact that both of us looked like we'd gotten smallpox before being blowtorched. As he ate, he kept looking at me over his plate as though I were ready to release poisonous spores from my eyebrows. I was preparing to apologize for being short with him about the hell-phone when he put down his fork and sighed heavily.
"My uncle died today", he said.
As I silently awarded myself the Dogpiss Asshole Friend of the Year Award, I asked how he was holding up. He said that he wasn't close to this particular uncle, but that his presence would be required - and required anon - in the southern Turkish city of Adana for the funeral. "I have to be one the damn pallbearers", he said moodily as he pushed the remainder of his dinner around on the hand-thrown ceramic plate.
It was at that moment that I, with dawning horror, realized that the trip we'd planned - only a third of which we had left - would have to end. I'd spent quite a bit of time in Turkey, but I didn't think that being left to my own devices without a native speaker of Turkish was wise considering that I had, apparently, a singular inability to distinguish that which was Awesome from that which was Incredibly Stupid. Ahmet must have sensed my hesitation, and he put down his fork and looked at me. "You ARE going to go on with the trip, right?", he said, fixing me in my seat with his very serious eyes. "You understand Turkish. You know how to get food. You know how to get places with public transportation. And you've done nothing but talk about Satan's altar for days now. I'll kick your ass if you don't go."
It was true. I'd spent five months in the country and I knew what to get in restaurants, how to find what I needed in cities, and - perhaps most important - I had the razor-honed ability to home in on a ruin site like I was a carrier pigeon on crystal meth. And I had been talking about Satan's altar - rumored to have been inside the Red Basilica (Kırmızı Avlu) in Pergamum - far too much to have come that far without seeing it and its hoovey goodness.
We left Behramkale reluctantly. The ruins of Assos are easily some of the most evocative in all of Anatolia and indeed the entire of the Greek-speaking ancient world, and the village of Behramkale was debilitatingly charming. Ahmet clearly didn't want to spend an entire day and night in transit to Adana (stopping in, of course, Ankara) and I was loath to part from his witty company. It was therefore all the more fitting that we had to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup truck from the harbor to the upper town, and that keeping us company in said pickup truck was a goat. A goat that had continence issues. Goat raisins everywhere. ALL THE TIME GOAT RAISINS. As we sat on the side of the dusty road picking livestock shit out of our clothes and awaiting our separate buses - his going southeast, mine going straight south - a donkey walked out into the road and stood there defiantly. It was as if he was thinking Yes. Yes, I am an ass. An ass in Assos. I get it. Morons.
I parted with Ahmet, wishing him a safe and goat shit-free trip, and after three dolmuş connections I found myself in one of Turkey's legendary climate-controlled sleeper buses. Before I got on the bus in question I'd handed my luggage to the bus driver and had asked - perhaps more pointedly than I'd intended - if this particular vehicle would be dropping me off at Bergama, the Turkish city that clung to the side of the ancient Pergamene acropolis. He assured me that the bus was indeed going to be stopping at Bergama and I clambered aboard the bus to my seat.
The next thing I remember was that I was being shaken awake by a man whose fen-like breath swam with the heady presence of onions, cigarettes and coffee. Haydi, haydi, Bergama'dayiz he said, and each expulsion of breath crashed over my face in a way that made me briefly imagine that I was being slapped with a diaper that had recently been filled by a tot who'd been eating slightly spoiled Indian food. It was dark out beyond the bus and the unflattering interior bus lights had been turned. We were not moving, and everyone - I MEAN EVERYONE - was looking at me with a mixture of pity and impatience. I rallied and flung myself down off the side of the bus to find my suitcase waiting for me already. Quick as a flash the driver and the porter teleported back onto the bus and it sped away into the awaiting darkness of an Anatolian night.
Wait. Why was it so dark?
I was too sleep-addled to piece it all together quickly, but when it finally came to me I felt icy dread creep into my man-area, and it withered accordingly. No, I wasn't in a well-lit but appropriately well-worn provincial otogar, perfumed as it would be by cologne, smoke, the smell of roasting meat and the vaguely reassuring scent of diesel exhaust. In fact, I was standing on the side of a Turkish highway in the middle of the night with a suitcase, a Discman and a rapidly-growing desire to live.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness just as some small animal skittered across the desolate stretch of highway - mother of God, was that some sort of ghastly lizard or something? - and, just as I was about to leap out of my skin, I saw the outline and lights of what appeared to be a skeezy roadhouse. I didn't know they even had those here, the lucid part of my brain interjected in detached ethnographic interest. It was then that I saw what appeared to be four fire-red lightning bugs moving in lazy circles above the ground of the parking lot. Moments later four shadows detached from the more concrete darkness and I noted with dim fear that the fireflies were the cherries of four cigarettes, each one of them clutched in the hand of a burly twentysomething Turkish man. The men began to stride purposefully toward me and it was then that I began to pray.
Dear baby Jesus in Your hay-scented manger, I began, I know that you probably aren't terribly amused by my profound interest in the Seven Churches, but get me out of this and I'll make sure to...um...VISIT YOUR MOM'S HOUSE. Oh, I did that already in Ephesus. Uh, I'll...GAZE ADORINGLY AT MOSAICS OF YOUR COUNTENANCE. Ah. Did that already at the Hagia Sofia in İstanbul. Look. I don't have much. I'm sure you're a reasonable divine infant. Can you help a former altar boy out of a bind? Or are you going to be LIKE THAT?
They were drawing closer and I began to understand just how fecked I was - foreign, fat, and forsaken - and how nobody on the earth knew where I was at that moment. So this is how I am going to perish, I thought, alone on the side of a Turkish highway in the middle of the night, snuffed by creepy Turkish hooligans before my time. It made for a lovely tourism advertisement. It was at that moment that one of the men detached from the group and walked up to me. He took an impossibly long drag off of his smoke, exhaled and said
So, are you going to Bergama?
IN ENGLISH
to me.
I recovered from the shock of being addressed in my mother tongue in the middle of Anatolia more slowly than I'd like to admit. Upon closer inspection, the burly twentysomething Turkish hoods of my imagination were in fact four reasonably-dressed college kids who were heading home on that same bus for their vacation. Home to Bergama. Despite these revelations - and the resulting disappearance of the metallic taste in my mouth - I had fixated on why this particular gentleman had addressed me in English. I was surprised because I'd spent a lot of time in Turkey and, almost without fail, people presumed I was Turkish. It's not my "look", although there are certainly Turks who look like me. I don't flatter myself to presume that it was my ability to blend with the native population, but because I was in pretty good franchise of how things functioned I did get by unnoticed for the most part. My analysis was interrupted by the young man, who sported a kicky goatee like mine (at the time) and had begun speaking again.
We just called a taxi. Would you like to share it with us? I found the strength to say that yes, indeed, I'd like to not die on the side of this highway, and he laughed heartily. It turns out that we were quite near Bergama - as my eyes adjusted, the lights from the city glowed welcomingly in the distance - and, reassured that I wasn't about to take the Big Dirt Nap, I asked why I was left to perish. Oh, he said, if there are fewer than ten people getting off at a certain city, they drop you off on the outskirts to save on gas and time. Well, at least the cheap buses do. I vowed to become fluent in Turkish so that I could write a scathing letter to the chairperson of the We're Crappy and Strand You for Giggles Bus Company just as the taxi arrived. We piled in and, in the gentle glow of the globe light I introduced myself to my four companions and thanked them for not taking my sweet sweet life. They laughed again and asked if I had a place to stay in town. I was so preoccupied with not being slaughtered that I hadn't given it much thought, and it was clear that it was quite late. One of the gents, Mustafa, then told me that his grandfather owned a hotel in town that I could stay at called, strangely enough, The Gobi Pension. He worked there too and would make sure to take care of me. I nearly wept with gratitude.
And about the English? They had seen the book I'd been reading before I passed out and, apparently, I had been speaking in my sleep. They were in the seats behind me, they assured me, and were in no way stalking me.
The Gobi Pension was perfection. Mustafa and his charming grandfather checked me in and told me about the complimentary Turkish breakfast that could be had the following morning and trundled me off to bed tutting softly about how weary I looked. My room overlooked a busy road and, on the other side of said road, a street fair was quite earnestly in full swing. I opened the window and listened to the fair and the lingering sigh of the city as night overtook it before passing out in my clothes on the bed.
I awoke early and, eager to not miss the lovely breakfast, I made my way downstairs. Patio tables set out on the sidewalk positively groaned with Turkish breakfast fixins: abundant tea, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread (loaf AND simit), olives, salça, feta cheese and hard-boiled eggs in İznik- style egg-cups. I tore into it like a badger until I noticed a young blonde man sitting alone in the corner poking dejectedly at his egg. I brought my plate over to his table and asked if I could sit because HEY I WANTED TO TRY NEW THINGS OK. He looked at me quizzically and I began to wonder if I should ask in French or German (neither of which I actually knew) when he bade me sit. His name was Serge, he was in fact quite fluent in English and he was a Belgian tourist visiting Turkey for the first time. He had no earthly idea what was going on, like, EVER. (Did they mean to set out olives and tomatoes for breakfast? he asked. Yes. Yes they did, I counseled whilst cramming said delights into my awaiting maw). I asked him what he planned to do that day, informing him that rabid hell-cats wouldn't be able to keep me from the Pergamene acropolis and the Red Basilica. As we talked over the eggs and olives and learned more about each other, I revealed that I was taking Anatolian/Greek/Roman archaeology courses at my school, and he beamed. Who better, he asked, to go to Pergamum with? Serge was a big believer in serendipity.
Serge and I became fast friends. He was bright and witty and quite a conversationalist, traits which I prize dearly. Instead of taking pictures, he wrote and sketched in a journal about his experiences, which I found fascinating. We set out after I gorged myself, and as we walked to the site, we noticed that a young man of about thirteen was tailing us. As my experience only the night before had proven to me, Turkey was a place where wonderful and unexpectedly delightful things would happen just at the moment when you presumed that you were about to be murdered, and I wasn't concerned. Serge, however, was still guarded, and he became quite uneasy. Um, so what's with this kid? Pickpocket? Glue-huffer? he asked. Let's ask him, I said, and Serge looked mildly horrified. C'mon, it's a kid, and we're strapping lads. We can take him. Serge tittered nervously.
I turned around and walked toward the boy, who looked quite startled by this development. Can I help you? I asked. It took a moment, but the boy beamed and answered. Can you speak English with me? I am learning it in school. Sure, I said, but in exchange you have to help us. When we're done today with seeing Pergamum we'll both need to find the otogar to leave town. Can you help with that? The child nearly squealed with delight and agreement. I winked at Serge, who looked on in wonder. It was clear that he was beginning to understand the magic of serendipity as it played out in Turkey. As we walked to the site, we held an extensive conversation with our new friend. His name was Mehmet (Call me Mike, he begged), and he liked American music and British television and had a dog that he named after an obscure Ottoman pasha. He had a cat, too, but her name was a little different. He'd named her Madonna. That is awesome, I said, and meant it.
After temporarily parting company with Mehmet at the foot of the hill leading to the sites, Serge and I spent the better part of a day in the extensive ruins of Pergamum's acropolis - I in nearly unglued archaeological bliss, Serge writing and sketching dutifully in his notebook and looking pensive - before we descended to one of the secondary sites nearby. It was the site of the Red Basilica, which in antiquity contained an altar that was crowned by a sinister-looking hollow bronze statue. A priest would get devastatingly high from inhaling the smoke from a burning medicinal herb and would climb inside the statue and gibber until he passed out/shat himself, all the while making oracle-like pronouncements. It was this place that St. John pronounced was where Satan dwelled and I stood there, transfixed, in the roofless ruin and tried to imagine how beastly sweaty those priests must have been after being released from the bronze statue. Mmm. Satany and musky.
After taking in as much of Satan's altar as I could stand, we made our way back to town. True to his word, Mehmet was waiting for us at the edge of town to show us to the otogar. After he brought us there and helped us buy our tickets - Serge going to Çanakkale, I to Ankara - we bought him an ice cream and a Coke and passed a lovely hour watching the street fair's pagentry.
Serge's bus came first, but before he got on he scribbled his email address on a postcard and asked me to keep in touch. Many months later, I got an email from him; he was teaching English and French in Nanjing, China. Apparently, while he and I were climbing around the ruins, I'd talked extensively about my love for the Chinese culture and the Chinese language, and he'd recorded that in his notebook. Reviewing it later while poised to choose a country to teach in, he'd chosen China in large part because of how rabidly I'd talked about it. He was so damn happy, he said, and he had me to thank for it. Serendipity indeed.
Mehmet stayed with me until the bus came. Absently I reached down to the ground for a rock or a stick as a little souvenir of the wonderful day I'd spent with two new friends, and when my hand came back up I noted that I'd come upon a rock.
A white rock.
As I boarded I put the rock in my pocket where it would be safe. The muezzin was crying out from a nearby mosque, a sound that was dulled and finally muted by the interior of the coach. As we pulled away, Mehmet waved happily at me through the window with - did I imagine it? - a little bit of mist in his eyes. The hum of the air conditioner whispered softly, and I half-imagined that it spoke with St. John's words as I closed my eyes for a much-anticipated nap.
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
For the first time in my life I had to rely on myself to navigate around another country and its culture alone, and in doing so I had learned to trust in the often surprising innate good in strangers. I'd gotten over my fear of taking risks because I somehow knew that Turkey and her countrymen would ultimately not disappoint me. I arrived in Ankara puff-chested and cheeky-proud and, for the first time in my life, I felt like an adult. A man.
My white rock doesn't have a name written on it - I checked - but of this I have no doubt: I had overcome.
Until next Friday, I remain,
Domonic
"My uncle died today", he said.
As I silently awarded myself the Dogpiss Asshole Friend of the Year Award, I asked how he was holding up. He said that he wasn't close to this particular uncle, but that his presence would be required - and required anon - in the southern Turkish city of Adana for the funeral. "I have to be one the damn pallbearers", he said moodily as he pushed the remainder of his dinner around on the hand-thrown ceramic plate.
It was at that moment that I, with dawning horror, realized that the trip we'd planned - only a third of which we had left - would have to end. I'd spent quite a bit of time in Turkey, but I didn't think that being left to my own devices without a native speaker of Turkish was wise considering that I had, apparently, a singular inability to distinguish that which was Awesome from that which was Incredibly Stupid. Ahmet must have sensed my hesitation, and he put down his fork and looked at me. "You ARE going to go on with the trip, right?", he said, fixing me in my seat with his very serious eyes. "You understand Turkish. You know how to get food. You know how to get places with public transportation. And you've done nothing but talk about Satan's altar for days now. I'll kick your ass if you don't go."
It was true. I'd spent five months in the country and I knew what to get in restaurants, how to find what I needed in cities, and - perhaps most important - I had the razor-honed ability to home in on a ruin site like I was a carrier pigeon on crystal meth. And I had been talking about Satan's altar - rumored to have been inside the Red Basilica (Kırmızı Avlu) in Pergamum - far too much to have come that far without seeing it and its hoovey goodness.
We left Behramkale reluctantly. The ruins of Assos are easily some of the most evocative in all of Anatolia and indeed the entire of the Greek-speaking ancient world, and the village of Behramkale was debilitatingly charming. Ahmet clearly didn't want to spend an entire day and night in transit to Adana (stopping in, of course, Ankara) and I was loath to part from his witty company. It was therefore all the more fitting that we had to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup truck from the harbor to the upper town, and that keeping us company in said pickup truck was a goat. A goat that had continence issues. Goat raisins everywhere. ALL THE TIME GOAT RAISINS. As we sat on the side of the dusty road picking livestock shit out of our clothes and awaiting our separate buses - his going southeast, mine going straight south - a donkey walked out into the road and stood there defiantly. It was as if he was thinking Yes. Yes, I am an ass. An ass in Assos. I get it. Morons.
I parted with Ahmet, wishing him a safe and goat shit-free trip, and after three dolmuş connections I found myself in one of Turkey's legendary climate-controlled sleeper buses. Before I got on the bus in question I'd handed my luggage to the bus driver and had asked - perhaps more pointedly than I'd intended - if this particular vehicle would be dropping me off at Bergama, the Turkish city that clung to the side of the ancient Pergamene acropolis. He assured me that the bus was indeed going to be stopping at Bergama and I clambered aboard the bus to my seat.
The next thing I remember was that I was being shaken awake by a man whose fen-like breath swam with the heady presence of onions, cigarettes and coffee. Haydi, haydi, Bergama'dayiz he said, and each expulsion of breath crashed over my face in a way that made me briefly imagine that I was being slapped with a diaper that had recently been filled by a tot who'd been eating slightly spoiled Indian food. It was dark out beyond the bus and the unflattering interior bus lights had been turned. We were not moving, and everyone - I MEAN EVERYONE - was looking at me with a mixture of pity and impatience. I rallied and flung myself down off the side of the bus to find my suitcase waiting for me already. Quick as a flash the driver and the porter teleported back onto the bus and it sped away into the awaiting darkness of an Anatolian night.
Wait. Why was it so dark?
I was too sleep-addled to piece it all together quickly, but when it finally came to me I felt icy dread creep into my man-area, and it withered accordingly. No, I wasn't in a well-lit but appropriately well-worn provincial otogar, perfumed as it would be by cologne, smoke, the smell of roasting meat and the vaguely reassuring scent of diesel exhaust. In fact, I was standing on the side of a Turkish highway in the middle of the night with a suitcase, a Discman and a rapidly-growing desire to live.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness just as some small animal skittered across the desolate stretch of highway - mother of God, was that some sort of ghastly lizard or something? - and, just as I was about to leap out of my skin, I saw the outline and lights of what appeared to be a skeezy roadhouse. I didn't know they even had those here, the lucid part of my brain interjected in detached ethnographic interest. It was then that I saw what appeared to be four fire-red lightning bugs moving in lazy circles above the ground of the parking lot. Moments later four shadows detached from the more concrete darkness and I noted with dim fear that the fireflies were the cherries of four cigarettes, each one of them clutched in the hand of a burly twentysomething Turkish man. The men began to stride purposefully toward me and it was then that I began to pray.
Dear baby Jesus in Your hay-scented manger, I began, I know that you probably aren't terribly amused by my profound interest in the Seven Churches, but get me out of this and I'll make sure to...um...VISIT YOUR MOM'S HOUSE. Oh, I did that already in Ephesus. Uh, I'll...GAZE ADORINGLY AT MOSAICS OF YOUR COUNTENANCE. Ah. Did that already at the Hagia Sofia in İstanbul. Look. I don't have much. I'm sure you're a reasonable divine infant. Can you help a former altar boy out of a bind? Or are you going to be LIKE THAT?
They were drawing closer and I began to understand just how fecked I was - foreign, fat, and forsaken - and how nobody on the earth knew where I was at that moment. So this is how I am going to perish, I thought, alone on the side of a Turkish highway in the middle of the night, snuffed by creepy Turkish hooligans before my time. It made for a lovely tourism advertisement. It was at that moment that one of the men detached from the group and walked up to me. He took an impossibly long drag off of his smoke, exhaled and said
So, are you going to Bergama?
IN ENGLISH
to me.
I recovered from the shock of being addressed in my mother tongue in the middle of Anatolia more slowly than I'd like to admit. Upon closer inspection, the burly twentysomething Turkish hoods of my imagination were in fact four reasonably-dressed college kids who were heading home on that same bus for their vacation. Home to Bergama. Despite these revelations - and the resulting disappearance of the metallic taste in my mouth - I had fixated on why this particular gentleman had addressed me in English. I was surprised because I'd spent a lot of time in Turkey and, almost without fail, people presumed I was Turkish. It's not my "look", although there are certainly Turks who look like me. I don't flatter myself to presume that it was my ability to blend with the native population, but because I was in pretty good franchise of how things functioned I did get by unnoticed for the most part. My analysis was interrupted by the young man, who sported a kicky goatee like mine (at the time) and had begun speaking again.
We just called a taxi. Would you like to share it with us? I found the strength to say that yes, indeed, I'd like to not die on the side of this highway, and he laughed heartily. It turns out that we were quite near Bergama - as my eyes adjusted, the lights from the city glowed welcomingly in the distance - and, reassured that I wasn't about to take the Big Dirt Nap, I asked why I was left to perish. Oh, he said, if there are fewer than ten people getting off at a certain city, they drop you off on the outskirts to save on gas and time. Well, at least the cheap buses do. I vowed to become fluent in Turkish so that I could write a scathing letter to the chairperson of the We're Crappy and Strand You for Giggles Bus Company just as the taxi arrived. We piled in and, in the gentle glow of the globe light I introduced myself to my four companions and thanked them for not taking my sweet sweet life. They laughed again and asked if I had a place to stay in town. I was so preoccupied with not being slaughtered that I hadn't given it much thought, and it was clear that it was quite late. One of the gents, Mustafa, then told me that his grandfather owned a hotel in town that I could stay at called, strangely enough, The Gobi Pension. He worked there too and would make sure to take care of me. I nearly wept with gratitude.
And about the English? They had seen the book I'd been reading before I passed out and, apparently, I had been speaking in my sleep. They were in the seats behind me, they assured me, and were in no way stalking me.
The Gobi Pension was perfection. Mustafa and his charming grandfather checked me in and told me about the complimentary Turkish breakfast that could be had the following morning and trundled me off to bed tutting softly about how weary I looked. My room overlooked a busy road and, on the other side of said road, a street fair was quite earnestly in full swing. I opened the window and listened to the fair and the lingering sigh of the city as night overtook it before passing out in my clothes on the bed.
I awoke early and, eager to not miss the lovely breakfast, I made my way downstairs. Patio tables set out on the sidewalk positively groaned with Turkish breakfast fixins: abundant tea, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread (loaf AND simit), olives, salça, feta cheese and hard-boiled eggs in İznik- style egg-cups. I tore into it like a badger until I noticed a young blonde man sitting alone in the corner poking dejectedly at his egg. I brought my plate over to his table and asked if I could sit because HEY I WANTED TO TRY NEW THINGS OK. He looked at me quizzically and I began to wonder if I should ask in French or German (neither of which I actually knew) when he bade me sit. His name was Serge, he was in fact quite fluent in English and he was a Belgian tourist visiting Turkey for the first time. He had no earthly idea what was going on, like, EVER. (Did they mean to set out olives and tomatoes for breakfast? he asked. Yes. Yes they did, I counseled whilst cramming said delights into my awaiting maw). I asked him what he planned to do that day, informing him that rabid hell-cats wouldn't be able to keep me from the Pergamene acropolis and the Red Basilica. As we talked over the eggs and olives and learned more about each other, I revealed that I was taking Anatolian/Greek/Roman archaeology courses at my school, and he beamed. Who better, he asked, to go to Pergamum with? Serge was a big believer in serendipity.
Serge and I became fast friends. He was bright and witty and quite a conversationalist, traits which I prize dearly. Instead of taking pictures, he wrote and sketched in a journal about his experiences, which I found fascinating. We set out after I gorged myself, and as we walked to the site, we noticed that a young man of about thirteen was tailing us. As my experience only the night before had proven to me, Turkey was a place where wonderful and unexpectedly delightful things would happen just at the moment when you presumed that you were about to be murdered, and I wasn't concerned. Serge, however, was still guarded, and he became quite uneasy. Um, so what's with this kid? Pickpocket? Glue-huffer? he asked. Let's ask him, I said, and Serge looked mildly horrified. C'mon, it's a kid, and we're strapping lads. We can take him. Serge tittered nervously.
I turned around and walked toward the boy, who looked quite startled by this development. Can I help you? I asked. It took a moment, but the boy beamed and answered. Can you speak English with me? I am learning it in school. Sure, I said, but in exchange you have to help us. When we're done today with seeing Pergamum we'll both need to find the otogar to leave town. Can you help with that? The child nearly squealed with delight and agreement. I winked at Serge, who looked on in wonder. It was clear that he was beginning to understand the magic of serendipity as it played out in Turkey. As we walked to the site, we held an extensive conversation with our new friend. His name was Mehmet (Call me Mike, he begged), and he liked American music and British television and had a dog that he named after an obscure Ottoman pasha. He had a cat, too, but her name was a little different. He'd named her Madonna. That is awesome, I said, and meant it.
After temporarily parting company with Mehmet at the foot of the hill leading to the sites, Serge and I spent the better part of a day in the extensive ruins of Pergamum's acropolis - I in nearly unglued archaeological bliss, Serge writing and sketching dutifully in his notebook and looking pensive - before we descended to one of the secondary sites nearby. It was the site of the Red Basilica, which in antiquity contained an altar that was crowned by a sinister-looking hollow bronze statue. A priest would get devastatingly high from inhaling the smoke from a burning medicinal herb and would climb inside the statue and gibber until he passed out/shat himself, all the while making oracle-like pronouncements. It was this place that St. John pronounced was where Satan dwelled and I stood there, transfixed, in the roofless ruin and tried to imagine how beastly sweaty those priests must have been after being released from the bronze statue. Mmm. Satany and musky.
After taking in as much of Satan's altar as I could stand, we made our way back to town. True to his word, Mehmet was waiting for us at the edge of town to show us to the otogar. After he brought us there and helped us buy our tickets - Serge going to Çanakkale, I to Ankara - we bought him an ice cream and a Coke and passed a lovely hour watching the street fair's pagentry.
Serge's bus came first, but before he got on he scribbled his email address on a postcard and asked me to keep in touch. Many months later, I got an email from him; he was teaching English and French in Nanjing, China. Apparently, while he and I were climbing around the ruins, I'd talked extensively about my love for the Chinese culture and the Chinese language, and he'd recorded that in his notebook. Reviewing it later while poised to choose a country to teach in, he'd chosen China in large part because of how rabidly I'd talked about it. He was so damn happy, he said, and he had me to thank for it. Serendipity indeed.
Mehmet stayed with me until the bus came. Absently I reached down to the ground for a rock or a stick as a little souvenir of the wonderful day I'd spent with two new friends, and when my hand came back up I noted that I'd come upon a rock.
A white rock.
As I boarded I put the rock in my pocket where it would be safe. The muezzin was crying out from a nearby mosque, a sound that was dulled and finally muted by the interior of the coach. As we pulled away, Mehmet waved happily at me through the window with - did I imagine it? - a little bit of mist in his eyes. The hum of the air conditioner whispered softly, and I half-imagined that it spoke with St. John's words as I closed my eyes for a much-anticipated nap.
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
For the first time in my life I had to rely on myself to navigate around another country and its culture alone, and in doing so I had learned to trust in the often surprising innate good in strangers. I'd gotten over my fear of taking risks because I somehow knew that Turkey and her countrymen would ultimately not disappoint me. I arrived in Ankara puff-chested and cheeky-proud and, for the first time in my life, I felt like an adult. A man.
My white rock doesn't have a name written on it - I checked - but of this I have no doubt: I had overcome.
Until next Friday, I remain,
Domonic
