These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come. To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— 'He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery' just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
- the Book of Revelations
- the Book of Revelations
Things could potentially have gone more smoothly getting to the bus that would take me back to Ankara from İzmir. For twenty unblinking minutes I watched as the taxi that was transporting me to the station wove erratically through dense traffic, quite narrowly avoiding snuffing black-clad Greek widows, lithe Levantine youths and mustachioed Turkish men poised on the curb as they smoked their bitter Samsun cigarettes. Yes, they were on the curb. The taxi went onto the curb. I really don't know what my friends had said to the taxi-driver when they loaded me into the taxi, but I imagine that it was "DRIVE LIKE YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE AND YOUR KIDS ARE HOME. YOU KNOW, LIKE THAT CREEPY LADYBUG SONG." As my post-dinner sütlaç threatened to tumble forth from my gullet and onto the taxi's notably clean upholstery, I sought the intercession/succor of the baby Jesus.
Dear Infant Jesus in Your timothy-perfumed Manger, I began, I know that I don't deserve Your pity, but I would like to not have to avail myself of repatriation insurance. Well, I guess it would be my family availing themselves of it, as I would be by that time "that fragrant seventy pounds of charred bones in the Fed-Ex box". But anyway, I have a lot to live for, not the least of which is, um, becoming a priest. Um, no, I can't promise that. Uh, I'll - um - GO TO YOUR MOM'S HOUSE IN EPHESUS. Yeah, I already did that. Look, I just really want to live, OK? I used to be an altar-boy if that means anything. Amen.
As we rounded the next corner on two wheels I beheld the bus station and nearly began to weep with gratitude. And by "weep with gratitude" I mean "discretely check the contents of my underthings because I was certain that I had evacuated." I got out of the taxi by nearly teleporting out of the open window and threw a lump of lira ($3? $55? I didn't know) at the driver, who had already taken the pre-agreed-upon fare for the service. I'd once again forgotten that Turks don't usually accept tips for doing their jobs. (Refreshing.) Out of the corner of my eye I saw him rise up out of his seat to try to give it back to me, but I was gone too quickly, and I will never know if he was able to buy a pack of smokes or a new TV with the lira I'd thrown his way. I knew two things and two things only: one, the last bus to Ankara that night was going to leave with Swiss precision in about sixteen seconds from the otogar and two, despite having lived in Turkey for five months at that point, I didn't know how to operate a telephone. Spending the night in the nearly-abandoned otogar sounded about as appealing as being administered a slow-sheet enema full of tapioca and, jowls a'flap, I ran as I'd never run before.
There it was. The İzmir to Ankara Express. It was pulling away, right on time, into the gathering Aegean darkness, heedless to the brutal lowing sounds that issued forth from my desperate lungs. I stood there watching it gather speed as it attempted to clear the garage while cursing in a language I'd made up on the spot. It sounded like the noises I imagine Cape buffalo make while giving breach-birth to triplets while high on peyote and it echoed cruelly and caromed off the high-arched ceiling of the otogar. It was then that the next several hours came to me in a vision, and brittle disappointment and mute horror settled into my bones.
No, nice old lady, I am not a homeless vagrant from the bleak Anatolian hinterlands. Please don't knit me something. Please no. Please. Oh, alright. Booties, then.
Pray, sir, are there to be found some men's restroom facilities that don't cause me to swoon from a nearly corporeal odor? And is there a suitable magazine you're ready to throw away that I may savage for something to cleanse my nether-regions? No? Good. Awesome.
Yes, withered old fellow, I would like to purchase those old lentil "meat"balls, and please cover them with that unidentifiable red sauce that will taste of sadness.
It was just as I had begun to actually taste the sadness-sauce in the back of my mouth that I noted that the brake-lights of the bus were glowing like nuclear cherries and the bus moved not. Swiftly gauging the distance between me and the bus, I determined that if I ran like my hips were going to break I might make it. As I tore across the parking lot at speeds generally reserved for particle acceleration the bus stopped completely, the door opened on the side of the bus and the driver - barely older than myself - stepped out into the light of the streetlamp, smiled broadly, and waved at me. Merak etme, he said. Don't worry. Then he mimed talking on the phone and made feminine chirping sounds. That could only mean one thing: my friends had called to tell him to wait for the fat American. As I attempted to take a breath that didn't feel like I was being run through with a bayonet, he offered me a smoke as he hefted my bags under the carriage. I declined as politely as I could and dragged my carcass aboard while he shotgunned it down in record time. As I made my way in the darkness to an empty seat I looked over my shoulder at the soft green glowing LED clock at the front of the bus. 10:03. I'd made the bus three minutes late - nearly unheard-of - and, while actually unlikely given the Turkish character, I felt as though I could sense the steely weight of judgment falling in twin parallel eye-beams upon my person. I found an empty seat as quickly as I could and attempted to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, which was nearly impossible given that I was still emitting high-pitched squeaks every time I exhaled and volutes of brine ebbed forth from every available pore.
Once I'd calmed myself from "rodeo bull" to "uncomfortable librarian" I took note of my chair companion. I'd not noticed him before because Turkish bus seats are incredibly roomy, so he was relatively far away from me. He was also one of the slightest men I'd ever seen. I mentally noted that I'd used larger things than him to pick detritus out of my teeth. He smiled at me - a wan, brief smile, but one nonetheless - and I smiled back and got back to the task at hand: ensuring that I was alert enough to not get dumped on the side of the road in the middle of the night again. After a few moments, he leaned slightly toward me and introduced himself. I told him my name, and that it was nice to meet him, and I immediately apologized for my crass butchery of the Turkish language. He smiled again - this one broader - and asked if I was a German. Nope, I replied. American. He then switched to urbane, nicely enunciated, British English. It's a long story and it involves a woman, he said of his English skills. I nodded sagely.
Turns out my new friend was from Akhisar and was going home after a visit with family in İzmir. I admitted baldly that I knew nothing about Akhisar (literally "white fortress") and he shook his head. Not much to know, he said. It's a nice place to raise a family, but it's not as exciting as the Pearl of the Aegean we'd just left. And there was that old stuff in the city center. You know, Bible stuff.
Bible stuff.
I casually got out my trusty (and increasingly nasty) guidebook. Akhisar. Formerly Thyatira. One of the Seven Churches. Aww yissssss.
I'd been on enough bus trips in Turkey to know that we'd not be tarrying in Akhisar; more likely, my new friend would barely have both feet on the sidewalk before the bus lurched away toward the enveloping dark of the awaiting Anatolian steppe. I casually mentioned my interest in 'collecting' the Seven Churches and he looked unsettled; I sensed his unspoken question and immediately stated that I wasn't some Christian fundie hoping to unlock the secrets to the End Times by visiting the Churches. Instead, I said, I was motivated by a desire to see places where it was rumored that evil dwelt. He didn't seem as comforted by that as I'd hoped, and I changed tack to ask about the ruins.
Oh, he said, they're nothing special. They're right in the middle of downtown. His eyes twinkled a little. Would you like me to ask the driver to drop me off there instead of the otogar? It's actually closer to my house. I think I could get you two minutes.
I was taken aback by this offer not because of the inherent generosity of it; I'd become completely accustomed to that in Turkey. No, here was someone who was deliberately messing with Turkish coach bus schedules, and, having fresh experience in that milieu, I knew that the consequences are dire. However, the thought of passing Thyatira in the dark of night, perhaps never to return, steeled my resolve.
The plan was simple and yet risky: he'd call out to the driver to drop him off in the city center in front of the ruins and would invite the driver to have a cigarette when he got off to help him with the luggage. If the driver lit up, I'd clamber off, claim that I needed to stretch, and walk casually up to the ruins and return without any other explanation. I can't keep him long, and he's bound to smoke that cigarette like he's about to get shot, he said, but I'll try.
Twenty minutes later I found myself trying to not look too interested in the personal conversation that was happening outside the bus window. All at once there was the reaching into the shirt pocket and the proffering of the cork-tipped white cylinder, and with a flick of a Zippo I was out the bus door and scuttling toward the ruins. My friend was right: they weren't Ephesus-spectacular, but they'd been lovingly protected. It appeared that Akhisar was proud of its past. I breathed in the heady smell of old things and ran back to the bus just as the driver stubbed out. He smiled at me and said something I didn't catch. I'd like to think he knew what the plan was all along and that he found it amusing; more likely he was grateful for the unplanned five minutes of standing and the hit of nicotine.
I thanked my friend several times and waved at him through the window of the bus as it pulled out in the direction of Ankara. I turned back and had begun to settle in when I noted the abrupt arrival of a new seatmate. In her strange, homemade fishnets, black pumps and miniskirt she looked so starkly out of place that I nearly shrieked. I got no other information from her other than that she was sick of sitting near the restroom in the back, was DEFINITELY Russian, was definitely going to Trabzon, and was definitely an artisan whose muse was humping. All day with the humping. I made mental note to not touch anything of hers and to take a cleansing Purell bath later.
Awesome. A Jezebel. I guess I deserved that.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic
