Middle East - Anthony Ham [15]
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To understand the Syrian love of hospitality at a deeper level, read Damascus: Taste of a City by Marie Fadel and Rafik Schami, while the lives of children across the region take centre stage in the enlightening Children in the Muslim Middle East, by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea.
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A few weeks later, outside the citadel in Aleppo, I found Abdul lingering in my shadow. This quiet, gentle boy became my silent companion as I wandered through the souqs, translating for me when my Arabic wasn’t up to it, always polite, never asking for anything in return. Later again, this time in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, a young girl named Fatima began by playing with my daughter and ended by inviting us to her family’s home for a meal. I had long ago grown used to friendliness at every turn and gracious hospitality in Syria. I just wasn’t expecting it to start so young.
Anthony Ham
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TURKEY
Divriği’s Divine Doors
It was a typical start to a Turkish journey. I took a taxi to the Sivas otogar, where the men shook their şapkas (hats) and said the next dolmuş to the southeast left in a few hours. As I had more than 350km to cover that day, I decided to tear up the thrifty traveller’s rulebook and commandeer the taxi. The driver’s eyes bulged behind his glasses, but he rapidly recovered and calculated the charge. We negotiated and haggled and bartered and frowned and, eventually, smiled and shook hands. Woohoo!
Bircan (the driver and I were now on first-name terms) steered us out of town. The rolling hills had one-mosque villages in their folds and stickmen shepherds on their ridges. Our first stop was Kangal, announced by a statue of a black-faced, pale-bodied, spiky-collared canine. Kangal dogs, originally bred to protect sheep from wolves and bears, are now man’s best friend across Turkey.
Another type of creature had drawn me to this remote service town and I soon came face to scaly face with it at the Balıklı Kaplıca health spa. The warm water is inhabited by ‘doctor fish’, underwater ticklers that nibble fingers, toes and any other body part you offer them. The fish supposedly favour psoriasis-inflicted skin and the spa attracts patients from all over the world, but the school happily gets stuck into any patch of flesh. It’s wonderfully therapeutic to dangle your feet in the water and feel nature giving you a thorough pedicure.
Shirking the recommended three-week treatment, we returned to the taxi. As the dry brown hills turned into snow-capped mountains, the road began to resemble a rollercoaster and Bircan’s driving became increasingly inventive. Luckily, he was paying a rare visit to the right side of the white lines when we arrived at the military checkpoint.
Bircan’s English was as lousy as my Turkish, but we always managed to communicate the important things. When the soldiers had examined our IDs and waved us on, he explained, ‘PKK…terror!’ The years of widespread insurgency in Kurdish southeastern Anatolia are over, but the area’s fearsome reputation endures, as do military operations against the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party).
Our last stop before taking the Big Dipper home was Divriği, a town dominated by Alevi Muslims in a valley between 2000m-plus mountains. It had a tense feel, but there was a good reason to come here. Three reasons, in fact. The Ulu Cami mosque and medrese (Islamic seminary), built in 1228 and named on the Unesco World Heritage list, has a trio of doorways carved in mind-boggling detail. Each door is decorated with a stone starburst of flowers, medallions, interlinking geometric forms and Arabic inscriptions.
When Bircan had finished praying, I asked him if he was glad I’d dragged him all this way. He smiled. The doors were so intricately carved, he said, that their craftsmanship proved the existence of God.
James Bainbridge
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Andrew Eames recounts his journey to ancient sites