Upon My Last Visit to Arikan Ranch

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I went to the Ranch twice more, both times as a chaperone for a free day for the middle schoolers who chose that activity. During the last week of classes at MEF, there are no classes. Students choose activities and field trips. So on Tuesday, I was among the teachers overseeing a football tournament in the morning, and a swimming tournament in the afternoon. The football tournament consisted of mixed-gender teams that played in a gym on a basketball court. Each team had five players. There were no off-sides, and balls could be played off of the walls. It is much more exhausting than regular soccer, because there is seldom a time when the ball is not close to one of the four forwards. Tired players would switch off at goalie. Games lasted 15 minutes. The level of play was intense; the sixth-grade boys made it into the semi-finals, losing to the eventual winners. The swimming tournament was just a bunch of silly games.
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Next day I was back at the Ranch. I decided to really explore the facility, so I started walking around the perimeter next to the high stone walls. Here’s what I saw (in order of appearance):

• A concrete basketball court
• A rose garden with many different varieties
• A double tennis court
• A man-sized chess board
• Staff apartments -- the building looked like a two-storey motel
• Flowering shrubs along all paths -- all paths featured large, flat pieces of marble embedded in the ground
• Chickens, ducks, geese and peafowl wandering free
• 16 sheep and lambs in a pasture with 8 miniature deer (4 each by gender)
• 4 fruit orchards
• Several large horse stalls, no horses in sight
• A duck pond
• The concrete lake mentioned earlier, with a fake waterfall that flowed under a stone bridge
• 2 black swans swimming in the fake lake
• 2 large greenhouses. The first featured short, broad-leafed palms, various herb gardens, and potted trees. Two covered women were working in the room, one hoeing around the palms, the other planting herbs. The second green house was dedicated solely to tomatoes. Arikan sells these to his schools.
• A field of grapes
• A cherry orchard
• A crowed artichoke patch -- they grow up on long stems, reminding me of Brussel sprouts
• 2 smaller green houses dedicated to herbs
• A mint patch with brilliant blue flowering tops
• A helipad -- I surmised that this must have been the spot from which I had seen Saturn during my first visit
• A large arboretum dedicated mainly to evergreen trees
• The Arikan Palace, a huge dwelling with a central tower emblazoned with a bold IA for Ibrahim Arikan. Another huge rose garden
• Another guard house, the guards sipping tea and watching me closely in case I decide to storm the Palace
• A man with a weed-eater, buzzing out grass and weeds from between the bricks in the parking lot in front of the Palace. It is clear these people live here year-round maintaining the grounds for a family that lives there only during the summer months.

Meanwhile, the kids were running around, playing basketball, football and cricket in the tennis courts, swimming in a square pool in the middle of an open, square entry building. Lunch featured barbecued meats, various salads, and lots of soft drinks. We were there for about four hours. Each of the kids paid 20 Turkish Lira. Arikan made money.
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Upon My First Visit to Arikan Ranch

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Ibrahim Arikan is the founder of MEF Schools. He made a small fortune selling supplies to schools, then started building schools so that they would buy only his supplies. Smart cookie. The reason he his so fond of schools, other than as a source of income, is that he attributes his success to a former teacher. Little Ibrahim was a stutterer. He was told that he had very little future of success because of this problem. But one teacher had faith in him and coached him and he overcame his disability. I can look out the window from the room in which I am writing and see a double statue -- little Ibrahim dressed in suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, and curly-haired, professionally dressed teacher lady holding a large book in her left hand while her right hand rests on the boy’s shoulder. Kind of creepy-looking at night.
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The Arikan Ranch is a huge estate west-south-west of Istanbul in a place called Silivri. It is a fortress surrounded by huge brick walls, and protected by armed guards and dogs. This was my third visit, and I am astonished by the opulence. The reason for the first visit in September, 2009, was a huge party thrown for all the teachers and staff at both the National and International Schools. Hundreds of employees sat with spouses at rows of long tables that lined a large artificial lake, at the end of which arose a small, covered island that featured a band stand. (This looked ominous for the future of the evening -- my apprehensions were proven to be well-founded.) It had been a long teaching day and the drive to the Ranch had taken over an hour. I was hot, thirsty and hungry.
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Soon after being seated each person was served a ceramic plate of meze (appetizers: olives, cheeses, tomatoes, cucumbers, different diced vegetables in sauces, with bread, of course -- Turks cannot conceive of any meal without bread, the staff of life and all that). I didn’t know that what lay in front of was just an appetizer, so I ate everything, even the stuff I didn’t particularly like. Since I knew barely anyone at my table, I decided to take a walk and check out the nearby area (I will describe what I saw in another Istanbullet). When I got back, there was another ceramic plate at my seat, and people were lining for the main course. Unfair! I was too full to eat anymore. Wine and beer was served, and after dessert out came the raki (pronounced “rock-uh”). This is Turkey’s national alcoholic beverage. It is identical to the Greek national drink, ouzo, as far as I can tell. Both are strong, aniseed-flavored spirits that are clear until mixed with water, then they become cloudy.*
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Almost everybody got drunk in a hurry. Most Turks don’t drink much, not because they’re Muslims but because the stuff is so expensive. So they get tipsy quickly.** The band started playing traditional music and soon there was a huge line of people holding hands above their heads and undulating around the pool in a counter-clockwise motion. This was amusing to watch until Arikan decided to take the mic and sing cheesy Dean Martin songs, like “When the moon hits your eye like a large pizza pie, that’s amore.” I soon had enough of that and got up for another walk. I found some steps that led up to a path. There were several people moving on up the path so I followed, wondering what the draw was. Soon we reached a flat concrete area where Arikan had placed a large, portable telescope. The skies were perfectly clear and when I got my turn I was delighted to see that it was pointed at Saturn. The rings were clearly visible; I could even detect some color, but maybe that was from my tears. It was a truly awesome sight.
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* I took one sniff and was confirmed in my decision to decline. I had tasted ouzo once when I was a kid, aboard a Greek freighter in the Port of Longview, where I was begging for some Greek coins to add to my growing collection of foreign money. (See, I was already thinking internationally!) I would ride my bike about a mile down to the docks, ask permission to come aboard and then politely ask for spare change. I knew when foreign ships were arriving because it was listed in advance in the Longview Daily News. When the Japanese ships came in, I would sell them carp that I would catch fresh in the nearby sloughs on the way to the docks.
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** On the way home, well after 1:00 AM, one Turkish teacher was so intoxicated that when traffic slowed to a crawl, which it always does when trying to get into the city, that she got out of the van and walked in the four-lane road, talking to fellow stalled travelers. I never saw her again, so I think her antics were punished.
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Istantidbitx VI

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Turkish Men
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In Istanbul, they never wear shorts except when exercising, hats and backpacks are rare, and they rarely walk fast. They sit for hours drinking many hour-glass-shaped cups of sweet, hot tea, no matter what the temperature is, smoking, talking, arguing, gesturing, playing backgammon, and another board game featuring bronze dice. They walk or sit with their arms linked or around one another, like lovers. They greet one another with a stylized kiss: press right cheek to the other’s right cheek, then repeat left. (Women do the same, but they make a kissing, “smooch” sound with their lips.) Men generally do not shave for about two weeks, whereupon they have a barber do it. I have adopted this practice. It is a most pleasurable Turkish custom that I will miss very much.
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MEF International School
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Turkish pencils have no erasers. Students must provide their own rubbers (unlike in America, where they are handed out by the school nurse. This is a pun.). Classrooms have no pencil sharpeners. Students must sharpen their pencils with little plastic hand-held sharpeners that they carry in a bag shaped like a burrito, which is full of pens, pencils and, other school related paraphernalia.
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Students in the Turkish National School can pass with a 50% average. In the International School, if a student is at 58%, teachers are "encouraged" to find ways to bring the score up to 60%. These kids are worth a lot of money -- we can’t let laziness and stupidity get in then way of them passing. That would obstruct profits!
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Bus Duty
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Breakfast and lunch are provided for student and faculty every day. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, there are snacks at the bus tables. All Primary School students are required to be assembled and led to their 16 passenger bus by a faculty member. I am in charge of Bus 62. I am responsible for the largest group of PS bus riders in the school (kids from China, Korea, Pakistan, Russia, USA). Luckily, Bus 62 is the last in line, placing it right next to a MEF playground with swings, slides, etc., so I let my kids scamper around until the "get on board" whistle sounded. All the other Bus Duty staff had to try and keep their charges corralled in or around their bus.
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This spring, the rules changed, and all Primary School students were to get on the bus, take their seats and fasten their seat belts, then wait for 15 minutes before the buses left. That worked fine as long as the weather was bad. But when it started getting warm, I said "No way," and I let my kids stand or sit outside close to the bus. The other Bus Duty staff resented my action, but my kids were happy, and all the other kids wanted to go home on Bus 62.
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Upon Finally Being De-Greased
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The Middle School production of Grease is now just over three months behind me, and I have finally recovered from Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome. The shows went well, there were few embarrassing moments or pauses, and the students felt good about their performances. The cast consisted mostly of 6th graders.
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I had hoped that the karaoke CD I had ordered the previous spring would serve for the accompaniments of the well-known songs, freeing me up be the vocal coach and prompter. However, the CD worked only for the solos; in the large ensemble numbers, the singers couldn’t feel the beat, so I had to play (i.e., pound on) the piano much more than I had anticipated. In addition, we only had enough boys to fill out the roles of the Burger Palace Boys and the nerd, Eugene. So I became Johnny Casino, sitting at the piano onstage with my back turned to the audience, shouting a few lines and singing “Hand Jive” at the top of my lungs. The music wasn’t difficult, but the playing of it was -- pounding '50s rock. My arms ached after each rehearsal. Meanwhile, "Beauty School Drop-Out" was done in pantomime because our Teen Angel’s voice broke in January and he could no longer sing the climactic falsetto passages.
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Check out the names and nationalities:
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Leads: Sandy – Aylin (‘eye-lin’, Russia), Danny – Jimmy (USA)
Burger Palace Boys: Kenickie – Anar (‘ah-nar’, Russia), Roger – Danny (Korea), Doody – Kayhan (‘kye-hahn’, Turkey), Sunny – Fuzuli (‘foo-zoo-lee’,Uzbekistan)
Pink Ladies: Rizzo – Suzan (pronounced ‘Suzanne’, USA), Marty – Abisheree (‘ah-bee-shree’, Pakistan), Jan – Erin (USA), Frenchy – Ana (Spain)
Others: Patty – Joanna (France), Eugene – Atif (‘ah-teef’, India), Miss Lynch – Antonia (Germany), Vince Fontaine – Rashad (Turkey), Teen Angel – Allejandro (Spain)
Chorus : Leoni (‘lay-oh-nee’, Holland), Natia (‘nah-ti-ah’, Georgia), Melina (‘me-lee-na’, Italy), Olga (pronounced ‘Olya’, Russia), Lara (USA)
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Upon Walking Along the Golden Horn

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Last Saturday, May 21, I walked almost the entire length of the Golden Horn. My goal was to visit a village of Muslim pilgrimage, Eyüp, and check out some interesting sites along the way. To get there, I would pass through the neighborhoods of Fatih, Fener and Balat. These districts are a reminder that for centuries after the Muslim conquest, Christians and Jews made up about 40% of Istanbul’s population. It was a beautiful, clear day with a light breeze that made the walking easy. (OK, what made the walking easy was because the sidewalk is absolutely flat, free of dogs and tourists, and the traffic was light.)
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The Golden Horn looks great on maps, but it is very sad when seen in person. It is a flooded river valley that flows southeast into the Bosphorous, a natural harbor that first attracted settlers over 9,000 years ago. The Horn eventually enabled Constantinople to become a powerful and very rich port. Quote: "According to legend, the Byzantines threw so many valuables into it during the Ottoman conquest that the waters glistened with gold." Now, it resembles the Seattle Ship Canal, polluted and lined by empty, rusting ships, warehouses, bridges and docks. Seagulls perch and preen in serene boredom upon these modern, iron-oxide relics.
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I began my walk in Karakoy ("dark village"), on the northern side of the estuary. I crossed the Galata Bridge for the first time on foot. This bridge was constructed approximately where the chain was laid across the Horn to protect the Italian ships during the siege of 1453. It offers a splendid view of Istanbul’s seven hills, each bristling with minarets. It was a good day for fishing -- all the plastic buckets I passed contained suffocating anchovies hauled in by poles stout enough to tame tarpon.
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Once I had reached the end of the bridge and turned northwest, and had fought my way through the crowds of tourists surrounding the New Mosque and Spice Bazaar, I entered a shadowy valley created by walls of rusty corrugated tin on my right, mounted by spirals of concertina wire, and over 40 tour buses parked on my left. (Walking Brain: Why the concertina wire? There’s nothing but dilapidated warehouses over there. [Perhaps to keep out the non-existent homeless people.] And why is it called concertina wire? I thought a concertina was a small accordion. [Maybe the wires holding open the folds of the bellows mechanisms are interwoven.] Did Vivaldi compose a concerto for concertina? [Probably not.] But I bet Hindemith did! [Walking Brain does not have a sidewalk to follow, like I do.])
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The district of Fatih was named after Mehmed II, the Conqueror (Fatih). Its crowning monument is a mosque originally built in 1470, destroyed in an earthquake in 1766, and immediately rebuilt in baroque style. It is one of the largest kulliye (collection of buildings surrounding a mosque) in the city, with 8 medresses (Muslim theological schools), a hammam (Turkish public bath), a han (office block) and a hastane (hospital). For being such an impressive holy site, I was intrigued by the number of roaming roosters and hens and the amount of graffiti. (Walking Brain: Why is there so much graffiti? One of the first things that struck me upon arriving in Istanbul was the lack of graffiti compared to other large cities. Why here in this profoundly Muslim site? [Perhaps there is neither money nor incentive for removal.])
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I walked on into the Fener ("lighthouse") district. A shoe-shine guy brushed past me and accidentally dropped a brush. I called to him, picked up the brush and handed it back to him. He thanked me profusely, shook my hand, called me "a gentleman," and offered to give me a free sandal shine. I was feeling pretty good about myself by that time, so I thought, 'Sure, why not?' Then he told me that he was a Kurd from Ankara and couldn’t get a break in Istanbul, and that his wife was still in Ankara with his five children, one of whom was in the hospital. Then he asked me to pay for the shine. Duped again! I gave him my pocket change and continued on.
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My next stop was the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Nominally the head of the whole G.O. church, the Patriarch is now shepherd to a diminishing flock in and around Istanbul. The Patriarchate is all that remains of what was once a thriving Greek enclave, where many wealthy residents rose to positions of prominence in the Ottoman Empire. I walked up a steep incline and entered the Patriarchate through a side door. The main door was welded shut in memory of Patriarch Gregory V (I am not making this up -- there are famous dead Gregories all over the place), who was hanged here for treason in 1821 after encouraging the Greeks to overthrow Ottoman rule. The Patriarchate centers on the basilica-style Church of St. George, which was built in 1720, but which contains many older artifacts, gilded icons and furniture.
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I walked back downhill and visited a really unusual building, the Church of St. Gregory -- just kidding, St. Stephen of the Bulgars. This entire church is constructed in cast iron, even the internal columns and galleries. (I have never been in a church before where, if you flick your finger against a column, it goes 'bong!') The history of its construction mirrors the whole dead Gregory thing. Gregory V was executed at the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, 1821-32. Later, the Bulgarian community broke away from the authority of the Greek Patriarchate just up the hill. The Bulgarians were issued an ultimatum by the sultan: if you want a separate church, you must build it in one week. Pre-fabricated sections of cast iron were created in Vienna in 1871, shipped down the Danube to the Black Sea to the Bosphorous, and St. Gregory’s, sorry, St. Stephen’s was assembled in one week.
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It is really quite an astonishing building, an all-metal church. The echo is perfect for (dare I say it?) Gregorian chant and Orthodox hymnody. The church still serves the Bulgarian community today. The congregation keeps the tombs of the first Bulgarian patriarchs permanently decorated with flowers. The church stands in a park which runs down to the Golden Horn, dotted with trees and flowering shrubs. As I was walking back down to the waterfront, a shoe-shine guy brushed past me. He dropped a brush. I instinctively picked it up. Without me calling to him, he spun around, looked surprised and called me "a gentleman." In the immortal words of George W. Bush, "Fool me once ... uh ..."
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I have to report that Eyüp was a disappointment. Historically, it is the burial place of the standard bearer of the Prophet Mohammed, Eyüp Ensari. The wealthy elite established mosques and street fountains in the village but, above all, they chose Eyüp as a place of burial. Basically, Eyüp is one huge cemetery. Yet it is a place of pilgrimage for Muslims from all over the world. I heard many languages that I did not recognize, and saw no casual tourists.
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Whereas most Americans consider cemeteries to be spooky places, the Ottoman graveyard is a garden where the living stroll among the dead without morbid inhibitions. The gravestones are often symbolic: from their decorations, one can determine the gender, occupation, rank and even the number of children of the deceased. For instance, the size of turban reflected a gentleman’s status; a differently shaped turban indicated a member of the Sufi order; women’s gravestones have a flower for each child.
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I took a ferry back down the Horn, sun-burnt, footsore and oxygen-hazed. The boat zigzagged slowly from one iskele (dock) on the south shore to the north shore of the Horn, back and forth like a giant grandmother doing somnambulant aquatic needlework, until I was finally deposited in Eminönü (umlauts on the, oh hell, who cares?) Trying to get from the ferry dock back to the Metro was actually frightening. A turgid torrent of humanity slowly struggled down the steps that led underground. One hesitant step at a times, I became gradually encased in a lava-like wall of humanity, oozing downward. Anxious shopkeepers tried to serve as foot-traffic cops, shouting and waving, but the living stream had a mind of its own. I was glad I was taller than most so that I could see potential openings, but they always seemed to close before I could get to them. I became worried that if someone were to lose it and start screaming, there would be a deadly stampede. I became worried that it might be me who would start screaming.
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Then I was hit on the head by the eagle. The shops that line the sides of this sluggish underground passage feature cheap clothes and noisy, plastic battery-powered toys. At ground level, toy police cars, tanks and trucks flash, whiz and whirl, while plastic airplanes and birds circle above, tethered to hooks in the ceiling. One of the circling eagles lost its mooring, fell and hit me on the head. I am proud to report that I did not scream, hence preventing the potential public panic. Being able to write this paragraph is proof of my (if I may so humbly say) heroic power of self control.
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Fun with Mavis and Herm: Part Two

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It was the Sunday morning one week after my return from Cappadocia. I was despairing that I may have boggled the dates when Mavis and Herm would return to Istanbul. I thought they were coming back on Saturday, so I had spent that whole time sleeping on the couch in avid anticipation of their return. Come Sunday morning, my only consolation was Total Rugby. Then the phone rang -- it had to be them! I had a difficult choice to make: rugby or ... I chose my friends (= free lunch).
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It was another beautiful spring day. I charged downhill. (OK, I lurched.) Upon entering the bus, even though empty seats were available, I chose to stand because there was an open window slat above me that drew in the fragrant April morning air. Before we had even reached the next stop, however, a stern hooded woman in a heavy, tan, ankle-length, buttoned-at-the-throat Islamist uniform slammed the window shut with an emphatic bang. She must have felt the dreaded coolness of the air and had courageously acted to prevent its threatening the endangered Turks behind me.
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I knew it was going to be a fun day when the driver honked at an errant motorist and the horn stuck, blaring at the impassive walls of the ill-fated Ciragan (Turkish ‘g’) Palace, a restored residence of the last Ottoman sultans, now a 5-star hotel. Both Driver and Change Maker leaped heroically through the front door, thrust open the hood and yanked at random cables until the horn stopped, but we passengers could not know this because of the cacophony of car horns protesting from behind our vehicle. During this distraction, I reopened the window, and enjoyed fresh air until I disembarked in Besiktas, whereupon I met the Hermodsons.
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Our first stop was the Dolmebahce (pronounced Dole-meh-BAH-jeh) Palace, meaning filled-in garden. The palace was constructed in 1856 in what had been a garden created over land recovered in the 16th century. The line of tourists was huge, and after a short wait (made shorter when an usher informed the crowded line that it would be at least an hour and a half before we even made it to the entrance booth), we decided that this was a site we would not be visiting today.
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We caught a bus to my neighborhood, Ortakoy, and visited the Saturday open market and took pictures of the neo-baroque mosque, then caught a taxi up to Kurucesme and visited the neighborhood where Nancy and I had lived for several months (described in loving terms in previous Istanbullets). We walked downhill to the church built over the dry well from whence the village derived its name, and M & H scrambled through the ancient tunnel to the underground source of the holy water. We then walked along the Bosporus to Arnavutkoy (“Armenian Village” -- I’m sorry that I originally called it a Greek settlement). This is where I go to get my hair cut by Adil, but my favorite restaurant, Abracadabra, was closed for renovations. We walked around until we found a place that was open but not crowded, and was sending off a lot of take-out food, which meant the locals liked the cooking there. (Busy restaurants in Istanbul maintain small fleets of motorcycle serfs who will speedily deliver their culinary products to your doorstep, wearing unfastened helmets while smoking en route.)
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After lunch, we continued our walk along the water and passed through Bebek (in Turkish, “Baby”). This place reminds me of Rodeo Drive (“Yeah, baby”) -- international high-end shops abut one another, while yacht-brought wealthies jog along the sidewalks with their designer dogs. Once we reached the northern end of the village, we caught a taxi to Rumeli HisarI -- Rumeli (meaning Roman, but really meaning Christian, the enemy the place was built to thwart) Fortress.
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This huge fortification was constructed in 1452, under the direction of Sultan Mehmet II Fatih (“The Conqueror”), one year prior to the conquest of Istanbul. Mehmet II’s aim was to block any support which might have come south from the Christian nations that nestled along the northwestern shores of the Black Sea to assist the Byzantines. It was erected on the narrowest point of the Bosphorus, facing another smaller Ottoman fortress that already existed on the Asian side. Amazingly, in an age lit only by fire and powered only by slaves and animals, Rumeli HisarI was completed after only 4 months: Mehmet II designed the first tower and created a competition between his Pashas (Generals) to complete a tower each and a connecting wall to the next tower.
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Now, Rumeli HisarI is a huge museum, displaying many of the ancient stone-throwing cannons that were used during the conquest. It has a large, open-air amphitheater that is used during the summer months for concerts, and the views from the battlements above the Bosporus are among the most spectacular in Istanbul. I always take my foreign guests there. However, I find each visit more harrowing, personally, as I am developing vertigo. To get to the battlements, one must climb ancient stone staircases, each step of which is irregular in composition and height between steps. There are no guardrails, and the steps get narrower the higher up you go. Also, the gusts of wind off the Bosporus get more erratic and forceful. I cling to the walls like a starfish on Haystack Rock, inching upward while my heart and breath rates enter the red zone. But once on top, it is exhilarating!
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Thanks for the visit, Mavis and Herm! I hope to see you at my next international gig!

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Upon Attending an Armenian Mass

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I just got back from the first Eucharist in which I have been a communicant in almost two years. I attended Saturday Mass at the Church of St. Gregory the Savior (I am not making this up), an Armenian Catholic church built in Ortakoy in 1839, making it older than the iconic Ortakoy mosque. I have walked past the walls surrounding this church for almost two years and never seen them open. I have pressed the buzzer outside the doors many times and never received a response. Today, I attended Mass thanks to the first friend I made in Istanbul, Gail Chandyok.
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Gail lived with her husband and son one floor above me in the apartment complex owned by MEF Schools in Umraniye, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, where I originally resided; this is where Nancy and I lived before she found the apartment in Kurucesme. During the weeks before Nancy arrived, Gail was my sanity anchor. She is a native Indian and teaches math (they call it "maths" here). She is always well dressed and organized -- my polar opposite. The Chandyoks are devout Catholics, and now live in the MEF apartments in which I reside in Ulus next to the school.
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Today was the second time I have participated in worship with them this year. On Good Friday past we, purely by chance, if one believes in coincidences, attended a Stations of the Cross service together in a Greek Orthodox church in Ortakoy. On Friday the 13th (gasp!), Gail and I happened to be sitting across from one another at lunch, and somehow the topic of prayer came up. (Since I am leaving Turkey in six weeks, and do not have a job awaiting me, I’ve been spending a lot of time praying.) Gail asked if I knew of the church mentioned above and I replied in the positive. She told me about Saturday’s Mass, so I came at 3:00 pm and there were she and Francis.
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The service took place in an intimate chapel aside from the main church. It lasted about an hour, and was attended by the Chandyoks, seven women and myself. The priest wore an elegant white silk cloak adorned with a beautiful embroidered cross on the back. Since he spent most of the service facing east, away from us, I saw more of his backside (like an audience sees a conductor) than otherwise. Francis passed me his missal so I could read the lesson of the day in English. During the Eucharist, we communicants got the wafer, but only Hayk took the water-mixed wine. One woman came late and left early (I thought only Lutherans did this).
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Afterward, in a shaded area between the church and the walls that protected it from the street, we had a tea party. There were eleven women and four of us of the other gender, including the priest. Slices of bread (of course), and unsweetened biscuits were served with constantly-refreshed small hourglass-shaped glasses of tea. Everyone but the Chandyoks, the priest and myself smoked cigarettes.
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I soon realized that I was the main topic of conversation because 1) I am different looking; 2) I am from America; 3) I am Christian -- not Catholic, but still present for Mass; 4) I am associated with Gail and Francis (both of whom speak Turkish), and; 5) I was able to communicate with the priest, Hayk Aram, a handsome 70-something fellow, who happens to speak German much better than I do.
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I learned that St. Gregory, according to legend, had been imprisoned in a well for 12 years, and had survived during that time solely on the bread and wine of the Eucharist. After excusing myself, I went back into the church to investigate the architecture, icons and the upper layers of the structure. The building is a small basilica with four faux marble pillars on each side of the nave, all with false capitals. The ceiling frescoes resemble recessed marble hollows such as in the Pantheon in Rome, and were painted by the artists who decorated the interior of the Dolmebahce Palace. In addition to a few representations of the Virgin, the wood-framed paintings that hung at intervals around the nave dealt with scenes from the life of St. Gregory. Interestingly, Jesus only appeared on the processional crucifixes.
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The church boasts two balconies, the only such feature of any church in Istanbul, I was told. Both balconies have raised platforms—the first possibly for additional seating, although there were no pews, as there were on the ground floor. The second balcony has two raised platforms, which I would like to believe were intended for a large choir. All the windows, from top to bottom, feature metal bars on the outside, and metal shutters that could be bolted from the inside. Hmm.
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Outside, near where the tea party took place, stands a silent wooden belfry with a large corroded bell. Behind the church is a barred stairway that leads to an underground recreation of St. Gregory’s well, now sadly considered unsafe for visitation.
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Upon Visiting Cappadocia, Day Two

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On Friday morning, while taking breakfast outside (to the amazed horror of Omar because the temperature was OMG! cool), I was delighted to observe a huge, yellow-and-orange striped hot-air balloon pass overhead, huffing and wheezing. The basket must have held over 30 people. The winds in this area change direction as the air warms, so the balloons follow a circular path over this incredible landscape and return close enough to home for the tourists to land and be driven back to their hotels, while the balloons are deflated and returned by pickup truck to their starting sites.
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When the tour van arrived, it contained two couples from Brazil, another mother/daughter combination (Germans -- mom from Freiburg, daughter from Berlin, a history major), a guy from Nigeria working for a petroleum company in Turkey, two male Canadian companions from Quebec, who conversed in French, a hooded woman from Uzbekistan (who spoke perfect American English and lives with her mother in Doha, home of Aljazeera TV), me and Ali, the guide.
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(SIDE-NOTE: There is a peculiar territoriality that occurs when a group of people first enters an enclosed space, such as a classroom or a bus. Once a person initially chooses a place to sit, that becomes the place where they tend to sit whenever they return. During my school days, and extending into my college years, I liked to disrupt this silliness by taking one of the popular people’s seats whenever I arrived before them. The ensuing confusion was very amusing to observe. But, on a tour bus, where people tend to leave personal belongings on or below their seats, this was not possible. I sat in a single seat behind the Uzbeki woman.)
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After driving past many of the geological marvels I had seen the day before, we disembarked and began a 3km hike up to a plateau above the Rose Valley. (On tours, I like to stay as close to the guide as possible so I don’t miss any information, and so s/he might like me enough at the end to not expect a tip.) I was dismayed at how quickly I was gasping for air. My muscles were fine, but my respiration and heart-rate were desperate. The trail left no opportunities to stop and rest as we trudged upward through towering V-shaped walls of tuff. I was gasping for oxygen, but was not about to suffer the indignity of halting the progress of the serpentine line of tourists following me by collapsing on the trail. (This possibility, however, did enter my mind.) Once we finally reached an open space, I realized that there was no one behind me—I could have stopped at any time. I had been keeping pace with the guides who do this for a living, and the Germans who, like the Austrians and Swiss, think hiking up mountains is fun. Now that I had some time for wheezing cogitation, as the rest of the group finally managed to catch up to us, I realized that I had been scrambling uphill at over 10,000 feet above sea level. Gasping up here is OK.
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I was not impressed by the Rose Valley, so-called because of the layers of reddish pigmentation in the sedimentary walls of the cliffs. It was small beer compared to the Badlands of South Dakota. We walked on past, into and through many dwellings and chapels that had been dug out of the tuff, revealed now because of centuries of erosion, or still intact with weathered frescoes inside. Back in the van, we drove to a site that allowed tourists to enter one of the several underground cities created by the early Christians to protect themselves from the Romans and, later, the Turks. These people literally crawled into the embrace of the rock, emulating non-aggressive ants—they were communal, everyone had a specific job to do, and they were hard to wipe out.
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They protected the entrances to these underground cities in a very ingenious way. A large, circular stone was rolled into the entryway--a vertical aperture tall enough for a person of the period to enter easily. This stone was then rolled to the side of the entrance into a space carved out of the tuff, allowing easy access for the inhabitants. When danger approached, the stone was rolled into place and buttressed against ramming.
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Along the way, I noticed that most of the mosques did not have domes (autistics like things to be the same). I mentioned this to the Uzbek woman who sat in front of me, and she was similarly puzzled. After a while, she posited that they may be Sufi mosques, Sufis being the Muslim sect from which the famous “whirling dervishes” derive. I asked her how the Sufis had managed to escape the internecine struggles that are still plaguing the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. She replied that the Sufis believe that they have a unique connection with Allah (the dance of the dervishes is an expression of this spiritual connection) and if others choose another path to Him, that is fine with the Sufis. They only fight in self-defense.
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Once we entered the human ant hill, I knew I could not descend deeper than far enough to see what it offered at the upper levels -- defensive ante-chambers, living and storage spaces, temporary cemeteries, wineries and chapels. Every room was teeming with tourants, mostly Japanese. By the 2nd level down, my claustrophobia was screaming and I returned to the daylight. My fellow companions later reported that they wished they had followed my example, because after the 2nd level the dark corridors became smaller and smaller, warmer and warmer, and began to reek of nervous perspiration, and there was nothing new to see but smaller examples of what had been carved out nearer the surface.
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The next stop was a factory featuring semi-precious stones, but specializing in onyx. We were ushered into a workshop where an elderly smith sat before a stone lathe. He locked a rectangular block of onyx into the device, and then began noisily scaling away layers of stone chips. Eventually, he created a beautiful stone egg the color of thick honey, polished to perfection, standing on a coarse pedestal, this being the only remnant of the original block of onyx. I was very impressed because it was all done manually -- no buttons were pushed other than On and Off.
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After this demonstration, we were herded into a large jewelry store, with precious stones displayed in every fashion -- necklaces, earrings, etc. Our group was led to another demonstration intended to whet our appetites so that we would buy something. My rug merchant antipathy was on high alert. However, after having given her spiel, the hostess asked if anyone could answer the question, “What does ‘Cappadocia’ mean?” Since I had been making taking mental notes for this Istanbullet all day, I immediately blurted out the answer that Ali had said that very morning, “Place of beautiful horses.” I now own the onyx egg described above.
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Our last stop was Pigeon Valley. Because Cappadocia is basically a bunch of volcanic rocks, the inhabitants had to create food. To do so, they needed fertilizer. Hence the pigeons. There are thousands of pigeon coops carved into the hillsides. Anyone who has ever visited a major metropolitan area knows that pigeons = poop. In Cappadocia, pigeon poop was encouraged. Now, the wines from Cappadocia are considered Turkey’s finest, all due to guano.
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Back at the hotel, while sitting reading outside in the cool (meaning I was alone) fading evening light, two workmen arrived. Their job was to attach rope lights to the metal latticework that held grape vines above where I was sitting. I can imagine that the eventual effect will be quite lovely. During this procedure, Omar brought them tea, then a plate of biscuits, and then a plate of orange slices -- Turkish hospitality. Turks are lovely people I will miss very much.
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