Four weeks on the road in Turkey

And Richard's ears are burning

by RICHARD JONES

IT'S said that the small things that happen on your travels are often the events most likely to endure in the memory. So, too, for me I'm sure.

Istanbul

IT'S said that the small things that happen on your travels are often the events most likely to endure in the memory. So, too, for me I'm sure.

I'd heard about the experiences of other men at a Turkish barber (the berber in Turkish) but had to be there in person to really appreciate the full procedure. The scissors and comb routine across the hair was pretty standard. So, also, the No. 1 electric clippers cut around the beard and moustache. But the final flourish took the cake. Watched by a bevy of small boys, goggle eyed outside one of Konya's barbershops, plus the tea man who brought not one but three tiny glass cups of steaming Turkish tea the barber whipped out his throwaway cigarette lighter.

Whoosh.

Into the right ear aperture goes the tiny flamethrower. As quick as lightning the barber is around the back of the chair. Whoosh, again. This time the left ear is subjected to the same operation. That singeing odour in the air is your own. Miraculously, the smell of burnt ear hair lingers in the air just a few seconds before the barber splashes the cologne around and the whole thing is over.

Trying to explain this a few weeks later to a group of young Western males didn't seem to gel with them. Then the penny dropped. Not until we reach a certain age do we males grow our ear hair. The Turkish barber is the master of age categories, though.

So what else remains in the memory after a month in Turkey? St John the Baptist's skull and (I think) right arm, wrapped in gold leaf. They are on view in one of the four Treasuries situated at the old Ottoman Sultans' Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The Prophet Mohammed's sword and scabbard, also in the Topkapi Palace. Emeralds the size of cigarette packets adorning a sultan's turban. All of those, certainly. But also the ruins of Troy, just south of Canakkale on the Aegean seaboard. To think you might be treading the same ground where Achilles, Ajax, Ulysses and other Greek heroes plus Helen of Troy and her lover, Paris, once stood 3000 years ago during the decade-long siege of Troy was breath-taking.

Ephesus, or Efes as the Turks call it, where St Paul wrote his epistle to the Ephesians is another world site of tremendous historical significance. And perched high in the hills overlooking Ephesus and the city of Selcuk is the Virgin Mary house.

I say house because all that remains of the building are a few stones. It's said Mary might have lived in the stone house, perhaps adjacent to St. John's abode, during her final years between 37-45 AD. What's left forms part of the foundations of the present tiny Chapel. The Chapel now attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims each year.

Down below accessed by a winding road, the remains of important Ephesus buildings such as the Library, the Temple of Artemis and the magnificent 25,000 seat Roman Theatre stand. There is another 25,000 seat Theatre at Aspendos on the Mediterranean coast and it's rated as the finest, still intact Roman ampitheatre in the world. The afternoon we were there the rain was pouring down - would that it might happen here in parched central Victoria - so the steeply angled steps right to the very top were extremely slippery.

These theatres are still used today. Our guide proudly told us that Shakira had recently performed in the old Aspendos building. Then there was Perge, another Greco-Roman city also accessed just like Aspendos from the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya. Its Roman baths with the separate and distinct cold, tepid and hot pools are about the best still left in the world.

The Romans were masters at aqueduct construction and the underground systems for pool heating. But should a member of the Roman nobility need to have his or her communal marble toilet seat warmed before venturing forth, how was this to be achieved ? Why, by a slave occupying the said seat for a few moments that's how. The slave would warm up the uninviting marble with body heat before the master ventured forth.

Turkey was proclaimed a secular state in the 1920s by its great leader, Mustafa Kemal. He was known as Ataturk, or the Father of the Turks, and had served with distinction as a lieutenant-colonel as the Turks held the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. By war's end he had risen to general. I knew the Turks had suffered considerably more casualties than the rest of the Allies, but the present figure puts their dead at a staggering 85,000 soldiers.

Although you hear the regular muezzins' calls to prayer throughout the nation, it's in central Anatolian Konya where Islam is at its strongest. The restaurants in this city, and one we visited was ranked in the World Top Ten a few short years ago, serve no alcohol with dinner. Nevertheless the shepherd's lamb-on-the-bone dish, served in a good-sized earthenware bowl, was succulence personified.

Konya is the home of the Whirling Dervish sect. Its founder was an Afghani named Rumi who lived in the 1200s AD. Today the Mevlana Museum which contains his huge tomb is topped with a striking, fluted dome of turquoise - one of Turkey's signature sights.

Unfortunately the next set of religious festivities featuring the Dervishes was not due until December so we missed out on watching a performance.

There were many other splendid sights. From our fourth floor hotel balcony watching the Queen Elizabeth II steam out of Kusadasi was one.

Kusadasi on the Aegean is not only a cruise ship haven, but also the city from which one makes day trips to Ephesus and the Virgin Mary house. Here we met an exemplary taksi driver (there is no x in Turkish) named Ibrahim Yumusak.

Ibrahim took us under his wing, offered us good deals and made sure we were taken to the local bus company for the sixth leg of our seven-stage coach tour around his country.

For 60 new Turkish lira (about $57) he drove us to the Virgin Mary house and Ephesus, didn't seem too bothered by our penchant for spending hour after hour wandering through the ruins and then bobbed up again to drive us to the bus terminal the next evening. Ibrahim was a mine of information. I hadn't realised 100,000 Armenians now call Turkey home and there are sizeable minority populations of people from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other central Asian nations.

We encountered only one spiv among the taksi driving fraternity and the coaches were a revelation. The inter-city coach system is a wonder to observe let alone use with big modern Mercedes plying back and forth all day and, it seems, all night. The prices are extremely reasonable, tea and cakes are served at frequent intervals and there are regular stops mid-journey.

We used seven inter-city coaches during our month in Turkey. Three of the hotels we stayed in had been converted from Ottoman Empire period houses. Our boutique hotel in the capital, Ankara, had only six guest rooms and was entered from a laneway. Once the bell was rung, the door into a secluded courtyard was opened and there was this splendid and private mini-hotel.

And I can't finish without remarking that it was a privilege to be on the Gallipoli Peninsula on the 11th day of the 11th month for Remembrance Day. Enterprising Turkish tour operators run an Anzac House (I kid you not) in Canakkale. It's a four-storey backpacker haven with their very knowledgeable guides running daily tours to Troy and the battle zones. We did our own thing with Troy but decided to take a mini-bus tour with 14 others on Remembrance Day.

Across the Dardanelles we went on the regular vehicular ferry and drove over the hills to Anzac Cove. At 11 am on the 11th day of the 11th month Murat (our tour guide) and two of our small party laid a wreath at North Beach - adjacent to Anzac Cove - as we gazed out across the water. One of our number read a prepared address reminding us of the significance of the day and down we went to wander on the shingles and sand of Anzac Cove.

Incidentally, North Beach is where Johnnie Howard gives his address on 25 April. How 25,000 people are shoehorned into that small-ish space is amazing, but we were told heaps of temporary scaffolding and seating is trucked in each year.

Later we went to one of the beachside cemeteries where Simpson the Man with the Donkey was buried along with hundreds of others. Simpson was just 22 when a Turkish sniper picked him off.

Then up the steep hills we drove to Lone Pine cemetery. We were all handed a red carnation to place on the headstone of our choice before heading towards Chunuk Bair, the highest point of the peninsula held by Mustafa Kemal and a command post he never lost.

The trenches the Turks and Anzacs occupied 700 metres above sea level up there are separated by just the width of the modern road. That's how close they were by August, 1915.

We could walk in what's left of the trenches on both sides and peer into wire-meshed tunnels. Murat, a fit 30-something, told us the best he had done with modern footwear and just a back-pack from Anzac Cove to the highest point the Aussies and Kiwis reached on April 25, 1915 was three hours.

On that fateful first April morning 91 years ago the first Anzacs were up there in one-and-a-half hours, lugging 303 rifles, all their provisions and digging tools before they were pushed back.

It's an astonishing place to visit and one which, once seen, will never be forgotten.

Oh, in case you're wondering what impact the new roads have had on the sacred sites following the burst of publicity about highway construction earlier this year, forget it.

Apparently the main road was constructed in winter and it's now pot-holed and breaking up, but in no way does it impinge on Anzac Cove or the beachside cemeteries.

19 December 2006

australianrules.com.au

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Four weeks on the road in Turkey And Richard's ears are burning

Four weeks on the road in Turkey

And Richard's ears are burning