Şanlıurfa and Harran, Turkey, Sunday May 4th

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We had decided not to take the hotel tour of five sites in a whole day at great expense. Instead we settled for a bus trip to Harran for four liras ($A3.50) each. The Harran area was previously desert and not productive for crops, so most of the people there traditionally raised animals. Now irrigation using water from the Ataturk dam has changed the area into lush agricultural land growing subsidised crops, so many locals are now wealthy.

We hired a young guide, Ibrahim, who is in his second last year of studying to be a professional tourist guide. To illustrate the wealth of the area, he said that now it cost about 100,000 lira ($A85,000), as well as many gifts of gold, white goods, electronic goods and camels or goats, to marry a beautiful girl and about 20,000 lira for the cheapest wife. In addition, the husband’s family must host the three day celebration and provide a feast for the whole village plus all relatives and friends. In Şanlıurfa the price for a beautiful wife was 25 – 30 thousand lira plus gifts. I asked our host what constituted beauty and he said that it was a round face like a moon or an orange, clear skin, tall and slim waist, big breasts and no faults with the line up of the features or limbs. In addition she would be strong.

When our host married 43 years ago, the event was held in the nomad traditional way. It involved the three day event, colouring of one hand for the groom and hands and feet for the bride, who was 14 years old, and lots of symbolic games. In one, the groom and his friends, mounted on horses, chased the bride and all the other young girls, mounted on camels. When the groom caught the bride he put her up on his horse with him. Although this is a ritual game, the riding and dodging were for real and great fun. In another game the groom’s friends caught him and tied him up by the feet. They said that they wouldn’t release him until be gave them lots of treasures and sweet things. He said he would give them anything but they didn’t believe him. He was left until his mother came along and bought his freedom with trays of sweet foods. After the ceremonies the bride and groom were given a sectioned off part of the communal tent for three days and after that they slept in with the rest of the extended family. Our host and his wife gave up the nomad life 19 years ago to give their children the educational opportunities that Şanlıurfa offers. Nowadays girls marry between 18 and 25, and boys between 18 and 30 or so, depending on their studies and financial position.

Harran is one of the oldest human settlements in the world. It is mentioned in the book of Genesis in the Bible and Abraham lived here for a while in 1900 BC. It sits on a dusty and treeless plain. There is a small modern village that evolved after the 1980s when people began to move out of the traditional beehive houses and build more comfortable homes. The traditional beehive houses have a round, mud brick wall structure and the dome roof is made from thin bricks purloined from the ancient ruins nearby. The houses are cool in summer and warm in winter. The surviving beehive houses were built about 200-300 years ago

We visited the site of the oldest university in the world, where Euclid worked on his ideas of geometry, and which later was connected to a mosque. The remains of the 8^th century Ulu Mosque dominate the area, with an unusual square minaret. It was built by the last of the Umayyad Caliphs, Marwan II and is supposed to be the oldest mosque in this part of Turkey. There was a fence around the site and an extra cost to enter, more than the actual entry to the whole site. We could see quite well from the little hill beside so we settled for that.

Our next stop was the Culture House, a complex of 19 joined beehive rooms with connections between some of them. They were arranged around a walled courtyard and originally belonged to a large and wealthy family. Set up like an ethnographic museum with traditional cooking implements in the kitchen and floor cushions in the sitting room, it costs nothing more that the price of a cup of tea to don costumes and sit about pretending to own the place. You can buy the clothes if you want, but our guide and Keith were ready to move on so I did not have the opportunity to be led into temptation.

Outside the current houses there were stacks of sticks from cotton plants for fire wood and piles of fuel made from dried animal manure in handy round disks with a diameter slightly larger than a sponge cake.

The castle was very impressive, containing a three storey stop for travellers on the ancient Silk Road, along which the treasures of the East were transported by camel caravan to the west. Looking from the third floor we could see the hill-like mounds that guided travellers and indicated the Silk Road, when there was little else to be guided by. The animal accommodation was on the top floor to allow hot air and smells to rise without inconveniencing the people.

The castle itself had been built onto buildings from previous ages. A mosque had been superimposed over a church, which had earlier taken over the temple devoted to sun worship. The window through which the sun shone to hit a particular spot on the wall remains, as do three layers of arch in one section. A tunnel of 400 metres or so led to the University, but is now not passable. Originally there were four watch towers, each with responsibility to guard a gate. We climbed the tower in the middle of one of the two remaining watch towers and gazed out over the plains, but saw no invaders. The tower is surrounded by walls with twelve gaps in them, designed to act as a clock or calendar, although we don’t know exactly how.

Our guide was very knowledgeable and helped us to notice things that we would have missed without him. When we had finished we returned to the modern village, where the ancient Aleppo gate still stands in the remains of the city wall. He asked if we would like him to come over to the gate with us, but since he had already explained it, we said not to worry. As soon as we set off a child on a mound of dirt to the side made a bee-line for us. Very soon he was saying “Money, Money,” and we were saying “No.” He continued with “Yes, yes,” standing right in front of our feet and when we turned, coming around to try to prevent us moving forward. This went on for a while and we tried to ignore him. Eventually Keith had a few polite but firm words with him, in English but with a tone that required no linguistic skills to interpret.

The boy skulked off but only to pick up stones that he threw at us. We turned and started walking towards him and he ran off. We were only going back to catch the bus but he must have thought we were coming for him. The same thing had happened to the host of our pension the previous week, but a stone had hit him on the head. His wife said that the only thing to do is to grab the boy and hit him about the head and then he will know that you mean it when you say “No.” We certainly won’t be following that advice.

The trip back to Saliurfa was most entertaining. Our minibus was overcrowded with people sitting along the walkway. When our driver saw that we were coming up to a police check point, where they are very strict about regulations, he did a sharp right and we bounced off across a building site, dodging piles of sand and trenches. We entered the narrow streets of a village where we barely squeezed past market stalls and around tight bends. Another vacant lot, used to store rubble and looking like a bomb site, provided us with an exit to the highway, surely past the road block. Alas, we had come up to the exact spot, so once we careered past a building and could see up the highway, only metres from reaching it but still hidden by the building, the driver slammed on the brakes and we reversed for about 100 metres. It was back to the cross country driving for about twenty minutes, with some of the ever patient passengers beginning to doubt that a way out would ever be found. Eventually we reached Sanliurfa by back roads. We had seen a great deal of village life and of the poorer sections of the city, reminding us of some areas in Egypt.

We had also seen some really beautiful clothes – worn as ordinary clothing in the streets of the village as well as in the city. The beautiful fabrics we had seen in the bazaar were worn by women of all ages, although young women often wore western clothes or long skirts and tops with head scarves. Maybe it was married women who were wearing the exotic fabrics, often in a long dress with a decorative belt and a full skirt. The sheer fabrics floated over underdresses in a plain colour, usually white. Over the top a matching long coat was sometimes lined and sometimes not. The embroidery on the fabrics is exquisite and the colours are vivid – bright aquas, oranges, velvets in gorgeous rich hues, white with white patterns, sequined designs. A black or brown cloak with gold braid edging was often hiding these garments since the weather was cool for the locals.

We made another trip to the bazaar to buy a present for the new baby. That evening two other travellers had arrived – French Stephan on a one or two year trip on his bicycle and Jim from America, who is considering a future in Turkey. After dinner, Jim and I went with our host and hostess to see the new baby. We stepped out of their courtyard into the pitch black night. There are street lights but they were not working just then, however they were fine when we returned. Most streets are not wide or car friendly so we walked to where our host had parked his car. The new baby was three days old and home already. He was sleeping in a low metal cradle near his mother who rested on a mattress in the corner of the sitting room. Cushions for the back were lined up along the walls and a television was on a stand opposite. The whole family came in to greet the grandparents and Jim and I were given honoured positions beside the grandfather, our pension host. The big brother I had been chatting with the night before was very quiet in his family setting. The children’s ages were 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8 and a little girl who looked to be about 7, a cousin, was also staying there. The baby was so sweet and I was given the first cuddle. Next was the grandmother and then he woke up, so he had a feed. Like all Kurdish babies, he will be named on the fourth day, with the eldest member of the family selecting the name. In this case the name will be chosen by the great grandmother who is 103 years old. I took some photos without the flash so they may not be so great. Jim took a photo of the grandmother because he was intrigued by the tattoos on her face. Apparently they are just a matter of choice and not a cultural obligation.

Some of the discussions between the father and son concerned taking second wives and mistresses; fairly odd I thought in the circumstances.

When we returned, Keith and I made the decision to continue east, which meant an early start for the next day. Before we went to bed I gave Jim some toilet paper supplies since he had come east imagining that it would be provided, as occasionally it is.

While we picnicked in the park in Sanliurfa, we watched a family throwing rocks and large sticks into a mulberry tree. If they threw to a good spot, large numbers of white mulberries fell to the ground, where they were collected on the waiting blanket or picked up off the grass. The mulberries in this area are sweet but they lack the distinctive, delicious taste of the black mulberry that is commonly grown in Victoria.

Like all urban areas, Şanlıurfa houses most of its inhabitants in blocks of concrete flats, supposedly strong enough to withstand earthquakes. In this city many of the flats were flamboyantly decorated.

Harran is on a very flat plain, in stark contrast to most of Turkey. Looking from the tower in the castle we could see very small hills on the horizon. These were created to guide traders on the Silk Road in ancient times across this otherwise featureless landscape.