Gaziantep to Kahta, Turkey, Wednesday April 30th

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Keith made an early raid on the Internet café to investigate accommodation in Kahta and Şanlıurfa. I worked on the blog in the hotel lobby until Mehmet arrived to help us to the bus. He and I picked Keith up from the café. Then we spent a pleasant time drinking tea and eating simit and pastries for breakfast and chatting in the square. Mehmet told us that each little area or street elects a headman who deals with the municipality on behalf of the residents, in addition to having a headman for a large area such as a village.

Around us young boys were offering a pair of slip-on sandals to anyone in leather shoes, in the hope of receiving a shoe shine job. Other vendors wove their way through the crowd selling cigarette lighters, tobacco, tea from urns on their backs and bandaids. Many people were out and about or sitting with friends chatting. It was a benign and peaceful scene, perhaps one that has been acted out for centuries in this place.

Burhan arrived to drive us to the otogar (bus station) wearing a suit, since he had taken time off work. We piled in and off we went. We knew that Mehmet had a good singing voice but we hadn’t heard it so we put in a request. Mehmet certainly has a beautiful voice, and with Burhan joining in, he sang a love song. We burst into spontaneous applause when they finished.

Soon we arrived at the bus station. We had really enjoyed getting to know some of Mehmet’s friends and Burhan had been so helpful and friendly. It was a quick farewell since he had to get back to selling medical supplies, but we hope to see him again sometime.

Our farewell with Mehmet was quite emotional. We had both felt a family-like bond with him, particularly enjoying his sense of humour and his personal code of being happy when what he does makes others happy. He had to leave before the bus came but made sure that there was a person to see to our needs. We hope that, one way or another, the ‘see you soon’ farewell comes true.

The bus trip was very interesting. The fertility of this part of Turkey must surely be beyond dispute, judging by the crops and orchards we drove through. Now and then, rocky terrain would dominate, with some scrubby and scruffy vegetation. This was most true in the mountains but also occasionally on the plains. The villages had houses with flat roofs, with external steps leading to them, and compound-like yards with stone walls. Twice I saw roadside stalls for gravestones and covers; the style that has a garden bed compartment on top to place over the grave and a higher end on which to write the name. Many had painted flowers on them. I was driven crazy by seeing orchard after orchard of trees I couldn’t identify – all the same sort. I should have stopped looking. Vineyards abounded with a wide variety of supporting methods. Oil wells and tanks struck a discordant note amongst the fields but symbolise the rediscovery of a resource valued, although little used, in ancient times.

We changed buses at Adıyaman. We were going to Kahta, a town of 60,000 people, in order to visit the famous Mt Nemrut at sunrise. The woman beside me did not move up much, to avoid touching the man sitting beside her, so Keith had to endure a one buttock only seat until she got off. After about 45 minutes we reached Kahta, where we intended to get off at the bus station and make some phone calls to work out where to stay. Suddenly the driver was calling out ‘Nemrut’ to us. No frills in this conversation. We called back, ‘Evet’ (yes). The bus stopped and he put us and our bags out on the footpath. A man approached and asked if we had a hotel reservation. We said that we didn’t. He was the manager of the hotel across the road and had come across to meet a couple who had made a reservation with him. We were not them, but we went across the road for a cup of tea and to hear what he offered. Keith knocked back a room with a shower and asked for something cheaper. After settling on the room, the manager kept the low price but said that he had told his son to give me a room with ensuite facilities. We signed up for a tour to Mt Nemrut the next morning, with wake up time being at 3 am. Later that day we saw an English speaking couple arrive, so perhaps they were the missing pair.

After an afternoon nap, we went for a long walk. It was market day, with many fruit and vegetables stalls about the main intersection.

We did not see any other tourists and we were keenly aware of our novelty value. A man spoke to us in English, inviting us to sit with him in the street and have a cup of tea (which turned out to be a can of Pepsi). A circle formed around us with word passing up and down the street and people replacing each other to check us out. The man we spoke with explained that this is a Kurdish area and that everyone is bilingual. He also spoke Russian which, he said, had a lot of words in common with Kurdish. We gathered that he worked for the council, that he had something to do with fishing since he said the word and pointed to fishing gear in the shop behind us, and that he also worked in some way with the Internet, which he indicated by pointing to the internet café next door and saying ‘Internet’. He could have worked in those businesses, he could have been a fisheries officer, he could have been a researcher. This illustrates how we are often able to communicate with nouns and main ideas such as ‘work’, but that we miss so much and a lot is left up to a guess. On the balcony across the road an old man and his grandchildren sat, absorbed, as if they were at a play and had scored the best seats. Our new friend translated some of what we said for the others. This was a simple moment, so easy to have refused, but a pleasure to us all. We thanked them and went to buy some ingredients for dinner.

Another special moment occurred in the vegetable shop when three men assisted us with our purchases. Two ran the shop and the third was a customer who luckily spoke a few words of English. They were especially pleased when I bought a bunch of parsley and a lemon, as if the odd mishmash of single items we had selected to make a soup suddenly made sense.

We did refuse one more invitation to drink some tea in the interests of starting the cooking, but we would certainly describe the people here as very friendly and interested in strangers. Our hotel allowed use of the kitchen so we made a delicious soup and ate it with plenty of fresh flat Turkish bread. We set the alarm for 3 am.