Christine and Keith's Travels: Konya, Turkey, Monday April 14th

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We both had poor sleep – the hotel had a noisy bell that sounded when anyone entered, tiled floors, shared bathrooms with loud flushes, ‘three storey rock’ pillows and our room was above a late night hoon driving stretch. Since we had a card for another hotel, we set of to check it out, just as the bazaar stall holders were setting up for the day. Konya has different commercial sectors for different types of businesses, similar to Egypt, and the enormous bazaar is set out in the same way. All the stalls were operated by men, even women’s clothing stalls. Larger, more modern shops had some women assistants. Remarkably, for a town which is a religious centre for Muslims, there were numerous shops selling strapless evening gowns with tiers of tulle frills and vivid colour combinations. Goodness knows who wears them and on what occasions. Come to think of it, the photographers all display wedding photos featuring brides and bridesmaids in these outfits.

A female university student helped us to find the second hotel but the price of a room was the same as the other one ($34). We opted for not having to pack up. On the way back we bought some cheese and enjoyed a cup of tea in the shop. It is fairly common to be invited to have a cup of tea when purchases are made. The owner just spoke into an intercom and a tea boy arrived. Tea boys can be seen scampering all over the city, carrying trays of glasses of tea, holding the tray by a central handle. It is a very congenial custom and speaks of a society in which people take time with each other.

Konya has the best tourist information office staff we have met. The man was able to tell us where to find an English language bookshop and to recommend a hairdresser to me. Next day the staff helped us with Turkish addresses and one woman translated the whole of one of my English letters into Turkish, so that the recipient would understand it. We had made copies of photos and written letters to John in Rhodes, the farmers in Selcuk and to Emine and Huseyin in the village above Pamukkale.

We visited the Mevlana Museum. Mevlana’s father was an important spiritual leader in Konya, around the 1220s, when it was the capital of the Seljuk state, which controlled most of Anatolia. At that time Konya was a great centre of learning, attracting many scholars and artists. When the father died, Mevlana became his spiritual heir. He was a great scholar in his own right, specialising in science and religion and drawing great crowds to his sermons at only 24 years of age. He had great influence as a mystic philosopher and more than 100 dervish lodges were set up over Turkey and the Balkan area. Many sultans adopted his thinking. Mevlana wrote a vast body of works - sermons, letters, court addresses and poetry in couplets. The ‘Mesnevi of Mevlana’ and ‘The Book of Shems’ contain more than 65,000 couplets and many expound Sufi philosophy entwined in stories.

Mevlana established the practice of whirling as a way to become one with God. It is the dance of the whirling dervishes and is performed in a precise and ritualistic way. The tall hat represents the tomb, the white robes are the shroud, and the black robes are the earth. Whirling allows the dervish to attain an ecstatic state and to experience oneness with God, similar to the experience of death.

The museum has a mausoleum with the graves of Mevlana, his father and his son, as well as those of other dervishes and important religious leaders. Each tomb is topped by a hat or turban, with Mevlana’s having an enormous turban on it to signify his importance.

Mevlana believed that all religions are part of one, and he had a very inclusive approach. He famously wrote:

‘Come, whoever you may be,

Even if you may be

An infidel, a pagan, or a fire-worshipper, come.

Ours is not a brotherhood of despair,

Even if you have broken

Your vows of repentance a hundred times,

Come.’

People were praying at the tombs and a woman was crying. This is not a site revealing the past alone. It is a current site of pilgrimage, with most of the tourists who come to Konya being religious visitors. The attached mosque, requiring plastic overshoes rather than taking shoes off, displayed beautiful ancient prayer rugs. Other rooms had Korans and texts in intricate calligraphy and set ups with models portraying the life and times of Mevlana and the dervishes. Tulips bloomed raucously in all the gardens in Konya, and particularly in the garden of the museum. Unluckily for us, whirling, still in the strict ritualistic way, is only done on a Saturday so we could not see it in Konya.

After lunch we strolled down to Alaaddin Hill to visit the Alaaddin Camii (Mosque). It had strict dress requirements of a long skirt and head scarf and luckily I had come prepared. Inside it was extremely simple, except for the complex painted frame in blues around the central area. In the midst of the city, with trams circling the hill on which it sat, the mosque was completely hushed and peaceful.

Next we bought a few items, including an English-Turkish dictionary, and looked for the hairdresser. While we were wondering how to ask how much a haircut would be, a boy came up to us and asked if he could help us. When we explained the problem, he took us to hairdresser after hairdresser, all booked out, until he found one with a vacancy. He was a high school student who had learnt some English at school. Absolutely amazing, and he was so sweet and deferential to us. After a conference entirely in gestures, the snipping began. The two young men at the hairdressers had a field day with my hair and came up with a concoction that could truly be called a 1960s coiffure. It took both of them to do the blow wave part. Meanwhile Keith and I had two glasses of tea each, and all, including the haircut, for 10 lira, about $A8.40.

After admiring the impressive and enormous Ataturk statue, and the other statues and fountains nearby, we went to a bus company office to buy a ticket to Aksaray for the next day.

Another student happened by, and hearing us having problems communicating, he offered assistance. He took us to the right bus company office and stayed to organise our ticket. After that he showed us where to buy a tram ticket and where to catch the tram to reach the bus station. He had been studying in the Czech Republic, using English as his language of tuition. Many other people offered and gave assistance over the day, mostly men and of all ages. Our impression of Konya was of a city that is not in a hurry and that retains the strong traditional community bonds of greeting and helping people. We observed people helping others all the time, from the giving up of seats in buses, to assisting with parcels and to taking people where they needed to go. There appeared to be great care taken of old people, who were out and about despite various degrees of difficulty mobility wise. It was also a beautiful city with mosques and old buildings, a hill swathed in flower beds in the centre of town and civic beautification everywhere.