Şanlıurfa – Mardin – Hasankeyf , Turkey, Monday May 5th

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The bus left Şanlıurfa early, at 5 to 7, so bad luck for anyone who believed the schedule. We were planning a very full day, with visits to the villages of Mardin and Midyat and the monastery outside Mardin, and finally a night stop at Hasankeyf. Pretty daunting really.

The bus dropped us off five kilometres before the centre of Mardin, obviously under the impression that we would want one of the taxis at the taxi station there to take us to the monastery. We had planned to walk there and back but now we were too far away for that. We took a taxi to the small bus depot and left our bags, and continued in the taxi to the monastery, Deyrul Zafaran, six kilometres from town.

At the tourist entry building, we were asked to sit and wait because there was a tour ahead of us. Eventually it was our turn to buy tickets and walk up the steps through the rose gardens to the monastery. It is a good thing to separate the commercial side of things from the actual site, which is set in amongst the mountains and sufficiently far away for the other aspects not to detract from its dignity.

This is still a working monastery and was once the seat of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate. It also has students studying other disciplines and a young student teacher met us and guided us around. Originally this site was used for sun worship, so we started with a downstairs chamber from that time. A window in one room lets in the sun, which shines on the opposite wall. The flat ceiling in another room was seemingly blocks of stone with nothing to hold them up, but the blocks are actually angled, with keystones running along the centre.

The tombs of the patriarchs were in a separate chamber, with doors 300 years old. A simpler chapel, the Mary Chapel, had litters in it that were used to carry the patriarchs about in and a 300 year old wooden throne for them to sit on. A fancier throne, with the names of all the patriarchs who served this monastery since 792, is in a larger chapel, where services are still held. An ancient wall hanging depicted a saint we had not heard of.

We went up the stairs, but not into any of the rooms which the Lonely Planet guide says are for travellers and worshippers, and we didn’t see where the monks live. We asked our guide if it was usual for monks to enter as school leavers. He said that there is no entry age; you just have to be convinced in your heart that it is the right path for you. After studying at the monastery for some time, a potential monk goes to Syria, where he is examined on his knowledge and commitment, and returns to take up life as a full monk if all goes well.

We walked back from the monastery and it was fantastic – out in the fresh air with mountains all around. We passed through a little village with turkeys and chooks spilling out onto the road. People waved and called “Hello.”

At the outskirts of Mardin we knew that we were back in civilisation when a boy followed us and asked for money. He hung on for ages and another boy joined him. They were thwarted in their pursuit when a man called to us to come down into his courtyard. He happened to live in the ex-summer residence of Artuklu rulers from the 13^th century, where three natural springs fed a pool. One of the springs and its channel passed through a bedroom and it was in there that we were given a large cup of water to drink. Luckily it was delicious water and we both enjoyed it. The trees in the courtyard were very old and enormous, providing plenty of shade.

We emerged to find the boys had given up waiting and strolled in peace up into the town of Mardin, which is built on a hillside. It was hard to find a shady place for a picnic, but eventually we sat down and ate. This town has many very beautiful buildings with exceptional stonework in a light beige colour. The post office is in a building that was once the private residence of a wealthy family in the 17^th century. It is double storey, with two courtyards with many rooms off them. The views from the upper terrace were magnificent, with the plains of Mesopotamia extending until they became a blur in the distance.

The bazaar is in very narrow streets, so everything has to be carried in by man or donkey power.

We didn’t have much time in the bazaar, although we did buy more strawberries than we could eat for one lira (90c). That was because our appreciation of the historic features of Mardin had had to be interrupted to deal with a very 21^st century problem. Metin had told us that mobile phones not purchased in Turkey had to be registered with a passport number when they are brought into the country, something we had not known about. This is to try to stop smuggling of mobile phones into the country. We had had a warning notice in Turkish on our phone and had not realised that the time was up for registration. We went to a mobile phone shop and showed them the warning message. They read it, talked at length amongst themselves and then used our dictionary to give us the crux of the conversation – underlined were the words ‘fugitive’, ‘contraband’ and ‘leakage’! They wrote a message in Turkish and sent us to the official Turkcell shop. On the way we passed armed soldiers and hoped that they did not ask to see our dictionary, which would inevitably fall open at the underlined damning words! We forgot our status when we got lost and asked a policeman for directions, but since he read our note, perhaps he had bigger fish to fry on the calm, lazy afternoon streets of Mardin. A few days too late to register, we became the owners of a new mobile phone.

Really rushing through Mardin was not what it needed to be properly appreciated and we could see that it could easily be a lovely place to stay for a while. We did not go to the museum or the church of the Martyrs, but we saw some absolutely stunning mosques and other buildings. We will return to Mardin on our next trip to Turkey.

Despite not feeling that we had had long enough in Mardin, it was 5 o’clock when we reached Midyat, which is another village which features beautiful architecture. We were not to see any of it since, when our bus pulled in, we found out that the last bus to Hasankeyf was ready to go. We were gathered up by kind people explaining our situation to us in Kurdish as we tried to keep up with the options which had become only one. Sailing out of Midyat, I felt some relief that our already full day had just had a providential shortening.

We arrived in Hasankeyf just before sunset. It was so beautiful, with an ancient city and castle silhouetted at the top of a sheer ravine, which was carved out by the Tigris River. Below, a small village nestles on the same side of the river and a bridge leads to more village and fertile plains, backed by mountains. The river runs fast across a bed of pebbles, leaving a large part of its flood time course uncovered. The black voids of ancient cave homes spot the cliffs below the second part of the village. Looking towards the sun, the ruins of a grand Roman bridge look like a giant’s sturdy legs stepping across the water. We couldn’t stop telling each other how much we loved it, especially after we booked into the only accommodation in town and found that we had a balcony overlooking the river and the bridge. This was perhaps the only feature that the accommodation had, but filthy, smelly, shared toilets pale into insignificance when you are in Hasankeyf.

Our dinner was taken at outside tables in a little restaurant that charged 13 liras ($A11) for soup, salad, tea and cheese pide for both of us. Cows ambled down the road and, when it was nearly dark, a couple of lone donkeys came for a stroll to graze on the oleanders in the median strip.