This is actually being written a few days into the trip on the way in to Troy. My initial impression of the Turks was based on films like Yol, Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express. The author of the Lonely Planet book on Turkey believes that we see a lot of anti-Turkish propaganda. I almost believed that Turkish officials ran a sort of xenophobic police state. It went to the extent that I encrypted parts of this log where I talk about the Turks for fear that the authorities would read them as I came through customs.

After a few days I am sorry that I took that attitude and I gladly shed it. Turkey is the best country we have visited off the Pacific Rim and it is in large part because of the Turks. While the Turks are probably as capable as any people of negative actions when they have power are, I find them to be among the most likeable people I have visited. My trip is full of incidents of complete strangers going out of their way to be helpful in ways I cannot imagine Americans would do. We hear a lot of negative things about Moslems and I think more people should come to Turkey to see how positive and life-affirming the Turks are.

As an example, lots of people in other countries have forgiven their one-time wartime enemies. Americans get along with the Japanese now, for example. But who but the Turks would celebrate the courage of their wartime enemy the way they memorialize the Anzacs who came to attack them at Gallipoli? That is like Americans celebrating the courage of the Japanese at Midway.

I rather expect that someone will write me for politically incorrectly liking the Turks too much the way someone complained when I was too positive on the Sikhs of India. It is possible I am misled, but I am sincere. The Turks strikes me as a good, fun-loving people who have their own extremely original view of the world. Where one sees a lot of militancy coming from the Islamic world the Turks represent a melting pot nation which though mostly Islamic seems highly tolerant of many peoples with many beliefs. And Islamic women choose if they will cover their heads or not, there is nobody in government to tell them. They value that freedom.

I just wanted to get that said. Incidentally, our guidebook explodes the whole myth of Americans rotting in Turkish prisons. Even the convicted drug smuggler whose story was supposedly told in Midnight Express says that telling contains major lies and even he defends the Turkish government. The real story of what the Midnight Express is a jaw-dropper. I repeat the guidebook’s explanation inside.

Now on to the trip log…

It is said that the Roman Empire fell for longer than most civilizations survived. When did the Roman Empire finally end? Well, there were people who were born under what was called the Roman Empire who heard in their lifetimes about the discovery of the New World. The last piece of the Roman Empire died in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks under Mehmet the Conqueror. 9500 years ago there was a tool-making culture in Turkey. Ancient Troy was in what we now call Turkey, the Roman Empire moved its capital from Rome to Turkey, and today Turkey is both a Middle Eastern country and a European country.

We are visiting Turkey at an interesting point in its history, certainly a time of change. Turkey for the last few years has been trying to appear to the world as an exotic European country. They were anxious to become part of the European Union. They would like to overcome the image in Europe as a source of cheap labor and a backward country. I remember in the last year or so seeing in my newsmagazine paid inserts showing how forward-looking Turkey is. But most of Europe has not given Turkey much respect for a lot of reasons. There are long-standing prejudices. There is the mammoth feud with Greece, one of the longest continuing feuds in World History. Turkey has a human rights record that is certainly non-stellar. And, of course, it does not help that Turkey is Islamic and not Christian. Turkey had its work cut out for it when it wanted to join the European Union. On December 17, 1997, the European Union rejected Turkey’s bid for admission. Now Turkey is probably going to turn to the United States for military alliances. Turkey currently is looking for better relations with the US.

Ironically, while Turkey is too Islamic for Europe, it is not enough Islamic for most of the Arab world, as it is willing to make alliances with Israel. Turkey was the first predominantly Islamic country to recognize Israel. That was 1949. And the two countries have remained friendly since. This has helped to make Turkey a pariah in the Arab world and among its own fundamentalists who want to take power. However, the Turkish Constitution requires a separation of religion and state. Constitutionally the state is secular. That is a rarity among Islamic counties and it must be a difficult balance to maintain. It keeps the country moving forward into the 21st Century while many of its Islamic neighbor countries are rejecting what we in the West consider to be modern ways. There is a war with the internal Kurds. They are fundamentalists, but also a separate ethnic group that wants to be their own nation. They have their own language and culture and would like to have a homeland of their own. In 1988 Iraq attacked its Kurdish minority with chemical weapons. The Kurds fled the country into Turkey increasing an already substantial population. Turkey tried to bring them into the mainstream culture, but they would not assimilate and still hold out the dream of being a separate country. This has led to a low-key civil war in the East. The PLO has allied themselves with the Kurds. That must put the Kurds in a peculiar position since they also allied themselves with Saddam Hussein in the war. But the Kurds must need an ally. The Turkish government, finding itself opposed by the PLO has even more reason to have military ties with Israel.

The methods being used by the mainstream are frequently undemocratic by Western standards. Political parties are abolished. Journalists are imprisoned. The Prime Minister promised to follow more democratic principles when he came to power. Journalists and editors have been released from prison, but to limited freedom and it they offend the government or criticize the military they will have to go back to prison to serve the rest of their terms. It may become necessary to destroy democracy in order to save it. It is a frightening dilemma. Consider that in Algeria the fundamentalists are in the minority but they still have the power to create the current bloodbath.

I suppose in the United States there are some Islamic Fundamentalists but they have not caused much chaos since we are a rich country, and we can afford Cadillac security. Where we have had terrorist acts like the bombing of the World Trade Center we could bring hundreds of millions of dollars to bear stopping one terrorist group. Terrorists are much less likely to attack in the United States because we can afford good security. This limits the number of terrorist groups and that means that even more can be spent tracking and stopping the ones that are in the country. Just from the point of view of economics it makes more sense to fundamentalist groups to chip away at poorer countries. Also in the poorer countries there is more discontent. For those who are poor and who have little hope fundamentalism offers an opportunity to be in the in-group. You may not have much comfort in this life and have little hope of getting it, but do things our way and you will have it terrific after you die.

Turkey is better off than many, but it has nowhere near the economic power of the US. This is not a defense of some of their tactics, but it is a fact of life. It is how the government will react. The poor will be drawn to fundamentalism. It also is very near Islamic states. Turkey is trying desperately to bring prosperity to their country because money is a trump card that keeps fundamentalists under control and allows them to be controlled in approved democratic ways. The prosperity will not come from a partnership with Europe. That was what Europe said last December. If the US rejects Turkey I wonder what they will do.

But as much as Turkey currently is hoping for the US friendship there also are tensions. There are alleged human rights violations in the war against the Kurds. Photographs allegedly showing soldiers holding the decapitated heads of Kurds have been shown on “Sixty Minutes.” Six leading members of the Welfare Party including a former Prime Minister have been banned from politics for six years. We try to pick countries to visit that do not have serious human right violations, though few major powers are free from accusations.

Well, our last day at work was a somewhat nervous one. You always wonder if things are going to work out or not. I did my usual trick of sleeping all of about a half-hour last night. A good store of fatigue, ironically, is extremely useful for transoceanic flights. It acts as a natural sedative for the nerves and makes sleep on the plane a lot easier. It is 3:17pm locally but 10:17pm in Turkey. The Garden State Parkway to Newark Airport is bumper to bumper. Oh, I am Mark Leeper and my traveling companion is my lovely wife Evelyn Leeper. Evelyn has done most of the planning for the trip. We are just going by ourselves. Nobody expects us.

I nodded off a little in the car. When I am sleep deprived I tend to have vivid dreams. I was picturing the driver with a long and narrow three-fingered hand. It was almost like something out of War of the Worlds. Often we talk to the driver. This time we drove in silence. I was either writing or dozing off. I have switched to Turkey time and I was trying to put the flights into my calendar entirely in Turkey time. Eventually I will have to change the flights back to New Jersey time. By the time I return that is what I will be using.

The line at Lufthansa is huge. Apparently the desk opened late and a lot of people had already arrived. The line snakes around the ropes in front of the counter then stretches more than half the length of the terminal. It blocks the path of people leaving the counters. People in different accents and ethnic backgrounds are coming up shocked saying “Lufthansa?” A German group starts a second queue at the inlet to the roped section. It is feeding in as if it were the official queue, though of course they just arrived. I think on our trip to Egypt we were cut in front of by people from every European NATO country. This trip they are starting early. The Germans try to let more cut in. I casually rest my hand on the rope, just incidentally blocking their path. One of the Germans who otherwise looks like an amiable man in his 60s gives me a dirty look as if I was the one being rude.

Now I thought it had been smart after I packed my photovest and decided what pocket everything would be in to take out every piece of metal and put it in a ziplock bag. I then put the ziplock in my briefcase. I was sure there was no metal on me when I went through the metal detector. At least I thought I did. Nope. Beeeeeeeeeep! “Take off the vest and chest pouch and sent them through.” I do and the human port lets me through without complaint. Must be the zippers. Well at least I know that there is no point in trying to put all the metal in my briefcase. I might as well resign myself to always taking the vest off. My last photovest fell apart on our Alaska trip. It was pretty tough finding more photovests for sale. I was all set to buy one over the Internet for something like $60. Literally I was going to order it after work when we were cooking dinner. With supreme timing as well as irony a catalog of hunter products was delivered in that day’s mail. They had a hunting vest with even more pockets for sale for $29.95. It has something like 22 pockets. The only problem is that it is a hunting vest. It is the kind of catalog that sells t-shirts that say, “This is your woodchuck.” [Picture of woodchuck]. “This is your woodchuck on hollow points.” [Picture of a little piece of woodchuck and body parts splattered all over]. “Any questions?” Really funny stuff like that. Jokes for the ten-year-old in all of them. When I ordered the vest they asked me “Survey question… Do you hunt?” “Uh, no.” How could I tell them I am a confirmed Bambiist? Good vest though. I call it “my vest of many pockets.” I just wish it didn’t look like a hunting vest.

Well, we are sitting in the waiting area and we are told our first flight has been delayed. But for now it is only 15 minutes delayed.

I have been pronouncing Frankfort “Vronkvort.” It is very cosmopolitan, very jet set. Take it from me.

History lesson: This is a history of the lands we call Turkey

Okay, you may need a thumbnail history of Turkey for what follows. Don’t try writing this on your thumbnail. The last person who did was caught and got zero for the exam. (This section has been revised as I have learned new history or thought of better jokes.)

There were inhabitants of Turkey as far back as 7500 BC. So like an iceberg that is 80% below sea, at least 80% of Turkey must be before C. About 1900 BC the Hittites were warring with Ancient Egypt, starting a long history of people in these lands warring with people who would be more dramatically represented in the movies. Hence they are almost always represented as the bad guys. 1250 BC the Trojans are fighting with the Greeks on their own home turf at Troy. The Greeks are, however, masters of PR and it is their side of the story that is remembered and once again the people of these lands, not really Turks yet, but of these lands, are labeled the bad guys. This in spite of the Greeks pulling that lousy stunt with the wooden horse.

1200-600 BC: more invasions and the Greeks are determining civilization in this area. 550 BC Cyrus of Persia invades to get a piece of the action. 334 BC it is Alexander the Great. It is painful, but nobody can stand up to the little brat. At least he has the courtesy to die young. By this point these guys have a reputation as easy marks and even the Celts invade them, believe it or not. 250 BC is the rise of the Kingdom of Pergamum. It has great warriors and great art but they fail to capture the public’s imagination and no films are made about them.

129 BC: Rome establishes Asia Minor as a province. There is little chance to beat Rome and no movies to be made so they sit it out.

330 AD: We see what sitting it out gets you. Constantine decides the Roman gods are false, switches to Christianity, but just in case moves Rome away from the Roman gods to what will be called Istanbul, but he decides first it will be called Constantinople. Istanbul will have to wait.

527-565 AD: The Emperor Justinian builds the greatest and most grotesque church in the world, Sancta Sophia, an undying tribute to Christianity. Undying, perhaps. Christianity, perhaps not. For nearly 1000 years the Holy Roman Empire rules but fails to achieve being holy, Roman, or an empire. None out of three ain’t so hot. Still they call it the Holy Roman Empire because it sounds good. For the first time it is commonly accepted that ketchup is a vegetable because that too sounds good. The rulers find the Turks to be good protectors. They live side by side with good friends the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks raise armies and occasionally take Byzantine Emperors prisoner. But the Seljuks eventually fall. Well, it proves that Turks are no match for Europeans.

In the early 1200s Crusaders arrive to liberate the Holy Land from Islam. They plan to plunder Constantinople. “But we are Christian,” protests Constantinople. “You’re Christian??? That’s funny. You don’t look Christian.” said the crusaders. “No prisoners.” And the Christians won a much-needed victory against the hated Christian.

1453 AD: Mehmet the Conqueror, an Ottoman Turk, overruns Constantinople and turns the St. Sophia into a mosque, an undying tribute to Islam. He immediately foregoes Roman, settling for “Holy” and “Empire.” He begins almost 400 years of Ottoman rule under Sultans. With the Turks powerful under the Sultans and considered a threat to Europe, Turkey was once again the bad guys and the Greeks told the world, “I told ya so.”

For years the Ottoman Turks ruled well but corruption set in. Suleyman I brought the empire to its high point beautifying Constantinople (now Istanbul, but Europe refused to call it that) and rebuilding Jerusalem. But too many of the Sultans were clods, however, and the empire declined. Some would rebuild without democratizing; some were just weak. Subject countries with better press were kicking Istanbul’s butt.

Then pretty much on schedule came the 20th Century. The Young Turks were a group of, well, young Turks who wanted Western-style reform from the Sultans. They forced a constitution to be again instituted. They were young, bright, clever, politically powerful, and they picked Germany to win World War I. When the war ended things were as bad as ever with the Sultan, now the pawn of victorious Western powers. The Ottoman Empire was chopped up.

Greece, recognizing that its old enemy Turkey was now down, decided to let bygones be bygones, but also decided the time was right to start kicking it anew. The forces under Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Ataturk-when you like what a boy does you say “attaboy”, people liked what this Turk did.) kicked back and harder. This made WWI commander Kemal again a hero. He went on to usher a new age into Turkey. Henceforth people would be loyal to Turkey first. No international organizations like the Communist Party or the Boy Scouts in Turkey. Religion is great like champagne. Politics is great like mayonnaise. Champagne and mayonnaise don’t go together and neither do religion and politics. Turkey would have a secular state.

Well, that is just a view of Turkish History from a very high level. About 20,000 feet unless I miss my guess. People who find the foregoing offensive, well, it was not meant to be taken seriously.

Let’s see, if this is Monday this must be Selcuk. Salihli was not really a tourist town. They had one site several miles away. So the accommodations were not very good. There were one low-end place and two middle to high-end hotels. Selcuk seems to have a lot of hotels and much more competition and as a result it is a lot easier to get a comfortable room.

The one thing that seems to be a universal problem is that the covers do not really cover the bed. A little tossing in the night and your legs or arms are uncovered. The other problem in many places is that you cannot sit straight on the toilet. It is too close to the wall or the sink or the cutoff for the bidet so you have to sit at an angle. These are all minor inconveniences.

Selcuk is set in a hilly region. Mary Lynne asked someone yesterday the name of these mountains. Turkey has mountains and they are name. This is just a hilly region and there is no name for the hills, they are too insignificant. It is interesting, but none of the people want to be in the European Union. The people I have talked to are all relatively pleased that the country was rejected. They think that the country has resources that have not been tapped yet and the do not want to give them up to the Europeans. They think that the country can become rich if it stays on its own.

The film Prince of Darkness was about alternate interpretations of Christianity and it talked about a mystical “Brotherhood of Sleep” who knew the true purpose of Christianity to fight an evil force. I wonder if the inspiration came from the local Grotto of the Seven Sleepers. The legend says that agents of the Emperor Decius, trying to suppress Christianity pursued seven Christian boys. The boys hid in a cave where they could not be retrieved. The pursuers could not get the boys so the cave was sealed so the boys could not dig their way out. Two centuries passed. One day there was an earthquake and the wall blocking the cave crumbled. The seven youths arose from a sleep and walked to town to find their friends and food. Instead they found the town was now Christian, but all their friends were long dead. They lived out the rest of their lives with these strangers and when they died they were buried in the cave. This could also be the inspiration for Rip Van Winkle.

We hear the people just outside the door going to breakfast. They sound Australian. It is funny how few Americans we see here. I guess it makes sense that we would see a lot of Australians and New Zealanders, but I would have expected to see a slightly higher proportion of Americans. We ran into one set of Canadians (whom I consider to be “Americans” coming as they do from North America, though they don’t use that term to apply to themselves) but I don’t think we have run into many other travelers from the US. At least none long enough to talk to for long.

We have to ask at the desk if there is a bus to the ruins at Ephesus.

We go up to breakfast. Everywhere Turkish breakfast seems much the same. It is bread, hardboiled egg, tomato, jelly, honey, butter, cheese, and in this case cheese. I am eating it leisurely and the owner comes to our table. You have less than five minutes before your ride leaves. Okay. I have a ride? Well they did say something quickly about a shuttle to the ruins. I had thought it was an option. Suddenly I have a ride leaving in minutes. Evelyn says to send them on, she cannot possibly be ready in five minutes. “Well, maybe we give you a little more time.” I have a ride? Well, I am ready to go in the five minutes and it takes Evelyn a little longer but we are the in the lobby and there is a woman who will take us to the ruins. “We must hurry because there will be crowds at the ruins.” It is just us and the Sammons. So we pile into the van and in a few minutes we are at Ephesus.

“We pick you up in two hours and take you to my carpet shop. I am married to cousin of owner of your hotel. You don’t have to buy. You buy, we smile. You don’t buy. We smile.” So that’s it. As far as I have been able to tell, since Turkey was rejected from the European Union, the government would like better economic relations with the United State. The individual Turk has his own desires. He would like that Mark and Evelyn Leeper would come and visit his carpet shop. Right now the economic plans are on hold and the country is working full time to get Mark and Evelyn Leeper into carpet shops. Turkey has more carpet salesmen than the US has lawyers but otherwise the two professions have the same standard of ethics. In the US lawyers actually have to chase ambulances while in Turkey carpet salesmen just lay in wait under the nearest rock for a tourist to come by.

Pat and Mary Lynne take over this delicate negotiation. “But we don’t know how long we want to be at Ephesus.” “That is Okay, two hours is plenty.” “We want to go at our own pace.” “Then we cannot know when to pick you up.” “We don’t want to be picked up, and we don’t want to go to a carpet shop.” “Will you take my card if you change your mind?” I take the card.

A street boy is selling books and maps of Ephesus. He wants a million for a map, I offer 500,000TL. I get the map. On the way in we see at the admission box the same map is selling for 750,000TL.

What is Ephesus? It is the best-preserved Roman Empire city in the world. If you want to know what life was like in the time of the Roman Empire, this is the place. It recovered from an attack by Cimmerians in the 7th century BC to become prosperous in the 6th Century. It was ruled by the Lydians and the Persians. Alexander captured the city with no resistance but when he died the city went to Lysimachos. He brought the city to new artistic heights. Rome later ruled Ephesus but it was attacked and destroyed by the Goths in 262 AD.

Our first stop is at the theater. It was built in the third century BC. It held 24,000. It was built in the shape of a huge parabolic reflector. The structure is good for the view and better for the acoustics. It was used for plays and for more violent entertainment like gladiatorial fights and wild animal fighting. We first sit up in the peanut gallery but also stand on the stage. Voices really carry to the audience and back. After a while we move on. We were wondering however how they convince a slave to die on stage. They used to really kill a slave for realism.

The next biggee was the Library of Celsus, built 117-120 AD. It is a big two-story affair with a facade with two layers of pillars. Across the street from the library was a building identified in all sources as a bordello. On it are signs saying it was falsely identified as a bordello, but was really just a fancy house with a lot of rooms. You can believe whom you wish. Being right across the street from the library may have led to interesting dilemmas as to which way to for knowledge.

The alleged bordello was where excavators found a small statue of Priapos, a little man with an enormous phallus. A little further on there was the Latrina. There are no dividers between the seats and commoners and Emperors used it alike, though presumably the Emperor on the go could go to the head of the line for immediate seating.

The academic baths feature rooms to heat up and cool off after baths: a tepiariam, a calidarium, and a frigidariam. Most of the third floor has disappeared, but the lower floors could be identified. By this point the other tour groups were beginning to be a pain.

We walked further ending up going through a field where we saw a particularly well-armored thistle. Mary Lynne looked at it and dubbed it a triffid. Evelyn and I looked at each other. “She knows about triffids.” A triffid is a particularly nasty carnivorous plant from a novel by John Wyndham. One of my supervisors at one point asked me what the novel I was reading The Day of the Triffids was about. I stupidly said it was about man-eating plants and she sort of gave me a sour look. But actually that is not really what it is about. It is about societies and what makes them work and fail. A huge disaster leaves everybody but a handful of people on earth blind. Civilization immediately falls apart and small societies have to reform from start. Round 1 is whether your society falls apart of its own weight. Some do, some don’t. Societies that are entirely unselfish and altruistic fail, for example. Round 2 is whether your society can survive conflicts with other societies. Then if you have survived the first two rounds the question becomes can you survive really nasty disasters out there, worse than people. That is really where triffids come in. It is a really good novel that was the basis for a very mediocre film version and a very good BBC television version.

The thing to do if you have to push past a group is you say “Pardon,” in French with a French accent. If the group is French they know you are not, but they will like you because you are at least speaking their language. If they are German they do not forgive you, but at least they blame the French.

Toward the end of the visit is another theater, this one was at one time covered and had a capacity of about 1500 people. This one was used for concerts and for meetings. We were sitting in the theater when it started to rain. Evelyn and I whipped umbrellas out of our photovests. Mary Lynne was impressed. “Where did you hide those umbrellas?” I didn’t tell her my canteen was in the same pocket. My vest carries a water bottle, an umbrella, field glasses, a camera, a walkie-talkie, spare batteries for my camera and palmtop, earplugs, notepads, a palmtop and the Lonely Planet guide, and I can stash my jacket in the back pocket. I may be missing something. But it all comfortably fits on me. I feel like Batman.

Well, from there we start walking back to town hoping to see the Cave of the Seven Sleepers and the Temple of Artemis along the way. It is a long walk in what becomes the hot sun. If that were not parching enough, I am still on antihistamine. Very quickly my mouth goes dry. When I take a drink of water it feels like pudding. Mary Lynne is shorter than we are but Pat is over six feet with longer legs. He sets the pace. Often he is a fair distance in front of the rest of us. He says he can’t walk any slower.

We find the cave of the Seven Sleepers eventually. We cannot get inside as there is a grate blocking the way. We climbed up above the cave and looked down at it. People had written prayers on cloth and tied them around the grating above. On the way down we got some cold water. It was a bit overpriced at 250,000TL/1.5 Liter but it was good cold.

It was an even longer walk to the Temple of Artemis. The temple did not look its best today. In fact it had not looked very good since it was burnt down in 356 BC by headline-hound Herostratos. He wanted to be famous and he was like the guy who killed John Lennon. This was once one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is lost to us in large part because it was disassembled by Christians who were building the local St. John Basillica. There appears to be a belief that of you are stealing for your religion it is really okay. A lot of our history has been lost by plunderers trying to please their gods.

A tout selling flutes asked me what country I was from. It is always a mistake to tell since they have a spiel in your language, whatever it might be. I looked at him strangely when he asked in different languages. I finally decided to tell him. “Magyar Repooblic. Hongary.” Mary Lynne said smiling “Buda-Pesh.” There was a little too much grinning and he knew we were lying. Well, lying is a strong word. My mother’s mother was born in Buda-Pesh. Her father was born in Baja. That is Baja, Hungary. But the flute salesman knew no Hungarian.

We continued our walk to town. It was not a lot further beyond the temple. We wanted to go to the museum, but lunch came first. I had Haydari and Octopus Salad. I mean, where else can you get octopus salad? Evelyn had Kofte. We continued on to the Museum of Ephesus. This is a museum to display the are found at Ephesus, as excavations are continuing. The exhibits include statues found at the site. Among the ones more familiar was Eros on a Dolphin. This motif could be familiar to the reader for the Alan Ladd, Sophia Loren film Boy on a Dolphin. Well, they couldn’t call the film Eros on a Dolphin, now could they? There is also the Priapos with the large phallus. There are various carved heads. There is an Ethnographic Section with exhibits of life in the country. There are farm implements, there is a barbershop, that sort of thing. There is the head and arm from an emperor statue seven meters high. It is truly of impressive scale.

We got some small gifts for people at the museum. Outside we sat around waiting for one person or another. A shoeshine boy came up to me. The material of my shoes is leather, but not with the usual finish and I would not trust a shoeshine on the street. The boy asked me where I was from, again I was from the Magyar Republic. He wanted to give me a free sample of what he could do for my shoes on the top of one shoe. Of course once I let him do that the shoes would never look right unless he did this to the whole of both shoes, perhaps not even then if he did not know what he was doing. This struck me as a particularly bad idea. I got up walked away from him. After all there is little point in getting these shoes polished if tomorrow they would just look dusty again.

The rest of the day does not bear a lot of description. It was farbling over what we would do the next day, what Pat and Mary Lynne would do, etc. We had different ways to do various sites to choose from. From about 6pm on we were in our room writing.

I finished writing about 10pm and read some article I had brought and saved on my palmtop.

Most religions have their mystics. In Judaism there is the Baal-Shem-Tov who founded Hassidism. In Islam it is Rumi, poet and founder of the whirling dervishes. The history of Konya is entwined with that of the mystic Rumi, known to his followers as Mevlana. Rumi was among other things a poet who wound his idea into poetry. He was the founder of the whirling dervishes. He was the son of an Islamic scholar and mystic and himself became an even greater Islamic scholar and mystic with extremely loyal followers. Their very loyalty would cause serious problems.

He became the very close and intimate friend of another scholar and mystic, Shams of Tabriz. Rumi was loved but Shams was so devout that nobody could stand him. One day he asked Allah who could stand his company. A mystic voice asked, what will you give in return? Shams offered his head. The voice told him of Rumi. Shams and Rumi met and began an uninteruptable mystic conversation. It is said to have gone on for months without need for sleep or food or any human necessities. The followers of Rumi became jealous. Shams saw what was happening and disappeared without a trace. Rumi’s response was to return to his students but also to bury himself in his art but also to listen to music and sing spin for hours until his dizziness brought mystical visions.

Rumor came that Shams was in Damascus and Rumi sent for him. When they met again it is said that each threw himself at the other’s feet (which is a little hard to picture) and began worshiping the other. Again with the long conversations. Again the student jealousies. One day a conversation was interrupted with a message that Shams was wanted at the back door. Shams went to the back door and was never heard from or seen again. That was Saturday, December 5, 1248. Rumi was inconsolable, but life goes on. Rumi named the next book of his poems The Works of Shams of Tabriz but people knew better. Rumi continued to write poetry, mysticize, and teach until his death on Sunday, December 17, 1273. It was called his marriage day because he was united with Allah.

Rumi’s students picked up the spinning mania and are called the whirling dervishes. They wear distinctive robes with long skirts and fezes and spin as they meditate. These days they may just spin as a performance. The dervishes were to Islam much what the flagellants were to Christianity. They were an order with curious, colorful customs that wielded power. They were monarchist, archconservative, and xenophobic. Ataturk saw the dervishes as a force dangerous to progress and abolished them, having the monasteries turned into museums, as well as the shrine to Rumi/Mevlana.

The Dervishes have since become almost an act. I seem to remember seeing them on Ed Sullivan, though I could be wrong. They wear fezes, white jackets and long flowing robes. As they spin the robes fly out making them look almost bell-like. Most who see them do not realize the hat is really a symbol of a tombstone, the jacket a symbol of the coffin and the robes a symbol of the death shroud. They seem very much alive as they spin, however. It is interesting that while alive they have special headgear symbolic of death and Rumi’s tomb has a large turban on top, the headgear of the living.

Breakfast is extra in a hotel already a bit dirty and overpriced. We snacked a little on cookies in the room and I drank some cherry nectar. I found something nasty-looking sticking to the blanket from some previous tenant leading me to believe they let things go from the days that prompted the Lonely Planet to say the place was clean.

Our first stop was the Mevlana Museum, a combination tomb, shrine, and museum. Here we have the sarcophagus of Rumi and his son and the Sultan a the time. As you come in there are the turbaned sarcophagi of some of Rumi’s followers. The tops of each tomb are in the form of turbans. It is thought that April rains bring healing. April rains are collected and the ends of the turban on Rumi’s tomb is dipped in the water then daubed onto the ill.

You pass by the sarcophagi and see a tiny museum of Islamic artifacts including more of the beard of the prophet. There are antique copies of the Koran. Visitors should not miss the ceilings. There is a painting with dervishes. There are two giant rosaries, each with 99 beads each about an inch in diameter. As I was looking at the rosaries a visitor clapped me on the back and said “Salaam aleichum” which is Arabic for either “Welcome, friend.” Or, “move over I want to see also,” at least in this context.

Part of the same museum is a shop that is part museum with classic carpets, some amateur paintings of whirling dervishes, etc. We went to a separate kiosk and got some souvenirs including another woven rug sample. Some music on cassette.

I got as our chachka a set of worry beads. This fits all the rules, it is small, cheap, closely associated with the place visited, and something a local might be likely to buy for himself. We had already bought a small piece of cloth woven in a carpet pattern. This was one more item for the chachka shelf.

An old man seemed excited by our vests, but I was not sure if it was positive or negative. He would point at the vests and then on one hand bring his fingers together as if trying to pinch something using all five fingers. He would say what sounded like “good.” I had no idea what it was all about. It could be because they look vaguely military he thought they should not be in the mosque, but we were walking away from the mosque. Eventually it looked like we would not be able to communicate and we both gave up.

From there we walk the 3/4km walk to the Koyunoglu Museum. This whole museum is a private collection, in fact a large set of collections. None of the collection seems really large assuming we are seeing the whole collection, but there is a large amount on display. The admission is 100,000TL for locals and 250,000TL for tourists. It would be a little fairer if there was some in other languages, but the labeling is almost all Turkish. There is a collection of Neolithic tools, pottery, coins, fossils, rocks, stuffed birds, coins and bills. There is Islamic calligraphy including some long diagrams that could almost be kabalistic. There are historic photographs of Konya in the early parts of this century. There are collections of brass, a large one of carpets. After that there is a visit to a house from the late 19th century in Turkey. If the implication is that this was a typical house, one can only assume that the standard of living has dropped over the last century. I don’t know if it is typical, but the guard follows you through the entire museum making sure you do nothing wrong.

As we left and walked back to the main street we passed a boy of ten or so and unusual frankness said, “Hello, money money.”

As we were looking for a restaurant there was a sound like banging garbage cans and we could immediately see there was a collision of two cars. Both drivers immediately jump out and start arguing and gesticulating wildly. Like white blood cells people seem to come from nowhere to clog the damage site. We don’t stick around but continue on to find a restaurant for lunch. We did not see the accident and certainly don’t want to be witnesses.

We find a restaurant that sells a local specialty, firin kabap. It is basically mutton on bread. We also order half a roast chicken. While the food has been enjoyable for the time we have been here there is a certain monotony. We have had a lot of roast meat. We may not be getting the real Turkish cuisine. As in Scotland it may be difficult to find real local cuisine in restaurants.

When we are walking when people say hello to us it usually is a come-on for a sales pitch. We say “Merhaba” back, but not are really friendly. That is in part a mistake and we know it. When we stand in one place lots of people give us smiles and say hello and continue on their way. They are obviously just trying to be friendly. The Turks are a very friendly and fun-loving people. They are also aggressive sales people. And this creates a dilemma for the tourist who would like to be friendly with everyone and at the same time does not want to be pulled into a sales pitch. It is the identical problem we had in India, but there the percentages were a lot worse. Far fewer people tried to be friendly with no strings attached and I would guess there were four times as many aggressive tout contact per hour on the street. I think had we not been to India we would not appreciate Turkey and the Turks as much.

We went to the Great Karatay Seminary to see their collection of tiles but they were closed for lunch. We sat on a bench writing. A group of older schoolgirls in Islamic scarves sits down at the other bench and talk among themselves. I go off and get more water. We write a little longer. The school girls pick up and leave. One turns to us with a smile and says “good-bye.” We smile back. “Good-bye. Gule Gule.”

The Great Karatay Seminary was founded in 1251-1252. These days there is no seminary left, it is a museum of tilework. The first thing you should look at is the front door decorated with Koranic verses carved into the stonework. Very majestic. The museum is small, but it has a very impressive dome of geometrical designs. The first chapter of the Koran is written around the top. The museum has examples of all sorts of tile. It is interesting to see the sort of tessellation they use and how they hide it. (A tessellation is a covering of a flat plane always using one figure.) There are really only three kinds of tessellation. There is triangle, square, and hexagonal. You can recognize them by whether six, four, or three tiles come together at a corner. They have a tessellation alternating crosses and eight-pointed stars. That is really a variation on the square tessellation. Start with a checkerboard of red and black squares. Now for each red square, for each edge, add a little isosceles right triangle, its long side toward the edge. Do this all the way around and you have an 8-pointed star. But to do that you have had to cut a notch out of the neighboring black square. Each of the red squares neighboring the black square did that, so the black square becomes a cross. So you can perfectly tessellate with 8-pointed stars and crosses by deforming the checkerboard.

Got that?

I would say these museums we were seeing were tiny, but there are things to see. The Seminary of the Slim Minaret was built in 1264 to be more impressive than the other seminary. The doorway is as impressive, but the dome is not so ornate. The slim minaret is not so impressive or so slim looking since lightning in 1901 knocked off the top two-thirds. The door is impressive, and inside is examples of decorative stonework. In Islam it is forbidden to show creatures with souls, but mythical creatures presumably do not have souls, or at least that seems to be what was assumed here. There are a lot of designs, Koranic quotes and a few stone images of fanciful creatures. Some of the Koran carvings look almost Celtic.

We spent about forty minutes looking for the Archeology Museum but concluded only that you cannot really trust maps in the Lonely Planet. This is not as useful a Lonely Planet Guide as the one for India. Tired, we walked back to the Alaettin park. There is a fancy tea garden and Evelyn suggested we stop for a drink. Somehow I always think these places are for other sorts of people. I had a Pepsi for 150,000TL and Evelyn had coffee 100,000TL. We sat for a while. The park is on a hill overlooking the street so it was a pleasant place to watch the passing parade. Eventually it was time to move on. We were continuing around the hill when three girl students stopped us to talk so they could practice their English. We talked to them about five minutes telling them that we liked Turkey and telling them what we did (and did not like). We continued on to the Alaettin Mosque on the hill. It was first finished 1221. It is in the process of being renovated. They are putting metal braces on the columns and the roofing. Inside it has lost a lot of the feel of the old mosques. You cannot really see the dome from the inside because a lowered ceiling has been put in. Now it just looks modern inside.

After that we headed back to our room. On the way we made a purchase. We decided to give the beads we bought this morning as a gift to a friend who requested we bring him back something from Turkey. We passed by a man selling Islamic beads and I after some discussion bought some beads that the seller claimed. I got his best beads and paid 600,000TL, about $2.40. He claimed they were carnelian, but I thought that carnelian was opaque and these are translucent. In any case they looked like they were decent quality.

The mystery of the man this morning is a little deeper. It made no sense that he was saying “good” talking about my vest. I had more or less ruled that out. But walking back to the room I passed a man selling the same hot pepper we see as a table spice in restaurants. Basically it is pepper flakes. I point it out to Evelyn and the man selling it says “good” and makes the same hand gesture putting all five fingers together as if trying to use all five fingers to hold a single poppy seed. So the old man was excitedly saying something about our vests and saying something about good.

We got back to the room to find the room had been made up, but there were no towels. It may well be that they think that there is no point in us getting towels since there is no water either so there is nothing to dry off. I start down the two flights to the desk to complain that we have no water and no towels. The unsold rooms have their doors open. I look into one and of course it has towels. Oops, no, my mistake. It is my room that has towels and this unsold room that doesn’t.

At about 5:15 they turn on the cold water.

I started the short-wave listening to local stations on FM until the English language broadcasts came on. The BBC had a science program that talked about the recent detection observation of the largest space explosion ever detected. It was as if all the bright objects in the universe were compacted into a single location in space. I want to know more.

That ended at 7pm and we went out looking for a place to eat dinner. We found a place that specialized in chicken and had chicken on a spit like doner kabap. There is some sort of sports team eating there also. The waiter asks on of the girls to ask us whether we want the chicken as a sandwich or on a plate. She is wearing a Walkman. It is the same model Aiwa I have at home. Of mostly Islamic countries this one is one of the most liberal, and the standard of living, at least for some, is just about the highest. In most countries the military is the force of conservatism. Here it is the force keeping the country liberal and forward-looking. The non-poor do not want to see this become another Iran. The religious are free to be as religious as they want. The government does not want to let them force it on the unwilling. At least that is how I interpret things.

We each had a doner chicken submarine sandwich, effectively. Not a lot of chicken, but probably healthier.

Our hotel is just on the edge of a bazaar. Basically it is a lot of small shops in a small area. It is more convenient than what we would have since all the shoe shops are right together making it easier to compare. Elsewhere all the cloth shops are together.

It is now 8:55 and all the mosques seem to be competing with each other to chant. I am surprised anyone can make out the chanting from their own mosque.

Apparently a Swiss bank is being forced to turn over to Cambodia government funds deposited with the Swiss bank before the Marxist takeover, but the records of which have been lost. After the international grousing about Holocaust gold apparently Switzerland is getting very irritated at having to return deposits to both Jews and Cambodians and will ask the World Court for a clearer criteria. Just whose funds deposited in Swiss banks can the bank consider their own?

Voice of America is interviewing Basil Polidouris. The interviewer is just gushing over him as a great film composer. I probably agree, but Basil, what have you done for us lately? Independently of the quality of the film, if I had to choose the best single film score I ever heard I would have to choose Conan the Barbarian. For my taste it has the greatest spectrum of orchestral color. I can think of no score since Prokofiev that stands so well on its own. But you have not shown that degree of creativity in a good long time.