In The Grapes of Wrath Ma Joad asks her son about his days in prison “Did it make ya mean, son?” I was up past midnight writing in my log. At 4:36 I found out we were right next to a mosque that uses electric amplification to wake people up in a call to prayer. I wonder if I have found the reason there is so much anger in the Middle East.
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.
