Water! City! Cruising Turkey
Our group was standing on a dusty cliff overlooking the Xanthos River. (The word means yellow in Turkish; the soil along the shores has an amber tint.) In his imperfect English, Adip, our archaeologist-guide, was endeavoring to explain why ancient settlements almost always sprang up on coasts or shores.
Â"It is so clear!Â" he boomed, trying to make up in volume what he lacked in vocabulary. Â"So clear! Water! You know how important for human! So! Water, City! Water, City! Water, City!Â"
In a phrase, that sums up our trip: Water, City.
Last September, my wife Natasha and I went on an ten-day archaeological cruise along the southwest coast of Turkey. With ten other American tourists (most of them rich and retired), two crewmen, a cook, and Adip, we lived aboard a 70-foot sailboat, anchoring in coves and harbors, from which we'd make forays to surrounding archaeological sites.
(Natasha and I are not wealthy. At the time, she was an editor at a travel guide publisher. She edited the Turkey guide, and had been offered an open cabin on the cruise, for review.)
Over the past three millennia, half a dozen or so civilizations have flourished along TurkeyÂ's Mediterranean rim. The region - known as the Turquoise Coast for the color of the sea there - is strewn with temples, churches, monasteries, agoras, amphitheaters, aqueducts, bathhouses, necropolises and sarcophagi. Everywhere we went, we saw enormous crumbling blocks of stone, toppled columns and chipped frescoes.
We were there a few weeks after peak season; often we were the only visitors. Sometimes we found a perfunctory ticket-taker at a dusty, ungated entrance, but there were usually no ropes, fences, guards, or prohibitive signs.
Most sites had fallen into striking disrepair. They reverberated with their former life, and seemed almost haunted. Wherever we went, lizards slithered in and out of the rocky crevices between the fallen stones. At the few sites that had been more fully restored, this mystery was absent, replaced by the jarring clarity of the new stones.
At Patara, a Roman outpost a half mile or so from the shore, sand dunes had covered most of the theater, leaving only the top third of the wall visible. Standing against the top of the wall, I thought of that moment in "Planet of the Apes," when the astronauts realize that the immense hand jutting from the ground belongs to the now-buried Statue of Liberty.
After visiting the site, Adip took us to a small cinderblock restaurant built on the banks of a river. We sat at long tables on a verandah overlooking the water. I took off my shoes and socks and climbed down a rusty staircase into the river. The water was cold. I waded out into the middle of the channel, where the current was running strongly. I dunked my head under the rushing water and held it there until I couldnÂ't stand it anymore. When I climbed out, lunch was ready: soft, peppery eggplant, bulgur, fresh french fried potatoes, and trout that a few minues before had been swimming in a submerged metal cage by the shore.
The most spectral ruin was Termessos, a 2500-year-old walled city on top of a mountain. To reach it, we drove, via minibus, up a narrow, vertiginous road, and then walked another mile or so up a rocky path.
As we hiked, we began to see half-hidden walls and collapsed buildings, many overgrown with weeds and even small trees. There were no other visitors. We made our way over fallen, half-buried columns and enormous cracked blocks of stone, which rested where they'd fallen centuries ago. One could easily imagine the thoughtless stream of life - haggling over bread, filling a bucket with water - that had flowed there when these eroding buildings had stood undamaged.
Natasha and I wandered away from the group, and ended up in front of a teetering bathhouse whose roof had collapsed. We scrambled over slabs of roof, and climbed the crumbling stone walls for a look at the surrounding peaks, which were still saturated with late-afternoon light.
When we scrabbled down, the sun was setting on our mountaintop, and a cool wind slid along the walls. The remaining light skidded over the ruins. We came upon the amphitheater, built on the edge of a sheer cliff and overlooking the surrounding mountains. In dwindling light, the ruins, the mountains and the sky all blended together, everything slate gray, white and pale blue.
Visiting these ruins was a kind of meditation. It put human action in a larger frame. Once, these skeletal remains had been strongholds, places to be reckoned with. Now, those who conceived these structures were dead, as anonymous as the slaves who had carried the stones up the mountain.
This sense of fragility was oddly liberating; two thousand years ago, these people had suffered from the same fears – of loneliness, failure, death - that vex us all. Now these Greeks and Termessans were gone, and with them their worries. Perhaps this sounds bleak, but standing in the sun, in the dry air, it was pleasant.
Guiding us through all this was Adip. With admirable patience, he scheduled, translated, explained, and shepherded. His face was deeply tanned and creased from years of digs. He was in his 40s; his curly black hair was flecked with gray. Like most Turkish men, he wore a thick mustache. Whenever his English faltered – a not infrequent occurrence – he relied on one phrase to pull him through. Â"It is so clear! So clear!Â" heÂ'd say. For him, the phrase supplied a coup de grace, after which all discussion was needless.
At every site, Adip reminded us of the grinding, dangerous work - done without cranes, steam shovels or power tools - required to build these immense temples and acropoli. "Remember the slaves!" heÂ'd say, gesticulating in his commanding way.
Archaeology was only half the equation. The other half - water - provided a wonderful counterpoint to the dusty ruins.
When not exploring ruins, we spent most of our time on or around the boa, the Â"Ruzgar,Â" which is Turkish for wind. (We never actually traveled under sail, relying instead on the engine to get from cove to cove. The only time the sails were raised at all was on the last afternoon - an utterly windless day - so we could all ride out in the inflatable launch and snap photos of the boat in full trim.)
The weather was sunny and dry, usually in the mid-80s during the day. Every morning as soon as we woke up, Natasha and I slipped on our suits and went swimming. The Mediterranean is much saltier than the Pacific or the Atlantic, so buoyant that one can float without effort.
Besides Natasha and me, who are in our early 30s, the group consisted primarily of people who had come of age in the Eisenhower era, if not earlier; they liked to reminisce. Whenever the going got choppy, we heard stories about storm-lashed troopship voyages during World War II or Korea. Bill (whose left shoulder bore a faded tattoo of a joker) told me about his years as a teenage tail gunner in the Pacific, flying over the jungle while sheathed in a glass pod. Vernon, a rotund surgeon from Nashville who was unwell with some unspecified ailment, and could hardly hobble around the boat, recalled days he'd spent ranging through the Tennessee countryside, searching for arrowheads. Ernest, a radiologist from Philadelphia, spoke of swimming in the Adriatic 60 years ago, as a young man. He still spoke with a bit of an accent. "That's all ancient history," he said with a wave of his hand, when I asked how he'd gotten to America.
Conversation on board tended toward expensive topics. One afternoon, I listened to a spirited debate over the best kind of caviar. Another day, the topic somehow wound its way to planes. "Oh you had a plane?" someone asked affably, without surprise. "What kind? We used to have one too.Â" During these conversations, Natasha and I sat quietly, like young children among adults.
They treated Natasha and me as mascots, teasing us constantly about our upcoming wedding. Â"Better get used to that,Â" I was told more than once by a winking husband when Natasha asked me to do her a favor or errand.
At around five every day, the air cooled a bit, and everyone gathered in the stern for cocktail hour. Our shipmates were old-fashioned social drinkers, and generally had a beer, a glass of wine, or a raku, the cloudy and quite potent anise-flavored liquor that is to Turkey what vodka is to Russia. After cocktails we had dinner: Turkish dishes made with sautéed fresh vegetables, lamb and pungent spices. We ate on deck, sitting around a heavy wooden table shaded by a canopy.
It was easy to give over to this life. Lying in the sun on the warm wood deck, listening to the sound of eggplant softening in sizzling oil, it was hard to imagine that I had ever pushed my way into a packed D train, or hunched over a PC until my shoulders ached. I came to expect the dry pine fragrance we inhaled while climbing a hill at midday; the listing coumns casting serrated shadows; the schools of silvery fish flashing with sunlight as they neared the surface of the turquoise water; the retirees telling genial jokes theyÂ'd told many times before.
I knew by heart each day's sensations: sun, stone, heat, water, hunger, satiation - all woven together by the perpetual rock of the boat. I became so accustomed to this rhythm that I got a little dizzy whenever I was on solid ground.
Soon enough, sadly, we returned to New York. The trip receded. After a week in Brooklyn, my vertigo disappeared.
Three months later, at 1 a.m. on a bitter cold night, Natasha and I were walking tipsily along Houston Street in Manhattan. We came upon a Turkish takeout restaurant and, finding it still open, veered inside.
The narrow room had just enough space for four cramped tables across from the counter. It was crowded with Turks speaking Turkish. "Meeraba," I said to the counterman, using one of the few Turkish words I knew: Hello. "Meeraba," he replied. We ordered a slice of baklava. It tasted flaky and sweet. We ordered another. As I tried to prolong the sensation of each buttery bite, I felt the floor sway just the slightest bit beneath me.