The Apinautica - Chapter 10 Part 5 - The Faraway Land and City of Light
It poses an interesting problem going through trying to adapt writing you've already written, rather than building something up from scratch. Especially when you suspect what you should be doing is paring it down. But this sentence is already written and you like it! It makes you really think about things. Especially with a travelogue, there's a lot of things that are "interesting" but one must ask, do they advance the plot? I think a description or scene must either advance the plot, or at least contribute to mood. And as to plot, when it's not exactly that the protagonist must find the McGuffin and save the world, I suppose is just that every scene must have some kind of emotional weight. Anyway, I'm not sure everything here meets all those requirements, but I pared it down as much as I could.
I hoist myself out of the seawater and up the corroded metal ladder. Seven feet above the lapping waves I clamber onto the top of the small concrete platform that sticks out of the sea like a little cork. A metal pole holds a light aloft as a warning to shipping. The turquoise waters of Fethiye Bay sparkle around me, surrounded on three sides by the dusty green sunbaked shores of south-western Turkey, fading to grey on one side and close enough for me to make out ant-like people on the nearer side. Halfway between my perch and the nearest land the 65-foot sailboat Eleutheria rides cheerfully at anchor, and I can see my fellow passengers splashing playfully in the water alongside her, no doubt each with a can of Efes pilsner in one hand.
As I sit, dripping, basking in the sun, I contemplate with regret that our journey is almost over. Soon the outside world will close in, I’ll have to check my email and my text messages. It’s been a nice four days not thinking about the girl who set the winds blowing in my sails to come to her in Turkey, only to set me adrift here. Out on the water I couldn’t possibly hear from her, so I didn’t have to worry about the immutable tides of her feelings.
Presently I begin to tire of my stylite perch -I can’t stay here forever, my idylls among the aquatic lotophagi had to end sooner or later- and clamber back down the rusty ladder to swim the gauntlet back to the EleutheriaI - the passage of small pleasure boats across my path lends a bit of a frogger-like challenge to it.
As we walk down the sunny dock in busy Fethiye marina my phone begins to ping with four days worth of email and message notifications. I decide not to check it yet. Some of our merry band of passengers are departing for other locations, the two cute Spanish girls invite me to go with them to a hostel at Oludeniz, but there seem to be more things I want to do here, and as cute as they are I’m not in a mood to go chasing random cute girls.
I spend the day with my erstwhile shipmates, we go to the archeological museum, local market and find some delicious food. I’m less successful at finding a place to stay the night as all the hostels are full, though one allows me to sleep on a couch on their roof.
That night we find one of the streets tucked behind the touristy market to be packed with bars (oddly, one of them had a Route 66 theme), and we sit in the outdoor seating area of a Route 66 themed bar, enjoying the warm summer evening and the sweet smell of hookahs wafting on the breeze, ordering frou-frou cocktails.
Monday, July 22nd
I can’t put off the weight of the world any more. Waking up to the morning sun and pleasant breeze on my rooftop, I set up my laptop on the table, to check my email (these were the dark ages of 2013, I didn’t have a smartphone yet!). There was indeed an email from Her, but it still seemed to be murky ominous clouds presaging storms, the distant rumble of thunder, tense seas.
Frowning, I turn my attention to the next local distraction, Saklıkent Gorge. I go down to the main market and get on a dolmuş with “Saklıkent” listed on a placard in the window, along with its other destinations. That wasn’t hard. Everyone else on it is a local Turk, and no one, not even the driver, speaks a word of English.
After two hours of driving I start to become rather nervous. I know Saklıkent isn’t particularly close to Fethiye but this was getting a bit concerning. My anxiety rises to a level nearing panic until finally we pull into a parking lot surrounded by stalls selling nicknacks, we have arrived!
To one side the valley ends in a cliff, in which Saklıkent Gorge cuts a narrow slice. I pay the entry fee and enter. In the beginning there are wooden walkways over the river and fine white sand beside it to talk on, sometimes alternating with smooth stones, and shallow chalky blue water. Gradually as I travel further in the water gets deeper and the crowds thin. One must cross waist deep frigid water in places, and further on it is armpit-deep and I transfer my wallet and phone to my breast pockets, holding my camera above my head.
Splashing through the deep pools and over boulders is fun, though I find myself wishing I had someone to share the adventure with. The deeper into the crevice-like canyon I get, the fewer other people I encounter. In places one has to climb up little waterfalls and slippery smooth rockfaces. Eventually, I climb a very difficult one and never see anyone else after that. Now this is really exciting.
Finally, several kilometers up the narrow canyon, I arrive at a massive boulder blocking the gorge. On one side the water rushes down in a waterfall, on the other a slimey foul-smelling rope leads up to a narrow crack. I try climbing it several times, I can get some purchase on some knots tied in it, and manage to drag myself up to where the rope disappeares into the crack but then there is nothing above to hold on to and nothing below to push myself up on.
As a sailor I feel it a point of pride not to be defeated by a rope-climbing obstacle, but after several attempts, I conclude I am too likely to somehow injure myself in a place where help is very very far away. It appears the light is starting to fade anyway.
Tuesday, July 23rd
Lying in bed is when it haunts you the most. I remember the way she lay there gazing at me that first night in Egypt, her smile serene like a favorable breeze, her brown almond eyes warm like calm inviting waters you wouldn’t mind falling overboard into. That unbreaking steadfast gaze … how I miss those brown gazelle eyes.
At breakfast I meet some Australian girls. Turkey is rife with Aussies. You run into them on three, four, six month holidays. Europe is so far from Australia that if they go there they’ve usually saved up their money and vacation days to spend a long time.
One of the girls was kind of cute, they are both friendly. It’s their first day in town, so I show them around a bit, including this delicious place I had discovered for lunch. After lunch they’re going to the beach, the cute one asks if I’m sure I won’t join them, looking perhaps even a bit coy, but I shake my head. I have ghosts to pursue.
In 1923 Turkey expelled all Christians and deported them to Greece. Previously, 20-25% of the population of Turkey had been Christian, today, as a result of this and the Armenian Genocide, it is 0.3-0.4% of the Turkish population.
The Greek lights of the town of Telmessos (“city of lights”) were then extinguished, and the city was renamed Fethiye (“conquest”). While Fethiye obviously continues to be a place, the nearby town of Kayaköy was entirely depopulated and remains a ghost town.
It’s a quick and straightforward dolmuş ride to Kayaköy. I step out onto a quiet cobblestone road, where large olive trees create pools of shade and restauranteurs like trap-door spiders lethargically wait for customers outside their little touristy open-air restaurants. In a semi-circle, like amphitheater seating, the crumbling ruins of Kayaköy lay around us.
I follow the road up and soon find myself on a narrow cobbled street barely wide enough for a donkey-cart, that hasn’t been maintained since Kayaköy had abruptly ceased being a functional village in 1923. I’ve seen plenty of ruins in my travels, but never such an expansive and recent site. The whole village is here. Roofs gone, grass growing in living rooms, empty doorways, sometimes opening onto nothing where a wooden stairway had once been. Walking up the steep narrow stone road it’s hard not to imagine what it must have been like with villagers carrying goods up and down, dogs lying carelessly in the road, children running around, laundry hung up to dry. It’s no wonder it inspired Louis de Bernières (famous for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) to write Birds Without Wings about exactly that, the final days of this village. Next to a former chapel on a hilltop overlooking the village a red Turkish flag proudly flutters in the breeze.
At one end of town, there’s a big Greek church, which apparently has some pretty Byzantine-style mosaics on the floor. Its doors are closed with modern metal gates, signs advising it will soon be open as a museum. While the most recent occupation of the village was 1923, some of the buildings, such as at least one of the churches, are as much as 500 years old.
I return by dolmuş to Fethiye. I stop by a ticket office to buy tickets to visit the Greek island of Rhodes the next day, but am informed there aren’t any ferries that day. My plans a bit flummoxed, I start walking toward the Lycian tombs hewn into the rock behind Fethiye to watch the sunset, I’ve heard there’s lovely view from up there.
As I walked along the road above the cliff, with the city stretching off below me to my left in the warm twilight glow and tall pine trees on my right, I receive a text message, my first in several weeks.
“What are you doing?” She asks.
“Walking to the tombs overlooking Fethiye,” I say, “why?”
The tombs have these huge monolithic facades with columns, and a door in the middle. So of course one is expecting a huge room on the inside, but within the doorway, there is actually just a closet-sized room the size of the door - and it smells like piss because humanity in general can’t be trusted not to piss on ancient ruins.
They say one of the tombs belongs to the ancient hero Bellerophon, who traveled across Turkey on the winged horse Pegasus, slew the fire-breathing Chimera, and finally came to rest here. I traveled across Turkey on the Pegasus bus line, roasted hot dogs on the Chimera’s fire, and now here I am, contemplating his tomb.
“I’ll come to where you are,” she says.
The sun is setting over the bay, bathing the cliff face in soft pink light and the rooftops below me in an orange glow. There are two tortoises slowly trundling along the hillside in front of the tombs.
“Nah I’m done looking at the tombs,” I say blithely, as I try to line up a photograph with a tortoise right in front of the tomb. “I was thinking of going to Gallipoli tomorrow, let’s meet there.” It’s about 9 hours by bus south from her in Istanbul, 12 hours north from me.
“Tomorrow?” she asks. I’m walking back now. Lights are starting to come on in the city below.
“Yeah I’ll take the overnight bus” I say while looking at the menu of a little restaurant perched precariously above the cliff. They don’t have an English version of their menu, which is one of the best auguries I could ask for endorsing their food. The owner comes out and translates his menu for me, and makes a recommendation. It’s delicious. He won’t accept a tip. “Turkish hospitality!” he insists.
Lights are twinkling all across the city as I continue my walk, a city of lights below me. And she’s already purchased her ticket to Gallipoli. As unpredictable and uncontrollable as the sea itself, but maybe the tempest has passed.
