Turkey (part 5)
Yep, you've guessed it -- more Turkey Superlatives. This is the part where it gets exciting!
Nastiest beastie we came across: A live scorpion we were shown by a little boy in Mardin, who proudly announced it hailed from Nusaybin, a nearby town. This didn't mean much to me until I read Tim Mackintosh-Smith's ferociously entertaining Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Batuttah, which helpfully informed me that Nusaybin scorpions are famous all over the Arab world for their deadliness; apparently, they used to be catapulted over the walls of besieged cities to do away with the inhabitants. I'm kind of glad I didn't know this when the little boy in Mardin showed me his very own Nusaybin scorpion.
One of the less scary beasties of Mardin. Bizarrely enough, it seemed to be rather scared of me; a second after I'd taken this photo, it ran away with its tail between its legs. I wish I could have had a little more time to focus the shot properly...
Scariest man we came across (other than the few nameless ones described below): At the risk of offending a nation of God knows how many million inhabitants: Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey. I know the man did a lot of good things for his country, but damn, that doesn't alter the fact that he looked like a vampire. With those intense, piercing eyes and pointy teeth, he would have made an excellent Dracula, should he have chosen to go into acting. Instead, he chose to reform what was left of the crumbling Ottoman Empire and give the Turks back their dignity, for which major feat he is honoured today with more portraits than I ever saw of Ceauşescu back in the Socialist Republic of Romania or of Khomeini in the Islamic Republic of Iran. K and I had the misfortune of being in Ankara (the capital) on Victory Day (30 August), and got quite disconcerted by the number of giant Atatürk portraits surrounding us. Seriously, it's not nice, being stared at by thirty-foot vampires.
Scariest moment: The moment K and I woke up in the middle of the night to find that a number of men were trying to get into our hotel room, knowing full well we were inside. This happened in a tiny hotel in the untouristy village of Iliç. The hotel was virtually empty and we weren't sure whether there was anyone else around; the manager didn't always seem to spend the night at the hotel, and for all we knew, the only other guest (male) might be one of the men harassing us. To make it all just a tad more frightening, one of the walls of our room was made of thin polystyrene, meaning that anyone who gained access to the room next to ours could easily get into our room. K and I got fairly scared, particularly when it seemed, as it did at one point, that there were no fewer than four men standing in front of our door (we could see their silhouettes through the window in the door). After a while, two of them left, but that didn't really make us feel any better, least of all when the remaining two started to give light signals to an unseen party outside the hotel. We weren't sure what to do. The best course of action seemed to me to get dressed, put on our shoes and pack our bags, just to be able to get away quickly should things turn nasty (although quite where we should turn in that quiet little village in the dead of night was beyond me). So we quietly packed our things, without turning on the light. Meanwhile, one of the two men in the corridor repeatedly tried to open our door. Then he kneeled in front of it, in all likelihood to check the lock. At that point I got really angry, so I gave a tremendous kick against the door, yelled "Go away!" in Turkish and had the satisfaction of seeing both the guy and his crony get up like a bolt and run away, and of hearing the outside door slam shut behind them. To this day, I wonder what caused them to flee like that -- whether they were afraid of the racket I was producing, whether they had finally realised we were on to them, or whether someone else (presumably the other hotel guest, or possibly the hotel manager) had kicked them out after hearing my scream (K thinks she heard raised voices in the corridor just before the outside door fell shut). I would have loved to ask the manager exactly what had happened that night, but when we left the hotel the next morning (at 7 a.m.), both the reception and the other guest's room were empty. In any case, the two men disappeared (we saw them leave the hotel and turn a corner), and the rest of the night was uneventful. We didn't get much sleep, though; we were a little too awake for that.
Second-scariest moment: Wandering off from the rest of the group near one of the crater lakes of Mt Nemrut, only to find myself surrounded by ten near-naked Turkish men (ready for a swim) who leered at me and whispered among themselves in a way I really, really didn't like. I kind of panicked; I walked back to the rest of the group as fast as I could and asked our driver and another male group member to accompany me back to the spot of which I'd been trying to take a picture, so as not to have to deal with the young Turks alone. I don't usually panic like that, and in retrospect I think I may have overreacted to the situation, but at that moment I felt incredibly vulnerable. I really didn't like the look in those guys' eyes.
See the lake on the right? That's where I had my unpleasant encounter with the near-naked Turks.
Up next: Smile, you're on candid camera...