This blog is, mas o meno, a surrogate journal for me to have to remember my journey/conquerings. It's open to the world, though... I am, however, at heart a writer, and I'm always so happy stringing words together and weaving stories. I think that that's in large part an Irish trait. After this entry, though, I'll save the reflecting for later to-night. I still have to go figure out postcards and present for people, an get some food in me (luckily, our hoca bought some fresh simit that was still warm yesterday, so I had one, and when Gözde asked me if I would like some coffee with it, she was very good at reading my slight hesitation in considering manners as an, 'EVET! LÜTFEN!') before coming back and posting something with some value.
For now, more pictorial narrative. You must feel like you're reading a children's book. And if you are reading, honestly, post comments! I need to appear as though I'm well liked, obviously, because it's all about appearances, people. I love your e-mails, too, though, and I know that I owe a few of you some. <3
Let's start this narrative with another blunt moral:
war is fucking preposterous. I wish that there were a stronger word for the absurdity of it all, but English is failing me, and I don't know these adjectives in languages that may be able to express my emotions better.
That said, we'll continue.
İstanbul sprawls. It sends spidery streets of ceramic-roofed houses out across the meeting point of Europe and Asia, and these spiders webs of civilisation grow each year. You could drive for hours through this city, and we did a bit to travel down the coast. There's a portion of Turkey in Europe next to Greece and below Bulgaria. I urge you to refresh your geography of this region, and the world, for that matter, in order to ward off ignorance. From which state did Kosovo recently declare independence?
We drove for hours (five?) down the coast. It was beautiful. There were fields of sunflower crops, used both for oil and for snacks. Usually, sunflowers make me so happy, like the time that I pulled off the road in Salem for that empty lot full of them and picked some, but it was odd to see them cultivated. I think that there's something in me inherently that doesn't like to see plants in rows, or people, for that matter. That's not natural. I do, however, like to watch out the window for the 'lines': when the rows of crops run perpendicular to the road and I can see straight down them for an instant.
We arrived in Gelibolu late and had a delicious dinner. There was also a random local sardine festival going on... We walked around it after dinner, which was just interesting... Dinner, though, I couldn't finish, which made me so upset. You know how I'm constantly berated/made fun of for being vegan? Somehow, even as a vegetarian, that happens still here. More than that, though, I also have my reputation as someone who HATES to waste food, and I often end up finishing plates of other people's food so as not to waste. This dinner, though, was too much. After salad, bread, cold appetisers, hot appetisers, soup, and then a vegetarian main course of sort-of curried vegetables, rice, and another salad, I was completely stuffed. I can't even remember if we had desert (almost done this entry, I do now; it was fruit). I passed my salad around for people to finish, and when it came back, my professor slung her arm around me for people to take pictures of 'Meaghan wasting food!' I did, however, finish my milky glass of rakı. Back at the hotel (mind you, all of this is on Bahçeşehir) we slept.
In the morning, I walked along the water and marvelled at the size of the ships passing through. I felt so small, standing on the edge of the passageway, my white dress flapping about in the breeze and my small hands holing a camera to my squinting eyes.
At the museum's opening ceremony, we sat and listened to all the Turkish. The highest admiral or something like that of the Turkish navy was even there. I sat rapt in the sun (everyone else was at least in part in shade...), and some slept sitting around me as I tried in vain to poke people. O, well. The museum is a historical one that commemorates Piri Reis, a naval admiral and early cartographer famous for his comprehensive map of Europe et plus in the fifteen-hundreds, who was born in this small town. After the ceremony, we walked around the small city and entered a museum. You may recognise the town if you think about it.
It was here that I realised how much I inherently don't understand war, and how frustrated and angry it makes me. One kid shoots one man and within weeks, Europe is aflame. I just. don't. get it. ? Some of the stories that we heard (we had a tour guide who was the author of one of the books with which our group was presented; he's a math professor, but his hobby is history in this region) gave me a glimpse of this life, but I could never understand. He told of Australian and New Zealand troops throwing meat to the Turks metres away in their trenches at night, after fighting. The Turks, not knowing if the meat was pork or not, threw back notes saying, 'No meat. Milk and cigarettes' with which they were quickly supplied. When a second wave of ANZAC troops were gunned down by machine fire when trying to overtake Turkish trenches, a Turkish commander yelled something like, 'For god's sake! No more!' because he didn't want to waste any more young souls, but he would have no choice. Also, I can't imagine trench warfare: how did they live in them? how did they dig them without being shot? how did they fight with other trenches only metres--sometimes as few is three, four, and five--away?
Why on earth would anyone find this justified? It makes me so sad, more than anything. People kill each other over the stupidest things, but we're a world that's just fine with killing.
I'm so not. I can see the rationalisations and justifications for killing things, but one should not kill. That's all that I can say.
I cried reading this outside the museum, festooned with barbed wire and sand bags, a trench around the exterior.
I cried inside the museum, too, and put on my sunglasses. There were scattered artefacts all throughout the museum in scores: uniform buttons, scissors, tent grommets, pieces of paper, pins, everything. There was glass in one room, and the ceiling was glass, with the broken pieces of glass above it lit by Christmas lights. I thought of all of the women of my family, combing the beach in summer.
After lunch at the same place where we had dinner, we headed for Anzac Cove. We also visited a couple of Australian/New Zealand cemeteries in the area, and some historical sights around the shore and the hills. One cemetery had Mediterranean herbs between each of the graves, which was a lovely idea, indeed, because the herbs are self-sustaining and smell beautiful. I was able to identify many, which made me happy. Our hoca, though, walked around and picked a few for us to smell and see, but I found this activity quite disagreeable. I hate even to walk on a grave. Some of you know how I find peace in cemeteries, and I do, indeed, but these were a bit different, I think, because of the war overtones.
It looks, from the bay, as if you can walk along this ridge, but it is impossible--sometimes only ten centimetres wide.
The ride to this area from Gelibolu was beautiful, and the place was beautiful, but I could not enjoy the beautiful in full because I could hear machine gun fire and wretched screams in mine head as we walked. I could see bodies piled upon bodies in layers of gore, and out there, I could hear murmurs of death upon cracked and dry lips, crying for salvation. I relived in mine head storming the beach and watching hundreds of boys picked off in droves by Turkish snipers as they tried in vain to ascend and take these hills and cliffs. I watched the Turkish general walk blindfolded through the enemy camp to discuss a temporary ceasefire so that the Turks could bury their dead, at least and last. I could smell hot bodies baking in the sun: blood and wet wool, rampant disease and worry. There were flies everywhere in mine head. I worried about dysentery and festering wounds with no access to the overburdened medical units. I vomited stale biscuits and jam soaked with tea. I lost sleep in the trenches.
It sickens me to live in a world where people take more pleasure in making war than love, and it seems at times that the former is done with less discretion and consideration.
We had a small dinner under grape vines and plum trees. There were pieces of bread wrapped around meat, cheese, or potatoes, and our hoca's daughter and I split one potato and one cheese, which were both so delicious. There was plenty of çay, and I even asked for fifteen more, please, in Turkish, trying to organise who wanted more at our table. We had fruit for dessert and rolled strips of bread in honey and some other sweet sauce. Some people didn't like them, but they had brought a lot, so I ate far more than I would have preferred.
Driving back, we saw remnants of a forest fire a week before. I slept, and woke to take drowsy pictures of a sunset.
We stopped to use toilets (these were wretched, but they were squat toilets, of which I'm quite enamoured) and then I couldn't sleep, although I used my swimming towel (Little Mermaid!) as a neckroll pillow to keep mine head from, well, rolling. I thought that it was quite ingenious. Approaching İstanbul after more than 300 kilometres, I watched a thunderstorm dance around the sky, and I understood why people would think that this was Thor. It reminded me of one of the beginning scenes in It's a Wonderful Life, when the stars light up as they talk with each other. The sky blinked on-on-on-on-on, dark for a while, and then on again.
Back here last night, I shared stories with Gözde before showering and sleeping.
Sorry for the rampant pessimism, by the way, but people and their careless ways get me so depressed if I start thinking too much.
A happy thought in all of this, though: as I took pictures of the beautiful islands in the distance--some Turkish, some Greek--I thought of how I will be spending a week in a place even more beautiful than this, and how lucky the circumstances of my life are.
I'm blessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment