Turkish Moments - diary of a few events from my recent Turkey trip

Cake in school uniformWhen we went back to the restaurant we saw that the two school girls had left earlier. They had probably gone back to their homes to do homework. I had been thinking how things would go - if they were still there. When we found out that they had gone I was both relieved and disappointed. We had stopped there for lunch on our way to the Asklepion and the one girl, still in her school uniform, had sat with us while we ate two types of cake, one chocolate and one fruit, followed by some kind of filo pastry dish that wasn't baklava. At first I thought she worked there and wanted to practice her English. Then she lit up a cigarette and her eyes held on to mine a little longer than they should have. And the smile that opened up was not from someone who wanted to practice English. She criss-crossed her legs once and then twice and then a third time. She said she was nineteen but I didn't believe her. I don't think Adam did either. Her friend came over. She had blonde hair and was dressed in ordinary clothes but she had the same sultry look in her eyes and was just as young looking. I actually wanted to leave right away but we had all these deserts to eat and I didn't want to offend the owner who is a nice old lady. We didn't mean to order so much. All I had wanted was a cappuccino but they only had Nescafe.I was thinking how I could possibly finish all this damn cake when Adam asked the uniformed one when she was going to graduate. The following year was her reply and then she went on to say that she would go to Istanbul for university. I asked her what there was to do in Bergama in the evenings, for fun. She said there was nothing to do and that was why she wanted to leave and go to the big city. I forget now how it came about but a bit later on she mentioned that she was crazy and when she was crazy she liked to drink beer. I looked at my watch and said that we had better be going because the Asklepion would close in an hour or so. She looked at me and without knowing why exactly I said that we would come back later - for dinner. It wasn't something I wanted to say but sometimes I feel compelled to say things I don't mean just to escape an awkward moment. I could tell Adam was eager to get going as well. The blonde girl looked at me and then I said again that we would see them later, at about seven. I'm not sure if she understood because her English didn't seem good. She hadn't said much and was smoking a cigarette now. The uniformed one seemed satisfied that we should come back later but she said seven was too late. She had to get home so six would be better. Adam and I agreed although I knew we wouldn't be hungry at six. It was four now and we had each just forced down three plates of desert.Freud and the Gypsy catThe way to the Asklepion went through a gypsy neighborhood. A snot nosed muddy cheeked boy rode passed us on a bike that was way too big for him. He turned his head and shouted 'hello' to us and I returned with 'hello' but Adam said 'look out' because with his head turned the boy was riding towards a pool of disgusting trash riddled water on the side of the road. He righted the bike and rode away. I had heard from the two German school teachers staying at our pension that you had to walk through a dirty gypsy village to get to the Asklepion and that it had made them nervous. Adam said than in Australia they would never tolerate this kind of mess leading up to a major tourist attraction which was at one time a famed medical center and the world's first psychiatric hospital. They were doing dream therapy here 2000 years before Freud.We saw a dead cat on the road that had been run over at least once. The skin had burst open and the guts were laid out snake-like in red and white. There was hardly any blood though, just red meat and fat. The head was untouched and the eyes were shocked open and empty. The scene made me think of the time Sara and I had seen a dead cat in Sanlitun. I had parked my bike and then luckily found a plastic bag in the garden. I picked the cat up by the scruff of the neck, put it in the bag and dropped it in a big blue bin outside Carmen. I know she approved of this sensitive behaviour and I had felt proud of myself for doing it. I had also thought that this was the kind of person I was. But seeing this bloody mess I had no inclination to clean up. There was no Sara to impress. As I think about it now, the two cats have a symbolic meaning. With the first one, the cat was still intact as was our relationship. But this second cat was badly mangled and its innards had exploded out. I imagined that soon the gypsy kids would come and prod at it with sticks and pieces of wire. And perhaps an older one would point out what bits were what - a macabre anatomy lesson in the middle of the road. Mushtafa Sitting on the Izmir bus the next afternoon, I started eating Turkish Delight but Adam turned a blind eye because he had eaten over a kilogram of the stuff back in Istanbul. This guy doesn't do half measures. He did seventeen days at Oktoberfest and nine days at Ibiza and after a short rest he would continue to eat his body weight in Turkish Delight. I reclined my chair and continued listening to The Iliad. Achilles was busy dragging the body of Hector around the city much to the horror of Priam and co. It had always been my plan to walk the walls of Troy while listening to this classic. Ever since my English teacher read us The Odyssey in high school, visiting the site had been a dream of mine and when I finally got there a few days earlier, I did two tours back-to-back. The first was a group tour and the second was a private with the local legend, guide Mushtafa. Even though it cost me a whopping 40 Euros, I had to have Mushtafa. He grew up near Troy and, as a boy, scurried around the different archaeologists digging in the dirt. He had been a guide for 30 years and had even written a book, which, by the way, I bought and he signed. I was here and I would not be denied any chance to further grasp the mystical wonder of this place. Mushtafa, you are my main man.The tour was damn good and I got what I came for - a tangible intimacy with the site. Once Mushtafa left, I sat in the dirt by the western wall looking over at the farmland dissected by the Scamander river with the Dardannells in the background. This was where Homer set his epic battle between Achilles and Hector and I watched it unfold before my twitching eyes. I got so carried away in the blood and guts of the moment that I almost missed my bus back to Cannakale. Having recorded Mushtafa's entire tour on my iPhone, I flicked it on to keep me company for the 30km trip. But the sound file was corrupt and I considering smashing the phone on the tarmac as a display of protest, but Steve Jobs probably wouldn't get that message. He had just died. Trojan filterI met this Canadian guy at the Kebab House in Silcuk, just near Ephesus. Bald, overweight and loud, he seemed more Yank than Canuck. Since he had just traveled solo through Uzbekistan and a few of those other made-up countries in Central Asia and I happen to respect this kind of intrepidity, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But this only earned him a reprieve from his eventual fall from grace. It is possible to accurately judge the compatibility of a person from just one statement. The incompatibility pokes its head out because the statement they unwittingly unleash, sheds light on a part of their character that one finds intolerable. Not because it's disparaging or negative in any way, but because it either attempts to diminish meaning from your world or reflects a self-righteous ignorance. I met a girl at a bar in Hong Kong who, ten minutes into the conversation, stated that she hated literature, art and basically anything cultural. Cheque please! I experience a similar recoil when a Chinese person tells me they hate Japan. Have you been to Japan? No. Have you ever met anyone from Japan? No. Then why do you hate Japan? Because of the war. Oh, I could've sworn that ended. The porcine Canadian exposed himself when I asked him if he had been to Troy. His reply, 'Yeah, I went to Troy. Jeez what a waste of time! There is nothing there.' And then he went to talk more about his time in Central Asia but I had pretty much stopped listening. Horsing around in Love ValleyAfter watching the rugby final at Fat Boys, I asked Manuela if she would like to go horse riding. She was keen and so we headed out to the horse ranch I had seen near the Open Air Museum. We bumped into the two American girls, Crissie and Lena, and they became apart of the posse. When we arrived at the ranch, the big cheese said that the horses were eating lunch and we would have to wait until three before we could ride. We all agreed that beer would assist us in killing the hour or so wait and so we found a little cafe nearby. I ordered four cans of Efes, a bag of Ruffles and some cashews and we munched and sipped under a blue sky that sung melodies of sunlight. The two American girls had never ridden before and the beer soothed their trepidation. I needed some soothing too because I've been afraid of horses ever since I was nine when I had two bad falls, one of them involving a tree. The only reason I wanted to do it was in order to master the skill, not because I enjoy it. I've been in three TV shows where I had to ride and two of those times I had to be led. How do you say 'nancy boy' in Chinese?Our posse headed out into the Love Valley where the rock formations are cockeyed and tinged in shades of terracotta. It seemed our guide was content with just a walking pace and so I started making snoring noises. I had already walked through this valley and if I was going to put myself out by going horse riding I at least wanted to trot a bit. This circus pony nonsense was boring. The guide didn't get the hint and so I asked him if we could speed things up. I was told that because most of the posse were beginners, we would therefore just be walking. I kicked up a fuss and told him I wasn't paying 70TL for this bullshit and he got angry and said that on the way back he would let me ride homeward on my own. I started to get nervous then because I don't actually know how to ride and I had somehow conveyed that I could and angered him at the same time and now he was setting the stage for a tragedy with me in the lead. All I wanted was to trot a bit.True to his word, homeward bound where the road splits, the guide told me to hang back and veer right while the posse went left into the valley. I had to fight with my horse because all he wanted to do was follow his pals but I managed to hold him until we were alone. He suddenly recognized the road and he bolted in the direction of the stables. I squeezed with my thighs, yanked the reigns with the left, clawed the saddle with the right and screamed like a ravaged siren on the inside. I wasn't trotting like I wanted but galloping instead and the horse's hooves were pounding the gravel with a rapidity that only a welterweight boxer and his bag could come close to approximating. The weird thing is that I slowly lost the fear and exhilaration replaced it. I realized that this is why people like horse riding. I used both hands to pull the reigns and the bit went so far up his mouth that the discomfort slowed him down much to his annoyance. We walked for a bit and I patted his sweaty neck and whispered sweet nothings into his ear. Then I let him go again and we repeated our gallop-walk routine all the way home without hitch.When the posse returned I saw that Crissie was walking and in tears. Her horse had bucked her off on a steep slope and she had hurt her back. I felt bad because this horse riding thing was my idea and it was pretty obvious that they had matched her up with a frisky horse. I sat snug on my cloud of euphoria though because I had faced a fear of mine and came off unscathed. The nine year old inside of me chuckled to himself and then jumped on the tractor and rode off into the sunset.