—

On the way to the bus station this morning, the city was unspeakably smoggy– worse than I’ve ever seen it. Gaziantep is a polluted place, unquestionably; when the weather was warmer, I’d find myself getting pollution headaches after anything more than a few hours downtown, and a low pall of dirty smoke hangs over the city at all times. But this was considerably more intense: from the top of the ridge of the Cumhuriyet neighborhood, I could look down sidestreets towards the center and see the whole city obscured, its outlines made uncertain by a grey haze. Downtown, it was difficult to even make out the edges of the castle clearly. Apparently yesterday a factory on the outskirts of the city caught fire, and now the aftermath is drifting through.

—

At the otogar, I got snapped up immediately by one of the where-are-you-going guys– the three or four people from the bus companies who hang out at the entrance to the station and try to gather up anyone incoming for one of the nearer destinations. It’s actually usually the best way for me to get a ticket; still buying directly from the bus companies, and usually for the soonest departure. My where-are-you-going guy today asked if I was German– usually the first question– but, to my surprise, followed it up by telling me (in German) that he’d lived in Köln for two years. Despite my assurances that no, I am not German, and yes, I understand (some) Turkish, the rest of our business was conducted in German. It was kind of sweet, actually; I got the impression he wanted to practice.¹ As he was walking me to the bus, ticket in hand, someone called out a joke to him in Turkish; I asked if he was a friend. “Yes,” he said, in Turkish this time, “all friends. But no German friends. And no German wife.” He grinned, and gestured expansively, jokingly. “Neden? Neden?” For what reason, what reason? Then, a little more quietly, without the gestures, neden again.

—

My initial impression of Urfa was dominated by pigeons.

From the otogar, a dolmuş took me into the center of old town through a city center which reminded me of Antep (but with the substitution of palm trees) and a short string of winding back streets, the kind that make you wonder whether the bus driver actually meant to turn this way, or is just enjoying trying to smooth down some of the nearby masonry. I hopped out when we reached the old bazaar (not really being eager to continue participating in the backstreet driving experiment), and, after a minute’s walk, found myself in the courtyard of the mosque built on the site of Abraham’s birth.

Which, as I said before, was full of pigeons. I realize this is a trite observation to be making about a terribly holy place– but it was the first thing that struck me, in any case. Huge clouds of pigeons, settling on the domes, the balconies of the minarets, the ornate architecture of the courtyard’s corners. In the center, a constantly-moving, constantly-disturbed crowd of pigeons cooing on the yellow stones with alternate contentment and indignation, as children threw handfuls of feed and raced through the knots of birds. At the very middle, where the children and pigeons were attending to their respective business, was a short stream set into a channel in the stone: water from the Balikligöl, the lake of sacred fish that supposedly sprang up to protect Abraham from fiery death– which eventually brought my attention back to the ostensible holiness, and away from the pigeons fluttering all around.

—

More writing incoming when it’s not so late after a long day of travel; pictures incoming when I have the correct camera cable again. Tomorrow: grading grading grading, seeing a movie (Yahşi Batı) with a friend and her class, possible dinner plans, personal academic projects. Busy life.

1: For me, hearing German is both lovely and a little strange. I can no longer consciously produce much German without great difficulty, but I understand a respectable amount when it’s spoken at me. What’s much more odd, though, is that there’s no translating going on in my head; what German I can remember just intrinsically means what it does, the same as English. The advantages of learning a language early, I guess.

• (1) On the minibus ride from Antep to İslahiye (the nearest town), we started with only myself, a young family (whose son kicked the back of my seat incessantly), and an old man. Generally, while driving out of town, you pick up additional passengers from the side of the road: people waiting on the edge of the highway who live somewhere near the bus route, or who were dropped by a bus coming in from elsewhere. You pass clusters of potential travelers: women in village garb with şalvar and old-fashioned scarves, elderly men smoking and mumbling and clicking their beads, families with high school kids headed home from the big-city dershane, people from town coming back from a day shopping, all standing in little groups at unspoken bus stops. Any gathering at a corner or a storefront is a possibility, so lay on the horn! The bus attendant will open the side and hang out gracefully, one hand clutching the roof of the van, and call, “Hatay-Hatay-Hatay-Hatay-İslahiye-Hatay-Hatay-Nurdağı-Hatay!” (or substitute your end destination and midpoints here). Most of the time, most of the people will just click their tongues and raise their eyebrows to send you on your way. There are so many little groups, though, that by the time we passed the outskirts of the city, the minibus was crammed to the gills, including a three-year-old boy half on my lap¹ and two old men on plastic stools in the aisle.
• (.5) In İslahiye, I exercised my Turkish with surprising success– both asking and (mostly) comprehending directions, figuring out where things are going and when, and (though this is not new) giving my standard biographical spiel. My understanding-mumbly-elderly-men skills are improving, too, which is much more of a necessity than I originally expected. We make progress. (Yavaş, yavaş.) This is not really a vignette, of course, and doubtfully exciting to anyone but me, but I am going to broadcast my progress whenever I goshdarn make any. (To be fair, I understand some new everyday utterance every time I leave the house. Today, I finally comprehended what the hell people say to me in shops: “Başka bir sey var mı?” “Anything else?” Retrospective duh.)
• (2) Longer coda to the last: Making friends with people on the bus is not something I’ve ever been skilled at, even in the States. But gradually (yavaş, yavaş, as with everything here) I’m starting to pick it up. Elderly women, little boys, and preteen girls are a social godsend: the first exchange wry smiles over crowded buses or squirmy children, the second try their English² and crow gleefully when I stammer in Turkish, and the third are curious but now old enough to want to help a lost yabancı. Today, I had the trifecta. The grandmother (presumably) of the three-year-old on the bus smiled at me warmly and clucked her tongue at the boy, though we didn’t exchange a word (I mumbled a polite bir büyük çocuk!, a big boy!, but I don’t think it was even heard). In the dolmuş to Yesemek, a preteen girl (Şennur) and her little brother and I managed a pretty long conversation about where we were from and what we were doing. Yes, some of it was just smiling and nodding on my part. But I catch more (and say more) every time.

Maybe because Americans are so often cautioned to suppress our instinctive smiles at strangers, I worry overmuch about being friendly in public. In Istanbul, or Ankara, or even in Antep, I do feel out of place when I try to make conversation– they’re cities, and people have city things to do. But in the towns and villages, once you have the least opening– the least reason to smile and nod– well, a smile is a smile. Even when I can’t communicate anything more, that connection keeps me from feeling adrift.

1: Other particularly interesting things that have been in my immediate proximity on the dolmuş or minibus in Turkey: 1) four or five large plastic bags of extremely recently butchered raw meat, during Kurban Bayramı last weekend, and 2) a chicken in a cage (the last time I was in Turkey, in 2008). Normally it’s just, you know, two three-foot-long PVC pipes tied together and women carrying enormous metal plates wrapped in newspaper.
2: “WHAT IS YOUR NAME? WHERE YOU FROM?”

And a small-print anecdote: while walking in İslahiye, I came across a sign in messy red paint, hanging from a dingy, windowless one-story brick building. “Sünnet yapılır. [phone number]” Colloquial translation? “Circumcisions done here.”