CHAPTER 13:  Turkey, Seljuk I

19 Nov, Friday

After nine days and five hours on Patmos, I’m finally on a ferry again. We mill around the rumbling hold for an eternity breathing exhaust from cars, trucks and motorbikes before the crew finally lets us into the passenger compartment. The warmth of the ferry feels good, but I’ve not been on one this dirty. The carpet looks as though it hasn’t been vacuumed since October. The shabby crew drifts around with their chest hair sticking out their open shirts and their pants wrinkled. Dirty dishes decorate the tables in the dining room, and the trash cans are full. I try to find a quiet place to unload my backpack where I can sleep, but small groups of shouting Greeks are everywhere.

I sit next to the dark windows watching for the coast of Turkey. Gradually, as we enter the straight between Samos and the mainland, pinpoint lights speckle the darkness. We should be at dockside by five-thirty, a little early to look for a hotel. I’m sick and tired of being out in the cold.

The announcement over the loudspeaker startles me even though I’ve been unable to sleep with the loud voices and smoke. We’re coming into Samos Town. I wait impatiently down in the hold with a handful of people, listening to the whistling wind and rush of water pumps maneuvering the ferry while the docking crew tries to straighten out the mooring ropes. The wind blows the ferry laterally, stretching the ropes across the exit as the metal gangway scrapes and pops against the cement dock. The clang and scream of the ferry’s motors coupled with the frantic shouts of men are frightening. The cars and trucks can’t move with a rope across the exit, but it doesn’t stop the passengers from crawling under and over the rope, adding to the chaos and interfering with the crew. I hurry off myself, bending low under the rope which sings under the high tension. I feel a tingle ripple through me, realizing I could be dragged to death.

I step off the gangway into cold driving wind and stinging rain. I use the pink neon glow of a sign, Hotel Samos, as my homing beacon though the dark. I push through two sets of glass doors, thinking I surely can’t afford a room in this place. The man behind the desk and another manning the coffee and pastry shop are the only people around. The carpeted dining room with a cathedral ceiling is dark and empty. I drop my backpack to the floor next to a group of sofas in the foyer wondering if they’ll run me out if I don’t take a room. I’m so tired. But perhaps they won’t mind. Samos used to have a Hermes festival during which everyone had a license to seal.[1] I’ll steal a little warmth and comfort.

After pulling off my coat and gloves, I talk to the man behind the desk and find that a single in this magnificent hotel goes for only 3900 dr ($16.00). No singles are available at the moment and won’t be till nine o’clock. I ask where I can find a travel agent to see about a ferry to Turkey. “Right next door,” he says.

While waiting for the agency to open, I walk to the OTE to call my son in San Francisco. The weather outside is still cold and windy and the sky overcast. Today is his birthday, but it’s 8:00 PM yesterday there. His voice sounds so fresh, young and familiar. It’s nice to be reassured he’s well. He’s a freelance illustrator. When I tell him I’ll be going to Turkey sometime during the next few days, he’s thrilled. He’s painting a Turkish mural on the wall of a woman’s clothing store. Just a little synchronicity, Hermes on the prowl again.

Let’s Go says I must leave my passport overnight before entering Turkey. At least I’ll have the rest of today and this evening to discover Samos. With the weather, it may be a week before I get a ferry.

Nine o’clock comes and goes and still no room. In the meantime, I walk next door to the travel agency, which has just opened. The agent hasn’t even pulled off his coat. I step into the small room, which is still dark and cold, ask when I can get a ferry to Turkey. “Today, three o’clock,” he says. I stand there for a second, my dull mind trying to absorb my good fortune. I feel a rush of fear. I’m not prepared for Turkey, not today. “That won’t leave enough time for me to get through passport control,” I tell him. “No problem,” he says. I’m dumbfounded, find myself searching for another excuse. But this is no time for petty bickering with my own cowardice. “What’s the price?” I ask, pulling my security pouch from inside my shirt. As I go out the door, he tells me, “Be at the dock by two-thirty.”

I walk down the street away from the hotel looking for a taverna, a sense of doom hanging over me. The war with the Kurds in eastern Turkey looms larger.

I find a dark greasy taverna, and order two gyros and French fries. The entrance is small and the room long with a dark greasy kitchen in the back. I chomp on the gyros and stare out at the sea and a ferry in the distance. A lone dog hobbles in and stands three-legged at the entrance, her nostrils elevated and twitching at the smell of my food. Her fourth leg, the left front, is broken just above the first joint and flops like a rag. She shows no pain, the leg evidently broken some ago. The proprietor comes to shoo her away.

I reenter the hotel and take a single room until two o’clock at a half-day rate. I take the elevator to the third floor. After a shower, I climb into bed for a nap, hoping the alarm on my wristwatch will make enough noise to wake me. Three hours won’t be much, but I can’t face Turkey with no sleep.

A quick check of Let’s Go reveals that ferries from Samos dock on the Turkish coast at the port town of Kusadasi. Troy is my primary destination, and it’s north of Kusadasi about 350 kilometers, but I also want to see Ephesus. Ephesus is just a few miles inland from Kusadasi, so I’ll spend the night in Kusadasi and catch the bus the following morning to Ephesus. All these logistics are worrisome in a country totally unknown to me. Now for a little sleep.

Just as I doze, the telephone rings, raises me straight out of bed with my arms and legs flailing. It takes a few seconds to realize I’m not at home in Boulder, Colorado, that I’m in Greece, on the island of Samos. The voice must be the man at the front desk, I think, but it’s not. It’s the travel agent. He says the schedule has changed. The ferry leaves for Turkey at one o’clock instead of three, suggests I be at dockside by a quarter till one. I’ll have to go to the dock immediately.

After I hang up the phone, I’m rattled and still trying to surface through drowsiness. How did the travel agent know to call me at Hotel Samos? I didn’t even have a room when I bought my ticket. Was the call real or was I dreaming? My first chance to get a little sleep, and that damn Hermes, god of synchronicity and guide to travelers, takes it away.

I lumber to the dock, but no ferry is in sight, just a fishing boat moored sidewise at the pier, a few men milling about onboard it. No one is available to ask about my passport, so I enter the coffee shop, wondering if the spooky telephone call was really meant for me.

A large group of young people surrounds a couple of tables watching MTV on a television suspended from the ceiling. As I slide my backpack off into one of the plastic chairs beside a vacant table, a brunette with an infectious smile and captivating gray eyes speaks to me. Her name is Sarah. She and her female traveling companion are both Australians, as are several others. One of the girls is from New Zealand, a Kiwi. “What state you from, mate?” asks a big Aussie with a black beard sitting beside a dark-haired heavyset woman. Their names are Tim and Jane. “Colorado,” I say, and get a chorus of cheers. I’m a little dumbfounded at the commotion I’ve created. “Here’s two of your neighbors,” the Aussie adds, slapping a young man on the back. The embarrassed couple are newlyweds from Denver. The entire group has been waiting several days for the ferry to Kusadasi.

The agent finally shows, followed by scooting chairs and rustling backpacks as we scurry for the door. The agent stands at the dock calling names and returning passports, but mine hasn’t been processed. I wait outside Port Authority feeling uneasy. The ferry also concerns me. When I first came to the dock, I saw it but thought it was a small fishing boat. I don’t know how they’ll get us all aboard.

I strike up a conversation with an English couple, two very thin, rustic people, both with golden hair. They live on a yacht at the marina in Kusadasi and are in Greece only to get their Turkish visas renewed. They’re the friendliest people I’ve ever met, bubbling over with conversation and laughter. I’m captivated by their English accents and easy manner. They think the Turks are wonderful and disapprove of the fussy Greeks. He says the change in our departure time, one o’clock instead of the three, is because the Greeks are forcing the Turkish ferry to leave dock early. The Greeks are simply being difficult.

I ask about getting my two cameras, three lenses and forty rolls of film into Turkey. Let’s Go tells me I can’t get into the country with more than one camera and five rolls of film. They scoff at the question. “I could believe it about Greeks. They’re a picky, antagonistic people,” they say, “but not the Turks. They’re thrilled to have you in their country.” I wonder if the relationship between the Greeks and Turks isn’t the 400 years Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire. From 1456 to 1830 the Greeks lived under Turkish suppression.

The ferry slips away from dock, and soon we’re lunging through the white-capped sea, loping along with the chattering voices and shouts of approval when we break a large wave. I want to keep the horizon in sight but keep losing it watching Sarah. She has an easy intimacy about her that disarms me at a glance.

We survive the rocky boat ride although a couple of women are a little pale around the mouth. When I step from the side of the boat onto the dock, a Turk takes my hand to make sure the rocking boat doesn’t dump me into the sea. They throw our packs from the boat in a big stack, and we scramble for them. The English couple disappear quite suddenly, and I’m disappointed because they asked me have a drink with them on their boat.

As we exit customs, two young Turks approach us. “Ephesus?” they ask. “New Zealand Pension? Seljuk?” Seljuk is the small town just outside Ephesus. Sarah says she’s heard of the New Zealand Pension, and it’s suppose to be great. Ten of us pile in the van, me against my better judgement. I’m afraid of becoming a tourist and forgetting my purpose for being on this journey, but I go with them anyway, quiet honestly, because I can’t take my eyes off Sarah.

First they take us to a bank where we exchange travelers checks for Turkish lira, and then we’re off to Seljuk. I sit at the back of the van against the window, and Sarah sits in the seat facing me, telling me about her home in Australia.

In Seljuk, the van pulls up at a nondescript building with a cinder-block fence and a wrought-iron gate that would look at home in any neighborhood in the States. Just inside the front door, we climb stairs to the second floor. I’ve thought about dumping this group of tourists in Seljuk, but Sarah has changed my mind. Besides, they’ve solved all my logistics problems. I’ve made up a full day of the five I lost stranded on Patmos.

Arhman, the young Turk who drove the van, unlocks the door of one of the community bedrooms, pushes it open. As I enter, I see that it’s new, white walls and ceiling, spotless linoleum floor. Three single beds butt up to the wall on the right. A fourth single bed is sidewise, flush against the left wall. The beds all have tan box springs on short-legged frames, firm mattresses with tucked-in white sheets and green blankets, the covers folded back military style, a fluffy white pillow. I can have one of these beds for 50,000 lira ($3.67) or a single room to myself for 200,000 lira ($14.68).

After unpacking, I walk downstairs to the living room where the rest of the group has gathered and being served Turkish tea in tiny glasses, which look like miniature flower vases. My glass sits in a tiny circular metal saucer and comes with a miniature spoon. I ask Sarah if she thinks the water in the tea might make us sick, but she just smiles and lifts her cup to her lips.

We talk to a youngish blond woman from England named Alison who owns the Pension with her Turkish husband, Turgay. Alison bounces her infant son on her knee. Turgay owns the New Zealand Carpet Shop just down the street. I’m stuck in the middle of the Turkish carpet industry, something I wished to avoid.

After tea, Arhman asks if we’d like to go to dinner. It seems a little early, but the light wanes as we pile in the van again. Not surprisingly, Arhman stops by the carpet shop first. The carpet shop is one large room, running from alley to street. We enter through a lounge just off the kitchen where we sit around a table, and they pass out tiny cups of tea again. Beyond, down a slight incline, exotic Turkish carpets cover both the floor and walls of a larger room. Turgay, Alison’s husband, introduces himself. “Don’t worry about the carpets,” he says. “We won’t pressure you if you’re not interested.” He takes several people into the carpet area, turns on a overhead spotlight and spreads carpets of fine-woven wool and silk. The golds, reds and blues sparkle in the overhead light. He quietly explains how they’re woven by children.

I don’t like the way they’ve railroaded us into the carpet shop under the pretext of taking us to dinner, but it only takes a glance from Sarah for me to join her. She’s out in the middle of the floor on her hands and knees. “What do you think?” she asks, sliding her hand along the furry surface. “Aren’t they luxurious?” It’s as if my ex-wife just spoke to me.

Turgay explains the design, an Islamic double-prayer pattern based on the Muslim family who wove it. The large crosses in the middle tell the number and sex of their children, light outside for a girl, dark outside for a boy. The camel heads tell the family’s wealth. Flowers mean good luck. The goat horn, camel feet, and scorpion are the symbols of nomads. The alternating pattern of the outside border provides religious instruction: pray five times a day, fast, once in life go to Mecca, believe in God and Mohammed as our prophet, look after poor people.

After the carpet show, Arhman leads us through dark streets to a crowded restaurant where they push three long tables together for us. We order plates of spicy-hot meatballs, stuffed tomatoes, spinach, white beans, tsatsiki, rice, tons of bread, French fries, potato salad, eggplant, a sour-cream dish which looks like mashed potatoes, a clear liquorice-tasting liquor called raki (pronounced “rocky”).

Before we finish eating, Arhman leaves to dress for his cousin’s wedding. “I’ll be right back,” he says. “If you like, you can go with me.” When he returns, he has changed into a dark suit and tie, looks very dashing, tall and thin, dark hair and dark skin, very European. The girls create a fuss over him. He blushes.

After dinner, Arhman walks us through the spacious but crowded streets of Seljuk with monuments and ruins lit by spotlights, glistening water spouting from fountains. We enter a huge theatre with well-dressed Turks coming and going, some with turbans but most looking European in white shirts and dark slacks.

We go up two flights of stairs onto a balcony overlooking the stage. We’ve missed the ceremony, but the newly-married couple are just cutting a multi-layered cake. They cut it together, four hands on a long knife, one long slice, a symbolic cut down each layer. He’s dressed in a dark business suite and tie, overly-long baggy pants. She’s dressed in a pure-white low-cut wedding dress offsetting her dark skin and black hair.

A live quartet blares eastern music and a vocalist warbles in Turkish. A tall gray-haired man comes out with a microphone, calls on members of the two families to dance. The two father’s come out first, perform an eastern dance where they elevate their arms from their sides, fingers snapping, and move their feet while wiggling their hips. They’re followed by the two mothers and other adults, women dancing with women, men with women, kids with other kids and adults, locking arms across their partners’ shoulders. Men come on stage to shower the dancers with paper money, sending kids scrambling. Others pin money on the mothers and fathers or stick it down the top of their dress or in their shirt pockets while the band plays and the man sings the same song over and over.

Sarah leans on my shoulder to shout something in my ear. Her warmth is startling, mesmerizing, a quiet hint of perfume. Slices of cake pass through the crowd and eventually reach us, a white two-layered cake with creamy frosting. I’ve come to believe what the English couple told me this morning. The Turks are genuinely glad we’re here.

Arhman goes to pay his respects, and when he returns, asks if we’d like to leave. He wants to get out himself. He’s not particularly impressed with the whole affair. He drives us back to the pension, the music ringing in our ears. I sit by Sarah, as I have all evening, but a sort of dreariness has come over me, realizing I already like her more than any woman I’ve met in years.

Back at the pension, Arhman builds a fire in the wood stove, and Sarah sits with me for a while before excusing herself and is off to bed.

  20 Nov, Saturday

Early in the morning, the long warbled wail of the Muslim call to prayer seems far off and otherworldly. I fall back to sleep but finally manage to rouse myself and have breakfast downstairs. Alison serves me a boiled egg, sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, jelly, butter and all the bread I can eat, plus a mandarin orange, all the time trying to pacify her fussy eighteen-month-old son who sits in a highchair banging a spoon on his tray. When I finish breakfast, I ask Alison if she’s seen Sarah and Wendy. “They’ve already left to see Ephesus,” she says. I had hoped to see Ephesus with Sarah.  

From the pension, I walk a couple of blocks to the intersection of the main road from Kusadasi and the road north to Izmir and Troy. 

The merchants are still setting up long wood tables and arranging fruit and vegetables: onions, garlic, leeks, eggplant, artichokes, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers, large sacks of carrots, turnips, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, peanuts, olives in huge jars, mandarin oranges, bananas, haricot, broad beans, lentils and chickpeas, potatoes. North of the crowded street the entire block is filled with rows of sheds containing tons of fish and meat and beyond the sheds, acres of fabric, ties, scarves, shirts, pants, dresses.

I return to my room, grab my daypack, throw in some oranges and bananas. I’m in a hurry to catch Sarah. As I go out the door, I hear a woman’s voice call my name. It’s Bronwyn, the Kiwi. She has her black hair pulled back in a ponytail and has on a black sweat suit. “Mind if I tag along?” she asks.

Arhman volunteers to take us to the ruins in the van. After a short ride, he drops us off outside the gate at a small tourist shop selling handmade statues and ancient coins. We each buy a guidebook and enter the site. “He’s dropped us off at the exit,” she says. She reads a little in her guidebook, then turns to me again. “Starting here will actually work better. This used to be the main entrance to the city, the Magnesia Gate. If we’d entered at the main tourist entrance, we would have been in the middle of the ruins.”

Even though Ephesus was founded in Mycenaean times, the Ephesus at this site has nothing to do with the Mycenaeans. Originally Ephesus was closer to Seljuk and was moved here in 299 BC by the Roman emperor Lysimachus, a successor of Alexander the Great. The residents of the original Ephesus didn’t want to move, so Lysimachus cutoff the water supply into the old city. This new Ephesus was coastal, built along a east-west road running between two mountains. The ruins look chiseled into the crease between the hillsides. The western edge of the city was eclipsed by the sea.

I remember thinking the night before I left Corinth, back on the 27th of October, almost a month ago, about Paul’s voyage to Ephesus from Corinth. He had his head shorn and had taken a vow. He came with Aquila and Priscilla, his two friends from Corinth. He left them here to start a Christian church and then traveled on to Antioch.  They came in 51 AD, and this was the end of the first of Paul’s three missionary journeys to Asia Minor and Greece. Christianity wasn’t spread among the Jews. It was spread by Paul, Andrew and John among the Greeks, and just as the ancient Greeks gave us democracy, so Greece became the gateway through which Christianity came to western civilization. I would imagine the Greeks were easily taken with his words of a loving, forgiving God after centuries of the war-loving gods of Homer, their bickering inference in human affairs.

Paul also had been in Ephesus earlier, before 51 AD. Five years after Jesus was crucified, around 35 AD, the Christians were expelled from Jerusalem, and Paul, John, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene came to Ephesus to live. Ephesus at that time was a growing metropolis made of marble and stone. They may have entered the city here, at Magnesia Gate.

Beside the gate are the ruins of the Eastern Gymnasium, which was an education and sports complex.

It’s much larger than a football field, 160 meters by 65 meters. The Varius Baths are to our right, dug into the side of Mt. Koressos.  They were divided into rooms named for the temperature of the water, the frigidarium (the cold room), the tepidarium (the warm room), and the caldarium (the hot room).

Ephesus was a plumbed city with several fountains, wells and cisterns. Water came from the four directions. Springs near Kusadasi provided water from the west through stone-block ducts; a spring to the north on the road to Smyrna (Izmir) brought water by open canal; from the east the source was a spring in Sirince, a small village in the mountains; and from the south, the Marnas spring on the road to Aydin.

Next to the Odeon is the Prytaneion where the city’s eternal flame was kept by a distinguished group of citizens. 

The marble columns and granite stones strewn about are so thick they hardly leave a path to walk. The two remaining columns forming the entrance of the temple tower above. Tall figures carved into the top of each column peer down upon us.

“Are you interested in going to Istanbul, David?” Sarah asks.

I'm startled by the question. And the strangest thought occurs to me. Perhaps it that I was just thinking about Odysseys, but it's as if I've just heard the voice of a Siren. She's calling me away from the purpose of my journey. So far I've not let anything take me from my planned course. Even , the mother and daughter I met at Delphi couldn't sway me. And now this. I remember the words of Homer about Odysseus' trial at hearing the Siren's song:

On the way, they passed the shores of the Siren’s island. But Circe had warned him of their powers of persuasion and told him if he wished to listen to them sing, his crew must seal their ears with beeswax and lash him to the mast of his ship. This they did, and when they sailed past their green clover-sweet shore, white with the bleached bones of their victims, he heard the Siren’s song and begged his crew to release him, but they only cinched him tighter. Thus Odysseus escaped the lure of the Sirens.

We leave the two of them, me still reeling at unimaginable mistake I've just made, the four of us agreeing to have dinner together this evening. I keep looking back at Sarah, reluctant to let her go. Bronwyn and I continue down Curetes Street, which is paved with large flat slabs of marble, stopping now and then to take pictures. 

]Just past the Trajan Fountain, we leave the ancient road and enter the remains of walls leading up the side of the mountain. “What’s this,” I ask. She’s been reading to me all the time we’ve been seeing ruins. She has such a soft voice and easy manner.

We exit the brothel into the adjoining Scholastikia Baths and the lavatory. The baths are made to the same configuration as the Varius Baths we saw earlier, a frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium. The toilet is marble, walls lined with benches, holes cut in the top like gigantic key slots for human waste to fall through.

What he’s wonder about is the picture of his statue. His protruding erect phallus is as long as he is tall. “Looks like a tribute to wishful thinking,” I say. She laughs and walks away.

The library was built from 114-7 AD and was not here when John, Paul and Mary were here. Twelve thousand scrolls were kept inside,[2] now a standing tribute to the literary interests of the Ephesians in the 2nd century AD. All that remains of the library is the intricately-carved facade, which is two stories high and sixty feet wide.

I watch as she loads a new roll of film, then reads to me from her guidebook, wisps of hair falling about her face. Her hands are smooth and nimble. She’s a sculptor and a weaver.

The we walk on to a large theatre off to the right at the western foot of Mt. Koressos. This is the most famous of all the ruins at Ephesus. St. Paul preached in Ephesus and almost lost his life because of it. Ephesus was the city of Artemis and her statue which was sold all over the city, was manufactured by the powerful and influential jeweler, Demetrius. He saw Paul as a threat to his income. This theatre was used for gatherings of the citizens, as well as theatric performances. During one such large meeting of the citizens, Demetrius worked the crowd up against Paul, the crowd shouting “Great is Artemis Ephesia,” obviously hurt and angry over his attacks on her. The city security official rescued Paul, admonishing the crowd to file their complaints against him through official channels. Artemis was the heart and soul of Ephesus. Paul’s view that Artemis was a devil goddess would not have gone over well.

Past the stadium at an unpopulated intersection, a gray Mercedes stops and the man inside asks if we want a ride back to Seljuk. We tell him no several times, but he shuts off the motor, gets out leaving the car in the middle of the intersection and walks toward us. He’s a prosperous-looking Turk wearing slacks and a sports jacket. He’s anxious to know where we’re from. But we still won’t accept a ride from him. He’s a businessman and has an office just beside the Tourist Information Office at the edge of Seljuk. He asks us to stop in for a visit when we get back to town if we would like to know about Turkish culture.

Bronwyn and I take the road east paralleling the highway toward Seljuk and walk to the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. According to a local legend, sometime around 250 AD seven young Christians sought refuge in the cave. They fell into an eternal sleep. An earthquake woke them, to their astonishment, two hundred years later. When they finally died, they were buried here. A church was built over the site.[6] The ruins of the church are still visible, imbedded in the northern side of Mt. Koressos.

This is also the site where Mary Magdalene was buried. According to many biblical scholars, Mary Magdalene was the closest to Jesus of any of the disciples. She was at the crucifixion and the first to witness the empty cave and see Jesus following his resurrection. In 1896 a 1st Century manuscript surfaced in Cairo containing The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) which is included as a part of the Nag Hammadi Library.[7] In her gospel, Mary Magdalene was taught by Jesus to understand the nature of his resurrection. The Library also contains the Gospel of Philip which alludes to Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene on the mouth which offended the other disciples. Jesus’ affection for her generated jealousy among the disciples.[8] Mary Magdalene has been wrongly painted as a prostitute by the church and has been the victim of a smear campaign lasting two millennia.

Bronwyn pokes me in the ribs, motions for me to follow. We have a long walk back to Seljuk. When we reenter the outskirts of town, the man in the Mercedes is waiting at the side of the street. He still wants to visit with us. I’m resistant, but Bronwyn wants to go. Sure enough he owns a small carpet shop, a narrow affair with no exit at the rear, sort of a rectangular cave lined with carpets. We sit on benches covered with carpets, rolls of carpets standing around us. No pressure here.

An ultra-thin young man enters with a tray of tea. Our host lights a cigarette. He’s college educated, a teacher. “There is no money in teaching in Turkey,” he says, “so I run a carpet shop.” His family is from eastern Turkey, where the war with the Kurds currently rages. His family lives where Noah’s Ark came aground. “They found it in a glacier but lost it again when the snows came,” he says. He tells us about the traditional way of building homes in Turkey. They are made with two floors, the bottom floor for the animals, goats, sheep, chickens, pigs, and the family lives on the top floor. Heat from the animals rises and keeps the home warm. He draws a picture for us as he talks. We talk about the Soviet Union disintegrating, the high unemployment rate in Turkey, me losing my job in aerospace. Three things he doesn’t like, he says: fundamentalism, nationalism and egotism.

As we leave, he tells us if we want to know more about Turkish culture, we should visit him again. He will tell us how the carpets are made, the dies, the weaves. He asks where we’re staying, and I lie to him, say that I’m not sure of the name of the pension. Then he lectures me, says that Turks are straightforward and I’m not being straight with him.

Just at dusk, Bronwyn and I go out to dinner. Another man joins us, a redheaded guy from Cincinnati name Richard. We haven’t seen Sarah and Wendy since we talked to them at Ephesus even though they promised to have dinner with us. During dinner Richard raises a fuss over his dinner, calls the waiter over. He doesn’t like his Turkish pizza.

Just as we arrive at the pension, Sarah and Wendy come down the stairs with their backpacks. To my dismay, they’re on their way to the otogar (bus station) to catch the night bus to Istanbul. As they walk away into the dark, I call after her. “Sarah, I didn’t know you were leaving so soon. I had hoped to talk to you again.” She takes a few steps toward me. “I know,” she says. “I’d hoped to also. But maybe we’ll meet again. We should be back in Seljuk in a few days. Get my address from Tim and Jane. Write to me.” I wonder how much the airfare is to Australia?

21 Nov, Saturday

I wake late and have breakfast downstairs again with Alison serving me while playing with her little boy. She changes his wet diaper. The kitchen and the living room are together in one large area, and several people have congregated after eating. Two young men I’ve not noticed before have joined our group. They’ve taken the single room with the big bed. One of them is sullen and sits quietly in the corner of the sofa. The other is flighty, floating about the room like a butterfly, talking about the English rock star, Cyndi Lauper. I make a comment about her because she was one of my daughter’s favorites, and the guy cruises over in front of me to talk, stands before me to monopolize my attention. His buddy scowls, glares at me. I finally hits me. These two men are homosexual.

I walk north from the pension to the intersection of the main roads running west toward the coast and north to Izmir. I walk west past the edge of town to a little-used side road beside the freeway. On the left and right, rows of tall eucalyptus trees run far into the  distance blocking the midday sun and creating an infinately-long tunnel of shadow. 

According to mythology, in Mycenaean times three Greek migrations to this part of the western coast of Asia Minor occurred. The first came from Crete around 1400 BC when Miletus fled from king Minos. He settled just south of here where he took over a Carian city and renamed it for himself.[9] The city of Miletus is still there today, where the Maeander river (now called the Menderes) empties into the Aegean. The most ancient relics found here at the temple of Artemis come from the hill overlooking this site, a Mycenaean grave which has been dated to the 14th Century BC.[10] The name “Ephesus” comes from the time of Heracles and Theseus. The sanctuary of Ephesian Artemis is said to have been named for Ephesos, the son of the river Kayster.[11]

The second wave of Mycenaeans came around 1220 BC with Manto, the daughter of the Theban seer Teiresias. Here’s where I once again pick up her trail. I remember, when I left Delphi back on December 15th, thinking of Manto’s departure for Asia Minor, our departures separated by 3200 years. This is the original site of Ephesus before Lysimachus moved it to the location I visited yesterday. Since Ephesus already existed at the time, she might have come here first, then moved a few kilometers to the northwest and founded Colophon.

St. John spent some time here at the temple even though he didn’t care much for Artemis. He called her a “demon” and a “deceiver of this great multitude.”[12]  The Artemis of Asia Minor is skewed somewhat from that born on Delos who is the daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo, a virgin huntress. On Asia Minor, Artemis is a merger of that Greek goddess and the great Mother Goddess, Cybele, the virgin mother of all life worshipped from Scandinavia throughout Asia Minor and into Egypt and Arabia. She dates back to 7000 BC. This Neolithic Artemis was worshipped by some as a meteorite which fell to earth in the shape of a woman. The meteorite is mentioned in the New Testament.[13]

The temple of Artemis was the largest structure ever built of marble. It was the size of a football field and six stories high, a forest of columns, 127 in all, and built over a foundation of leather-covered coal. It was destroyed and rebuilt seven times.[14] St. John was one of the destroyers. During his first visit to Ephesus, coming here by way of Miletus, John decided to visit the temple “... for perhaps if we are seen there, the servants of the Lord will be found there also.” Once inside the temple, he called upon God to destroy it:  

... the alter of Artemis split into many pieces, and all the offerings laid up in the temple suddenly fell to the floor and its goodness was broken, and so were more than seven images: and half the temple fell down, so that the priest was killed at one stroke as the roof came down.[15]

Later, John resurrected the priest as another show of God’s power, showing a good deal more mercy than he had with Cynops on Patmos. The priest was converted and remained with John thereafter.

Little of the temple remains today. The lone semblance of a column has been pieced together from misfit sections and reerected among the scattered stones at the edge of a pond where ducks float on the dark mirror surface. The remains of the temple were scavenged to build the Basilica of St. John, which sits on the side Ayasulk Tepesi, the hill overlooking the temple. I can see part of the basilica from where I stand and above it, the Seljuk Castle, a Byzantine citadel on the top of the hill casting a medieval, ghostly, presence over the entire landscape.

Mid afternoon, I walk past the main intersection in Seljuk north along the road toward Troy, past the carpet shop, along a side street and up Ayasoluk Hill.

An ancient story tells of St. John not dying but being taken directly into heaven, reminiscent of the death of Oedipus and what my family anticipated for my own grandparents. The other eleven apostles were murdered. John alone of the twelve apostles lived over one hundred years.[16] But some believe John died a natural death and was buried here at the Basilica. According to this story, John had a premonition of his own death. He left Ephesus at dawn, walked past the cave where Mary Magdalene was or would soon be buried, past the temple of Artemis, which he had destroyed, and came to this hillside.

Having looked for the last time on his beloved city of Ephesus, relieved now of all care, he told his disciples to dig a grave in the shape of a cross, and laid his cloak in it. Then, entering it, he lay down and told his disciples to cover him with soil up to the knees. They, weeping, embraced their master for the last time. John then gave them his blessing and told them to cover him up to the chest, first with a white shroud and then with earth. As the sun rose, John commended his sanctified soul into the hands of his beloved Lord.[17]

Since the death of John, his grave site has prompted several structures to be built here. In the 4th century, a basilica with a wood roof was built over his grave, followed by a church in the 6th century and fortification walls after attacks by Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries. Dust from his grave was thought to have medicinal powers, and the sick and injured traveled from far away to be healed.

At the far side of the ruins, I walk among large chunks of marble populating a grassy slope that leads to the top of the mountain and the Seljuk castle and look back over the top of the basilica, stare down into the roofless rooms. The sun is low on the horizon and casts a glow over all the ruins, as if the entire landscape has been dipped in gold. 

Something is bothering me. I say a quiet prayer, and I walk back toward the entrance and sit on a marble slab to try to understand what's going on with me. Fir trees, thick with the chatter of finches, cast a shadow across the ruins. A stone walkway winds off to the left and right.

The empty rectangular door frames standing alone seem to be saying something. I felt something symbolic every time I pass through one, as if it was an open invitation. But to what? Memories of my daughter as a child flood to the surface.

She’d climb into my lap, my chin behind her head, her ponytail swishing back and forth across my nose. Year after year, spring after spring, we performed the ritual, watching the Wizard of Oz together, my arms around that beautiful little golden-haired goddess. Perhaps I’m finally beginning to understand what those times were all about. In the movie, Dorothy disappeared, She and I formed a quaternion. I was the triumvirate: Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion. That movie was like those doorways, an open invitation, one she accepted a few years later.

I’m reminded of Artemis as a child of nine:  

Give me, give me ... . What did my daughter want? I’ve never understood.

On the other side of the stone walkway is a patch of ice plant and beyond, a marble walkway, rose bushes, two small pine trees and the ruins of the church itself with the fortress standing menacingly at the top of the hill. High in the air above the fortress, a large flock of dark birds flies a swarming circle, their sharp screeches pierce the quiet whisper of city noise as the wraiths storm the skies in some rude-sounding flock ritual. 

The sun is set, it’s last full rays glowing off the ruins, casting tree shadows across my shoulders.

During the evening, I have dinner again with Bronwyn and Richard. She’s bubbling over about her fourteen kilometer hike up the mountain to the east to the small town of Sirince. I’m lost in thoughts of Sarah and planning tomorrow’s visit to the Home of the Virgin Mary. The day after tomorrow, I’ll take the bus to Troy. I really cannot delay my travel plans for the possibility of Sarah returning.

22 Nov, Monday

Mid morning I walk Bronwyn to the otogar. She’s going south to Miletus, and I’m jealous for two reasons. First I’ll not get to see Miletus because tomorrow I’m going north. But my worst jealousy is that she’s leaving with Richard, the dork from Cincinnati.

When we get to the otogar, a man comes up to them to try to get Richard to use his company’s bus. The man is followed by six other young Turks from competing bus companies. An argument ensues between Richard and one of the hawkers who’s very aggressive. Richard stands provocatively in front of the man, throws out his chest and tells him how obnoxious he is, not realizing his own foolishness. The hawkers argue among themselves for several minutes, Richard purposely pumping them up.

Eventually he and Bronwyn walk away from all of them to the main intersection and buy tickets on the first bus south, which costs more than any of the hawkers buses. Bronwyn looks disillusioned. Richard seems a little shocked himself. They don’t even know for sure where the bus is going. I give Bronwyn a hug and watch the two of them step aboard. I’ve spent more time with her than anyone since Letizia in Corinth, and I hate to see her leave with Richard.

In the early afternoon, I walk to the town square to get a taxi. I negotiate with a likable young man and shortly we’re on our way, past the gate where Bronwyn and I entered the ruins of Ephesus, up Mt. Pion on a winding road, through pine-covered hills overlooking the farm-checkered valley created when the Kucuk Menderes river filled the bay with alluvial deposits. I see the Aegean in the distance. We enter a thick forest and shortly the site of the home of the Virgin Mary.

The biggest difference between Greek Orthodox Christianity and the Catholics is their perception of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Greek Orthodox believe she was a normal woman and mother; however, Catholics believe she was immaculately conceived, and a perpetual virgin. Prior to her birth, her parents, Joachim and Anna, were distressed that they had no children.[19] Joachim was upset and went into the desert to fast for forty days. Anna stayed home and sang dirges of woe. But an angel came to her saying:  

“Anna, Anna, the Lord God heard your prayer, and you will conceive and give birth, and your offspring shall be spoken of in the whole inhabited world.” Anna said, “As the Lord my God lives, if I give birth, whether male or female, I will present it as a gift to the Lord my God, and it shall be a ministering servant to him all the days of its life.[20]

When Mary was three, Anna kept her promise to God and gave her child up to the temple, where Mary was raised until the age of twelve when an angel let it be known that Joseph had been chosen by God and Mary was to be his ward. Joseph protested, “I have sons, and I am an old man, but she is a young maiden--lest I be a laughing stock to the children of Israel.”[21]

Sometime between the age of twelve and seventeen,[22] Mary conceived while Joseph was away building houses. When he returned and found her six months pregnant, he was afraid for his own safety because he had received her as a virgin, and yet he hadn’t protect her. And he was concerned for her safety because if he told the priests of her pregnancy, they might kill her. But an angel of God appear to him in a dream and told him the baby was conceived of the Holy Spirit. He took her to the priests and told them she was pregnant and about his dream. But they were not convinced and tested them both, making them drink “water of the Lord’s testing”[23] and sent them into the desert from which they returned whole and thus redeemed.

Muslims also revere Mary and consider Jesus a prophet. The Koran has an interesting description of Mary’s delivery:

And the pangs of childbirth drove her unto the trunk of the palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died ere this and had become a thing of naught, forgotten!

The (one) cried unto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord hath placed a rivulet beneath thee,

And shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee, thou wilt cause ripe dates to fall upon thee.[24]

This description of the birth of Jesus with Mary’s arms wrapped around a palm tree is reminiscent of the birth of Apollo, the son of Zeus, on the island of Delos.[25]

She had received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on the cross. Although she had never left her hometown in Germany, during her dream specific directions to Mary’s home were revealed to her. The dream was taken seriously and the search on Mt. Pion began in 1891. Archeologists finally located the foundation and parts of the walls. Coal found during excavations has been dated to the 1st Century.[26] The controversy over whether this was in fact the Virgin’s home was put to rest in 1961 when Pope John XXIII designated it a place of pilgrimage. Pope Paul VI visited the sight in 1967 and Pope John Paul II in 1979.

A connection exists between Mary of Catholicism and the quaternions of both mathematics and Greek mythology. Mary is the “real” or earthly element of the quarternion and the three “imaginary,” heavenly, components, are the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.[27]

The apparitions which appeared at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia promised retribution for the ills of mankind and presaged the war which has wracked that country since the fall of the Iron Curtain.