CHAPTER 16: Turkey, Ephesus II.

Inside the pension, I run into Tim and Jane, the Aussie couple, and learn Sarah never returned from Istanbul. This is indeed bad news but not unexpected. They also say all those who could rent a room to me are partying at the carpet shop. I take a stroll through the dark, back along the highway where a few minutes ago I thought I was going to get mugged. I also have to get my backpack from Arhman. I’ve been worried about the first volume of my journal and my film all the time I’ve been gone.

They’re watching a soccer match on TV, Turkey against Barcelona, all about half looped and very glad to see me. First, I talk to Turgay about a ferry to Samos. He keeps up with them because its good business to know when potential customers for the carpet shop enter the country. He tells me to come see him at the tomorrow afternoon, and he will call a travel agent.

Arhman gives me a glass of raki (pronounced “rocky” and tastes like licorice) cut with bottled water, and quickly drags it out of me that I haven’t eaten. He runs into the kitchen, fixes a big plate of baked chicken, potatoes and eggplant. A wonderful meal, the Thanksgiving dinner I’ve been wishing for all day. It’s good to be home, and “home” is how I feel about the New Zealand pension.

I sit at the kitchen table eating while talking to two young women from South Africa, Susan and Deborah. When I mention I’ve followed in Oedipus’ footsteps in Greece, Susan comes to life. In college, she’s studied the classics as well as psychology, knows all about Freud and the Oedipus complex. She’s studied Homer and wants to see the setting of the Iliad firsthand. The two of them are leaving for Canakkale tomorrow to see Troy. I tell her about seeing the Cleft Way, where Oedipus killed his father. After talking to Susan for a few minutes, I’m so excited I tremble. What’s happening to me? Why am I so emotional?

Suddenly a ruckus breaks out by the TV, much shouting and obvious disappointment. The soccer game between Turkey and Barcelona has ended in a tie. Two Turks shout at each other, and I see the unmistakable flash of rage. Chairs are thrown back from the table, and people scatter as Turgay steps between the two hot-heads. One is a tall older man, well built and commanding. The other is young, even better built, his face flushed with rage. The rest of us stop talking, and I reluctantly keep my chair. The Turks push the older man out the door and down the street, he resisting all the way, while four restrain the young man, arms interlocked with his to contain the raging bull he has become. He calms and they release him, but suddenly he’s out the door with another man following close behind. Four more men hurriedly exit through the back door.

Sometime after midnight, I sneak into the same room I was in before I left for Troy. The bed by the door where I slept is occupied, and Janice with the golden hair and delicate hands is still in the one beneath the window. The center bed is vacant. I take the fourth bed against the left wall, just a step from Janice, slipping my clothes off in the dark.

26 Nov, Friday

I wake when Janice stirs. She winks, slips out of bed already dressed in psychedelic stretch pants and takes off for a shower. The young man in the bed by the door slowly rouses, and we strike up a conversation from opposite sides of the room. He gets dressed while I tell him of my adventure coming back from  Pergamon, the man I thought was going to mug me. Michael was in Troy yesterday himself, coming from Istanbul. He had a bad experience that wasn’t so benign, but he sheepishly declines to elaborate. “Perhaps when I know you better,” he says. But he can’t shut up, keeps telling on himself, and the story gradually unfolds.

In Istanbul, Michael got hooked up with a seemingly nice man who showed him the sites, fed him dinner, carried his pack for him and ripped off his passport. Michael was into what he had thought was an ethnic experience. His only hint of the coming disaster occurred while they were having dinner. One of the man’s friends came to their table and talked with him briefly. The other man was frightening, an evil-looking, angry man.

I hear a commotion on the street outside our window, so I dress and before it while Michael talks and dresses. Outside, the school kids, must be high school, are on their way to their classes. They are all dressed in uniforms, girls in white blouses, blue sweaters and plaid skirts; the guys in blue suits, white shirts and ties. Amazing how European the next generation looks.

Michael’s story sounds scary after my experience last night on the outskirts of Seljuk. It was a sobering experience, he says. Looking back on it, he realizes he was dealing with a professional. He believes once the man hooked up with him, he would have gotten his passport one way or another. The part Michael didn’t want to tell me was that his passport was in his backpack instead of his security pouch on a string around his neck, as it should have been. He had to get a new passport at the American consulate. Now he may have trouble getting out of Turkey because he doesn’t have an entry stamp.

Michael also had a bad experience on the bus coming from Troy to Seljuk. He was traveling with a young lady, another traveler he met on the road. The steward asked if the two of them were married, and Michael made the mistake of saying no. Since Michael wears an earring, the bus steward assumed he was homosexual and separated them, forcefully. He then made several advances at the girl assuming she was a prostitute. He tweaked Michael under the chin and flipped his ear, made derogatory comments.

Just as Michael finishes his story, the young man from Denver, one of the newlyweds I was with when I first entered Turkey, bursts into the room with the Seljuk newspaper. Seems they’ve published a picture of a snow storm in Denver, Colorado. Back home, they have a foot of snow, and traffic is has been brought to a standstill on I 25. Seven thousand miles away and still getting news of home.

Michael and Janice walk to Ephesus together, and I spend the morning in the living room of the pension listening to the light chatter of travelers and writing in my journal. Alan, the fifteen-year traveler from Kenya, is still here. He’s leaving tomorrow, on his way to southern Turkey to photograph the giant sea turtles before they become extinct. Their only breeding ground has been sold to private companies and are being destroyed.

Alan is an enigma. I ask him the purpose of all these years traveling. I’ve struck a chord. “I’m looking for the cause of war,” he says. “I want to know why countries can’t resolve their conflicts peacefully.”

“Sounds a lot like the reason I’m traveling,” I say.

“Have you found an answer?” he asks.

“Oedipus,” I say. “Sophocles had all the answers.”

In the afternoon, I walk to the carpet shop to see Turgay about a ferry to Samos. He knows all the travel agents. I’m anxious to get back to Samos and travel on to Lesbos. Outside the shop, I encounter the most gorgeous camel I’ve ever seen. He has huge feet, a large head, mouth foaming from a long journey. His owner stands beside him engaged in conversation with another man.

I go inside the shop and talk to Turgay about a ferry, and he calls a travel agent. The ferry to Samos left yesterday, and another won’t sail until Thursday, six days from now. My other option is to leave Turkey by plane. A flight leaves Izmir for Athens on Tuesday, four days from now. The price is $112, American. I must  find a dependable way to get back into Greece, or I’ll miss my flight back to the States. But I’m not ready to put out that much money or pass up Lesbos yet.

When I come out of the shop, I see the camel again and hurry to the pension to get my camera before he walks off. I mentioned to Jane I want to take a picture of a gorgeous camel and she says, “You mean that big stuffed one out front of the carpet shop?”

I’ve been disorient all morning. I feel sick, head aches and stomach feels strange. I don’t feel comfortable in Turkey regardless of how nice the people have been. I feel comfortable in the pension but not out in public. I’m suspicious of people, and Michael is not the only one who has had bad experiences. One of the women staying here with her husband had a frightening experience in Izmir while showering. A masturbating man took his pleasure watching her silhouette through the glass door. And not being able to tell the difference between a real and a stuffed camel has set me to wondering if I could take care of myself in a hazardous situation, if I, like Michael, would mistake it for an ethnic experience.

Michael and Janice have been out together all day, and I’m jealous that he’s had her to himself. The three of us go to dinner together. Janice still has two weeks before going back to Houston. “I’m going to Egypt before returning,” she says, as if she’s trying to convince herself. She confesses to being a little apprehensive and wishes she had a companion. She looks me in the eye. “I’ll marry you for a month if you go with me,” she says. I know she’s kidding, but her statement still has an emotional impact.

When we get back from dinner, I stay downstairs with Susan talking about Oedipus before she catches the night bus to Canakkale, and Michael and Janice go upstairs to our bedroom saying they’ll be right back. But I can hardly talk to Susan for thinking about the two of them in our bedroom. A flood of fantasies about the two of them engaged in sex clouds my thoughts. Suddenly I’m enraged, unreasonably sensing a violation of trust. I force myself to remain in the living room talking to Susan, talking about Oedipus killing Laios. I’m certain it would be okay for me to go upstairs but would prefer to remain down here basking in a jealous rage. No sense destroying this emotional windfall by fronting it with reality.

Janice and Michael eventually come down after Susan leaves for the otogar. The three of us talk again, mostly Michael yaking, Janice and me listening, until Michael and I get into a heated argument over California history. I feel the anger rising again, see his hostility escalate to match mine. He defends his position by saying he was educated in the California school system, and I respond that I was raised in California too, spent twenty years there.

When I get mad, I’m not good at arguing. My thought process shutdown. I leave the argument, wallowing in thoughts of killing him in his sleep. Janice notices none of this. She’s simply mesmerized by his monologue. Michael continues talking till bedtime, me losing myself in Janice’s dreamy blue eyes.

We all go upstairs to bed.

I wake from a dream set in a land of war. We plot strategy, then carry rifles while walking dark barren streets and over brush covered hillsides. It’s a desolate dream, born of hopelessness and an unbearable sense of predestination. I lie awake thinking of war and drift into thoughts of Agamemnon’s daughter, how she gave her life for the sake of the Trojan War. I have the feeling the parallel between Iphigenia and my daughter is even closer than I’ve realized.

During the months following my daughter’s Christmas visit, she became distant, wasn’t commutative during my telephone calls. I realized kids push away from their parents at her age, but this seemed different. She had always looked forward to college but now would no longer discuss it. She became more involved in rock music. I bought her a keyboard to augment her lessons on the guitar. She was serious, dedicated. She devoted herself to choir at school. But instead of growing up, she appeared to be reverting. Though she was a senior, most of her friends were freshmen. She put ads in a small weekly newspaper called New Times, corresponded with kids about rock stars. On the surface, all this seemed harmless enough, but she was a recluse and uncommunicative. At least, this was the way it appeared to her mother and me.

I was involved at work and eager to believe all was well. I was supervising several engineers and overseeing the procurement of critical flight hardware. I frequently flew to Los Angeles on the company plane. At other times, I traveled to Long Island, New York to coordinate a subcontract with Grumman Corporation. I was a manager, responsible for several million dollars worth of engineering and very much enjoying my new responsibilities.

27 Nov, Saturday

I wake early but remain in bed soaking in drowsiness. Michael talks to me from across the room about going with him to Aphrodesia today. Our conversation wakes Janice, but she also seems too tired to rise. Michael sees me writing in my journal and admits to being a poet. After we’re dressed, he shows me some of the poems he’s written on his journey. Michael is young and excitable. I expect his poetry to be trite, but that’s just my residual anger with him about last night. His poetry is well constructed, lyrical and dramatic, full of rhyme. Reminds me of Shelly. The voice of his poems jumps out at me, shouts as it rumbles about in images of the ancient ruins, the gods and heroes coming to life. My words of encouragement are well received.

He tries again to get me to go with him to Aphrodesia, but I’ve decided to stay here and buy a plane ticket from Izmir to Athens. The plane will leave at noon on Tuesday. I can’t afford to wait for a ferry that might not actually sail for several weeks. I’ve been thinking a lot about Aulis on the coast of Attica, where Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia.

*

Mid afternoon, I go back to the market for goat-meat sandwich. Tim and Jane have just come in with one each and I'm starved. The one I had at Troy has changed my taste buds, I guess. This time I walk back into the sheds where they have the clothing laid out on table tops. Every article of clothing on the planet must have migrated here for this single day. The tales are so crowded I can't get close enough to shop.

After I return to the pension, I sit in the living room chatting with Tim and Jane when Janice comes to say good-bye. She has her large backpack and a folded carpet. “Would you like some help?” I ask. She gives me a rather severe look. “I’ve made it this far without you,” she says. I sit back down. “I just wanted to see you off,” I say. She squints a little through those dreamy eyes, a faint smile. “You  could carry my carpet if you like.” She’s also on her way to Canakkale to see Troy. I walk beside her while she tells me of her plans to first go north to Troy, then south, possibly to Rhodes and eventually to Egypt. I suggesting she catch the bus at the side of the road, as I did when I went to Troy, instead of going to the otogar. She flags down a big bus with an “Izmir” sign on front, and I wrap my arms around her for second. The shampoo smell of bushy-blond hair. She disappears inside.

I watch her bus belch smoke into the distance, then walk across the street to the travel agency to get a plane ticket. A carpet salesman accosts me on the sidewalk. He’s wild eyed and desperate. “Best carpets, straight from Istanbul, one hundred dollars. Come look, please, come look. Good carpets, very good carpets.” I’m afraid of him, taking to the street to get around as he shouts after me.

At the travel agency, I learn the price previously quoted, $112 for the flight, was for a student fare. The price for me is $180. When I shake my head, tell him I can’t afford it, he sits silent for a second then tells me he received a call yesterday about a ferry to Samos, leaves Monday at eight-thirty in the morning. I buy a ticket for the ferry.  It’s the same small ferry I came to Turkey on. After I have my ticket in my hand, he tells me they are ninety-nine percent sure the ferry will sail, and the one percent uncertainty is weather. Have I heard this story before? Check-in time is seven-thirty. Tight schedule but workable,” he says. I don’t trust his judgement of this and plan to talk to Arhman at the pension.

I already feel the loneliness of leaving.

I wake in the middle of the night feeling very bad. I dream of descending into a cave-like labyrinth where people lived years before, an ancient cave with a rusty-hinged door. I squeeze through tight places between ancient rocks, the walls growing tighter and tighter.

Several people are sick here at the New Zealand pension. Alex from Australia has had a fever and general weakness for several days and is staying here to recover, and Tim was coming down with a cold this evening. Michael has had a cold for a month. I can’t stop thinking of arguing with Michael, and my restlessness is like something trying to get out of me, something frightening rebelling against me. Sometimes I believe I am a murder, that I’ve acted on my murderous impulses. Having three other people in this room bothers me, the sleeping sounds of people snoring, mumbling and wrestling around are frightening.

28 Nov, Sunday

I’m still in bed, but the other two men I’m now rooming with are getting dressed after an aborted attempt to shower. No hot water. Alison, the owner, is frantically searching for the repairman. The girl in the center bed, who came in in the middle of the night, is still asleep, and I can see the bottom of her chubby foot sticking out from under the pink-flowered duvet. She talked in her sleep last night, lots of mumbles and erotic sighs. I bet her dreams are more interesting than mine.

In the bed where Janice of the golden hair and delicate hands slept, is a man from Washington DC. While he slips on his clothes, we talk. He’s tall, stout-looking, hairy and dark complexioned. He’s half Turkish on his father’s side and here looking for distant relatives. His grandfather fled Turkey to avoid fighting in the 2nd World War.

I’ve been undecided as to what to do today and considering going back to Ephesus. Though I enjoyed seeing the ruins with Bronwyn a few days ago, not having the solitude to write in my journal during my visit there has left me with a sense of incompleteness about the experience. I’ll go back this afternoon.

At breakfast I meet my new roommate, the girl who uttered the erotic sighs all night. She came in with a man and another young woman. They’re traveling in a van they bought in London. They’ve traveled through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. They say you can’t get diesel in Romania, and the queues at the gas pumps are miles long.

Michael comes in to have breakfast with me. He’s just finished packing and excited because he’s leaving for Israel this morning. He’s full of historical facts about Jerusalem, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea scrolls and looking forward to walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

Early afternoon, I walk east along the side road paralleling the main road to Ephes. On the way, I'm accosted by a man on a motorcycle who wants to give me a ride. I decline, saying I'm enjoying the walk. So he drags out a plastic bag of old coins. He says in broken English that they were found at Efes. I don't want to offend him, so smile and say they are nice, but then, of course, he wants me to buy them. I feel a little uneasy out here all alone, but eventually the guy takes no for an answer and roars on.

Beyond the church, cars whiz along the road to Kusadasi where I’ll catch the ferry tomorrow morning. North of the road, which is lined with evergreens and deciduous trees, are more cultivated fields and beyond them, the gentle slope of mountains rising out of haze.

I move on down to Celsus Library. The sun casts long shadows even at midday, but I sit in bright sunlight, warm enough to shed my hiking jacket. 

I jump at a gunshot in the distance echoing off the mountains, then settle back on the rock. It was just a car backfire, but I reacted as if it was a gunshot. I hear another. I’ve always had a problem mistaking loud noises for gunshots, but I never thought of the reason until now. My reaction is possibly a result of my father standing across the hall in his bedroom loading the deer rifle. My father will always be in that bedroom; I’ll always be face down on my bed, fingers clutching at the cold white sheets, waiting for the gunshot. Every time a car backfires, every time a hammer drives a nail into wood, my father fires the deer rifle.

The theatre is closed to the public for repairs due to damage caused during a recent Sting concert, and I’m not much on crashing gates in foreign countries, but I scramble over some rocks, climb an embankment and shortly I’m inside the theatre on the top row looking over the vast expanse of seats and northwest to the ruins of the Church of the Virgin Mary where the Third Ecumenical Council met in 431 AD. A capacity crowd of 24,000 must have been a tremendous sight in this ancient theatre, and quite a frightening sight to St. Paul when his preaching here caused a near riot.  

St. Paul may have been initiated into Demeter’s Mysteries.[1] He was an educated man raised in the Greek city of Tarsus on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast. Tarsus was an old Ionian city settled a thousand years before, during the wave of migrating Greeks following the Trojan War. It had a university where Greek philosophy was taught. His knowledge of the Mysteries is reflected in the language of his letters to the Corinthians, “... we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world ...”[2] He even uses the metaphors of Demeter, goddess of cultivation: 

And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but are grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.[3]

The sewing of grain is the central metaphor of Demeter’s Mysteries.

The sun has gone behind the hill for a second time, shadows creeping along Marble road as it sets, and I leave the stadium to meet Tim and Jane below. Another couple from the pension walk back with us. We walk through the main gate into the sunlight, past the ruins of the temple of Artemis, on along the road to Seljuk where St. John the Divine is buried. I feel all alone walking between these two couples, one couple in front talking quietly, Tim and Jane just a few steps behind, chuckling quietly, walking arm in arm.

Before we reach Seljuk, I break off from them, slow my pace so they move on ahead. The sun casts two rows of tree shadows across the field. As I reach the ruins of the temple of Artemis beneath the Basilica of St. John and the Medieval fortress on the hilltop, an old lady and a young boy out in the field to the north catch a white horse and bring it out toward the road. They step out of the eucalyptus trees lining both sides of the road. Suddenly the horse breaks loose from them. He’s saddled and runs in my direction, a wild look in his eyes. My first inclination is to step aside and let him pass, but then I step forward to see if I might turn him.

The horse rears on his hind legs pawing at the air and, remarkably, stops in front of me. I take the dangling rein, pat him on the neck where his skin trembles and on impulse grab the saddle horn and mount him. I haven’t been on a horse in years. He starts to gallop away from Seljuk, and I let him go, lean forward close to his neck and listen to the pounding hooves, feeling wild and exhilarated. As he slows, I turn him, dismount and walk him back to the old lady, a grand smile lighting her face.

I have dinner with the same two couples I walked back from Ephesus with, minus Tim. Tim is sick this evening and stayed at the pension. We eat at the same restaurant where we ate our first night in Seljuk. I like Tim, but this evening it’s kind of nice without him. It’s me and Jane, and the other couple, two couples having dinner together.

I go to bed earlier than usual, my room vacant tonight. Michael is on his way to Israel, and the guy from DC left for parts unknown. The young lady in the center bed who mumbled and sighed erotically last night has gone on to south Turkey. Tomorrow morning I’ll rise at six, and a Turk from the carpet shop will take me to the ferry in Kusadasi.

While thinking of my departure, I wonder what went through my daughter’s mind the evening before she disappeared. In April 1985, I was a busy man. I had astronauts calling me, was heavily involved in developing emergency EVA[4] procedures. I made several trips to Johnson Space Center where a full scale mockup of our payload was being built inside the astronaut Water Test Facility, where astronauts test EVA procedures. I went regularly to Kennedy Space Center where I received console training for the ground team to monitor flight hardware status during the Shuttle mission.

And the fact was, the Shuttle Centaur project was in trouble. All our hardware was behind schedule, and NASA wondered if we could make our launch date. We had a two week window in May 1986 to get two Shuttle missions off. No schedule slips were possible because both spacecraft’s were going to Jupiter, and the Space Shuttle had to be launched when Jupiter was at the right spot in the heavens. It looked as if we would have to fly unqualified hardware if we were going to launch at all. Some of us on the project talked openly of frying astronauts. All this excitement lured me further away my daughter.

Four months after I saw my daughter at Christmas, on Thursday April 19, 1985, I got a telephone call from my ex-wife at three in the morning. I remember my heart pounding from being shocked awake. I tried to shake a dream. She asked if I knew where Cyndi was. But Cyndi lived with her. Why would she call to ask me where she was? She told me Cyndi was missing.

My ex-wife had thought it unusual the previous evening when Cyndi didn’t come home, but reasoned she was probably at the local pizza place where she had a part time job. Around midnight, she started to worry, called the pizza place and learned Cyndi hadn’t been there at all. Then my ex-wife looked in Cyndi’s bedroom. All her music equipment was missing, her keyboard, amplifier, guitar. She wondered if Cyndi had been kidnapped during a robbery. She had called the police, but they told her to call back after eight in the morning when Detective Sim, who was in charge of the juvenile runaway cases, would be in.

I stayed awake the rest of the night, walked the floor thinking of all the bad things that could happen to a young girl. She had disappeared without warning, as if the earth had opened and swallowed her.

I went to work that morning in a daze and called my ex-wife to get an update. She’d talked with many of Cyndi’s classmates, but they knew nothing. She’d found more things missing, two hundred dollars from her own purse, clothes, Cyndi’s jewelry. She’d talked to Detective Sim, but he said that with no evidence of foul play, no sign of a struggle, no blood, they wouldn’t look for her. The search was up to us.

I hung up and immediately called the airlines, made reservations on the next flight to Phoenix, reserved a rental car, then called my son, who attended college at Arizona State, and asked if he could put me up for a couple of nights. That afternoon, I caught a plane to Phoenix.

29 Nov, Monday

The call to prayer, a loud warble, comes through the quiet morning air as my wristwatch alarm wakes me for the journey back to Greece. It’s still dark outside. I must hurry to shower and finish packing. A Turk will be here in one hour to take me to Kusadasi. By eight-thirty I’ll be out of Turkey.

My ride is on time, but they have sent the violent young man who wanted to fight over the soccer match. His car is low on gas, the gage first blinking red, then burning steady the rest of the way. But I make it in plenty of time, arrive early and wait for the travel agent to collect my passport. I’m soon aboard the good ferryboat Diana, the same small ferry I came to Turkey on. Last time we were packed in like sardines, but today only a handful make the trip. The Aegean is calmer, the boat a lazy duck in the water, rocking ‘n rolling to the lethargic sea. I remember Sara walking about the boat last time. Her ghost will be with me for a while.

After seeing a little of Samos, I’ll go on to Lesbos, the island to the north of Samos just off the coast of Turkey . I have several reasons for visiting the island. First, Achilles raided the island during the Trojan War. Second, the ancient poetess Sappho was born there. Lesbos was the island of the world’s most beautiful women.

In the distance, I see the dock and another familiar sight, Hotel Samos. Now, for my reentry into Greece, Ellada.