(Southeastern Anatolia)…The bazaar in the small city of Şanliurfa was a revelation, a time capsule that is both 11,000 years old (so scholars believe) and modern and vibrant. It is a Kurdish town, and immediately noticeable were the mauve scarves decorating the heads of both men and women. Some boast filigreed patterns in silver thread. The bazaar is the usual maze of alleys with shops, and into one a tailor invited us.
He sat cross-legged on the floor (probably had done since early that morning) and sewed thick sheep fleeces into jackets and waistcoats, whole ordering us tea. The “getting of tea” remains a joyous mystery to me throughout my travels in beautiful Turkey.
Hospitable Turks asked you to join them for tea, and therefore tea was summoned. It would come quickly, with accompanying sugar and spoons, but at no time did I see money exchange hands or anyone come back to collect the tulip-shaped glasses and trays. I was certainly not asked for contributions, and I rather think I would have offended if I had asked.
Perhaps there is a monthly charge? Who knows? Şanliurfa—its name was lengthened with the addition of Şanli, which means “glorious” in Turkish, in recognition of the city’s contribution to Turkish independence against the French—is famous for it being the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, who hid in a cave from the King Nemrut, who wanted to kill every child due to some unfavourable prediction. The cave can be walked to from an attractive area of plazas, mosques, gardens and pools, visitors crouching low beneath a green cloth (separate entrances for the genders) to sip the water that kept the prophet alive. The pools contain hundreds of carp, around which surround legends: If you see a white one, you will go to heaven; if you eat any one, you will be poisoned, for this was the site where Abraham was sentenced to burn by Nemrut but where the fire turned to water and the wood pile turned into fish.
Behind the pools—called the Balikligöl—are restful, idyllic caravansaries where old men talk about the past. The Second Crusade (1145-1149) also started when Islamic forces recaptured the city. It is a fascinating place, with patios opening up to reveal domino-playing, old men and an area of honey-coloured houses where I bought a grapefruit that was the sweetest fruit I’ve ever eaten.
One dinner was had sat on very low, backless seats (better to feel, perhaps misguidedly, that somehow you belong there and can watch the scene unfold without being seen yourself) outside a döner kebabı restaurant, a small hole in the wall, where the jolly proprietor sat outside with us and chopped the ends of and nibbled hot chilies to make sure they would not blow our “foreign” heads out of the bazaar. After hearing horror reports of travellers being mobbed in small, dusty, brown Harran, about 30 kilometres south of Şanliurfa, it came as a wonderful surprise to hardly seeing anyone. Where were they all? Where were the children? In school, it seemed, wearing blue uniforms.
A few residents shepherded sheep in the shade of the ruins of Harran’s university, which is the oldest Islamic university and thus perhaps the oldest on the planet from any faith or nation. Camels plodded around, and hoopoes and Burrowing owls swooped and hopped. Harran is small and poor, which must differ greatly from the 8th and 9th centuries when scholars flocked here to learn about astronomy, religion and medicine, some decades before Islam’s greatest university in Baghdad was even conceived. Beehive-shaped houses dot Harran, but most are used now for storage or tourism.
Numerous tarmac’ed but equally dusty roads crisscross the desert that after not being totally sure where we were continues across the border with Syria to forlorn places such as Büyük Çayli and larger Ceylanpinar. We ate honey on the comb while watching a Lebanese ground agama (Trapelus lessonae), a lizard that almost was indistinguishable from the sandy ground around it. Agriculture has started, thanks to the controversial GAP (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi) reservoir and dam project that seeks to tame the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
We span northwards to the glorious mountaintop town of Mardin. Essentially, at least for tourists, Mardin consists of one street, Cumhuriyet Caddesi, which contains the very comfortable Artuklu Kervansaray hotel. Walking beneath an arch, we admired an ornate doorway, only to be invited in by the owner, an old woman, who introduced us to her son, his wife and their daughter. More tea was served, and more lost-in-translation but heartfelt conversation was swapped, followed by an invite to climb on their flat roof to see the view of the Mesopotamian plain stretching from Mardin all the way, perhaps, to the Golan Heights of Syria and Israel and the crusader and Knights Templar castles of Lebanon. Several restaurants also have rooftop perches, and an antique shop had two kitschy watches bearing former Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein’s face that it would not sell for any price.
The next morning we visited its twisty bazaar and a Syrian Orthodox Church (the Kirklar Kilisesi) for which the keeper of the key suddenly appeared. This interests me, the word “kirklar.” In Scandinavia and Scotland, churches have a similar etymology. Atatürk wrote out a Roman-style Turkish alphabet on a napkin in the 1920s, but presumably the word for church had a pronunciation in the Ottoman dialect of Arabic. Answers, please. We were told that Pope John Paul II visited. We had the dark, dusty place to ourselves. Carved above the entrance is the church’s date of formation: 569.
Paintings of the church’s holy fathers, the earliest ones quite comical, line the walls. Approximately six miles away along a thin road is the far larger Syrian Orthodox monastery of Deyrulzaferan, that is, the Saffron Monastery, so named for its yellowish hue. Until recent years this was the seat of the Syrian Orthodox Church’s patriarch, who now lives in Damascus. Obviously, Damascus is in Syria, so that fact speaks volumes concerning this area of Turkey’s links to the religions and peoples of wider Mesopotamia. Deyrulzaferan has a large courtyard, two floors, a church and two remaining brothers who speak Aramaic, the language, supposedly, of Jesus Christ. There are also nuns. One room contained the crumbling remains of two small sedan chairs in which the patriarch was ferried. A mountain with caves stands behind.

(Finland)—Slightly jetlagged, in that nice manner of letting everything sweep over you and offering very little in a struggle against it, I was sitting on a lawn at a manor house called Haikko (www.haikko.fi), some 40 kilometres outside of Helsinki. It dates back to 1362, when it was home to Dominican priests who were part of the Russian monastery of Vyborg, but equally interesting was that the home’s latest renovation was funded by a lottery win, even though the latest owners would never be classed amongst the poor. Just down the road is the country’s second-oldest town, Porvoo, whose Finnish name comes from the local phonetic attempt to say its Swedish name of Borjå. Most of the Finnish places I visited have populations of Swedish speakers. Finnish, itself, is a far more difficult language to learn.
Porvoo has a wonderful district of cobbled lanes and red, wooden houses that today receives growing numbers of visitors but a part of which, up the hill, in the 1960s and 70s was often referred to as the “Shanghai of the Nordic Countries,” for its inherent dangers to life and limb from its inhabitants, apparently. It is noted for its snail restaurants. Timbaali (www.timbaali.com) even has a rout of snails crossing its awning.
Helsinki must be notable in that it is the only place I can ever remember going to in which I wanted to go shopping. I detest shopping, but in the village of Fiskars, famous for its orange-handled scissors, I visited its design museum and saw several shirts made by equally well-known Finnish company, Marimekko (www.marimekko.fi). In case anyone thinks I am softening, going to visit the shop was a last-minute decision I took after realizing I had 20 minutes following a visit to the Suomenlinna island-fortress (www.suomenlinna.fi) and not a stop I had to make before discovering that island’s hummocks, beaches, ponds, battlements and, even, a beached submarine. This UNESCO World Heritage site (no, not Marimekko) has, I was surprised to learn, a resident population of almost 900, as made evident by the existence of a supermarket just before the local ferry pier. Also, somewhere else on the island and not seen by my curious eyes is a työsiirtola, an open prison for very low-risk prisoners.
The most-visited spot, but also the area where you can most easily escape all other people, the fortifications of the King’s Gate, reveals an inscription that reads “Eftervärld, stå här på egen botn och lita icke på främmande hjälp,” which is Swedish, not Finnish, and means “Progeny, stand here on your own foundation and do not rely on foreign help.”
This was a quote from Count Augustin Ehrensvärd, who was commissioned to build the fort when Finland was part of Sweden. The city of Turku, the oldest settlement in Finland, also unveiled some interesting history. This small city will share the honours with Tallinn, Estonia, of being one of the two Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2011, and while it is pleasant, I think it will find it hard to compete against the medieval atmosphere of the Estonian capital, but let’s hope they work together.
One of my favourite Turku finds was a bust of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It was tucked away beside a red-brick building and was not on any official tourism pamphlet that I read, but it turns out that he stayed in a house here (of which it is now outside of) when in 1907 he fled Russia. In those years, Finland was part of Russia. He must have been grateful, as one of the first acts he administered when the Soviet Union was formed in 1917 was to give Finland full independence. On the other side of the equation, I took a boat from Turku to the island of Ruissalo, which yearly hosts the Ruisrock rock festival (www.ruisrock.fi). It’s been a while since I had been to one (Reading in the early 1990s, Glastonbury a little before that).
The Sunday line-up of bands was notable for being the last show by local heroes, The Crash (www.thecrash.com), whose songs are catchy but a little poppy for my tastes. They did a version of The Smiths’ There is a Light that Never Goes Out, which was excellent. I also managed to see The Gaslight Anthem (www.gaslightanthem.com), who hail from New Brunswick, N.J., which is the main campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (www.rutgers.edu), where I studied for my Master’s degree, and the Soul Captain Band, Finland’s most famous, and probably only, reggae band.
Also in Turku was a musical tree, an oak to which was tied a dozen mobile phones. A list of birds and their relevant mobile-phone numbers were listed below, and if you call one, you hear the sound the bird makes trill through the air. I rather liked it, the idea that using your personal phone can lead to a moment not of noise and meaningless chatter but one of quiet and contemplation.
Back in Helsinki I pottered around various neighborhoods, promontories and islands. One spit of land, Katajanokka Skatudden, very close to the central harbour (see photo above), I liked tremendously, and the next time I go, I will have to visit and eat at a restaurant tucked at the base of a circular building away from the stares of tourists. It was called Welloma (www.wellamo.fi), and if you climb up the steps beside it and then turn on the streets above it, you can get an excellent view of the Russian Orthodox Church of Uspenski.