A Year in the World (45 page)

These two are delicious. The vegetable one crackly and very fresh, the slightly sweet one scrumptious!

We move out onto the covered porch and all sit on cushions around three low tables—tin trays on stands—and the family serves us cucumbers and tomato salad, little finger-sized dolmas of vine leaves stuffed with vegetables, peppers stuffed with rice, fried potatoes, pasta—very tender. Thick yogurt, of course.

For dessert, watermelon and melon from the garden, more of the tahini pastry, and rice pudding with nutmeg. At one end of the porch is a sink with no faucets and a rearview mirror from a car attached to the wall. The grandmother takes me by the hand into their new room. Like the porch, it’s full of pillows, each one made or bought on its own merits, a wild mélange, lively to look at. With so many patterns and colors, they come together in a new way. A blue eye ornament to counteract evil hangs from the ceiling. She shows me a photo of her grandson on his circumcision day, his big rite of passage at seven. She touches my bracelets, then slips one off and onto her own wrist. Also an evil eye protection amulet, which I bought in Greece; it is unlike the local ones. Since she does not give it back, I’m glad it was not emeralds. She and her daughter-in-law are dressed in the semifolkloric “harem” pants and scarf. Shirt checked, scarf flowered, pants another flower. The clean and tidy house has almost no furniture except for a plastic-protected sofa and several sorts of banquettes or daybeds where they can sit or sleep. Riotous pattern reigns. The wife says, “When we eat at a table, we are never full.” The driver, wearing totally Western clothes, nevertheless has an impressive black mustache. They all seem very pleased that we came. The grandmother holds my hand and sits touching me.

Careening through the hills, bumpy road, no air-conditioning, we press on in the sweltering afternoon to mythic Xanthus, where I am simply too hot to go on. I walk far enough to see the big pillar with Lycian script on four sides, then with Aurora retreat to the shade and guzzle two bottles of water. When I’ve cooled, I rejoin the others and walk to the remains of a Byzantine church. I’m happy to see the familiar borders of leaves, as well as geometric and entwined Carolingian-looking designs, on pieces of white-tesserae floor. Enver pours water onto one section and shows us palm trees, then clears a threshold of dust with his foot to show us a large mosaic rabbit.

We stop for a swim at long, sandy Patara Beach, then rest with drinks under
palapa
. Cool at last. Apollo is supposed to have wintered here, which must be to say the coast stays warm all year. This was an ancient-world site of oracular predictions, second only to Delphi, but no one ever has located either the shrine or the oracle to Apollo. Just his sun chariot charging across the sky every day. The boat will meet us at another cove, so we hike across flatland (the silted harbor) and grasses incredibly scattered with ruins that hark back to Alexander and before. My map notes Patara as the only Lycian site continuously occupied since the Bronze Age. Silky long-haired goats graze among the foundations. Three brown-bearded ones pause and look up, as if to say,
What brings you here?
Mustapha sees us coming and sends the dinghy. We board in the same spot where Saint Luke and Saint Paul, that most peripatetic traveller, having landed here from Cos then Rhodes, found a ship to take them on to Phoenicia. There must have been a Christian settlement here by then. I’m awash in histories, stories.

And we swim again, off the boat. Dinner on board—grilled chicken and lamb, various mezes, and a bulgur salad similar to tabouli. We are anchored off Gemile Adasi.
Adasi
, my second word for “island.” Almost everyone sleeps on deck tonight. Our souls are rocked.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5: GEMILE ADASI

Easy day off this sacred island covered with Byzantine monastery stones. We hike to the top of the island. My hiking shoes hold on slippery terrain. That hour with the good hiking adviser at REI in Corte Madera was wise time. The astronaut-size shoes give me confidence to leap from rock to rock. Of the lives of the monks who lived on this austere island, five churches and several cisterns remain. They tried to catch every drop of rain, since there are no wells. We come upon a most curious structure, a covered walkway or narrow street with gaps in the roof as the building descends the hill. Arches open on the east and west sides. The functional effect is to cool the “street.” The gaps in the arched roof slightly overlap to the next layer down so no rain gets in but air circulates. Besides being a corridor from the church at the top of the hill, it must have been a place to linger. I’ve never seen anything like this. The views all around from the top of the island are blue, blue, blue. We find a small necropolis and nearby a domed kiln large enough to bake bread for all the monks. Some graves are carved directly out of stone. We’re alone on a mythic Mediterranean island with sage and myrtle-scented scrubby hillsides littered with sacred stone. We all photograph the views of coves. Going back, we follow the snags of goat hair in the bushes. They know the best ways down.

A swim, a peaceful afternoon on deck. Bernice and I stayed behind this afternoon while everyone else hiked to the large Greek ghost town, Kayaköy, only empty since 1922, when Atatürk arranged an exchange program that brought Turks from Greece and sent Greeks back to their original homes.

We lounge, talk books, and nap. I admit my weakness for the Aga Saga, the English tempest-in-a-teapot novel of domestic life, often written with Austen influences of skill and restraint. I pass one on to Bernice. She falls into it immediately and doesn’t look up again. Cumulatively the hot days and little sleep make me want a few hours to read my hero, Freya Stark. She mentions finding myrtle tied to tombstones.

Hiking in the full sun this morning, we heard a loud boom. When we got back on board, Mustapha said we had had an earthquake.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6: FETHIYE/LYDAE/CLEOPATRA
’
S BATHS

Into the small resort of Fethiye for a stroll among trellised houses with vines shading the street and pleasant small squares with fountains. The people are everywhere warm. Big smiles, and they touch you. They’re eager to shake hands. A hand on my shoulder surprises me in a Muslim country. I buy several alabaster soap dishes and a T-shirt with a Medusa head on it. The Di Rosas help us select good snorkeling masks. Now we are really equipped. At the market Enver buys fish, and we find enormous loaves of rustic bread.

Mustapha takes us up the coast to the spot where Anthony and Cleopatra are rumored to have cavorted in the baths of a small harbor. No perfumed sails and poop of beaten gold here. Their little ruin sank long ago in an earthquake. A squalid settlement remains, where a beached rowboat has been strangely fitted out as a bread oven and various nasty chickens and dogs roam, peck, and snuffle in the bare dirt. A black pot sits in coals near a sign for Amigo Restaurant, now defunct, which is fortunate for the health of all concerned. We see no one, but a terrier comes wagging and follows us into the hills.

Up, up as usual from sea level to a peak, along a stony path, with Bernice saying, “I am not a goat.” We enter a forest of Aleppo pines, heavily scented, cross more rocky terrain, and meet a Yürük (nomad) family with their daughters, ages one and two, tied onto donkeys. They’re moving a herd of goats with assistance from two dogs. One girl has on an evil eye necklace. Enver has met them before, and they graciously allow us to photograph them. The girls are shy, but the mother smiles confidently. Her husband follows the ridge, calling to the goats. Soon we pass their dark tents. Following a high path, we arrive at an empty green valley, where we find a domed cistern, then another, quite intact. Channels trap the rain, which collects below. Several partial structures loom against the sunset sky. I step on a marble torso, the navel and drapery easily identifiable, and other marble pieces broken and lying around. Enver calls to another nomad, asking him if he has found any coins lately, but he has not. The man stares as we pass. We look weird to him. Possibly zoological.

On through woods scattered with rocks and ruins, so many that I can’t tell them apart. A few stone tombs and views of Robinson Crusoe coves of emerald water.

Back for a golden light swim.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7: DALYAN CAUNUS

Boarded a riverboat piloted by a sinewy young man and his eight-year-old boy, who can’t keep his eyes off us. These glimpses of how pale-faced and odd we must look amuse both of us. We travel a few miles up the Dalyan River, around the bend from where we moored. Slow old river—Moses in the bulrushes! Big turtles, kingfishers flashing blue, rock-carved temple tombs on the hills high above. Because one was left unfinished during the Persian War, I can see the method of construction. First smooth the rock face, then carve the house-shaped tomb into it so that it’s freestanding except at the bottom, where it’s anchored in rock. These rock tombs are eerie and also fascinating because they mimic the temples or domestic architecture of the ruling class of that time. Peaked roofs, columned entrances, friezes, and carvings over the doors reveal a sophisticated aesthetic for the living and the dead.

Marshes on either side line the milky jade waters. Marshes are my favorite landscape. Not water. Not land. Childhood summers along the Georgia coast with its vast Marshes of Glynn imprinted the serene watery beauty in my psyche. I loved the subtle shifts of color in the grasses and the sudden flop of an alligator from a log into the water. In this area the preservation of the loggerhead turtle is important. We see several sunning on mud banks, oblivious to the fuss made about where they lay their eggs. We tie up, and Enver leads us to a hot sulfur pool—very stinky—where we soak among warm rocks, then slather each other with green mud. Rheumatism and gynecological abnormalities will be cured, and male potency enhanced. So tonight the boat may rock with a power over and beyond the tides. Many photographs ensue, since we all look like the night of the living dead. Soon the mud dries to silver, and we each emit a big rotten egg smell. Karl, who is handsome and partially bald, looks the scariest.

We dry as we motor to the large lake of Köyceğiz. I wonder but don’t ask if this is the Lake of Leeches I read about. I don’t fancy jumping off the boat into the murky water, but I do. When I climb back up the ladder, I still have a sheen of mud on my back and legs. I jump in again. We’re all soothed and smoothed by the healing properties of the mud. Still, we look bedraggled in the garden restaurant, with our snaky hair and scoured faces. We don’t care and enjoy a long lunch of grilled shrimp, lamb kebabs with spicy yogurt, tomato salad, and fresh humus on sesame pita that we picked up in the village of Dalyan.

Enver keeps us moving. In the afternoon we hike to Caunus, a site where extensive roads have been uncovered. I’m attracted by a round “measuring platform” in stone, about thirty feet in diameter with concentric markings. The practical explanation may be right, but to me it looks like an astronomical layout. I’ve heard nothing about astronomy in any of the ruins, but surely these brilliant builders of cities wondered about the skies. More goats graze. They think they’re in an astronomical zone.

The low landscape and reedy water look like Asia. Small fishing boats with awnings could be in the Mekong Delta. From one we buy a box of blue crabs.

I’m shocked to realize this is our last night on board. Life on the water, never familiar to me, has come to seem divine. Wouldn’t my ex-husband be surprised? A sailboat figured largely in the breakup of our marriage. All Frank wanted to do was sail, every weekend. As a child he’d built his own sailboat in Pensacola, and I remember well the picture of him at six sitting in it, a sheet for a sail, his determined, intelligent little face. His father had a large sailboat, the
Mignon
, with its own china, and the loss of that in some financial fiasco involving a gas well reverberated still. Sailing was in his genes. But he was the captain, and I was the one running all over the boat hoisting the jib, trimming the main, throwing the anchor, plus cooking down below on the stove with two saucer-size burners. Some days were sublime. But San Francisco Bay is cold, rough, and often shallow. Sometimes we ran aground when the sonar malfunctioned, and one New Year’s Eve when we were stuck and had to wait for the tide to rise, I had a little epiphany: I would sail no more.

The privacy and freedom to maneuver this squiggly coast has been a great gift—the small coves where we slept to the calls of five kinds of owls and awoke to a visitation of bees at breakfast. Warm waters, the moon’s paths of wavering light, the boat’s billowing sails and little creaks—I’ve adored the life on board. I even find myself nodding agreement when Fulvio talks about buying a boat. We could sail for six months. Have I gone mad?

Tonight the crab feast, a huge mound in the middle of the table, with couscous enlivened by parsley, raisins, and nuts, and the “priest fainted” eggplant,
imam bayildi
, rich with concentrated tomatoes and onions. Ali concocts a flaming tower made of fruits for a finale.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8: KUSADASI

Cast out of Eden, we disembark at Marmaris, what a lovely name, and drive forever (three hours is forever in a bus) to Aphrodisias, one of the earliest settlements of Asia Minor. We pass sesame fields just harvested, the shocks gathered into upright pyramids for drying.

The layers of shards found at the site start in 5800
B.C.
Overwhelming. This is where I am hit with Stendhal’s syndrome. So much of the ancient world has been given to our eyes. The difference between this and all the other ruins is that Aphrodisias was a sculpture center, because of a white marble quarry nearby, where artists from all over the Roman provinces came to study. The site abounds with carved surfaces and soaring fluted columns, an astonishing number of them. This approaches a paradisiacal city with a pleasure garden—the most ancient garden I’ve ever known about. A circle of marble seats surrounds a decorative pond, where one could sit with baby and friends. My dear symbol, the bull, was important—a whole pediment of bull heads lies along a colonnade, and a “changing room” in the theatre is full of others. Is the site more simpatico because it lay in a fertile land where they worshiped the great mother—who later became Aphrodite? Even the theatre seats are marble, many with drawings and Greek writing on them. The upturned stones are carved with the familiar figures of Pan, Medusa, Pegasus, and putti. We’ve seen so many theatres, but here the personal touches of the writing and symbolic figures bring the reality closer. There’s more—much. The stadium—astounding. University of Florida could play Georgia there tonight. The huge ellipse of stone seats is undamaged by the centuries. Very easily I visualize a chariot race. We could not pull ourselves away from all the wonders and so lost the opportunity to see the museum, which closed at five.