In Xanadu (14 page)

I
asked Rajep if he found it difficult being educated when the rest of his family were not.

Sometimes there are problems. But I respect my father. He and my grandfather have worked hard and expanded our farm. When my grandfather came here much of this was waste, and we were given only very little land. Now we have nearly one thousand hectares.'

'You are not natives of Sis?' I asked.

'No, no one here is. We all came from Salonica after the Great War.'

'What happened to the original inhabitants?'

'I
do not know. I know no history. Ask my grandfather.'

Rajep took us inside, where we found his grandfather sitting at the table in the stone-flagged living room. He was a typical Geordie-Turk, all flat cap and wrinkles, but you could see that he had once been a handsome man, and he still had an air of authority about him. He spoke no English so we had to go through the tedious procedure of channelling our conversation through Rajep, who acted as interpreter.

'My grandfather wants to know whether you are Muslims.'

'I'm afraid not.'

'He asks whether you are Christians.' 'We are.'

'My grandfather wants me to tell you that it does not matter....' 'Oh, good.'

'... and that he had many Christian friends when he was a boy in Salonica. He says he had a pretty Christian girlfriend.'

'A Greek girlfriend? Wouldn't that have been regarded as rather wicked? I thought the Greeks and the Turks were traditional enemies.'

'No, my grandfather says that you are wrong. In Salonica the Greeks and the Turks were friends. He says the Greeks were kind people and were often helping the Turks. Only the governments did not like each other. He says he was very sad to leave Salonica. The houses were wooden and it was very crowded, but they had everything they wanted. He says that his father had a shop and also a farm outside the city where they grew cotton.'

The old man paused, trying to picture in his mind the images of seventy years before. From the kitchen came the sound of clattering as Rajep's sisters prepared our supper. After a second he continued; his grandson translated:

'In 1919 they were given the order to leave. Everyone was very sad. They said goodbye to all their friends and took what they could in a can to Thrace. They stayed in Edirne for one year, but cholera broke out and he and two brothers and one hundred others decided to leave and look for land elsewhere.'

'And who was living here? What happened to the Armenians?'

'My grandfather says that when he arrived here the Armenians had already fled. He says that they got an idea to make their own country from the French. Turkey was very weak after the First World War, so it was a good opportunity for them and they started to attack villages and kill people. Many men were still away in the army, so they slaughtered the women and children. But Attaturk defeated them and they lest everything. Many Armenians died, but the reason for the most deaths was hunger and cholera.'

'So the Armenians fled from Sis, and he did not have to fight for this land?'

That's right. He says there had been a big battle a year before at the village of Gazi Kuju, and when he came here the land was empty. His eldest brother went on to Maras and there he had to fight with Armenians and the Greeks. But here they just moved into the old houses, and the one hundred settlers were each given twenty hectares. He says his land had never been used and he had to clear it of trees.'

From the kitchen there was a shout as the sisters brought in piles of food on a tray. There was a
chorba
soup, some pilau rice with pieces of chicken, couscous and stuffed aubergines. The old man smiled and his face wrinkled up like wood bark. It was only then that I noticed quite how old he was.

Over his soup he continued talking.

My grandfather says that later some Armenians returned. They had become Muslims, and tried to hide that they were not Turkish. He says that everyone knew that they were Armenians, but they allowed them to settle and have some land. He says that everyone was very sad.'

Why?' asked Laura.

Because there had been too many killings and too many deaths.'

After supper we refused an offer of a bed for the night, and jumped on a tractor going to Mersin. In retrospect this was a big mistake. It was a night of unmitigated horror probably best conveyed through the entries I made at the time in the
logbook:

8.00 p.m. No sign of bus.

We drink
cay,
and I teach Laura
tawla.
Mersin bus station is nearly as filthy as that at Latakia.

8.30 p.m. Laura goes off to look for a loo.

On the way someone throws a shoe at her. When she returns I read her an entry from the guidebook: 'Turkish buses are fast, comfortable and always run on time. They are fun and so are the bus stations.' Neither of us laugh. No sign of the bus.

9.00 p.m. More backgammon.

Still no sign of our bus.

9.30 p.m. As before.

10.00 p.m. The bus has turned up!

It's a luxury bus and our fellow passengers are a dowdy bunch of pseudo-European Turks. Laura is sitting on one side with a moustachioed businessman wearing flares. I am next to a woman with a screaming baby. Both of us are over the wheel. The bumpiest place.

10.30 p.m. Set off two hours late, only to stop at the bus station in Tarsus, the home of St Paul. Enough to give anyone wanderlust: loud Turkish music and some sort of mewing Turkish transvestite. He/she/it tells me Tarsus is 'very romantic place'. It wore thick mascara, pink lipstick and held a small yellow handbag.

12.00 p.m. Woken by conductor who suggests we eat supper.

Driver gets out and washes his bus.

Laura and I drink
cay.

Return to find the baby has been sick.

3.00 a.m. Woken by conductor who offers us a biscuit. The driver is outside washing his bus.

Laura and I get out and drink
cay.
The baby has vomited again.

4.00 a.m. Bus stops again.

Conductor shakes us awake and offers us another biscuit. We swear at him.

Driver gets out and washes his bus for a third time.

Woman gets out and hoses down her baby.

5.30 a.m. Sivas bus station. Cold.

Exhausted. Penniless.

6.00 a.m. We change ten dollars with two stranded Americans.

The taxi drivers are all still asleep. Drink more
cay.

Discover that my plastic shampoo bottle has
,
                
broken.

There is Head and Shoulders all over my wash bag, my clothes and, horror of honors, my books.

9.30 a.m. Taxi into Sivas.

Book into Hotel Seljuk: The familiar sewer-stench of Turkish plumbing -
and
Germans doing press-ups outside my room. They tell me they have bicycled here from Tiero del Fuego: 'Ze Andes ver ze best bit.' Pass out to the sound of grunts outside.

I was woken by a gentle knocking on the door. Opening one eye I saw that Laura wasn't in the room, so heaved myself out of bed, expecting to find the Germans on the other side inviting us to come and look at their bicycles or perhaps go on a jog with them. My fears were needless; it was something wholly preferable. In the doorway stood the hotelier. He was holding a breakfast tray. A few minutes later he returned with a bucket of piping-hot water. He bowed as magnificently as an Abyssinian slave from
The Arabian Nights
and withdrew. This was more like it. I washed, got back into bed, rolled into the comfortable mid-mattress trough, and demolished the contents of the tray: sliced tomatoes, olives, crusty bread and white feta cheese. Sipping a tulip glass of tea, I looked out of the window at the bustling bazaar.

Sivas was transformed since our arrival at dawn. The Geordies were out in force, with their velvet mosque caps and heavy tweed jackets, although sadly their trousers lacked the capacious crotch-line favoured in Cilicia. However, this was more than compensated for by the women's outfits. A respectful six paces behind their menfolk, trailing children and shopping bags, walked a series of shapeless conical sacks. There was no sign of the enticing headdresses we had so admired in Syria; the women of Sivas literally wore garden sacks over their heads.

Everyone in Sivas seemed to be on the move. Boys dodged the carthorses to carry trays of tea to the shopkeepers. Horse traps streamed into the town, carrying farm workers and great yellow pumpkins for the market. Gangster cars - Sivas's ageing taxi fleet of 1930s Chevrolets - crawled down the streets behind flocks of fat-tailed sheep. It was tempting to go out and explore further but, on balance, I decided it was just too comfortable in bed. So I stayed put, sipping tea and reading the expedition bible. Sir Henry Yule's 1929 edition of
The Travels.
which had somehow managed to escape the morning's eruption of shampoo.