In Xanadu (18 page)

I smiled and picked at the garnish of my kebab. The German leaned over again.

'You know in zis hot veather, it is very dangerous to eat ze salad. It is unhygenic. Maybe you should eat only ze cooked vegetable.'

'Maybe.'

There was a pause.

'You vill die.' said the German.

We meant to leave the next day, but could not bring ourselves to do so. We returned from supper to find that Mr Orhan Ghazi had filled our room with pot plants, drawn the curtains and folded back the top corners of our coverlets, like an unseen housemaid in a stately home. We decided to stay for at least one more day, and the next morning, before Laura awoke, I slipped out to explore.

Sivas is forced into compactness by its geology: the collar of mountains - pale blue in the morning, rather than the tired ashen-grey of evening - hunch their shoulders around the plain of Sivas, encircling it and forcing the streets into a tightly-knit grid of winds and lanes and alleyways. Yet its inhabitants maintain the ways of villagers, and have resisted the municipalizing forces thrust upon them. A few paces beyond the wide, asphalted main streets lies a network of separate self-contained villages with their own pastures and fields. Already, at eight o'clock in the morning, these villages were in the full swing of the agricultural day. Women were carrying piles of firewood towards their houses, while the men began solemnly to disembowel their tractors. Children were sitting on broken balustrades, watching the grazing sheep or throwing grain to the hens and the bantams. A few of the older ones rattled worry beads. In the tea gardens other families were picnicking. They sat in close little groups around boiling
demlik
(Anatolian samovars) reproducing in the open the
zenana
of the house: girls were tucked into neat semicircles around odalisque mothers, at a safe distance from the men.

Around these scenes lay the debris of the past. Near one tea garden stood a bulbous, low-roofed Ottoman mosque, hexagonal with a single squat minaret. Ottoman mosques have never appealed to me. Although the exteriors of the great Sulimaniye and Bayazit mosques in Istanbul are impressive, with their shady cloister arcades and ripple of cupolas, their interiors are always disappointing. They are simply pale imitations of Hagia Sophia, without the latter's perfection of colouring (imperial gold and purple) or form (perfect shapes: the square and the circle). Instead they are gaudy affairs of scarlet, copper-green and lavender, and to the Vitruvian shapes is added the pointed arch, an alien element which adds nothing to the design. The result is a pastiche, as uninteresting and derivative as Victorian Gothic, and as far from the perfection of Byzantine architecture as the Albert Memorial is from Chartres. If this is true of Ottoman architecture in Istanbul, it is all the more so of the millions of identical maquette mosques erected over the empire. The interior of that in Sivas impressed on me the heaviness of provincial Ottoman architecture: thick columns with chunky arches, heavy marble balustrades. There are none of the flutings or fantasies one expects in Islamic architecture, no development of the ideas of Seljuk architects, only an uninteresting, bastardized Byzantinism, lacking either the dignity or the grandeur of the original.

Much more intriguing was the nearby Seljuk Shifaiye
medresse.
In its day this was one of the greatest medical schools in the Islamic world. It had a magnificent library, available to both students and the staff, and its teaching combined practical work at the bedsides of the sick with more theoretical study in the classroom. Its staff included surgeons, oculists and specialists in internal diseases, as well as a pioneering group of psychiatrists whose cures for mental illnesses used the sound of dripping water, music and hypnosis. There was nothing remotely comparable in Europe, even at the outstanding Italian medical school at Salerno.

The Shifaiye
medresse
was built in 1217, and its facade is an obvious prototype for that of the Gok
medresse.
Like the latter it is covered with swirling interlace, but of much more primitive type, with far fewer, much cruder motifs deployed across the whole facade. In the Gok the interlace is limited to the
ivan
gateway and even here within sharply defined borders, emphasized by the strong verticals of the two minarets. These rise up from directly above the borders: two magnificent pillars of crisp, pink brick, inlaid with ceramic tiles the colour of lapis lazuli. In the earlier Shifaiye
medresse
there are no border panels and minarets. The interlace spills out unimpeded onto the retaining walls. It is a wilder creation than the Gok, but a less balanced and successful one.

However, there is the ample compensation in the surviving court - a quad of beautifully arcaded cloisters. The arches are high and narrow with tall spandrels springing inwards only at the very top of the horseshoe; the voussoirs are polychrome, made up of alternate black and white stones. I had seen such arches before, not in Islam but in a Christian church: the transept arches in Catania cathedral. They are eleventh century, and arguably the first pointed arches in Europe. Islam had used the pointed arch since the eighth century and it seems likely that it passed its discovery to Europe through the medium of Norman Sicily. Hence it spread to Monte Cassino, and through Benedictine architects to France and St Denis. The lovely cloisters in the Shifaiye
medresse
were unexpected confirmation that the origin of the pointed arch, the key feature of European Gothic, lay not in the He de France but, like so much of European culture, in the Muslim world.

It seemed an exciting discovery, and I sat contentedly in the sun, under the arches, writing it up in my diary.

To one side a gardener was digging the cloister garth. Apart from the noise of spade on soil and the cooing of doves, the
medresse
was silent. This perhaps was the Peace of Islam. My pool of sunlight had already turned to shade when I looked up to find a beautiful, dark-haired girl walking towards me. From a distance I thought she must be Italian, but when she introduced herself it turned out that she was Turkish. Her name was Kevser, and she had just come back from Germany where her father had been a guest worker. She had lived there for eleven years, but when her father died her mother had had to return. She did not know whether she would be able to go back. She had taken exams and if she passed she might be able to get a place at a German university; like me she was in the limbo state of awaiting results. When I asked which of the two countries she preferred her reply surprised me.

'I have lived two completely different lives for the last eleven years,' she said. 'Most of the time I have lived in Germany, but every summer I have returned here for the holidays. I have close friends in both places.'

She struggled for the right words.

Technically life in Germany is much better. Life here is very hard. We have to go a long way for water, and sometimes we are hungry. There is no television, no music, no entertainment. There is only one post a week. And if I live here I will be very poor. But in some ways the people are luckier, richer. In Germany neighbours hardly talk to each other. They say "hello" when they pass in the street, but it is all small talk: they talk about the weather. Here people smile more. Really. They are happier. I am related to everybody near here, so I can go to any house. I can spend the night, sleep there and there will be no scandal. Some nights my cousins and I stay up all night talking. I have many close friends in Germany but we never do that.'

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. 'It's hard to explain the difference.'

I asked her whether she did not mind the inferior status of women in Islam, and the fact that the two sexes were so segregated.

'It is different here from the rest of Turkey,' she replied. 'My family - many of the people of Sivas - came here from Russia, from the Caucasus, one hundred years ago. In some ways we behave differently from the Turks. Separating the sexes and making the women slaves is not Islam, it is Turkish. We are good Muslims. We pray, we read the Koran, we believe in one God - Allah. Bui we behave differently from the Turks. We speak our own language, wear our own dress, have our own folk dances where the girls and boys dance together. I have as many friends who are boys as girls. So, no, I don't have to behave very differently from Germany. And my status is not lower. The girls in my family have our own tasks, but we still have a big say in the running of the household. We have a good balance. In Britain I think your women have too much power.'

'Some British people would agree with you.'

'I have heard that in Britain your women go out to work, leaving the men to run the household.'

'It does happen.'

'Your women must be very tough.' They are.'

One of the toughest was waiting for me when I got back to Hotel Seljuk.

Do you like it?' she asked. Why . . . well... it's. . . .' Is it so ridiculous?' It....'

You'll just have to get used to it. I'm going to be wearing it all the way through Iran.'

My travelling companion was dressed from head to foot in enveloping black wraps, like a vampire from a low-budget horror film. A black headscarf was lowered over her forehead to reveal her beady black eyes, hawk-nose and trireme chin. A black stormtrooper shirt gave way to an ankle-length dress of Victorian cut. Below the straps of her sandals I could see the familiar black socks.

'I
rather like it. It's very ... alluring.'

'You're always alluring, Laura,' I said, ever keen to please.

'Not too gaudy?'

'On the contrary.'

'Reliable sort of outfit.'

'Dignified.'

'Steady.'

'Understated.'

'Rather distinguished....'

'. . in an Islamic sort of way.'

Laura twirled in front of the mirror kindly provided for her by Mr Orhan Ghazi. 'Maybe it suits me.' 'Maybe it does.'

        *        *

We finally left Hotel Seljuk the following afternoon. I could have happily stayed another week, but Laura was anxious to keep to our schedule and we were already behind. Mr Orhan Ghazi was there to see us off. He bowed a final bow and wrung his hands like a widow. It was an emotional moment.

'Friendship is a fine bondage,' were his words. 'By the grace of God you will come back.'