The Sultan of Byzantium (16 page)

Downtown Trabzon stopped progressing 2,700 years ago and now looked like the River Ganges. Even a little fender-bender meant enormous traffic chaos. The increased number of women in headscarves caught my attention. They looked like a collection of young and eloquent girls with ivory complexions who would abandon their scarves and leave the set as soon as the movie was shot.

I liked my hotel just fine, with its rose-colored atrium that looked like a sheik’s tent. It was a mild November day. After lunch I visited the Haghia Sophia of the Pontus with Askaris. As we entered the church courtyard the roar of the Black Sea came at staccato intervals. I recalled the majestic Sea of Marmara. If it had a message to impart, it would deliver it in squiggly lines accompanied by imaginary musical notes.

The front of the plain thirteenth-century church had become a storage place for archaeological fragments. A tombstone next to the ladies’ room bore the name of Kamer Sultan, daughter of an Ottoman emperor. I saw a family resemblance between the building’s design, the color and cut of its interior stonework, and the Armenian and Georgian churches and Selçuk mosques of the region. This sense of collaboration impressed me. The ceiling frescoes offered the pleasure of viewing a painting. I felt the warmth of wandering through a naïve art exhibition in provincial Byzantium as compared to Constantinople. I called Askaris’ attention to the deficiency of expression, as well as the translation-cumprinting errors on the descriptions posted in the church and said, ‘If I were an emperor not in exile, I would know what to do.’ I thought that I would get used to the roaring as we moved closer to the spacious windows on the north side. I was wrong: the Black Sea was like a restless tiger that sensed its master being threatened.

Pappas and Kalligas were waiting in the courtyard. I set them free, telling them I wanted to explore Ottoman Trabzon. But since Askaris wanted to linger at Haghia Sophia a little longer, my bearded guards had to go with me. We went straight to the Ottoman bridges that divide the city between north and south. Those monuments, which in olden days had served as escalators to the time tunnel that carried me away to the Ottoman city, now looked a size smaller. I enjoyed the prospect a while, scanning the town for traces of the Trabzon that Sultan Yavuz had governed for twenty-two years, and where his son Suleyman, the future Magnificent, was born.

First I watched the commotion enjoyed by a group of ten- or twelve-year-olds joshing with each other on their way home from school. What was musical about them was their shouting at each other all at the same time in their accented Black Sea Turkish; what made it really dramatic was how they used their accents to demonstrate superiority. A little later began the promenade of older youth. It was odd how I couldn’t predict whether they would finish their sharp-edged conversations in a quarrel or a laugh. They pronounced each word with a special lilt and only when they came to the end of a sentence did they decide on the intonation. Then there were the young girls – their procession over the bridge was a folkloric fashion show. They would appear in small clusters and ritualistically divert their eyes to the ground as they passed in front of the boys. I didn’t want to think about how Pappas and Kalligas, walking like puppets on either side of me, would – if necessary – sacrifice themselves to save my life; but also – if necessary – would sacrifice me just as quickly for Nomo. For now they didn’t look much different from minor characters in a comic book.

We passed into the Ortahisar neighborhood together with the late afternoon
ezan
. A feeble autumn breeze caressed my face, which I took as a sign. I started to chase it, without asking where or why, when I suddenly felt my feet nailed to the ground. It was like I was wearing kaleidoscopic glasses. I stood, squinting. If no password was demanded of me, did that mean a message was forthcoming? My head began to hurt and a weariness crept into my cells. Then the thin curtain of fog facing me slowly lifted. There before me stood a row of Byzantine, Ottoman and Republican buildings shoulder to shoulder, resisting time and humanity and apparently issuing a challenge.

In this neighborhood squeezed into a confined and hilly plot there were other venerable structures showing respect for the topography. The faded pastel exteriors of picturesque houses that I wanted to call ‘little mansions’ recalled the ceiling frescoes of Haghia Sophia and the calm hotel atrium. I felt more rested as I strolled those narrow paths, occasionally passing a dry fountain with an inscription like ‘Every death is an early death’. I had street dogs for company and the paths usually ended in a cul-de-sac of wild fig trees. On these cool nameless streets I savored duets of silence and serenity. The sky grew darker but I felt that every corner had its own light to emit.

Poking my head into the Ortahisar Mosque, I watched the people at prayer. During the thirteenth century, when this mosque was the Church of Panaghia Chrysocephalos, the Pontus kings had held their coronation ceremonies in it. In the row of seven- or eight-year-old children at the very back, a faded and illegible message in English on somebody’s sweater briefly aroused my curiosity.

We then took a break at a café for retired men, where whoever wasn’t duelling with his cigarette was counting his prayer beads very slowly. I was a bit abashed by their universal chorus of ‘Welcome’ when we came through the door, as if they were saying ‘Amen’. Those with prayer beads appeared to be linked up to something between happiness and its opposite, and expecting news. On our way out I saw flyers for a
horon
dance in the window of a CD shop next to a print shop that declared its establishment in 1901 like it was sending an SOS. A young man in the doorway looked at me with eyes that said, ‘Mistakes will not be forgiven.’

I could express the lightness of being I was feeling in one sentence: ‘I was taken by a royal boat to the monastery complex.’ And a warning that Nomo would not have liked was whispered into my ear: the true task is to master the achievements of both the Byzantines and the Ottomans. In Trabzon I was halfway there. Yet if I was undergoing a test, I was beginning to grow curious about the examination committee. It would be a very Byzantine business indeed if Nomo was trying to wear me down in a duel. It was said that ‘Sumela’ derived from ‘melas’, meaning ‘darkness’ in Greek. I like darkness: every hue of it has a different taste. I know this from poetry.

*

I declared to myself with a sigh that, if I were writing a novel, whenever I heard that Altindere National Park was half an hour from Trabzon I would write down forty minutes. I felt like I was pursuing a protected species when I read that Sumela Monastery was situated inside the park.

I like words made of five letters, and I was curious about Maçka because it was both on the Silk Road and in Xenophon’s
Anabasis
. I’d forgot that Altindere Park was actually in the Maçka district. I was with Theo Pappas in a two-car convoy driving through the sunny autumn morning. I’d begun to sympathize with this wrestler-like guard who was never offended by my jokes, perhaps because he didn’t get them. I decided not to tease Askaris and so I didn’t say – yet – ’Was this man hired to unguard me?’

The way was charming: full of joy, full of green, under open skies with groups of clouds posing patiently. We saw buildings flimsy enough to belong to a cardboard stage set; maybe they grew out of seeds carried by the wind. We passed a middle-aged village woman with a pile of brush on her back and a bony cow on either side of her. The three of them walked with the same gait and swung their heads to and fro in the same rhythm. They were probably all thinking the same thing too.

As we headed south, the altitude and the quiet both increased. I greeted the sovereignty of silence with respect. I found the ticket-seller’s affection at the park entrance slightly out of place, however. If Askaris had been beside me I would have said something like, ‘This man is like a caregiver who demoralizes the patient.’ We climbed a curving road that grew more ruthless as it rose and came finally to a parking lot. Parked there was a tired minibus from the neighboring town. Altindere was shaded by colossal oak trees. We were caught in a stand-off between massive green and enormous silence. It was thrilling to feel that I could fly if I shut my eyes. Surely the park was the monastery’s terminal of eternity. Just then I came face to face with the mountain itself, rising 4,000 feet above sea level. Sumela shone like a giant painting suspended from the peak. I couldn’t take my eyes off it; was the monastery growing larger, the longer I stared?

It was an architectural work fifty feet high and 120 feet long, with a Gothic aesthetic that harmonized with the environment. Once more I found myself wondering how this structure got itself built on the edge of a cliff over the course of a thousand years; it made me ashamed of my puny diplomas. I knew that I would find the third purple square in one of two venues when I went inside the complex in another half an hour. I’d done my homework. I was coming to better terms with myself as I thought about how the human race, with faith and nails, could remove forty feet of a mountain. If by this means I was receiving some kind of spiritual training, I owed a debt of gratitude to the examination committee.

According to generally accepted myth, the Virgin Mary appeared in the dreams of two Athenian priests and ordered them to establish a sacred site in the Black Mountains of Trebizond. (Whenever Mary’s name is mentioned, it makes me think that Paul of Tarsus, from Southern Turkey, the flag bearer of Christianity, has not been properly honored.) The two priests, who were relatives, were brought by destiny to the foothills of these mountains after a tiring and tortuous trip. There they carved a small church out of the monumental rock and remained there until the end of their lives, dying on the same day. The local monks then took over, and the remote church gradually grew into a regional center. In the sixth century the Byzantine Emperor Justinian threw his support behind it. The period of difficulties came to an end in the fourteenth century with the help of the Pontus emperors. By now Sumela was a worldwide religious center. In the sixteenth century, when Governor Yavuz was injured while hunting in the nearby mountains, it was the monks of the monastery who healed him. From then on Sumela came under the protection of the Ottomans. With the declaration of the Republic in 1923, however, it lost its relevance and the monks moved away. It was natural for it to be forgotten on its mountain until the 1980s, when the beginnings of restoration got underway.

The artisan of the path to the monastery was nature. We headed up in single file, listening to the sound of a spring. It echoed like a warning signal and changed tones with each bend. The path was secured by enormous trees. Their dramatic roots, gripping the earth like octopi, seemed to say, ‘Traveler, every step you take is under our protection.’

I found myself in the Middle Ages as soon as I stepped through the main gate. To the left of the monastery was an open space like a courtyard, and around it were a dozen small buildings in addition to a church and chapel. I could believe that they were constructed out of stones plucked from the bosom of the mountain. First we went into the monastery with its five floors and seventy-two cells. Up close it looked like a small hospital, yet it was not without a library, wine cellar, and prison. With a little investment it could have become the most enchanting mansion on earth. When you looked down from the terrace a thousand-foot drop-off winked at you. No doubt every visitor exclaimed, ‘This must be heaven,’ on seeing the pellucid blue sky under which the sweet symphony of a running stream serenaded the virgin forest.

The passengers of the minibus, whose bumper sticker read ‘Don’t tailgate! You’ll regret it!’ were gathered in the courtyard. They were elderly and white-skinned and not happy with the tour. One of the women was berating her husband for bringing her here. My own short tour started at the chapel and ended at the rock-cut church. There were a total of seventy-two frescoes in the church and twenty more in the chapel. The cramped space meant that they covered the entirety of the two buildings’ stone walls, inside and out, plus the church ceiling. In the course of a thousand years the artists had illustrated almost the whole Bible, like a graphic novel. I stood in the deserted place and studied the images with the pleasure of viewing an art exhibition. They reflected not only the styles of various periods but also the different skills of master and apprentice. Looking at the still un-erased graffiti and the scratched-out eyes of saints, it was clear that the restorers had their work cut out for them.

We finished our warm-up tour. I entered the chapel with a prayer, tightly hugging a reference book analyzing the frescoes by theme. I inspected the whole place, inch by inch, from ‘The Nativity’ to ‘The Harrowing of Hell’. It was obvious that the purple square was not in the chapel. Well then, it had to be in the rock-cut church, which in some people’s eyes was the most symbolically charged space in Christendom. I examined the church frescoes first from one perspective and then from another. I went over ‘The Transfiguration’ and ‘The Exorcism of Satan’ point by point three times, and ‘Two Lions of the Monastery’ and ‘Doomsday’ four times. Desperately I shone my flashlight on the ceiling and the high walls. I searched until my hands shook and my eyes blurred. It was all in vain.

I thought I would do more homework in the evening and come back the next day, visiting the churches again and the naked monastery for the first time. (The outbuildings were apparently kept locked.) But I somehow felt that I would come away from this expedition empty-handed. All the same, I didn’t want to admit that I’d failed an exam. What came to mind was a conspiracy theory that was probably shared by my grandfather. Whoever passed the exam would become Nomo’s head and carry out the last item in the will, whereupon he could abolish Nomo. It was therefore quite possible that the organization would take precautions to disqualify promising candidates and avoid just such a disaster. I thought also that by finishing off my dream journey in Trabzon, my grandfather’s home town, Nomo was playing their own little joke on me. It was time to end my unpaid leave of absence and get back to my students. And so Emperor Constantine XV, unelected, in exile and exhausted, left the rock church.