Musings from Anatolia, Part Four: Coping with Turkish Language

Turks are proud people… they are proud about their legacy, their culture and their language.

Though more and more Turks are learning new languages- English, German, French and Italian… anticipating an eventual invitation into the European Union… as also Arabic due to religious reasons (and two being the divergent stresses which Turkish society, at large, is facing today… one looking towards West… and other looking towards religion); it is nevertheless sensible to pick up a few Turkish phrases while traveling in Turkey.

When I was planning for a Turkey trip… I checked out from various sources… if my bit of Arabic, Persian, English and wee bit of French would be able to rescue me in Turkey… responses were confused, and prejudiced…

Some told me that Turks hate Arabs and Arabic speakers… he was partially right… they do see Arabs with contempt… but have tremendous respect for Arabic… so when they saw a non-Arab speaking Arabic, they treated me with respect… almost assuming that I must be a Muslim… and that too a devout Muslim to have learnt Arabic for reciting and understanding Quran. In fact, there were places and situations, where I fended for myself only by speaking Arabic- like in Mardin and Sanliurfa, which are less than few kilometers from Syrian border and have huge Syrian influence.

Some other told me that Persian is very little understood in Turkey… and though it has some similarity with Kurdish, but hardly much to sail me through… they were wrong… Kurdish language, as somebody told me in Diyarbakir, has a number of dialects- the major of them are Kurmanji and Sorani… Kurmanji is spoken in Turkey, northern Iran, and Syria… while Sorani and its sister dialect Kermanshahi in southern Iran and Iraq…. All the dialects have varying influence of Persian… Kurdish being an Indo-Iranian language… however, despite being the lingua-franca of Turkish Kurds… Kurmanji is most close to Persian- Why? It is perhaps the legacy of past.

And the past is a relatively obscure religion called Yazidi… a proto-Islamic cult, which was declared heretic because of its syncretism, and belief on Malik Tawus (who in Christianity and Islam is considered the Satan)… trying to adopt lot of local Kurdish, Sufi beliefs, pagan beliefs and even early Christianity and Zoroastrian beliefs within its fold… Yazidis share a lot of beliefs with Islam… but then they were declared heretics, devil-worshippers and persecuted for centuries together… most of them converted to Islam… some still exist… in Iran passing themselves as Zoroastrian or Muslim.

Most of the Yazidis were Kurds... and their book of revelation was written in Kurmanji Kurdish… which maintains its purity till date and is spoken by Turkish Kurds… incidentally Kurmanji was very akin to Pahlavi (an earlier variant of Persian, it is often said that Kurmanji is closer to Pahlavi than Persian is).

So, when I tried talking to people in Persian… I was able to make them understand my point and understand their point… quite a bit… Kurds were happy talking to me … realizing that I am speaking something which is distantly Kurdish… and different from Arabic or Turkish. In fact in places like Diyarbakir, I was comfortable speaking Persian… Persian is also well understood in Dogubayazit… probably due to proximity to Iran.

Nevertheless, in West Turkey… I felt acute need to speak in Turkish… even before reaching to Turkey, I tried a few websites to learn phrases in Turkey… one of them Turkey Travel Planner was an excellent website… which gave a list of hundreds of Turkish phrases that I might find necessary to know… but a hundred phrase was too much to learn… I gave up… arguing that I would pick up a wee bit of Turkish on the way.

I was right… as soon as I left Istanbul… I confronted people who didn’t know English… touristy places like Selcuk, Pamukkale and Cappadocia were manageable… because I was directed to people who knew English, and there were many…. But Konya, Kahta, and south-east Turkey were rather difficult. Need was the mother… and I picked up few words here and there…

• Merhaba is a greeting (akin to Persian)…
• Gunayadin is “Good Morning”…
• Nerede is where (thus if one has to ask “where ABC Pension is”, you say “ABC Pansiyoon Nerede”)….
• Goodbye is Iyi akshamlar…
• Please is Lutfen (akin to Persian)…
• Evet/Hayir are Yes and No…
• Teshekkur is Thanks (akin to Persian)…
• Nasilineez is “How are you”…
• Iyiyim is “I am fine”…
• Kach para is “How much” (so if you have to ask how much is this for … ask (by indicating that thing) Kach Para)…
• Water is Su
• Gozel is Beautiful.

A few discoveries… due to Turkish influence in Arab world- especially on Egypt- a large number of nouns are same in Egyptian Colloquial and Arabic… words like Oda (room), Fehendim (a mark of respect, like Mr.), Bey (a beckon to anybody)… Duktoor (Doctor), Otobus (bus), Taman (OK)

Another one… Turkish colloquial has a high French influence… if you are confronted with an English word… and speak it with French gentleness (no teethal sound… soft pronunciation and ending with a long vowel)… you might be understood well…

I coped with these pointers in Turkey… anyone would.

And last pointer… both Turks and Kurds are very affable people… they would go out of their way to help you… and if you can’t speak anyone of the above… they would find an English speaker, somehow, to help you… so Relax!!!

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Sixteen: The magic of Cappadocia!!!

I woke up at around 6am… and after a bit of preparation, I left Shoestring… and started walking towards the market place… and then beyond it… to the Goreme Open Air Museum…

Cappadocia is a large area… one actually doesn’t need to buy tickets to see the place… everywhere around you the beautiful monuments of human labor and perseverance are littered around you.

The morning was breezy… I followed a dirt track, which was a horse trail… there are many ways of seeing the area- one is on horse-back following the horse trail… which takes you to different sites. One of them is the Goreme Open Air Museum

In the early morning time… the entire place was desolate… and eerie. Surrounded by hillocks all around, I could actually feel a chill in my spine… I had left the civilization behind… in front of me were a number of hills, carved in various shapes and sizes… and not a soul to accompany me. I was mesmerized with the beauty of the place… some structures had been converted into cattle sheds… some storage areas… but most of the structure were lying virgin… as if you could have just entered them and made them your dwelling place.

I entered a few structures… it was pitch dark, the emptiness all around and beyond instilled a sense of fear in my heart… I turned back… only to hear loud barking sound and a dog charging towards me.

Turkish dogs... especially those of Cappadocia are notoriously aggressive… and rabies-prone. To see a dog charging towards oneself is, therefore, a particularly dangerous site. I looked around… not a stone in sight… my brain was over-working and then I realized I had a weapon in my hand… my Sony Web-shot Camera… I raised my hands and gestured to the dog… if you come closer… I would strike… he stopped… looked at me… I looked back and then lowered my hand and walked away nonchalantly… he got the message- I don’t fear him… and wont attack till he doesn’t… he barked a few more times, unmoved… and then backed off.

Further ahead… there is the enclosed area of Goreme Open Air Museum… the ticket window wasn’t open… I looked at my watch; it was 8 am already… time flies when you are mesmerized by the beauty of this place. I started to go back… later, I read in one of the tourism brochure that Goreme Open Air Museum is a gem… with many old churches with lively frescoes… so colorful that one would think that they are freshly painted… I missed seeing them.

After a quick breakfast, I was ready for the guided tour… there are two tours on offer… the one I took… took me to smaller number of places… but they all were diverse in nature and were far-off from Goreme… the other tour was for nearby places… but as someone cautioned me… it became monotonous after a while… however, if I were going to stay in Goreme for more than a day… I would have taken both of them… you never have enough of Cappadocia… Shoestring also sold cheap Balloon flights… for about 150 USD… much less than what I was offered in Luxor for about 250 USD, a few years ago… it was a lean tourist season and I was getting good bargains… alas I was here for a day only… south-east Turkey beckoned me.

The tour comprised a young Canadian couple, 3 guys from Malaysia, an Iranian couple who used to live in Dubai… and an old Tamilian couple who had been living in UK for last twenty years (but despite sharing the same country, they were quite stand-offish)… and a beautiful Turkish guide Esraa… there was an air of innocence around her… and I took an immediate liking to her… and spent good time chatting and joking with her for rest of the tour.

The tour first drove us to a vantage called Goreme Panorama… it was a wonderful site… standing atop a cliff, you could see fairy chimneys all around… thousands of them… there was a time, when people like us carved them into houses… into refuge… when despair prevailed all around… these people were living in one of the most hostile parts of the world… desert-like climate, enemies butchering them all around… and they sought refuge in the mother nature.

I wondered if I can be overwhelmed more… I was wrong… and when the bus halted near Derinkuyu Underground city, which was a small unassuming place… announced by an equally unpretentious board that it was a UNESCO world heritage site… I wondered if I expected too much out of Cappadocia.

The early Christians were hounded by the Pagan kings, who considered the teaching of Christ and his followers, heretic. The early Christians, therefore, sought refuge in the wilderness of Cappadocia… fending for themselves with minimal agriculture in a barren desert-like land, where only a few shrubs grew... and by rearing cattle.

However, there plight did not end at this… the pagan armies entered even this region from time to time… and butchered them on regular basis… and it was then that they came with ingenuous idea of creating underground cities… where they used to seek refuge from the invading armies…

Once you enter the unassuming enclave… and start descending levels after levels… seeing granaries, churches, living quarters, ventilation shafts, kitchens, cattle pens, wells (the city received water from an underground river, which was often poisoned by the invaders)… you are overwhelmed by the extent and extant of the underground cities… it is amazing that humans created these and many more such underground cities… almost 100 meters deep… distributed over more than 10 levels…thousands of people lived inside them…

And while you go deeper and deeper… you feel the chill (literally and figuratively)… a claustrophobia… it is hard to imagine thousands of people trapped in such rat holes for weeks together… cooking, sleeping, partying, giving births and dying.

I closed my eyes… and thanked God that I was not born in the dark ages of religious intolerance… I was wrong… when I came out of the underground city… I saw an old Greek church… nothing had changed…

Musings from Anatolia, Part Three: Fighting the Flu

When I was planning my trip to Turkey, the swine flu was raging all over the world… I googled Turkey plus Swine Flu… and got some very scary results… that Turkey, which was a hub of global tourism and has relatively mediocre medical facilities, is also having a number of Swine Flu cases…

The thought of getting affected by Swine Flu in a distant land was frightening… I would be carrying limited cash… would know hardly anybody over there in Turkey… and lot of other perturbing thoughts…

When I landed in Istanbul Airport… I saw a commotion… people undergoing mandatory health checks, being distributed a lot of flyers about Swine Flu… having the symptoms and a list of health centers, where Swine Flu can be treated.

The doctors asked me if I had had fever in last few days… I said no (I was lying, a week ago I had a fever of 102 degrees F)… he checked a few more things… my pulse, my eyes, my tongue and then let me pass the immigration… I looked into the flyer… most of the centers that handled Swine Flu were in Ankara and Istanbul… almost none outside these two places… I was aware that intensive health facilities beyond these two places were practically missing in Turkey… and then in South East Turkey even the basic health facilities do not suffice.

When I was starting for Turkey… I checked with one of my doctor friends… what I do to save me from Swine Flu… he painted a grim picture… he advised- “Don’t go”... but then after seeing my resolve, he relented and gave me pointers to fight the Flu. He also advised me to carry a few masks, hand sanitizer, a few tablets, vitamins… and advised me to have a lot of citrus fruits… I later found out that these were all placebos at best… there was no Over-the-Counter cure against Swine Flu… one needs to get hospitalized, if he is affected by it.

My very first day in Turkey, in Istanbul to be precise… was scary… I started sneezing and coughing… I argued- it could be common cold… the weather has changed so drastically from Kandahar to Istanbul… but in heart of heart, I knew- it could be Swine Flu… slim chances of it being so, but if it was- God save me.

It was an existential question- whether I should take this sneezing and coughing seriously… or try my luck… finally I decided to try my luck… and went ahead with the rest of my journey…

On the road, I discovered my own ways and means to fight out with the flu…

I started consuming more and more coffee… I argued- Coffee has Caffeine, which fights common cold… and therefore should, logically speaking, fight Swine Flu too… nevertheless, coffee was a pretty expensive commodity… 1.5 to 2 Turkish Lira for one cup… so I purchased a number of coffee sachets and wherever I could afford one, I asked for a glass of hot water, and mixed a sachet… and lo! A hot cup of coffee was ready for me.

While in Istanbul, Yusuf told me about the magical properties of Turkish drink Salep… Salep is made by boiling a root tuber… it is slightly pungent in taste, and therefore added with some chocolate powder for taste- and practically, anywhere you go in Turkey, you would find small vendors selling hot cups of Salep everywhere… when I tasted it for the first time, the taste seemed awkward… but slowly I developed a taste for it… and then I relished drinking it… again and again. I don’t know whether Salep actually had a therapeutic effect or not… but each of its cup was wonderfully refreshing.

As during the entire trip, I had resorted to more and more of Doner Sandwich, which was nothing but a loaf of bread and a few chicken nuggets… I was missing out on balanced diet- fibers and most importantly vitamins. I, therefore, made it a habit to purchase a few fruits, wherever I could get them cheaply… Mediterranean Citrus came to my rescue… loaded with Vitamin C, they were an anti-dote for Cold… a few of them every day gave me required amount of vitamins to fight against the Cold.

I never refused a cup of tea… the hallmark of Turkish hospitality… I argued Tea is refreshing, and more importantly, a cup of hot fluid going into my body would keep me charged up to fight the Flu…

I caught up with as much sleep as possible… it was December, the days were smaller- in fact, by 6 pm it was already pitch dark and therefore I went to sleep after having a quick dinner at about 7 pm… and didn’t wake up till 6 in the morning… 10-11 hours of sleep did wonders to my immunity levels.

I don’t know how much these measures helped me in fighting the flu… but by the fifth day, when I had reached Cappadocia… my running nose stopped, coughing became less and less frequent… the flu was on the verge of its last stages… I sighed relief; for sure it was not Swine Flu… the rest of my journey was flawless….