Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Twenty Six: A stroll by the town
The holy pond was a kilometer away from Lizbon Guest House… I walked to the place… the pond is surrounded by a couple of mosques and a park, where all of Urfa seems to converge in the evening… the park is nice and refreshing… one can just sit on one of its bench and see the life passing-by… Urfa has a typical Arab feel about it… it seems so away from its Turkish antecedents…
The holy pond is a delight to watch… thousands and thousands of fishes in a small pond… all black in color… and when you throw morsels of food (it is believed that feeding these fishes brings good luck, and therefore every visitor- like me- makes it a point to by a 0.50 Lira fish food plate and feeds the fishes), the fishes jump over one another to grab the morsels… it is a great sight… it brought out affront the child in me… I almost laughed seeing the fishes behaving so…
A couple of steps away is the mosque, which houses the cave where Prophet Abraham was born… the father of monotheistic religion… and in another mosque beside the pond there is the place where he finally rested…
One of the most overpowering visuals of Urfa is its castle… it towers over the entire Urfa City… a perfect location to safeguard it from invaders… perched amidst the Byzantine and the Persian empire… the Arabs, the Seljuks and the Kurds… Urfa needed a formidable castle to protect it… and this was it…
Further down the road from the holy pond… the road forks into two going up… I wasn’t sure which one to take to reach atop the castle… I took the one on the left… and walked up. This road led me- not to the castle but to a hillock by its side- separated by a moat. On this hillock there is a Muslim cemetery… surrounded by a small little neighborhood. I walked in the cemetery looking at the graves… some of them were almost 300 years old… this place has been there for quite some time. I also strayed into the neighborhood… and saw another marriage ceremony… Kurds are a wee bit different from other Muslims, because they, like Hindus, believe in auspicious days of marriage – though not based on planetary positions but on traditions… perhaps it is a vestige of their pagan origin.
I watched this marriage from closer quarters than the other two… during the first two marriages… I was affected by the Turkish description of Kurds… unruly and inhospitable… now that description had tapered off… I found Kurds to be extremely hospitable and joyous people… I actually made friends with four well-dressed youth, who invited me to join the marriage… but I had to move on… I thanked them and started to walk downwards… to take the right turn at the fork, downhill.
The castle gives some very impressive views of the entire city... you can see some very panoramic views of Urfa and beyond… it was built in antiquity… when Urfa was Edessa a Greco-Roman city of profound importance… the city was ruled by the Pagans… the pagans were replaced by early Christians and then by the Muslims… during this changing over Urfa kept on losing its importance and sheen till it was brought into prominence by the Abbasids of Baghdad, who rebuilt this castle and brought it into its current form.
There are a number of evidences of the castle remote past… ruins of a pagan temple… facing east… with a holy pond in front. Then there were remains of ancient brickwork, which are also visible at the center of the castle… two huge pillars- typical Byzantine architecture…
It made me sit by one of the walls of the castle overlooking a 50 meters cliff… dangling my legs outwards… and think about how to analyze history… the more I see these historical heritage the more I am forced to think about ways and means of analyzing the history… the architecture, the masonry, the layouts… everything has profound implications… we can decipher the history through them… almost so accurately as if the events have occurred in the recent past…
It was time to move back… I walked down… and decided to take a stroll in the market of Urfa… they are famed because they have an Arab feel… somewhat like a souq… and one who has not seen a traditional Arab souq would be quite impressed with what he sees in Urfa… all around I could hear a commotion, smell of spices… and loud Kurdish and Arabic music… this place hardly seemed to be a Turkish town… as somebody told me later… barring the police and the army … nobody in Kurdish parts is a Turk.
I bought cassettes of Kurdish music… music, I believe, is one of the most lasting legacies one can carry with him from distant lands… Umm Koulthoum from Egypt… Reed Music from Konya… Maniza Daulat from Kabul and Pastho folk music from Kandahar… what else can one carry with him in this ephemeral world.
I reached back to Lizbon at 5 pm… by this time Aziz was back… with two of his other guests… one Stefan from Netherlands and his cousin… Aziz invited me to join them over a cup of tea…
Aziz had a fiery reputation… many swear by his candid nature and a no-nonsense attitude… while many others find him very pushy at times… the common complaint being that he insists that his guests should necessarily go on excursions with him… and if refused he can be very rude. When I came to Lizbon… I had my apprehensions… but after knowing Aziz more… these apprehensions just melted away.
Aziz definitely is very protective about his guests… and feels that if they do not go on excursions with him… they might be fooled… bringing bad name to Kurdistanis. He is a ferocious pro-Kurdistan nationalist… and doesn’t lose any opportunity to run down the Turkish government…. But definitely in his hearts of hearts he is a wonderful person and when he realized that I was on a shoestring budget… he gave me a lot of insights to travel around the place the cheapest possible way… he lamented that if I had come early in the morning I could have joined the Dutch cousins and could have seen Mardin, Gobelkiteppe and Harran for just 25 dollars per head.
I, too lamented the same…
The holy pond is a delight to watch… thousands and thousands of fishes in a small pond… all black in color… and when you throw morsels of food (it is believed that feeding these fishes brings good luck, and therefore every visitor- like me- makes it a point to by a 0.50 Lira fish food plate and feeds the fishes), the fishes jump over one another to grab the morsels… it is a great sight… it brought out affront the child in me… I almost laughed seeing the fishes behaving so…
A couple of steps away is the mosque, which houses the cave where Prophet Abraham was born… the father of monotheistic religion… and in another mosque beside the pond there is the place where he finally rested…
One of the most overpowering visuals of Urfa is its castle… it towers over the entire Urfa City… a perfect location to safeguard it from invaders… perched amidst the Byzantine and the Persian empire… the Arabs, the Seljuks and the Kurds… Urfa needed a formidable castle to protect it… and this was it…
Further down the road from the holy pond… the road forks into two going up… I wasn’t sure which one to take to reach atop the castle… I took the one on the left… and walked up. This road led me- not to the castle but to a hillock by its side- separated by a moat. On this hillock there is a Muslim cemetery… surrounded by a small little neighborhood. I walked in the cemetery looking at the graves… some of them were almost 300 years old… this place has been there for quite some time. I also strayed into the neighborhood… and saw another marriage ceremony… Kurds are a wee bit different from other Muslims, because they, like Hindus, believe in auspicious days of marriage – though not based on planetary positions but on traditions… perhaps it is a vestige of their pagan origin.
I watched this marriage from closer quarters than the other two… during the first two marriages… I was affected by the Turkish description of Kurds… unruly and inhospitable… now that description had tapered off… I found Kurds to be extremely hospitable and joyous people… I actually made friends with four well-dressed youth, who invited me to join the marriage… but I had to move on… I thanked them and started to walk downwards… to take the right turn at the fork, downhill.
The castle gives some very impressive views of the entire city... you can see some very panoramic views of Urfa and beyond… it was built in antiquity… when Urfa was Edessa a Greco-Roman city of profound importance… the city was ruled by the Pagans… the pagans were replaced by early Christians and then by the Muslims… during this changing over Urfa kept on losing its importance and sheen till it was brought into prominence by the Abbasids of Baghdad, who rebuilt this castle and brought it into its current form.
There are a number of evidences of the castle remote past… ruins of a pagan temple… facing east… with a holy pond in front. Then there were remains of ancient brickwork, which are also visible at the center of the castle… two huge pillars- typical Byzantine architecture…
It made me sit by one of the walls of the castle overlooking a 50 meters cliff… dangling my legs outwards… and think about how to analyze history… the more I see these historical heritage the more I am forced to think about ways and means of analyzing the history… the architecture, the masonry, the layouts… everything has profound implications… we can decipher the history through them… almost so accurately as if the events have occurred in the recent past…
It was time to move back… I walked down… and decided to take a stroll in the market of Urfa… they are famed because they have an Arab feel… somewhat like a souq… and one who has not seen a traditional Arab souq would be quite impressed with what he sees in Urfa… all around I could hear a commotion, smell of spices… and loud Kurdish and Arabic music… this place hardly seemed to be a Turkish town… as somebody told me later… barring the police and the army … nobody in Kurdish parts is a Turk.
I bought cassettes of Kurdish music… music, I believe, is one of the most lasting legacies one can carry with him from distant lands… Umm Koulthoum from Egypt… Reed Music from Konya… Maniza Daulat from Kabul and Pastho folk music from Kandahar… what else can one carry with him in this ephemeral world.
I reached back to Lizbon at 5 pm… by this time Aziz was back… with two of his other guests… one Stefan from Netherlands and his cousin… Aziz invited me to join them over a cup of tea…
Aziz had a fiery reputation… many swear by his candid nature and a no-nonsense attitude… while many others find him very pushy at times… the common complaint being that he insists that his guests should necessarily go on excursions with him… and if refused he can be very rude. When I came to Lizbon… I had my apprehensions… but after knowing Aziz more… these apprehensions just melted away.
Aziz definitely is very protective about his guests… and feels that if they do not go on excursions with him… they might be fooled… bringing bad name to Kurdistanis. He is a ferocious pro-Kurdistan nationalist… and doesn’t lose any opportunity to run down the Turkish government…. But definitely in his hearts of hearts he is a wonderful person and when he realized that I was on a shoestring budget… he gave me a lot of insights to travel around the place the cheapest possible way… he lamented that if I had come early in the morning I could have joined the Dutch cousins and could have seen Mardin, Gobelkiteppe and Harran for just 25 dollars per head.
I, too lamented the same…
1 comment:
One should also see the huge river fishes every evenings beside Shringeri Mutt in Karnataka..you can also feed them and people who come to Shingeri make it a point to visit the river and feed the fish. Some say there is a particular fish which has a nose ring of gold put by someone some years back !!
Post a Comment