News From the Interzone: Turkey, circa January 2001
I believe that my last group e-mail was over 6 months ago (Around January '01) sent from the old city of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), once home to the father of history Herodotus. So the events that follow date from around January 2001.
Halicarnassus was famous for the massive edifice of the Mausoleum, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Little remains on the site today save for some foundation stones and parts of the one subterranean funeral chamber; most of the stones were removed and rebuilt as the magnificent fortress of the knights of St. John in Bodrum harbor. The marvellous friezes from the Mausoeum are of course now on display in the British museum. Halicarnassus was at the center of the Roman province of Caria and its history was usually linked with the surrounding region, particularly Rhodes.
Like most of the resorts of the Mediterrnanean Bodrum must be tourist hell at the height of The Season (July/August); indeed for years I had avoided it having heard what a tourist nightmare it had become.... but like most tourist places it became popular because it is essentially a very cool place. Indeed off-season Bodrum is really quite a pleasant place- far from the Madding Crowd there were many nights in December-January (I stayed there for 5 weeks) when it was like a ghost town. There were a few core people around, mostly locals and rich Stanbulites escaping from the city, plus yachties (there is a major marina there)... that was true of course until Bayram ('Religious Holiday'- this being the big one- the week following on Ramadan, when most Turks take ten days off to indulge themselves after their abstinence). I met some very interesting people there during this time: German expats, musicians, Turkish cybergeeks, recovering addicts, sailors, fishermen, American evangelists, Turkish fashion designers and their ilk. I was fortunate to get turned on to a really excellent restaurant (Kapi on the harbor near the mosque) and I befriended its owners and their friends. During Bayram they had live music (as virtually every bar in Bodrum) and it was quite good generally. We had a great New Year's party with Turkish folk (Halk) music in a little place under the castle... a wicked windstorm blew in off the Med, just for Midnight creating an incredible visage of the castle swathed by enormous waves, with the moon shining through the clouds over the town... very cool...
The time came to move on, and I set out once more for Istanbul. It was quiet in Bodrum--too quiet--it was a nice place to pass the holidays, but I got the itch. I had wanted to do a little sightseeing on my way north and stopped briefly in Seljuk, but I hadn't quite realized that it was still the dead of winter and the temperature dropped radically when I got off the Med and into Anatolia, so I fled north to Istanbul stopping only long enough to visit the Seljuk museum containing Ephesus stuff and the famous many-breasted cult statue of Artemis from the site of the Artemision (another ancient wonder). Before Artemis, the site had been sacred to Cybele and indeed has been a centre of earth mother worship and fertility cults since Neolithic times. Curiously enough in relatively modern times some divinatory thaumaturge placed the birthplace of the virgin Mary in Seljuk and there is a shrine there which is visited regularly by pilgrims, the religiously curious and gullible tourists. Well back in Istanbul it was rainy and cold, so I spent a lot of time indoors studying Turkish, writing, going to movies and searching with friends for the finest eating establishments that the city had to offer (and indeed there are many). So one day I was invited to go to a party in Ankara for my friend Jo's birthday. I left Istanbul on January 22, planning on returning 4 days later. Little did I realize that I wouldn't return for 3 months! :) Ah well that is the road the way I like it. Of course I didn't properly prepare and left a few important things undone in Istanbul but so be it...