October 2012 Mardin, Diyarbakir, Sanliurfa Turkey

Rikki flew from New York to Istanbul on Friday October 12 and I joined her from Frankfurt on Sunday afternoon. We had room 302 at Legends hotel, with a balcony with a view of the Sea of Marmara. Rikki and I went down the hill to visit our friend Mustafa in his Troy Rug Shop, and we met his new assistant, Hukbirtie from Afghanistan. We took the ferry from Eminonu to Haydarpasa and looked into the train station there.

We returned on the ferry and got on the tram up to Taksim to eat dinner at our favorite restaurant, Zencifil. It’s vegetarian with many options on the menu, and they make their own gelato. Back to Mustafa’s. He was waiting to have beer with us.

Monday we had breakfast in the hotel’s top floor dining room. We watched the seagulls on the roofs below us, the boats on the sea, and the Princes Islands in the distance.

We spent a little time at Mustafa’s, then went to the Ugur leather shop where I was measured for a new leather jacket. I had wanted a replacement for the black one I bought there years ago, but they talked me in to a slightly different style and promised to spiff up my old jacket. We took the tram up to Taksim, walked to our friends’ agency, ONK, and had lunch with Nimet and Hatice. Went back down hill to the Spice Market where we floated along with the crowds, and we bought a red plastic bucket to wash our clothes in. The bathroom sink at Legends is very very small. The Rustem Pasha mosque entrance is right off the alley around the Spice Market and we went up to admire the incredible tiles on the walls. Walked back up to Mustafa’s, had some beer, and went over to the Tamara restaurant for dinner (lahmacun).

Mustafa's shop is a meeting place for tourists who enjoy his company and for other vendors working in the Arasta Bazaar.  We like to start the day with a visit to him and his assistant, Hukburtie, and end the day with another visit. 

Tuesday Mustafa told us there was a big market in Yesilkoy. We took the train there, but it turned out the market happened on Wednesday. Yesilkoy is filled with Ottoman houses and it’s right on the water. In fact it was so warm that there were people swimming. We saw a display of little fish outside a restaurant and we went up to their family room and ordered a plate of fried anchovies (hamsi) and rocket salad. The woman in the kitchen had to clean every little fish so it took quite a while, but they were beautiful and delicious when they arrived. It was almost more than we could eat.

Hamsi (photo from Turkey For Life)



 We walked along the shore and back to the train station. Took the tram up to the stop by the Grand Bazaar and wandered around in there. Went down to Buhara restaurant for lahmacun and meze. When we got back to the hotel we saw that our red bucket was gone. The cleaning staff must have thought it was theirs. I went out on the the back stairwell and retrieved it.

Wednesday we started our day with a visit to Mustafa’s. He was trying to find the right size sumac carpet for a customer by calling around to his carpet colleagues. We took the tram out to the airport (about an hour) and flew southeast to Mardin. We’d made our flight arrangements on Turkish Air and rental car reservations through Rock Valley Travel in Urgup. We’ve used them for several trips and they are very good. We picked up our car from National at the airport and Rikki drove us into town. The roads were all torn up and we could not figure out where our hotel was. After going this way and that, we parked near the hotel, but the road between the parking lot and the hotel was a marketplace with donkeys, baskets of produce, and people shopping.

 I left Rikki in the car and walked down to the hotel, the Antik Tatlidede Otel. I’d booked it on booking.com. They had almost all rooms available, and the manager wanted to give us his best suite, but it had only one double bed in it. I said no, we had to have two separate beds. He said “no! you sleep this way and she sleeps that way”, putting his hands under one cheek and then the other. The only room with more than one bed had five beds, and I took it. The problem of getting the car down to the hotel remained. I wrote a note for Rikki and handed it to the hotel assistant, but he ran off without it. Meantime it had gotten dark and Rikki was surrounded by men looking at the car and a boy who kept asking for ‘feesh’. Rikki couldn’t figure out how to lock the car doors, so the boy was leaning inside the car, and the hotel assistant suddenly got into the passenger seat and said “otel”. Rikki had no idea who he was and did not want to go anywhere with him. He called back to the hotel and the manager handed me the phone to tell Rikki she should go with the man. The boy with the ‘feesh’ was taken care of and by backing up and going forward many times, they turned the car into the narrow angle down through the market. The only food the hotel had available was a breakfast, so we ordered that. I went to a little store that sold beer. Only beer. The hotel manager had a fit when we wanted to have the beer with our food on their terrace, so we ate in our room. We couldn’t finish everything, and during the night I heard some commotion. It was cats that had come in through the window, knocked over the bread basket, eaten the cheese, and were happily sleeping on Rikki’s clothes.

Next day after a breakfast very similar to our dinner, we went out to find the bazaar. No one seemed to know where it was, but it turned out to be right below the hotel, and it was a warren of alleys winding down the hill. I bought a pair of earrings and a pen knife and Rikki bought some soap. We found the restaurant Cergis Murat Konagi founded by Ebru Baybara Demir,a woman who had been our guide in this area many years ago. The menu features regional recipes and the setting is spectacular, looking over the vast plains below the city. You almost feel as if you are looking at the ocean. We had a tray of cold mezes, onion/yogurt soup, and cold ginger spiced tea.
     After lunch we drove 3 hours east to Sanliurfa, or Urfa, where we had reservations (thanks to a Turkish friend) at the Ogretmen Evi (teacher’s home). Our room had a balcony looking over the city. We had to walk here and there looking for beer, but then the shop was right around the corner. We had our beer and some snacks on the balcony.

Breakfast in the cafeteria of the Ogretmen Evi was cafeteria style, with cheese, olives, tomatoes, yogurt, etc., and simit bread. In front of the hotel we caught a bus going downtown and walked along to the covered bazaar. The older men in Urfa wore shades of grey sweaters, shirts, and loose pants, with a lavender or purple scarf loosely draped on the head.
The women also wore the scarf and long glittering coats. Some of the women had tattoos on their faces. It was so exotic I couldn’t stop looking at them. We sat in a little plaza filled with motor bikes as the men washed their feet before going into the mosque. We were worn out and hadn’t had lunch. A boy came along with a tray of sweet simits and we each bought one out of his dirty little hand. We hung around in the bazaar some more, bought soap, scarves. At one of the outdoor restaurants nearby I asked if they could serve me a vegetable plate. Yes, we agreed on grilled eggplant, tomatoes, onions and rice. When my plate came it had a big skewer of meat in the center. I took it over to the cook and asked him what happened to our agreement. Confusion followed, and one of the men, began pressing his finger on each piece of vegetable on my plate, saying I could just eat this and this and this and put the meat on Rikki’s plate. Anyway, they took the meat off my plate and took some of the charge off my bill. We found a bus that went back to the hotel. There was a loud wedding on the third floor, but up on our balcony we heard nothing.

On Saturday we set out for Diyarbakir. A few miles from Urfa we drove to an archeological site, Golbeklitepe. A 12,000 year old temple was recently found there by the farmer who owns the land. All the stone structures were underground so you view them from a walkway around the pit. The farmer is still sitting there with his two dogs.
     We stopped for lunch in Siverek and explored the bazaar there. The outskirts of Diyarbakir were depressing: awful 8-storey apartments and torn up roads. Our map was useless. Finally we found the Azizoglu Otel in the center of town. This had been recommended by our friend’s mother who had a friend in Diyarbakir, and it was perfect for women travelers (80 TL/$45). We had two beds and a couple of windows that looked out at the ancient city walls. We went out for a walk and were approached by Ali who offered to guide us. He took us into the Ulu Cami, the vast mosque.

We hung around with him a bit and then parted ways. We found a beer store a couple of doors down from the hotel. We sat on the edge of my bed looking at a lightning storm over the city walls.

The hotel served an excellent buffet breakfast which included hot lentil soup with bowls of spices. There was a hilarious prank show on the TV, and the waiters and we 3 or 4 guests were all laughing. We went back to the Ulu Cami to soak it in.

We wandered around the bazaar, visited some other mosques, and walked down to a section of the wall that was supposed to be a bit of a rough area. A group of about 8 children began following us and we could not get rid of them. Occasionally an adult would shoo them away but then they’d come back like flies. We wanted to find a Syrian church and we had to go down one of the narrow alleys. I was so nervous about these children that when we got to the door of the churchyard and a child tried to point out the doorbell to me, I jumped away from him. The door was opened and we were invited into a large courtyard and into the small church. Here the art is Christian. When the caretaker saw that we were really interested, he opened up another room, a hallway of arches.

Down another alley we came upon a gathering of men singing Kurdish narrative songs. We were given chairs. One man would sing for about 5 minutes, and when he finished, another would sing. Tea was served and everyone disappeared. We had lahmacun for lunch and again for dinner. There was a terrific rain and lightning storm while we were having dinner.
    A few miles outside of Diyarbakir we stopped at the 10-arch Roman bridge over the Tigris, built around 1000. We wanted to see the Malabada bridge, the longest single span stone bridge in the world (also Roman, 1147) and had to drive about 40 miles out of our way. The bridge was having some work done, so there was scaffolding and we could not walk on it, but we sat and regarded it from under a grape trellis. A glass of tea appeared, and a kitten.

We had to go back through Diyarbakir to go to Mardin and the traffic was awful. We stopped at a gas station to ask directions, and a man invited us to follow his car out to the highway. He didn’t make any allowances for us, driving in and out of traffic rapidly. Rikki is such a good driver that she was able to keep up with him – I’m sure he was impressed.

Back in Mardin we found the Ogretmen Evi at the bottom of the steep hill that the old city occupies. It must have been a fine place in its day, but all around it now are new 4-storey apartment buildings, and on the one small spot of old pasture land nearby, a small herd of goats were grazing. They hadn’t gotten our reservation but they had a room for us, a poorly designed room with a tiny window. We went back up the hill to eat dinner at the Cergis Murat Konagi.



Assyrian pottery

 Next morning we checked out of the moribund Ogretmen Evi and went uphill to visit the archeological museum. There was some pottery there that looked EXACTLY like our mother’s pottery, but it was Assyrian. Then we went to the Mardin City museum. This was opened just a few years ago, and the pride in the historical artifacts of the Mardin area is obvious. There are tools, fabrics, clothing, photographs – things that were not remarkable in the past but are now gone from life. Downstairs there was a temporary photography show of the works of Ara Guler who has been traveling around Turkey for many decades.Everywhere in Mardin were shepherds standing with small flocks of sheep. Tomorrow starts Bayram when the sheep will be sacrificed.

We bought more laurel oil soap and I bought a little copper disk with the picture of the goddess Shamaran stamped on it. We bought it from the man who made it, and he had hundreds of different items celebrating Shamaran. Down to her chest she is a woman and from the chest down she is a dragon. For lunch we had lahmacun and ayran. We returned the car and got the 4:45 flight to Istanbul and checked in with Mustafa. Legends hotel had kicked us out of our room and given us one without a view. Their excuse was that another customer had offered a higher price to have our room.

Wednesday morning we went up to the breakfast room at Legends and there was our cousin Lille from Albuquerque NM. We knew she would be there, but we had not seen her for about 5 years. She’d already been in Istanbul for almost a week and today she wanted to return to the Grand Bazaar to exchange a bedspread she had bought. We could see by the reactions of all the men we encountered that she had made quite a hit in the city. We took her to the Spice Bazaar then had lunch at Tamara. We visited Gunduz who is working in one of Jennifer’s Hamam shops in the Arasta Bazaar. During the course of the day Lille bought an organic cotton blanket, a silk carpet, a kilim, wool saddle bags, etc. Mustafa said he feels he’s known Lille for 50 years, saying “and I’m 43”.

Lille left early the next morning for the States. Bayram took hold of the city. The Grand Bazaar and almost all shops (except for Arasta Bazaar) closed. Restaurants closed. Many museums closed. This was not a good time to be a tourist in Istanbul.

On Saturday the news of Hurricane Sandy’s approach to the east coast of the US sounded bad; it was expected to hit on Monday. We were able to change Rikki’s flight from Monday to Sunday. I could not change mine (which stopped over in Frankfurt) without paying something like $1000, so I stayed. On Sunday I went to the Rahmi Koc Industrial museum where they have old trains, boats, cars, a submarine, small planes, early appliances. Waiting for the ferry I had a fish sandwich on the piers (grilled fish fillet, onion, lemon served from a boat).

In the late afternoon I went to the Kadirga Hamami – my first time for a Turkish bath experience. Jennifer had told me it would be just a flat fee (50 TL; about $28) so I didn’t have to think about tips. They pushed and pulled me in the right direction. The other visitors were wearing underpants, but I was not, so I felt extra vulnerable, but the masseuse woman said “no problem”. I poured hot water over myself for a long time, then she rubbed my skin while I lay on the marble slab, then back to the water basin and back to the slab. When I was excused, I wrapped in my cotton peshtamel and sat in a chair and drank the bottle of water they gave me. I felt like I was returning from outer space.

I had a date to have dinner with Mustafa and his family at his shop, and there they all were waiting. The two boys and Hukburtie went upstairs to eat, and Mustafa, his wife Hamide, their daughter Esra, and I sat downstairs. Mustafa’s customer friends from Poland arrived and joined us. Hamide had brought her home-made baklava. I left around 9:30 and next morning got up at 1:30 to get ready to leave for New York.

It took me six days to get home to Brooklyn, thanks to Superstorm Sandy.