Near Eastern Summer Folding Closed

Why, I’m sitting at a table on a restaurant’s outdoor patio in a sun swept beach town on the coast of Turkey, sipping a cold pilsner, gazing upon the Mediterranean’s emerald and languid waters, resting up a bit after having spent a slice of an endless afternoon snorkeling around an island roughly three hundred yards offshore, upon which stands a remarkably well-preserved 13th century castle, hushed and soaking the soft October sun into its walls, the rays held deep in its pale stony breast like an old man clutching faded love letters, and—taking another sip of pilsner—remembering yesterday’s trip into the mountains of Turkey, ragged bluffs of gnarled limestone, pocked and weathered like weary clouds that hardened and drifted to earth, the car snaking along narrow roads like hallways through small villages, en route to the ruins of a Roman village with basilicas, a narrow Roman road winding past rock dwellings and emptied tombs, and a first century Zeus cult temple with broken tile mosaic floors, its tall, wind-scraped gray pillars still reaching to uphold the blue heavens, where nearby I dropped a pebble into a rock hewn well, listening to a deep, haunting splash, the same echo heard by pagans, Christians, Muslims and Turks, for thousands of years. And you? Oh yes, I’ve heard about the terrible financial times plaguing our good old home country. Firing the maid must have been draining, and then having to teach yourself—excuse me [“Yes, waiter, I’d like the eggplant and lamb kabob, and the lovely fresh tomato, cucumber and parsley salad. Baked the bread here? How grand. Oh why not: bring another pilsner. I’ll just have a brisk swim afterward before sprucing up for cocktails…”]—anyway, what were you saying? Oh yes, the downward spiral. Well, don’t fret. This is an old story. Remember the S&L rescue funding in the 1980's under Reagan? The meltdown stemming from, wouldn't you know it, loose regulation and sleepy oversight? So buck up! The government will have the taxpayers socialize the losses, that American-style socialism…. We’d come to the beach resort of Kizkalesi, Turkey, for a four-night vacation after Ramadan. Most of the teachers at school, like us, fled Aleppo for elsewhere. Some went to Istanbul; some went to the underground city of Cappadocia. We were a caravan of fifteen or so cars from either the school or the ICARDA research center in Tel Hadiya, husbands, wives, children. It had been raining hard a few days before we left, torrential downpours flooding streets. Ramadan lasts a month, charted by the lunar calendar (so the dates are different every year), and is marked by fasting from dawn (this includes children as young as Carrie’s 5th grade class), then eating continuously at night. There are men assigned to roam the neighborhoods banging a drum-like thing at around two in the morning, announcing it’s time to eat again. I’ve never seen these creatures, only heard them. It’s a strange syncopated rhythm they’re pounding out; awakened, I lay there naturally trying to figure the time signature. But every day the call to prayer sounds from the minarets around seven in the evening, breaking of the fast. Cigarettes are lit. The streets soon empty, as folks arrive at the homes of friends, family, relatives, carrying with them cellophane plates of food to share. The fast is over, the feasting commences. If you had sold your watch, say, to fill up your SUV’s gas tank, but find yourself suddenly stranded in a Middle Eastern city during Ramadan and don’t know the time, you could bet it’s around six-thirty, quarter to seven by noting the reckless driving and wild, maniacal bulging eyes of starving folks racing the streets to their first meal of the day. They will run you down and no one will care. These people are hungry. Plus, they haven’t smoked all day, and rattle in their bucket seats. Go ahead, squawk your case to the judge from your rickety wheelchair during Ramadan; chances are, the judge won’t hear you for the growling in his belly, and distracted with sniffing his cigarette stained fingertips. Then again, if you are on the streets after the fast is broken, you may witness one of the kinder, endearing rituals of Ramadan: the fasting each day is a remembering those less fortunate who have little to eat, living for a day how they live, and so you may see a small child flagging down a lone taxi who is still on the clock; the child leans into the window and hands the driver a plate of food. Or a young girl brings a bottle of water out to an old woman to drink. Walking through our neighborhood in the early evening, row after row of four-story apartment buildings, you hear very little, packs of birds gathered and chatting in trees, a distant horn, but through the quiet you will note very distinctly the sounds of forks tapping plates: everyone and their brother, literally, is eating. And they are going at it. Early evening is warm, the air damp and fresh from the rain, and all feast on wide balcony patios. Clink, tap-tap, clink clink, scrape tap clink clink clink tap clink echo down the darkening neighborhood canyons. When morning unfolded the next day, we were off to Turkey. … Geologically and geographically, Syria and Turkey share similar terrains at their borders. The slate gray hills rise gradually and stretch low, sucking the glaring sun. But it seems another world when driving into Turkey. For one, few women you see are veiled in black; in general, colors are drab in Syria (or maybe we haven’t been here long enough to detect variations of tone). Many wear scarves around their heads as tradition dictates, but the colors are lively and bright. The old men wear brown blazers and sport the Turkish caps you’d see keeping the heads of men dry in Scotland. The buildings in Turkey flash sunny blues and yellows. Our drive from Aleppo to our beach town was four to five hours as the crow flies, but another two hours tacked on just to get across the border (note to self: devote another blog entirely to that two-hour comedy of dull, trudging bureaucracy of customs staged at the border; refrain from attempts at parody, for the reality of that border crossing’s inefficiency will swamp your art). We drove past plowed fields, gently rolling hills. Whizzing down a six-lane superhighway, I gaze out upon hamlets nestled around a mountain. We pass Tarsus, and I look around at the rocks and trails, note shadow and the slant of light on the worn hills, and know that I’m seeing the same colors and contour the apostle Paul saw growing up before wandering the old road to Damascus. There are Roman ruins all over the land. We passed lush and rocky canyons cupping ruins of golden stone aqueducts. Peering south toward Lebanon and Jordan you’d cast a long look over land where the Canaanites roamed (called Phoenicians by Greeks) long ago. Five thousand years ago, along with the Israelites who migrated to Phoenicia, another Semitic people settled in western Syria, the Aramaeans. Aramaic, the language Christ spoke, is still part of the liturgy of the Syrian Orthodox Church, and is the lingua franca in Maalula, a village north of Damascus. In eastern Syria a thousand years earlier lived the Babylonians, and after them along the Tigris River trekked the Assyrians (where Syria gets its name). Alexander the Great turned the lands from a Persian into a Roman empire, and the eastern Roman Church, Byzantium, ruled until the strong Omayyad clan of Islam swept through. In the Levant, this whole region, you can take nearly any road, follow it a ways and come upon the haunts of dead cities, emptied, silent as rock, but present in the lone standing facade of an ancient church …. Hotel Hantur has small rooms, but the balconies look out on the sea. Days were spent reading and swimming. Early mornings I swam before breakfast, a ritual when waking near bodies of water (I remember the surprised delight a friend evinced when I went swimming after Carrie and I’d spent the night at her place on Stinson Beach; she’d never thought of doing a morning swim in the Pacific’s cold waters. Are you kidding? I thought: what better way than an ocean swim to sweep away the hangover cobwebs the gin demons spin). I dearly love the sharp chill of our Pacific Ocean. Lake George’s waters are refreshing and beautiful. Skinnydipping the rivers and crystal streams running through Idaho and Montana sketch beloved memories. But floating and flapping in the sea in Turkey I must offer as a sacred act. One quiet morning alone in the Mediterranean, the castle beyond, a few dogs playing on the beach, I nearly brined myself because I stayed swimming too long; I just couldn’t think of a sufficient reason to come in. Nothing came to mind. The water was salty and perfectly mild in temperature, cool and pleasant, easy to float. A quiet morning, I looked below and watched my feet slowly, delicately kick. After a glorious dip in the Mediterranean under these ancient skies, life could only go downhill from here. When you find my dead bloated remains bobbing off the rocky coast of Cyprus, soulless but smiling, eye sockets sucked clean, just pack, bottle and shove me on the shelf with the other pickled vegetables. But turn off the TV, pour an aged scotch, and light a candle for me if you hear someone playing a piano from a high windowed room at twilight. … During the evenings we would all gather on the roofed porch at the hotel for beers, gin and tonics, and wine. The highpoint of working overseas at an international school is gathering friendships with people from all over the world. Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Scotland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Iraq, Jordan…and these folks who’ve been on the circuit for awhile have been everywhere. Conversations are often peppered with “Well, when I was in the Congo…” or “I remember one night in China” or “Yes, it was that way in Yemen also…” One of our favorites is a stoutly gentleman originally from Belgium, a man named Koen, who’s probably third up from the top at the ICARDA research center. He’s spent the last thirty years traveling the globe, speaks at least (what we’ve counted) five languages. High up at ICARDA, one of the most respected organizations in Syria, but he he’ll drop by your beach towel in the afternoon, “I haven’t seen you in a while, how are you anyway? Good I hope?” I’d driven back with him from the mountain town of Kasab a few weeks back, a weekend trip to the Syrian coast, with his son, Nick, and an ICARDA intern from Massachusetts, Greg. Unverified hypothesis lacking sufficient data: the higher up a man is at a company or organization, the faster he drives. Koen drove like a man possessed back to Aleppo from Kasab, streaming by apple orchards laden with fruit, tiny stone houses with grape vines strewn across trellises, the plumpest, firmest, and juiciest grapes I’ve ever eaten. Old women and children scatter as we barrel along. At one point his son, Nick, began muttering the f-word. “What is it?” Koen asked. Nick admits, “Oh, I think I left my trousers back at the hotel.” Koen looks straight ahead, then turns wildly toward his son and rages in Italian, hands flying in every direction. Nick turns away. “Come on, Dad, it happens.” Koen then looks over his shoulder at me. “I say to him, did you forget anything? He says, ‘No.’ You looked everywhere? ‘Yes’ And this is what I get.” Nick tries to call Mary, Koen’s secretary, an Armenian woman who’d traveled with her family to Kasab. “Maybe she hasn’t left yet,” Nick adds, punching numbers. He gets Mary, who agrees to look. Ten minutes later she calls Nick on his cell. “Oh thanks, Mary!” Nick sings. “Thank you so much. Yes, just bring them to the office tomorrow. Thanks again….” Koen’s got both hands on the steering wheel. “Great,” he remarks dryly. “Tomorrow morning my secretary’s going to walk in carrying my son’s trousers. What the hell are they going to think….” …. Sitting at breakfast, a family staying at the hotel opens the side doors to their van parked alongside. Turkish folk music begins pouring out. The father, a rotund man in a blue golf shirt, shorts and cap, rises and begins to dance as a soft breeze rolls through. His arms open and curl out toward the sky, as though he is Atlas shouldering the world. He steps lightly to the rhythm, bouncing a bit, and, slowing, turns, holding arms aloft. His daughter, or niece, joins him. She is a strikingly beautiful woman, bronze skin, dark eyebrows, and piercing brown eyes. You keep looking at her, wondering if you’ve stumbled upon a special race of unearthly beautiful people having emerged from some hidden mountain valley. Arms aloft in a crescent moon, she lightly moves across the porch. At one point she pauses, then begins turning ever so slowly, and at each beat she gently throws her hips out, then smiles, laughs, and spins around. Fingers twirl, the old music sings, she dances. Every red-blooded male at breakfast that morning had twenty-five years shaved off his life. For hours afterward I had trouble completing sentences. Walked into a parked car. As we watched, a weather-beaten, bent and peasant old women carrying baskets of figs creaked by on the street. She probably celebrated her 100th birthday back when I was assuring my Dad I’d try riding without training wheels. She had a lined, bulbous face, her dull eyes almost disappearing in the rubble of her flesh. She drifted closer as the music drifted, and suddenly was on the porch. Set her figs on a table. The dancing man welcomed her, and her eyes sparkled. She raised her arms in the shape of the crescent moon, one of the symbols (with a star) of the Turkish flag, and she danced, heavily but gracefully, almost imperceptibly moving through the steps. The hotel owner watched with glee. “This is Turkish music!” he announced proudly. “All music beautiful! American music, African music, Turkish, all beautiful!” He smiled and looked on as the morning opened like a flower. ….What could possibly constitute the highest honor bestowed upon me? The late Jeff Buckley’s mother handing me his Telecaster guitar he used when he made his fame at Sin-e in New York? No. John Updike begging me to help edit a new collection of his stories? Nah. The New Yorker magazine leaving messages on my cell hoping to serialize this blog? Hm. No, those things would of course be lovely. But the highest honor came when the husband of our upper school assistant principal, Roberto, asked me to help him prepare a dinner in celebration of his 50th birthday. Roberto is an Italian chef by trade, has worked restaurants and catering businesses, grew up in a small village by an Italian mountain lake. A herd of teachers were on a hike in Tel Hadiya, a hill in an agricultural region where the research center sits. From the hill this one early evening I was watching a lightning storm drift its way across western Syria. Roberto knelt down next to me and proposed: it would be Roberto and his wife, the head of the school and wife, and Carrie and me. I was to sous chef. A six-course meal, including roasted lamb with rosemary, simmered in a stock that had been cooking all afternoon, seafood risotto with lightly sautéed fresh fish, roasted potatoes, baked whole onion with balsamic vinegar, cheeses, chorizo from Spain, roasted red peppers doused with Italian olive oil. And the wine. Let’s get our bearings here: an Italian chef who loves food, loves wine, and it’s his 50th birthday celebration. Do you think the wine he’d chosen for the occasion might be phenomenal? Vintage Italian bottles (plural) that he’d been saving perhaps? We arrive at around 1:30 in the afternoon, Roberto shuffles me into the kitchen and tosses me an apron, hands me a knife, and we rock and roll. “Chefs must have good wine,” he announces. He opens a bottle, lets it breathe, and pours us a couple glasses to season our cooking spirit. The women in the living room hear the glorious cork pop. Suddenly they are hovering at our lair’s entrance. “We know there’s wine opened,” Roberto’s wife says. He pours the women glasses. We return to our preparations. Then Roberto, head chef, lunges for the bottle, and begins refilling our wine glasses full. “Quick,” he whispers, “before zey return!” Afternoon turned to twilight, to evening, folded closed like the heart of a dark flower. No one thought of leaving. Hours drift by, and we move to the balcony to wait for stars. Aleppo is quiet as Roberto pours icy homemade limoncello. I pick up my guitar and play.