My Tan Lines Have Faded, But My Memories Haven't

Although more than two weeks have passed since my return from our five-week journey through Turkey and Cyprus, I remain unable to tie my thoughts together with words. The trip stuffed my head with memories and experiences to the point that it feels like an over-packed suitcase, and when I pop it open, closets worth of laundry shoot out at me and hit me like snowballs in a snowball fight. Of course, being hit with the mass of memories from the trip is much more enjoyable than being pegged with a snowball, but it makes blogging a daunting task. Where to start? I guess I’ll start with the first curveball Turkey threw at me: the language barrier.

“Merhaba! Nasılsın?” - A phrase I memorized with the help of my Turkish friend Beyazıt, which means “Hello! How are you?” When I learned this, I started saying it to every Turk I encountered. Most of the reactions I received fit into two categories: the “isn’t that cute, an American student failing miserably at our language” laugh, or the “this kid thinks he can speak Turkish so let’s bombard him with tons of phrases he doesn’t know” response. When faced with the latter, I wore the same expression I did in AP Calculus – the one where I stared ahead blankly trying to figure out the complex series of equations that led to the derivative of an arbitrary base exponential.

I love puzzles, as well as talking, and being plunged headfirst into a foreign country seemed to be the perfect mix of the two.

This is not to compare Turkish to Calculus, however, as the Turkish language scores exponentially higher on the fun scale. Trying to learn the language suited my interests well. I love puzzles, as well as talking, and being plunged headfirst into a foreign country seemed to be the perfect mix of the two. Once I had figured out the sounds each Turkish letter made, I would try to read store signs to work on my pronunciation, which would often put a smile on Beyazıt’s face. One time, when I counted to ten in Turkish, he started laughing and said, “Your accent is so cool, you sound like a little kid.” Thanks, Biz.

Before I move on, I do have to say that I have a newfound respect for those people who are bilingual. Not being able to speak the native language was a humbling experience, but I am thankful for it. We Americans tend to lose our patience with foreigners who don’t speak “American,” but what we don’t realize is that trying to speak a different language with a native takes courage. We need to do a better job at being receptive to those who speak English as a second language so that they do the same when we travel to their countries.

“Tavla” – My favorite Turkish word. It means “backgammon” and helped me experience Turkey on a more intimate level. Beyazıt taught me how to play the beloved game one night in Antalya while we puffed on a nargile (water pipe or hookah) next to the beach.  I learned how to maneuver the black and white wooden pieces across the delicately carved board while soft clouds of the apple and gum flavored smoke floated above our heads. It would have been a romantic setting had there been any girls with us, but the lack thereof made it “bromantic,” if you will.

Tavla is a great game. When you break the game down, it seems comparable to those gambling games that require both skill and luck, such as Texas Hold‘Em. I would say that winning at Tavla requires 60% luck and 40% skill. Even if you make all the right moves, someone can still beat you if they get better rolls of the die. This aspect of the game makes it equally frustrating as exhilarating. To encourage the dice to give you a good roll, I leared how to  say “Hayde kemik!,” which means “C’mon bones!” in Turkish. The basic strategy of the game is to set up “doors” or “gates” on as many spaces as possible to limit your opponent’s moves. Sometimes, you can “lock” a piece in so that it cannot be moved, which sometimes results in a marz. A marz counts as two wins, a helpful feature when playing first to five wins.

I couldn’t get enough of Tavla. I played whenever I could as much as I could. Göze, one  of our tour guides, helped me hone my skills as a Tavla player, and when we went to Famagusta in Northern Cyprus, I had the opportunity to play an old Turkish Cypriot who had been the Tavla champion of Cyprus some thirty plus years ago. I beat him, but only because he would make sure I made the right moves every time. Aside from the victory, playing Tavla with this old man was a way to establish conversation and learn some things that our textbooks couldn’t tell us. I learned that this man, whose name means “Blackhawk” in English, had been a surgeon during the fighting between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots in the 1960’s and 70’s. It was hard to imagine this small, dry island playing host to inter-communal violence, but I had an eye-witness sitting two feet away from me rolling a pair of dice into the Tavla board. Incredible.

I apologize for my random and abrupt transitions. They do seem an appropriate way to describe the trip, however, as our transitions between archaeological sites were equally abrupt. One day we would be walking through the Lion’s Gate at Hattusa, the next we’d be climbing up Roman theaters, and the next we’d be on sailboats in the Mediterranean. Abrupt and random can be a good thing, trust me.

Spolia. Something I had never heard of before that appeared over and over on our trip. Spolia is the term used to describe the recycling of building and sculptural materials for the construction of newer buildings. For example, we would find pieces of Greek and Roman columns and friezes inside churches and mosques; unusual, but practical. Beyond these physical examples of spolia, we also learned about some symbols and ideas that would be recycled over and over, which I would call “ideological spolia.” It seemed like we saw bees or bulls at nearly every archaeological site, whether it was from the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze, or Hellenistic period.

Perhaps the most prevalent and most interesting example of this ideological spolia was the worship of some kind of mother goddess. Archaeologists excavated a clay figurine of the mother goddess from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia. We had the privilege of seeing the figurine firsthand at the Anatolian Museum in Ankara, which was a good way to start the trip, as we would see her in different forms in many of the other sites we visited. We saw her as Artemis, the Greek Goddess of fertility (among other things), and I would argue that we saw her as Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ.

Once again, I apologize for the discontinuity of my blog. My memory of the trip consists of thousands of individual sights, smells, and sounds that form a mosaic in my mind. Even though we saw some amazing mosaics in Turkey and Cyprus, they cannot compete with the one I now have engrained in my memory. It is a treasure I will have for years and years. I feel blessed to have been part of such an amazing trip, and I would like to thank all those people who made it possible for me, especially Dr. Goebel, Mr. Ali, Dr. Moore, Ümit Isin, Göze Konuralp, and Lisa Halmes. Thank you.