Beth Zonderman Art

From book project Cay, Tavla, Myslenky

Life past my doorway
The old man in the crocheted skull cap walks his donkey out and rides it back with a pole across his lap. Sometimes he greets me, saying, "Salaam Aleikum."

Nine year-old Filis is pretty and bright. Sometimes she helps me wring the wash. Leyla is only pretty. Hatice usually sticks her tongue out, but if she's eating an olive sandwich, she spits the pits at me. She and her sister bring fuzzy goats on leashes to eat in the orchard below.

Icecream Man honks, lists the left against the weight of the kettle he carries on his right, and trades me cones for cigarettes.

Neighbor women, Hazim's aunts, come and watch me, comment on the quality of my work, and ask if I'll marry their sons.

Bread and grapes are exchanged for other bread and grapes.

The old Dog Lady next door leads her donkey to the valley for baskets of the dry purple flowers it eats. The tiny crone babbles to herself and scolds everyone. Her fifteen half-wild dogs howl and terrorize the village. While she's out, little boys stand in her doorway, bark taunts, and run squealing when they bark back. I'm sure Cenap had a reason to shoot one of those mongrels.

An expanse of pink gums parts the Dog Lady's silver-lined mouth. She has nothing and no one save her animals. The dogs maraud and poach, but Cenap is a trigger-happy adolescent and he knows the dogs are starving.

Imagine when she came to him asking how he could do this to her baby.

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Brief History of Kappadokya
Millennia of volcanic activity and erosion from spring flooding sculpted the surreal landscape that Kappadokya is famous for. Fertile valleys surround striped mesas, wavy blades of eroded stone, and the "fairy chimneys." These are tall cone-shaped towers with boulders seated atop them.

In the fifth century early Christians fled persecution and sculpted their hidden cities in the rocks and cliffs. By basketfuls, they hollowed the stone towers into rough dwellings, aviaries with pocked walls, and chapels with domed ceilings. They filled monasteries with echoes where stone had been, arched doorways, and carved columns. The earliest inhabitants punctuated their architecture with geometric cartoon designs in ochres and iron oxides. Later Byzantine Christians commissioned frescoes of saints and miracles. Hundreds of these chapels remain, hidden behind rough-hewn holes in the cliffs.

Today Moslem Turks live in and among these caves. Every home is part or entirely cave, although many have electricity, plumbing, telephones, and TV`s. The people are primarily farmers, but most work in the burgeoning tourist industry. They live for summer, as fall is short, winter is buried under snow, and spring bears the floods that created the region. In summer the food for the year is grown: grapes, pears, apples, apricots, cherries, melons, squash, potatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, chick peas, and wheat. Summer also brings tourists to drink in cave bars, dance in cave discos, sleep in cave rooms, and complain that the caves are damp and stuffy.

The village where I lived for a short time was home to three thousand people, all some how related, and each would tell you that they all are crazy. As far as I could tell, the women do the home and garden work and crochet scarves to sell to tourists. The young men make and spend the money-selling carpets and working in travel agencies, drinking and carousing tourist women. The old men advise, dictate, and play backgammon in he tea garden. Young women are largely unseen. People are "at work" from dawn until late at night, but much of the day is spent drinking tea, gossiping, and eating seeds from a sunflower blossom. It`s really boring. Time stands still, chickens and dogs wander aimlessly.

At the end of summer, travel agents take off suits and return to the fields to harvest grapes. In fall groups of women gather in their sister`s homes at kneeling tables to roll the huge flat breads to stockpile for winter.

The village is really sleepy and cute, but anyone is until you smell their shit. The Australian co-owner of the other pension had to flee during the night, in spite of her sizeable investment because her partner had tried to have her killed so many times.

I hated my first boss and eventually he hated me. We both hated his father and we all hated the uncles. The oldest one, who coughs and spits from the roof all day spent a year in prison for knifing his brother. Being the first born, the others must still defer to him. His son tried to kill the third uncle, but the family and neighbors managed to stop him. When we saw him the next day he just smiled and said, "Vallah, I was very drunk."

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Goreme: Roof
From the roof top where I sleep, I have a three hundred degree view of the valley. At five A.M. the prayer calls from six mosques wake me with a chorus of voices like yodels of sleepless ghosts. The morning is still blood dripping into water. Finally the day breaks yolk off the striped mesa at the far end of town. Some days the little tiger and his brother have squirmed into my dreams. (They're roof top cats and therefore, clean. They touch ground only when Hazim chases them.)

At sunset the cone-shaped stone towers and the fortress at Ucisar are purple silhouettes where the lip of the valley meets the blushing sky. People turn apricots drying on roofs and Hazim's mother comes with a pot of dinner. He thinks I'm crazy to sleep up there, or more likely it shames him in front of the neighbors, and every evening ends with him throwing up his hands, saying, "Go. It is not my problem."

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Goreme: Santana Bar
In the candle-lit bar converted from a stable, Ikman played the saz. Normally he tries to get me to bed by telling me how horrible all Westerners are, but tonight he massaged the meter-long fret board of the instrument like the neck of a lover. His other hand hummed across ten strings on the split melon body. From somewhere a drum kept rhythm, but no one was playing. Imperceptibly, Ikman did that too while strumming. Some nights, late, the waiter played the large wooden spoons between palm and knee and the owner, a drum. Men drank and sang, and maybe danced- arms out like a big bird sunning its wings, fingers clicking, shoulders, and feet still a mystery. View images: from book project Cay, Tavla, Myslenky