Our trip to Harran was an adventure I'm sure none of us will soon forget. We met at Ercan's office at 6:00 am and had our first tea of the day. To our surprise, we were not alone in our tour. Ercan had booked half a dozen other tourists for the tour. Our tour was led by Yusuf, our driver/guide and, as it turned out, quite a character. He was a non-stop talker and story-teller who took an instant liking to Nancy, but displayed it by affectionately teasing her about everything. He decided to constantly test our rudimentary Turkish. It was going to be a long day.
As the sun heated up, we drove south into a lunar landscape. I had a hard time comprehending how people could live in such a place. All of a sudden, we stumbled on an irrigated field where cucumbers grew. Yusuf jumped out of the van and made us all gather fresh cucumbers off the vine, which he urged us to eat. They were crisp and refreshing. Yusuf had a Falstaffian presence: he was a large man with a ready laugh, an easy smile and twinkling eyes. He obviously loved to eat, talk, entertain, and live life to the fullest. He was also mischevious and would constantly tease us, especially Nancy, and anyone else we encountered in our day's travels. While driving south, he would launch into a story or explanation which was admittedly hard for us to understand because of his heavy accent. At some point he would notice our interest flagging and start to pepper us with questions. When we really started to flag, he would launch into a song and insist that we join in.
We passed through mud hut villages with no greenery evident anywhere. We would occasionally spot a robed figure leading some sheep up or down a hillside, at times some children playing near a well.
We stopped in small villages where the village mukhtar or chief would emerge and chat with Yusuf, who seemed to know everyone. By the time we were ready to take a lunch break we were all suffering from the heat. One of our tour members, a quiet Turkish businessmen from another city, even passed out from the heat. The scene was actually a little comical. We had climbed up a hill in one of the villages and stood in the blistering sun looking out over a moonscape. Yusuf launched into a seemingly endless description about some piles of rock that were ruins from ancient times. I'm sure most of us were barely listening, since Yusuf's accent was hard to understand and the history seemed pretty obscure. I don't think I was alone in wishing that Yusuf would stop and we could find some relief from the heat as well as something to drink. It was at that point that our tour had its first casualty. Fortunately, he was out for only a few minutes and my wish was granted: Yusuf announced that we would get back in the van and make a beeline for a place where we could cool off, get something to drink, and have lunch.
Our lunch hosts were a couple who lived in a typical mud house. We crouched to enter a low room with no furniture. It was surprisingly cool due to the thick walls. We sat cross-legged on the floor while our hosts spread a large plastic drop cloth in the center of the room. They served us ayran - a salty yogurt and water drink. Our meal was delicious. Most of us had little appetite due to the intense heat, but I found myself enjoying the fresh flat bread, chicken and rice mixed with nuts and raw onions. The meal was simply prepared and unceremoniously poured onto the plastic-covered floor, where we scooped it up with our bread and fingers. It had a deliciously earthy and hearty flavor to it. We finished it all off with glass after glass of hot tea. I don't think anyone was eager to go back out into the heat.
The day seemed endless. One high point of the afternoon followed our tour of an ancient biblical site.
After crawling around in dusty rock piles and caves for a while, we spotted an irrigation pump that was gushing water into a field. We ran over and started drinking from the spout until Yusuf splashed water all over first Anna, then Nancy. Before I knew what happened we all ended up splashing around in the cool water and getting thoroughly soaked. In the hot air our clothes dried before we had even walked back to the van. Another high point was our stop at an ancient caravanseray. It was partially in ruins, but I could appreciate the necessity for ancient camel caravans to travel at night and wait out the intense daytime heat behind the thick walls of the caravanseray. Some people must have lived there, because they emerged from the shadows and offered us bowls of ayran, which tasted delicious in the cool shade of the ruins.
Our final destination was Harran. A large ruined castle sits in the middle of the ancient town of beehive mud huts. We explored it for a while and saw an equally impressive site: the ruins of the Grand Mosque, which in its day must have rivaled any other mosque or cathedral in the world. On the way back to Sanliurfa Yusuf stopped the van next to a large irrigation ditch, stripped down to his underwear, and jumped into the cool water. We all waited while he cooled off and swam for a while, then headed back to town.
© 2000 by Robert Cannon
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