NOTE: I’m using pseudonyms for anyone with a distinctive name. I’m also streamlining things by quoting most conversations as if they were in English, whereas in reality they were almost entirely in Turkish. This is a continuation of a previous episode and might make more sense with that context.
Kahvaltı bitmez.
It's never too late for breakfast.
—Uncle Evolution
We’d lost Uncle Evolution. Dr. Ali, Mr. Ali, and I were all running down from the top of the sacred mountain called Düzgün Baba, shouting into the wind, the stony trail becoming treacherous in the falling darkness and rain, thunder and lightning crashing all around us. When we reached a spot near where we’d left him on the way up, Dr. Ali and I rolled under the shelter of an overhanging boulder while Mr. Ali combed the area for his uncle, who was nowhere to be found. I figured he would have seen the rain coming before us and gone to shelter further down, but we couldn’t be sure. We decided to keep descending. As we passed the iron meat hooks where sacrificial sheep were butchered, someone made a grim joke about the very real possibility of becoming sacrifices ourselves. But after a few more switchbacks, we heard a shrill whistle answering our shouts, and we followed it to the tea cave. The tea seller had long since packed up his equipment and headed for the bottom, and Uncle Evolution had taken shelter under his tarp. “See, Uncle is clever,” I said to Mr. Ali. “Clever, yes,” he said, “but he gave us a scare.” As we continued down the trail, I hung back with the older man, staying close to break his fall in case he slipped on the wet stones. “I don’t want to lose you a second time,” I said. But he still had plenty of youthful energy, reciting bits of poetry and sayings and tapping his staff on the ground. “If things don’t go a little wrong,” I said, “it’s not a real adventure,” and he agreed wholeheartedly. As we neared the bottom, I drew ahead a little, and Uncle Evolution stopped and called out to me. “Jesse,” he said and then, in his poetry-reciting voice, “Yağmur ile, yaşlık ile, cağırayım Düzgün Baba1.” I got his joke and laughed. Only a few months ago, I’d been finishing my translations of Yunus Emre poems, dreaming of going to Turkey, and now here I was on the side of a sacred mountain with a real Turkish poet, who I’d met only a few days before, and he was putting silly words about getting rained on into a Yunus Emre poem, and I actually got the joke. We crossed the parking lot to the warm room where Justice and Louder, her German brother-in-law, had been sitting by a charcoal fire roasting the peppers we’d picked from her garden. They’d been really worried about us, and after making sure that nothing was wrong except that we were soaked to the skin, they began to commiserate about the bad time we’d had. I smiled and shook my head. “It was an adventure!” I said, “I love adventure.”
I stepped outside, took off the shirt that Justice had given me, and tried to wring the water out of it. It was a soccer jersey with blue and white stripes, emblazoned on the back with Dersim Spor and the number 62, the local license plate code. I knew that in some places, even something as seemingly innocent as wearing this jersey could be seen as taking an anti-government stance. The province we were in had once been called Dersim by everyone, but in the 1930s the name was officially changed to Tunceli (pronounced something like toon-JELL-y) as one part of a campaign to force ethnic Kurds to adopt the Turkish language, culture, and identity. Some local people rebelled against this campaign, and the government retaliated by killing tens of thousands of them2 using ground forces and air strikes on civilian targets. Because of these events, using the old name of Dersim still carries a hint of rebellion. And the wounds have never had much of a chance to heal; violence continued in the area off and on well into the 1990s, and suppression of Kurdish identity has been ongoing. On strategic peaks overlooking the major valleys there still remained many small fortifications called karakollar, and the roads were frequently blocked by military police checkpoints. All this I came to understand slowly, as my friends would point out places by the road where some number of people had died in the fighting, or when I said I’d like to hike the whole length of a river someday and they told me that it might be dangerous because of landmines. I also found out that my new friends were Alevi-Bektaşi Zaza Kurds, a minority of a minority, and that this was their homeland. It was a special place, I was told, not like anywhere else in Turkey. And this felt true; the people there seemed to me like the mountain people in many places: resourceful and independent, surrounded and occupied many times yet never fully conquered, faithfully carrying on the old traditions. But far from being conservative and backward-looking, the area has been a hotbed of progressive and radical leftist politics for a long time. A majority of the province voted for the HDP candidate in the 2018 presidential election3, and the current mayor of the provincial capital was elected on a communist ticket. An antiques dealer in Konya told me that somewhere deep in those mountains, there’s a little village that the government doesn’t even know about, and it isn’t hard to believe considering the rugged terrain. But governments come and go, and meanwhile culture goes its own way, sending up new shoots in spite of every attempt to stamp it out. Back in Hacıbektaş, I had heard several people saying that the people of Tunceli were the best of people, and judging by the example of my new friends, I had to agree.
Just getting there was an unforgettable experience. Dr. Ali, Mr. Ali, and Uncle Evolution had set off from Istanbul early one morning in a tiny Fiat, and they arrived in Hacıbektaş to pick up Justice and me in the afternoon. We crammed in and set off. I was excited to see how road trips were done in Turkey, and I was not disappointed. In America I would have expected us to head to the nearest interstate and cruise east, but on the one hand, I haven’t seen any Turkish roads the resemble an American interstate, and on the other hand I’ve noticed that Turkish people rarely seem to be in a hurry when it’s not strictly necessary. So our first stop was just outside of town at the çilehane where I’d met Justice a week before. It was a sort of sculpture park with larger-than-life bronze statues of the great Alevi-Bektaşi bards of the past and present, men who acted as folk poets, singers, and philosophers. We paid our respects by drinking from the fountains and watering the grave of Aşık Mahzuni Şerif, and we took turns getting pictures with the statues of our favorite bards. By the time we finished that, it was getting on time for dinner, and I witnessed another cultural difference. In America I would expect us to search on Google Maps and scrutinize the reviews to find a place to eat, but Turkish people seem to be much more intensely sociable, and so Uncle Evolution called a friend for advice about where we should eat and how to get to the place. And so although our destination was due east, we wound up heading west to Kırşehir, because it was worth it for a nice meal. And it was a very nice meal, and then we had desert and tea outside on the patio, and so by the time we hit the road again it was getting dark and we had even further to go. All the time, I had only the vaguest hint of what was coming next, because I could only understand fragments of their rapid-fire discussions, and this meant that nearly everything that happened was a surprise to me. But really I couldn’t have been happier, because my travelling companions were so much fun to be around, and all the surprises were pleasant ones. On the highway east, Uncle Evolution reached back under the rear window and took down his saz, a Turkish lute with three courses of strings and movable frets, and played it while we all sang Alevi hymns written by some of the old-time bards we’d just seen in the sculpture park. I hummed along where I didn’t know the words, and sang aloud when a phrase repeated. Uncle Evolution rummaged through handwritten notes and handmade song-books that reminded me of the hippie singalongs of my childhood. I sang them the handful of songs from back home that I’d translated into Turkish and even took a turn with the saz myself. Late at night, we pulled into a rest stop out in the desert plains, where the long-distance buses stopped for riders to use the bathroom, shop, eat, and walk around. Justice stretched out to sleep in the back seat while the rest of us went to the cafeteria for a snack of bread and lentil soup. In the wee hours, we pulled over at a closed gas station and napped in our seats for a few hours. Then, as the sun rose, we finally entered the province of Tunceli, driving onto a ferry boat and crossing a mountain lake as the clear golden light touched an island with an old castle thrusting up from its peak.
At this point I thought we might head straight for Justice’s house, which she was clearly eager to get back to, but the boys had other plans. A long series of directions gleaned from phone calls and passing villagers led us deep into a mountain valley, along one-lane roads clinging for dear life to barren rocky slopes that plunged down into dry stream beds. The little car bounced over loose stones that battered at its undercarriage, and the gas light came on, but Dr. Ali drove fearlessly in spite of some worried exclamations from the backseat. At last we reached a farmstead cut into the mountain below the road, with solar panels on the roof of the house. There was a woman hanging out her laundry, and we shouted down to her for directions. Our destination turned out to be around the next bend, a simple dwelling made of stone and concrete, below it a little spring filling a pool cut into the ground and lined with rocks. The overflow from the pool watered fruit and nut trees planted on terraces below and a lush fenced garden. We were greeted by a massive dog of the local breed called Kangal, extremely friendly, slobbering profusely and smelling like the sheep he herded for a living. On a little wood-burning stove that had been cobbled together out of scrap metal, a teapot was boiling cheerfully. We were greeted by one of the neighbors, who picked some cucumbers from the garden for us to snack on, and after a while the shepherd arrived, climbing up from below with a rifle slung over his shoulder, as there were still wolves and bears wandering these hills. His herd surrounded him, little Romanov sheep with black heads and silky brown fleeces. Although his name was Turkish, he spoke the language with a hint of a German accent. Talking with him, we learned that he lived alone up here and bought almost nothing from the outside world. It seemed he didn’t have enough to spare to offer us hospitality, and I also got the impression he was a shy man who enjoyed his solitude. After some polite conversation, we went back to the car and bumped our way carefully back to the main road.
There was some discussion about what to do next. Uncle Evolution wanted to stop for breakfast, and when told it was getting a bit late for that, he replied that it was never too late for breakfast. In the end, another series of phone calls led us to a lovely cafe on the banks of the Munzur River, shaded by a lush canopy of trees. The water ran by below us in a crystalline shade of blue green, with schools of fish swimming against the current to feast on scraps of stale bread tossed down to them. On the opposite bank, a tall stone rose like an obelisk from the water’s edge, and olive-green foliage clung to the tawny slopes. Tea was served, the table was spread with a lavish breakfast that included local cheeses and local honey, and some of Dr. Ali’s relations showed up to join us. I felt quite at home, partly because of the hospitality and partly because this place reminded me so strongly of the Texas hill country where my mother’s family lives. And then, after getting Mr. Ali and Uncle Evolution settled in at a little hotel, we finally arrived at Justice’s house and I got to meet her family. Life in the little two-bedroom apartment revolved around her mother, who I’ll just call Mother. She was maybe eighty or ninety years old, with only one eye, no teeth, and limited mobility, unable to speak or feed herself, and very dearly loved. I gathered that she had six or seven surviving children, but a few of them lived far away in other countries. Her daughter Joy was there visiting from Germany with her German husband Louder. Another daughter worked as a nurse in the nearby clinic, and the nurse’s daughter Artemisia was often around the house helping take care of her grandmother. Mother’s eldest daughter Hazelnut was deaf and mute, communicating only in sign language. Her son Resolve, a cheerful man with a gray mustache, showed up for meals and conversation. He was very interested in reading books and talking to foreigners, and he’d picked up a bit of German, French, and English which he sometimes mingled with gusto. And so, in a very short time, I had gone from travelling solo to being enveloped in family life, and it felt like a warm hug. They plied me with food, they commandeered my clothes to wash them and lent me more comfortable ones4, they worried I might catch my death of cold outside or scald myself in the shower, and they expressed dismay every night when I chose to sleep out on the open balcony instead of on the couch they’d prepared for me inside, refusing to believe me when I told them it was actually more comfortable for me out there. Every day I was swimming in a soup of language: Turkish of course, but they sometimes spoke Zaza to Mother, Hazelnut wanted to talk with me in sign language5, Louder only spoke German and a little English, Joy sometimes forgot what kind of foreigner I was and spoke to me in German, and Resolve tried to introduce me to a local genre of humorous riddle which he called a fikir, using a delightful combination of English, Turkish, and gestures. I stopped worrying so much about speaking correctly and just went with whatever worked.
One day Justice took me out to the family’s little homestead in the mountains and we filled a huge bag with green beans picked from the garden. One day they took me to climb Düzgün Baba, the sacred mountain. One day we went to the sacred headwaters of the Munzur River in Ovacık, following a winding road up the valley with breathtaking mountain vistas. Vendors at the entrance sold twists of delicious-smelling beeswax, which we perched on the soot-blackened rocks and lit like candles. We ate at a cafe with picnic tables that straddled streams of rushing water. The boys showed up and ordered a bottle of wine to celebrate. I composed a little poetry in Turkish and Uncle Evolution corrected my mistakes6. When we left, we only drove for a short distance before we stopped at someone’s house and were served tea and yet another lunch. One day Justice and Artemisia took me to see a lovely waterfall where sheets of cooling spray tumbled down a mossy slope. Right beneath it you could sit and have food and coffee or tea brewed with water piped straight out of the rock. Just driving around from place to place was a feast for the eyes, as the roads wound through craggy mountains, some barren and others carpeted in groves of oak or wild fruit and nut trees. We stopped at roadside shrines where water bubbled out of the rocks, icy and refreshing. But everything that begins must end, and one morning Joy and Louder left us to end their visit with some vacation time on the Mediterranean coast. I think Louder was a little happy to get away, but as Joy said goodbye to the family, she was crying. “Alles ist gut,” she said to me, “alles ist gut.” When the time came for me to leave as well, Justice and Artemisia told me I should stay, I should cancel my bus ticket, they’d gotten used to me being there and they would miss me. But I had to go, my parents would be arriving in Istanbul in a few days, and besides, I would definitely be back. “Promise?” they said. “Promise,” I replied.
And I thought back to the mysterious but overwhelming feeling that had drawn me to Turkey in the first place. In all my wandering, there was something I was trying to learn, and there in Dersim I had a feeling that I might have found my school. I was surprised that it took me a few days to realize this, but the word dersim, the old name for the place, carries a double meaning. In Zaza it means “silver door,” but in Turkish it also means “my lesson.” Sometimes the workings of fate are not subtle. As I write this, on a bus heading east to Gaziantep, my seatmate is a young Kurdish man who made friends as soon as he sat down next to me. He works as a policeman and security guard in a suburb of Istanbul. He showed me pictures of him camping by the Munzur River and lighting beeswax candles at the headwaters in Ovacık. He offered me snacks and insisted on paying for my dinner when the bus pulled over at a rest stop. I wondered whether there was some force drawing me to Kurdish people, who seemed to be so unfailingly sweet. Somehow, despite being relatively poor, and having suffered through numerous attempts to erase their language and culture, they had remained some of the most friendly and generous people I’ve ever met. When trying to explain Kurdish culture and history to me, Resolve compared them to the Native Americans, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to fit: a nomadic people that had been made to settle down, an old tradition of nature worship, a strong culture of universal caretaking and respect, a recent history of being forced into migration and re-education. I thought of the Apaches who’d offered me food, money, and rides when my motorcycle broke down in the middle of their reservation; me, a white boy, a descendant of their oppressors to whom they owed nothing. How does a culture go through so much trauma and yet come out of it so kind and rooted?7 How has the dominant American culture, which seems to be getting nearly everything it wants, wound up with such a weight of loneliness, boredom, and misanthropy? I had so many more questions than answers, and the only thing I could think to do was to pay attention to my lesson, to watch and learn. So I left behind a little piece of my heart in Dersim.
Sert bir fincandır, bu yaşam
Dostlarım şeker
Acı çayıma biraz koy
Bir tane yeter
It's a strong brew, this life
My friends are sugar
Put some into my bitter tea
A little bit is enough
—Jesse Crossen, Ovacık, September 2022
Meaning roughly: “With the rain, with the wetness, I invoke you Düzgün Baba.” This is a reference to the Yunus Emre poem that begins, “Dağlar ile, taşlar ile, çağırayım Mevlam seni,” meaning “With the mountains, with the stones, let me call thy name my Lord.” Düzgün Baba was the sacred mountain we were on.
Estimates of the exact number of casualties vary, as do accounts of what happened, so I’m leaving things a little vague here. The Turkish government has an official version of these events that might be different, but I’m taking Wikipedia as a consensus source for this type of information.
Demirtaş actually ran his campaign from prison, where he remains at the time of writing. If you think American politics are contentious, just start reading about Turkish politics. Without taking any sides, I would say Americans can learn something from where Turkey has been going lately, particularly around the questions of who decides what constitutes terrorism and who decides what constitutes incitement to violence.
The sweatpants they lent me were emblazoned with “BE COOL / GRL POWER / BE AWESOME” in raised velour, and unfortunately I was the only person in the house who could fully appreciate this message.
One major theme was gossip about the neighbors. Another was that I should get married and have three children. I was able to understand a surprising amount, especially after I asked some other family members to translate some of Haxelnut’s more common signs into Turkish for me. For example, the sign she used for marriage imitated the playing of some kind of wind instrument that I assume is used at local weddings.
Although when he tried to go further and turn it into free verse I drew the line. I can get into modernist poetry too, but making the rhythm and rhymes work is fun and challenging.
I’m well aware of some of the challenges facing young people in these communities and I have no idea how that’s going to turn out. Many of the young Kurds are escaping to foreign countries where they can find work. Many of the young Apaches are escaping to meth addiction.
Thanks for sharing your wondrous adventure Jesse. So glad you followed your heart to Turkey. The narrative of your identity as rational and logical is, to me, dissolving and permeating the ether with the spirit of mystic awareness.