Gönül ne çay ister, ne çayhane Gönül sohbet ister, çay bahane What does the heart want with tea or a teahouse? The heart wants to sit and chat, tea is an excuse. —Turkish saying
I came out of the cemetery in Konya at an unfamiliar corner, but there was the Mevlana Cultural Center, where I’d been the night before to see the whirling dervishes perform their sema ritual. The buildings were round, and none of the roads were on any sort of grid, so I had trouble finding my bearings. I began walking in what I thought was the direction of downtown, and then hesitated for some reason. Behind me was something called the Konya Panorama Museum and on an impulse I decided to turn around and check it out. The core of the museum was a round structure with two stories. On the lower story was a gallery of oil paintings and dioramas with wax figures that illustrated the life of Rumi (known here as Mevlana). From these I learned quite a few things I hadn’t known, like for example that he saved the city of Konya from being sacked by the Mongols using only the power of prayer1. In one of the paintings, depicting Rumi’s death, I was very excited to recognize Yunus Emre in the background (as played by Yusuf Gökhan Atalay), which is historically possible. From the center of the gallery, stairs led up into a platform on the second floor, overlooking a 360 degree panoramic scene painted on the outer wall which depicted Konya as it might have looked in Rumi’s time. In front of the painting were strategically placed props and life-sized wax figures that blended into the painted scene, creating a surprisingly compelling illusion of depth. I liked how the wax statues represented the many peoples of the Seljuk empire’s cultural crossroads, some of which I could recognize, like Mongols, and others I couldn’t, like a blond man with European features wearing a reddish robe like a Buddhist monk’s and a straw hat shaped like the cap of a mushroom. Although the museum was very small, I enjoyed the feeling of being immersed in historical times, and with admission being only 6 lira (about $0.40 USD), it was well worth the money.
As I was walking out, I saw a man sitting behind a desk at the end of the hallway. In front of his desk was a low table with comfortable chairs on either side. “Welcome,” he said. “Please, sit.” So we sat across from each other in the comfortable chairs, and after exchanging the usual information he asked where I was going next. I said I didn’t know, did he have any recommendations? He started writing down a list of cities, none of which I’d heard of. It turned out that before the pandemic, he’d been a private tour guide travelling all over the country, but now he was head of the tourism department for the city of Konya, and he wasn’t able to wander as far afield. Clearly he was good at what he did; I think from one look at my backpack and the fact that I had declined to take any of the tourist maps on the table, he knew exactly the kind of places I would enjoy. “Lots of historical things here,” he said or, “This city is where the silk road started.” He said that if he had the time, he wished he could go with me. We talked about the sema and he explained its symbolism to me in more depth than I’d heard it before, standing up and demonstrating the motions.
Seeing that he was interested in spiritual matters, I asked if he liked Yunus Emre’s poetry. “Yes,” he said, “actually my name is Yunus.” I had brought along three copies of my translations of Yunus Emre poems, and I handed him one. He leafed through it for a while and handed it back. I said no, it was a gift for him, he asked me to autograph it, and I did. When he gave me his business card, I saw that his last name was Güneş, which means sunshine2. And he did feel like a ray of sunshine to me, because for many months I’d been obsessed with old Sufi poetry and Anatolian culture, and finally here was someone who knew what I was talking about, who knew much more about it than I did. He told me a story about when Yunus Emre was a poor farmer whose crop had failed, and he went to a Sufi teacher named Hacı Bektaş and asked him for wheat. “Do you want wheat or do you want breath?” Bektaş asked. Yunus said that of course he wanted wheat, he and his people needed to eat. So his cart was filled with wheat, but on the way home he realized his mistake and turned around. “Please, take back the wheat,” he said, “I want breath.” But Bektaş replied that it was too late, he would have to go and see Tapduk Emre to get it. And that’s what he did, and Tapduk Emre cooked his raw soul, and he became a great poet, and what is a poem but breath, and what is wheat to a poem that touches the hearts of millions?
“Do you like tea?” modern-day Yunus asked, “Black tea?” I said yes. It wasn’t an idle question; he went into the cafe and came out with two cups of strong black tea, with no milk or sugar. “This is dervish wine,” he said. We sipped the tea. I told him about the mysterious urge that had drawn me to Turkey, and how I didn’t understand it yet, and how I thought I was meant to learn something but I didn’t know what. “You know,” he said, “you are really a dervish.” I didn’t feel like I deserved the title, so I asked him to explain why he thought so. “Because you are always walking around everywhere,” he said, “trying to learn.” I knew dervishes were famous for wandering far on foot, but I hadn’t really thought much about why. Did they also have some mysterious urge to go and learn something? To learn from the Sufis of a distant lodge, from chance encounters, from the road itself, or from the little part inside them which remained the same even as everything around them changed? “How did you know I’m always walking around?” I asked. “From your bag,” he said. “You know, dervish means poor. Poor on the outside, but very rich in the heart.” Yes, that was exactly what I wanted to be. Maybe he was right, I thought, maybe I am a dervish, or at least on my way to becoming one.
We finished the tea. “Do you smoke?” Yunus asked. “I don’t,” I said, and then, realizing that he wanted to take a smoke break, “but I’m happy to just stand next to you and breath.” We went outside and stood in the shade of the building. After a little while, a man walked up and started talking to Yunus. Yunus introduced him as Ali, and explained to him about my interest in old poetry and my translations. “I have written some things myself,” said Ali, “I am not a poet, but I have tried to write some poems.” I said I’d love to read them someday. We started talking, and Yunus excused himself to go inside and take care of a few emails. Ali pulled out a cigarette and asked a passerby if he had a lighter. “I’ve got one,” I said, and lit his cigarette. “Are you a Muslim?” he asked. “No, why?” I said. “Because they always have with them a way to make fire and a little knife,” he said. “It is a sunna; the prophet always carried these things.” I showed him that in fact I did have a little knife as well. It’s a good sunna, I thought, Islam is a very practical religion. When Yunus came back, he and Ali started talking about Anatolian culture, how its oral tradition went back thousands of years, carried on by the women, and how the Sufi teachers had transmitted it more widely. Ali said, “you know these three guys, Mevlana in Konya, Hacı Bektaş Veli in Nevşehir, and Hacı Bayram in Ankara, they really laid the foundation of Anatolian culture today.3” He ticked off the points on his fingers, “Everyone is respected, everyone is taken care of, all religions are respected, there is no racism, there is no clash.4” He described how the people here could be happy with very little, how they took care of each other. He taught me some old Anatolian sayings to illustrate: bir lokma, bir hırka (one bite to eat, one shirt to wear) and iyilık iyidır (kindness is good).
I began to understand that Yunus Emre was just one branch of a great tree with very deep roots. This was a rich cultural soil, and he had chosen breath instead of wheat, and through him that soil had produced beautiful blooms of poetry. But the ordinary people, the people I saw all around me, they expressed it too, their foliage and blossoms less showy but no less lovely. In my brief experience, they had a kindness, a generosity, a tenderness, a respect and care for other people that on my travels so far I’d always held as a rare and precious thing. A real treasure, yet here it was common, as if the streets were paved with gold. But I got the feeling it was endangered by the march of progress. I’d heard tell that things were changing, that business was booming, that the companies known as the Anatolian Tigers were growing, that many people were moving here, buying houses here, that many people no longer knew their neighbors. Despite the setbacks in the past few years, the continuing economic growth was clearly visible, at least in Konya. At least until the twentieth century5, Anatolia seems to have been a sort of backwater, washed over by a long series of cultural and religious tides including the Greeks, Celts, Romans, Christians, and Turks, but also harboring many tide pools where old traditions could live and grow and mingle undisturbed. Would the Anatolian spirit stand strong through this new tide of industry and wealth, where neighbors could depend on their salaries and their internet connections instead of on mutual aid and conversation? Who can say, but I felt blessed to be here now to experience what’s left of the old culture for myself. I wanted to bathe in it, to absorb it, not for the pleasure of being treated well but to learn how to treat others well, to learn to be more like these people.
After his prayers, the Mongols were apparently unable to draw their bows. They still demanded a large amount of money though, which the city paid.
Many Turkish names mean something. Some of my favorite ones I’ve seen so far are Yeşilyaprak (Greenleaf), Gönülalan (Heartspace), and Kabakçıoğlu (Squashsellerson). I suspect many such names were created when citizens were forced by law to adopt purely Turkish surnames.
According to Wikipedia there are considered to be “four poles of Anatolia,” the other being Shaban Veli, but he lived at a later time, during the Ottoman era.
I think this is a fair portrayal of the progressive ideals promoted by these Sufi teachers, although just like any set of ideals, they haven’t been followed perfectly or by everyone in the region.
I’m trying to understand the history of Turkish politics better, and I’m aware of many of the issues surrounding it, but it’s a complex and sensitive subject which I’m going to try and stay out of. Over the millennia, many governments and political movements have come and gone in the region; my concern here is not with them but with the enduring character of the ordinary people.
iyilık iyidır
I always wondered why my mother loved Turkey so much and through your words, I'm understanding why. I have been a lover of Rumi wisdom so it's great to learn more about his history and influence ...Every time I read these beautifully written shares about your " dervish" experiences with the Turkish people I feel as if you have gifted me a special connection to my mother. Thank you Jesse, truly.