The Old Cities

The Old Cities…

Water Seller

Where medieval is actually quite modern and towns like Antioch and Herran are mentioned in the Bible.  I love wandering in the Bazaars, watching vendors set up for the day, watching the deliveries and watching shoppers pinch fruit and haggle.

Often the bazaars… the shoemakers bazaar, the silk traders bazaar, the gold bazaar, the flour makers bazaar, the tin makers bazaar… are sectioned by craft.

Pot Shop

Delivering Bread

We find the saddle shops and the metal shops and products from Iraq and Syria exotic.  The most colorful products are soap, fabrics and evil eye beads.

Delivering Vegetables

The most fun is watching deliveries by donkey.  In Mardin, the mazed streets are so narrow and extensive that a brigade of 40 donkeys makes up the municipal trash service.

Getting Through The Maze

Men do most of the shopping and women are mostly out of sight.  They seem shy and distant and it’s them I fear offending with my camera.  The men are friendly and often ask me to take their picture or strike a pose when I ask if I might photograph.  The friendliest of all are the children who follow and badger and beg.  We give until the money is gone, but their need drains me emotionally.  I wonder what promise the world holds for them in this country that is poor, overpopulated and lacking in opportunity.

When the shopping and the heat get to be too much, we retreat into coffee and teahouses.  My favorite is the old Tobacco Trader’s Market in Gazieantep.  It has been turned into a tea stop and had private side rooms in which women were gathered laughing and giggling in one of the few social activities I observed them engaged in. It is in the bazaars that women are most likely to be publicly present.  And it seems women like to trade laughter the world over.

Tobacco Trader's Market

Arab Spring and Turkish Politics

Broder between Turkey and Syria

This morning Deborah Amos reported for National Public Radio from Gaziantep, Turkey that Syrians were beginning to trickle over the nearby boarder as violence in Syria increases.  We had originally planned to go to Syria, but switched to Turkey when the Arab Spring erupted.  Since we had visas, we continued to consider going to Allepo, Syria, but could not get reliable information on demonstrations there.  News does not flow freely in this part of the world and our Turkish host told us that the Turkish government does not allow outside news on the Arab Spring into Turkey. 

Campaign Flags

Interesting observation since Turkey’s political elections are June 12 and Prime Minister Erdogan is stumping the country for a coveted two thirds votes.  He has clamped down on the press and Turkey now has more journalists in prison than China.  If he wins it will give him the power he wants to rewrite Turkey’s constitution and weaken Turkey’s democracy.

Mud Brick House on Syrian Border

Hasan Pasa Hani, Diyarbakir...with Che in Attendance

We chose to visit the Kurdish region, as it is the least  accommodated by the Erdogan government.  Erdogan has made some overtures to Turkey’s 12 million Kurds to stop the violence that continued in the region through 2004.  His goal is to be admitted to the European Union.  However, Erdogan’s overtures toward the Kurds have been meager and there were demonstrations in Diyarbiker, the unofficial Kurdish capital, while we were there.

Looking over Mesopotamian Plain into Syria

Will the Arab Spring spill over into Turkey?  I would rather not see violence, but young informed people are spreading the word across the middle east that life is better elsewhere and they want a piece of it.

On the Road in Anatolia

Driving in Anatolia

We swerve to miss a donkey cart in our lane and a swaying transport truck coming toward us. It is loaded twice as high as it is wide and rocks wildly in the ruts of the road.  There are no real lane markings left on the remaining pieces of asphalt and sometimes the two-lane road suddenly turns into five as jockeying transports, minibuses, handcarts, motorbikes, cars and horses dodge and weave.  No speed limit. No turn signal. No passing rules. Lots of horn honking.

 

We pick our way along a four-lane freeway that has been reduced to two heavily potted and crumbling lanes.  As I hold my breath, I realize that in the US we went from the horse to the Model T over a full generation.  The Turks went from donkey carts to Volvo Transports overnight and everyone is still sorting it out.  Since car ownership is the exception, there are still a lot of donkeys that must use the same road I am on.  However, the signage is great even if it is a bit overdone.

The original roadwork cleared the verges and runoff provides water for the emerging spring plants.  Shepherds and goatherds graze small flocks along the skirt of the road.  Many are no older than six or seven and some are elderly.  The ones in between, like teens everywhere, are on their cell phones.  It passes the time, as there is little shade other than cell phone towers and power poles.  It is also approaching 90 degrees and the humidity is 90 percent.

I think driving is a challenge, and then we enter the gridlock of the city with its medieval-sized streets….

West From Astoria

West From Astoria

A gigantic cargo ship passes under the Astoria-Meglar Bridge on its last leg across the Pacific.  I check The Ship Report to see where it is going and nose on up the river past the remnants and pilings of old fish canneries.  My favorite building is the old net shed called Big Red. 

I remember the Bumble Bee Seafood cannery as a child, but the history of the canneries goes back to the late 1800’s.  In 1883 the record pack was more than 42,000,000 pounds of salmon from 39 canneries.  Most of the labor was done by Chinese.

The rain is coming down in a light mist that will clear for the sunset.  I keep close to the Columbia River, taking all the side roads to the reaches of its estuarial waters.  They lead to  cattail marshes filled with birds.  I try to imagine how it looked when Lewis and Clark saw it in 1805. Astoria came later and was first coastal settlement in Oregon founded in 1810 as a fur trading post established by John Jacob Astor.

Astoria is the most westerly city on Highway 30.  It is where I begin my exploration. I became fascinated with U.S. Highway 30 when I realized it runs from the Atlantic coast in Atlantic City, New Jersey to the Pacific coast at Astoria, Oregon, a distance of 3073 miles. It is one of the original routes commissioned in 1926, and was the first route to be paved coast to coast.  It is the second longest road in the U.S.

The highway begins at its intersection with Highway 101 where it comes off of the Astoria-Meglar Bridge.  From Astoria to Portland it is better known as the Lower Columbia River Highway. 

A dredge, the fishing boat, Itasca, a boat from the US Army Corp of Engineers and the cargo ship, Fu Min are all berthed at Pier 36 on the Columbia at Astoria.  The varied craft give an idea of the busy traffic on the river.

 

I remember the huge fishing fleets and the canneries, trips across the Columbia on the ferry…all gone now…and this trip is one to capture some of what is left along Highway 30.

Astoria Highway 30

Highway 30

The snow is pelting down forming a soft slush on the highway.  I keep my eye on the temperature watching for it to hit freezing.  Late winter weather.  Snow one moment and sunshine the next.  But often the landscape is a study in gray.

I have decided to trace Highway 30 across Oregon.  For some reason, ever since I heard it could be traced all the way across the United States, it has become a fixation. Tonight I am sitting alongside the Columbia River just outside of Astoria at Highway 30’s western end.

I am slogging through one of the braided estuaries of the Columbia called Wolf Bay. There is snow here too. The snow has followed me or raced to meet me for nearly 500 miles.  Tonight it fell as sleet and scattered like birdshot over the water as I watched skeins and rafts of birds rise and land.  Swans, geese, mergansers, mallards, gulls, hawks and two eagles.  There were more but it got too dark to identify them and I was too cold to stay long.

While this is the end of my trip, it is the beginning of my story.  I will retell it backwards from Astoria…..where it is winter and it is snowing at the beach.

Weather Report

Weather Report

The wind seeps and moans

Whisks down leaves

Skirls through power lines

Clouds boil up

And spill over the lashes of light

Raking dawn slantwise

Each cloud gap pierced

With white hot fire

Branding the face of the gale

Ravens wheel and stall

Then turn and accelerate

Sliding down the day

As it flaps out crisp

Shaken smartly

Punctuated with sunshine

All afternoon clouds roll down the valley

Light slips over their white tops

And under their grey bellies

Pushed by wind that sifts cold

Through the denim of my jeans

And slithers up the Boise Front

Sliding dark shadows

Over wrinkled, brown-skinned hills

Until it blows itself east

And I am surrounded

By the suns heat and fire

As it enflames the cradle

Of the Owyhees

In one last crescendo

That embraces the sky

Two Chairs

An invitation to pause and share, to listen and exchange.

The past two weeks I have slowed down the pace.  Found a couple of chairs and a friend, my grandchild, my daughter, my son-in-law and watched the catchlight in their eyes, the furrowed brow, touched a hand, kissed a cheek and had a real conversation attending to all of the details.  

***

No telephone, no Facebook, no e-mail, no virtual experience.  While I value these for the geographic distances they can span, I regret them when friends and family offer them as substitutes and excuses. I believe they are missing something….or maybe it is that I miss a very important part of them.