things

I realized that the trilingual 10-year olds -- Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic -- we've been meeting in the southeast know three languages from three completely different language groups. Likewise impressive are the kids who have tourist shpiels memorized in six languages. With proper opportunities, they might be capable of an awful lot as grownups.

Camels have adorable bare bottoms. I had not realized this. They also seem quite happy in the sun, unless some jerk has made them wear immense saddles and be chained to things to give tourists rides.

In eastern turkey, men walk around holding hands or with linked arms. It's quite charming.

Abraham, apparently, after hiding in a cave for 10 years, emerged and started smashing King Nemrut's idols; King Nemrut, upset, ordered him to be thrown into a fire. But when he was thrown out the window, the fire turned into water and the wood in it turned into fish. So now the descendants of these fish are the best-fed fish in the world. It's fairly frightening to watch them swarm for food.

I saw some nine-thousand year old rocks. The rocks were unimpressive, but the artwork on them was pretty great - vultures and foxes and lions and so on.

Turkish hospitality does not allow you to pay for anything. This is frustrating, but also sweet.

Panoramic views vs. driving out of the city: you can't see the new Mardin from the old historic one. But driving out you realize how the city makes sense -- there's all these highrises on the other side of the hill. Diyarbakir is more mixed in the downtown, but still on the drive out you see lots of much less "mixed" neighbourhoods - subdivisions, big blocks of housing units that look the same, etc. More for the everywhere is the same file, and so on.

Urfa (or "Sanliurfa" - glorious Urfa - as it was officially renamed in the 1980s -- I can't find out why; the same happened to Antep; in both cases it's to commemorate the brave struggles of the people in the "war of independence") is lovely - the city has been heavily developed in the last 5+ years under a mayor whose first term was AKP and then ran for his second as an independent, and the development (parks, wide sidewalks, public squares, repaved roads, lots and lots of trees and flowers) seems to have had a very impressive effect. All kinds of people walking around - this is a pilgrimage point (see the fish above), so there are lots of conservative muslims and LOTS of iranian tourists, but there are also more women on the street in all degrees of religious and secular dress than we've seen since Istanbul. Very friendly. Visited a mosque that was a church until the 1920s, then a prison, now a mosque. The caretaker did not know what kind of church it was; he had even heard a rumour it was a synagogue. I haven't found out either (just checked the guidebooks). another example of the selective history erasing...

Urfa has experienced some of the biggest effects of the GAP development project, particularly the Ataturk dam (obvious name), on the Euphrates -- there are irrigation channel running all along the fields, which are now extremely green, large plots, full of machinery (there's a New Holland assembly plant here). Much more could be said on this, but I won't now. We drove through this on the way to the 9000 year old rocks at Harran (where there was a university in the 1100s, as well)...

Two opinions on Kurd / Arab relations in Urfa: one person told us Kurds and Arabs get along well here; although there are some separate neighbourhoods people mix happily (this matches much of what I saw). The other opinion was that Arabs are dirty and rich and got all the best plots of land in the GAP project but make the Kurds do the work while they relax in their four houses with their four wives and their fancy cars, and that no self-respecting Kurd would have tea with an Arab.

This is my last day in Turkey.