I'm certain Kemal sees me frown and bite my lower lip as I try to memorize and count the number of turns. He tries to reassure me. "You can't get lost," he promises. "It's very easy. Çok kolay."
"Çok kolay," I repeat, as if by saying the phrase out loud I can convince myself of its truth. I've never driven in Turkey before, but the principles are all the same, right? Right, left, two lights, another left, then a right. Directions an imbecile could follow.
Yet even while I'm saying it, I know deep down that Kemal is mistaken. Literally and figuratively, I've been down this road before. It won't be easy, and I will get lost. But one way or another, eventually, I will probably figure it out.
Story of my life.Emboldened by the belief that things will work out because they usually do, I open the door of my tiny Chevy Aveo rental clown car, move the seat back as far as it will go, and drive off slowly down the cobblestone streets of Antalya.
* * *
I had come to Antalya for two reasons. First of all, I was tired of being cold. Istanbul had been experiencing a colder-than-usual winter, with snow, slush, icy wind and all the other unpleasantries of a typical winter in New York or Pittsburgh. By early March everyone is sick of it, myself included. I wanted to go somewhere that I didn't have walk around with my collar turned up and my hands jammed in my pockets.
Second, I had come to realize that Turkey was a big place, and in five months' time I had seen exactly one city in the entire country. I had become like one of those foreign tourists who come to New York for three days, ride to the top of the Empire State Building, and think they've seen America. Searching for warmth and another part of Turkey, I decided it was time to hit the road.
After thumbing through a few guidebooks and checking out a couple of internet sites, I picked Antalya: once a small fishing village and now a city of more than 1 million on the southern coast of Turkey. Make no mistake: Antalya has been discovered. But I am able to snag a flight from Istanbul to Antalya that cost all of $72 USD.
That's $72, as in $72 round trip. At this price, I could almost afford to fly back and forth every day.
On the internet I locate a hotel that had been converted from an 18th Century Ottoman stone and timber house. The cost of my room? Fifty five dollars a night. In New York or San Francisco, you might be able to find a hotel room for $55. But that would be $55 per hour, and both you and the hooker would be afraid to sit on the bed spread.
As I board the airport bus in Istanbul to fly off to the southern coast of Turkey, the weather is gray, rainy and cold. In contrast, as I step out of the Antalya airport on the southern coast of Turkey, the weather is gray, rainy, and somewhat less cold. Apparently it's still winter, even in Antalya.
I see. Maybe this is why you can still fly here for the price of a bus ticket.
* * * *
Back in the rental car, I've managed to get lost in less than five minutes. This may be a record, even for me. After a right and two lefts, there seems to be no road on which to turn right again. Instead, I am on an unidentified four-lane boulevard with signs pointing to some location I've never heard of. Slowing down to try to read Turkish street signs seems to aggravate the drivers behind me, honking as if they are incredulous to have the bad luck to be stuck behind yet another clueless tourist.
I have no idea where it is I am currently headed. But I do know that where ever it is, that's not where I want to go. Looking on the bright side, I am beginning to narrow things down: I need to go any direction but this. I need to go left. Or perhaps right. Based on nothing but instinct, I opt for the U-Turn.
* * * *
After arriving at the airport the first day, by the time I reach my little hotel in Antalya's old city (Kaleiçi, or "Inside the Castle"), it is nearly six o'clock. My room's sleeping arrangements consist of two twin beds, more or less pushed together. The decor looks like something my grandmother might have picked out, if my grandmother had been a French prostitute in the 18th Century.
Still, I'm very pleased with my $55 a night accommodations. No, it's not the Ritz Carlton, but it's not the Motel 6, either. Outside it is still raining, and the forecast calls for more rain tomorrow. Perhaps the less than ideal weather explains the cheap hotel rates, and the fact that I currently seem to be one of only a dozen tourists in all of Antalya.
Around 7:00 I stumble out into the rain to forage for food. I make the mistake of by passing the very chic-looking restaurant attached to the hotel, and instead wander into town to a place billed on the outside as a "kafe bistro." On the back wall inside is a flat-panel TV, with a continuous recording running of a wood-burning fireplace. A television station in Pittsburgh used to run the same thing for six hours every Christmas morning: "The Yule Log: A Holiday Tradition!" Hey, that's reason enough for me to give this place my business.
In front of the simulated fire are two musicians, playing the bağlama and guitar. They are not playing them particularly well. And like the faux fireplace, the food that arrives at the table is not so much food, as it is an approximation of food. It's as if the chef had no real experience preparing food, but had once seen pictures and tried his best to re-create it from memory.
On a positive note, beer is served.
Hoping for better luck tomorrow, I finish my beer and my ersatz food, warm my hands in front of the ersatz fire, zip up my anorak, and head out in the rain back to my tastefully decorated brothel.
The rain has more or less stopped the next day, but the weather remains gray, cloudy and cold. I decide to start the day by walking through the streets of the old town. The old town streets are indeed ancient and quaint. They are also packed with tourist trinket shops of every conceivable incarnation.
Unfortunately, at this stage of the season there appear to be more tourist trinket shops in Antalya than there are actual tourists. As I walk down the street, it is as if someone has pushed the tourist alarm button and placed all shop owners on Def Con 3. The charming cobblestone streets soon become a nightmarish gauntlet of desperate merchants, working me as if their child's next meal depends on it.
I imagine this is what the zombie apocalypse will be like, if the zombies are hawking rugs, T shirts, and cheap ceramics.
In response to every request to come inside and look around, I repeat again and again what soon become the five most important words in the Turkish language: Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra. ("Not now, but maybe later.") I repeat it so often it becomes a mantra: "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra." "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra."
The magic words appease almost everyone, save for one persistent shop owner, who comes out of his doorway and begins to follow me down the street. "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra," I say to him. "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra." But he keeps coming; the words bounce off of him like bullets off the chest of Superman. I begin to wonder if the only way to stop him is to drive a stake through his heart.
As I'm still walking, he makes one last desperate attempt to make a sale. "I need your money!" he shouts at me in English.
I answer him over my shoulder without breaking stride. "Bende," I tell him. Yeah. Me too.
* * * *
As I left the shop of Kemal the rental car man, he made the following statement: "The petrol is on reserve, so you will return it on reserve." I had no idea in hell what he was talking about. Yet, because he was speaking English, and English is supposed to be a language I have mastered, I nodded as if I understood completely. Yes, of course; the petrol is on reserve. Please, Kemal, my friend. This goes without staying.
After driving around in circles in the streets of Antalya for 15 minutes fruitlessly searching for the Road out of Town and finally glancing at the dashboard, the meaning of Kemal's words finally become clear to me. "The petrol is on reserve," is Turkish (translated into English) for "The gas tank is empty." Oh. I see. I probably should have clarified that, before I'd gotten lost.
To avoid having to figure out how to say "Is there a Turkish AAA?" or "Help me; I am screwed" in Turkish, I temporarily suspend my quest for the apparently mythical Road out of Town, and start looking for something that resembles a gas station.
* * * *
I emerge from the Labyrinth of the Trinket Sellers shaken, but thankfully with money still in my wallet. With the weather still gray and overcast, I decide this might be a good time to head off to the Antalya Archaeological Museum.
Just as there aren't any tourists in the trinket shops, there aren't many history nerds in the archaeological museum either. Perhaps there is a limited audience for Roman statues, Greek coins, and clay pots fished out of the sea, even on the worst of days.
I confess that my eyes glaze over and my mind begins to wander after about the sixth statue gallery. I notice that on each of the seemingly dozens of statutes of Hercules, the genitalia has been completely snapped off. Every single one. I wonder if there was some period of male statue genitalia debasement not covered in my 9th grade history book, or if there is a separate exhibit of the offending appendages, back behind a curtain somewhere. Surely they were not just tossed in the trash; someone must have them. I'm not finding an explanation on any of the placards. How would I ask that in Turkish?
My God, I hope the weather is better tomorrow.
I rent a bike and ride out along the cliffs above the sea, running unexpectedly into the Dunden Waterfalls about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) outside of town. Busloads of French and German tourists have been disgorged here take photographs, but the falls are pretty spectacular all the same.The day is topped off with a dinner at a restaurant in the Old City yacht harbor of fish soup, calamari salad, grilled sea bass, and (of course) plenty of rakı. The only other people in the restaurant the entire time I am here is a Turkish couple entertaining an overweight Finnish businessman, who spends the evening recounting to his hosts in a loud voice how he built his business from the ground up. At one point he summons the restaurant owner to the table, to expound on his views (in English) of proper kitchen hygiene practices.
It is somehow comforting to know that America is not the world's sole exporter of pompous blowhards. I order another rakı, and call it a good day.
* * * *
Back in California, my sister has a GPS device in her Prius that she affectionately refers to as "Navigation Lady." Navigation Lady is a stern dominatrix, whom my sister disobeys at her own peril ("Navigation Lady wants me to take the freeway." "Navigation Lady is upset because I missed the turn."). The advantage to a GPS guidance system like Navigation Lady is that you never have to really figure anything out, because you always have someone telling you what to do. There's no denying the comfort in that.
But there is also a downside to obediently listening to what others tell you to do. Recently in Australia a car full of Japanese tourists drove their rented Hyundai 50 yards into the ocean when the Japanese version of Navigation Lady directed them down a road that, unfortunately, didn't actually exist. "It told us we could drive down there," Yuzu Noda, 21, told the local Australian newspaper. "It kept saying it would navigate us to a road." Yes, Yuzu and his friends did exactly what they were told. You see where that got them.
There is no Navigation Lady - American, Turkish, Japanese or otherwise - in my Aveo clown car. Yes, it's true: I am lost. But I've come by it honestly. Eventually I will find the right road on my own. And I'm reasonably confident that, in the process, I can avoid driving off into the ocean.
* * * *
The morning after the Night of the Bloviating Finn, I head out to the the beach in Antalya. Finally, the weather is perfect: sunny, warm (68-70 degrees), and beautiful. I wade into the water and read a book on the pebbly beach. The only other people within 100 yards of me are two young female tourists, who squeal and curse in German as they try swimming in the still-too-chilly water.
The snow-capped mountains of the Toros Dağları rise up behind me; the blue water of the Mediterranean stretches out ahead of me all the way to Israel. I could sit in this spot all day, or forever maybe. It is sunny and warm and calm and comfortable. No person in his right mind could possibly complain, or want anything more than this.
And yet.
And yet.
I keep looking back over my shoulder at the mountains where I've never been before. I throw one of the round beach stones into the water, then another. Then I stand up and collect my things. I remember passing a rental car place on the way down to the beach. Kemal's something or other.
* * * *
I have finally found a gas station, and secured "petrol for the reserve." Lost still, yes, but disaster has been averted. In Turkish, I tell the gas station attendant (who is actually pumping my gas and cleaning my windshield, by the way) that I am looking for the Road out of Town, and ask him if he knows where I could find it.
"Tabii," he tells me. Of course. He points to a street sign about 25 yards away, and tells me in Turkish to turn right at this sign, and go straight. I look to where he is pointing. Turn right there? I ask him. Yes, right there. The place he points to is not a major road, but instead a broken-asphalt side street that appears to be headed into one of the less-desirable neighborhoods of Antalya.
This will take me to the Road out of Town?
Yes.
This street here?
Yes.
What he is telling me seems to defy all logic. That can't possibly be the right road; it looks completely wrong. And yet. I pay for the gas, thank him, climb back in the Aveo, and take a right at the sign into the ramshackle neighborhood.
Almost immediately, I'm convinced I'm completely screwed. The street quickly narrows into little more than a one-way alley, going from broken asphalt to no asphalt at all. I slow the car down to a crawl trying to drive around the enormous potholes. A stray dog and three kids playing soccer in a vacant lot stop and look up at me
as I drive by, as if I have arrived in their neighborhood from another planet.
As wrong as it seems, I have no choice but to keep going. The road is so narrow there is no place to turn around. Even if I could, I would still have no idea where I was anyway.
In a sense, I created all of this uncertainty the moment I stood up from my place on the beautiful beach, and walked through the doors of Kemal's rent-a-car shop. Of course now there is no going back to that place on the beach. Sometimes, like it or not, the only place you can go is to go on.
After several more minutes crawling down the alleyway, I can see cars whizzing by up ahead. It is a highway, and at the intersection I can see a sign for the airport. It is, in fact, the Road Out of Town.
I put the Aveo in first and ease my way into the stream of traffic, heading off toward the snow-capped mountains in the distance.
I still don't know where I'm going. But I'm on my way.
Jim Croce and Paul Simon be praised.
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