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| Aksahap village |
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| Two artists together, Uncle Kemal and Bambina |
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| Wooden artwork of Uncle Kemal |
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| A stone sculpture by Uncle Kemal |
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| Coffee house committee, from left to right: Teacher Vahit, Retiree Erdener, Mountain man, Uncle Kemal, Tea-man, Halil |
Sunlight was not only waking up the earth that morning, but
also the warrior woman laying deep inside of Gamze. Maybe not her knee but her
determination was replenished by the morning as she decided to continue with
us. (I feel that I owe you dear readers an explanation about this treacly
language I’m using. It’s all the fault of Emrah Ozkok, the author of the book
Melas Canyon. Even though the book was very instrumental in bringing us on this
trip and guiding us through it, small articles he wrote in between each section
of the book, titled “From Guide’s Eye”, cracked us all up every night during
our reading out loud sessions, and with its super sentimental, heavy literary
language, left deep marks in our souls and minds.) After celebrating Bambina’s decision with a
happy dance, she and I took on the responsibility of bringing bread to the
table this time and went for a walk. After not recieving any response from the
only house in the whole village with some noise coming from it we were
returning to the teashop in dissappointment when a sweet old lady stuck out her
head from a door and told us that she couldn’t recognize us. After explaining
her our holy mission, we brought the subject to some bread and tried to get a
feel of her stash. She told us she only had two loaves of bread, but we weren’t
going to settle for that much of course, we wanted it all. After grilling her a
little we were finally assured that she really didn’t have any more. Along with
some tomatoes she put in the bag she send us our way with all her charm and
sweetness.
We spent the day walking from Uzumdere to Aksahap. Despite
the splendor of nature lifting our souls throughtout the journey everyone’s
except for our youngest member Benoit’s knee was hurting, making it difficult
to continue. We were exploring new walking styles to put the least pressure on
our knees, trying everything from acrobatics to ballet. Finally our experiments
were fruitful and Ali discovered a walking style that he named “penguin walk”. On the final stretch to the village we were
doing our penguin walk, laughing hard, and thinking of what the villagers may
think of us when they see us arriving in such a way. Luckily the person
greeting us when we arrived was someone who wouldn’t judge us by our walking
style. This pure hearted young man’s name was Halil and he probably was the
happiest person I have ever seen in my life. His mental disability didn’t stop
him from spreading joy around him and sharing one story after another. Along with
reenactments he was performing, he was living the stories over and over again. When
I call it a story, don’t take it as a made up one. He was telling us about a
true event that took place in the village the day before. There was a murder in
the town and when the cops came to arrest the murderer Halil was caught up in
the middle of all the action and naturally was deeply affected. The second
person we met in the village was a retired man, who had been living and working
in Istanbul most of his life, but now together with his aging mother was
spending his retirement traveling between Aksahap, Istanbul and Antalya. He
took on the responsibility of being our guide in the village. With him leading
the way, our operations manager Asena, Ali and I went first to the tiny grocery
store and empied the shelves, then stopped by Mr. Erdener’s house to complete a
few missing items we needed before returning to the tea house where we were to
spend the evening. While we were gone Halil had kept on telling stories, but by
this time his attention focusing more on Gamze, he was performing various
tricks to show off his strength to impress Gamze in a very sweet and naive way.
Before we came on this trip a friend of Gamze’s had read her fortune from
coffee grounds (a very popular and common thing in Turkey) and had told her
about a potential lover she would meet on this trip. First we thought it could
be Ozkaynak Mustafa, who had left a message on Susuzsahap facebook page
requesting a nightclub in the village, but now seemed like it could be Halil
that was destined for Gamze…
After settling in at the tea house, Asena prepared a
delicious bulgur dish for us. She made it so tasty and abundantly that everyone
went for the seconds and for the first time on this trip we were truely feeling
full. While we were having dinner the grocer’s son stopped by and kept talking
about the mushrooms he got poisoned from a few days ago and almost died, his
school and village life. We finally were getting all the attention and care we
had been craving for all throughout this trip. Off course one has to be careful
about what one wishes for. The visits that started with Halil and grocer’s son
Metin continued with the city man Erdener, retired teacher Mr. Vahit, artist
Uncle Kemal, hunter Duran, the reeve and a few others that I couldn’t catch the
name or occupation of. With so many visitors I took charge of the tea house,
serving everyone their tea. I got so wrapped up in being the tea guy that I was
about to start charging people for the drinks when we figured some fresh air
might help to bring me back to my senses. We walked over to Uncle Kemal’s house
to take a look at his artwork. Instead
of playing rummikub at the tea house all day, Uncle Kemal was spending his
retirement days by creating wooden and stone sculptures. His artistic soul was
reflecting off of his talk and work, which came as a pleasant surprise to find
in this distant small village. Once the committee consisting of the villagers
and us returned to the tea house, seeing how sleepy we were and having mercy on
us, the villagers kindly took leave and let us rest.
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