The sociable restaurateur

Lured to the Nazar Börek restaurant by the thought of gözleme (savoury pancakes), I can't find them on the menu. I choose instead a main course of saҫ tava, a metal plate of fried, diced meat, peppers and garlic with fresh tomato and parsley, suspended over flames. The food is excellent. The red wine is as smooth and elegant as its name.

At first, I am the only customer in the small, unassuming arched interior, but a couple arrive, soon followed by a handsome group of young French men and women.  Reverse baseball capped man spots my flaming, sizzling plate and presents a questioning thumbs up. I respond with an affirming thumb, though some authoritative sources assert that this would have meant a swift despatch for the gladiatorially defeated in ancient Rome.

The owner, Refik, fluent in several languages, takes time to chat about the local wine. He reveals his plan for another restaurant with a different style, but this is perfect for me this evening.

The music varies from traditional Turkish to hip and cool French tracks for his other guests. Dancing and drumming is required.

Click on the link: http://youtu.be/h5TjLVQVCZ4

The barber of Göreme

The sign on the wall said "Berber" and an arrow directed me round the corner. I found it soon enough. Inside, a boy of about eight years greeted me and ushered me to a seat. I remained standing.

"How much for a shave and haircut?" I asked. 

He seemed to understand my request. "Fifty". 

"Too much." I replied and moved towards the door. He looked anxious and barred my way with raised, but placating hands. With no one else in sight, for a few seconds, I entertained the thought that barbers started young in Göreme. Then, amongst his words I picked up "patron" several times and inferred that he was an apprentice or shop minder and that I should await the arrival of the boss. I said "OK" and sat down. The boy then scooted out the door. A minute later a man appeared with the youth in tow.

We negotiated ten lire for a shave, twenty for a haircut and I sat down, banishing all thoughts of Sweeney Todd as my face was carefully lathered. As I sat with a beard of foam, the boy watched intently, gave me a reassuring massage on my shoulder and responded to instructions from the patron. I was shaved once, twice without the slightest nick. Hair was washed and expertly cut. I was relaxed. 

Then came the pitch. A facepack, only ten lire. Seemed ok. Then green goo that I thought was hair conditioner was produced for my 'broken' hair. Now my guard was down and I acceded without checking the price. The goo was applied. While my ears were singed with flaming cotton buds, a call from the street distracted the barber and he lingered a split second too long on my left lobe. I recoiled from the pain. Then hot wax was applied, ripped off and I realised that this attention was not going to come cheap. Twenty minutes and a massage later I was a new man. I was shocked to see in the mirror that the conditioner, in reality, had been dye.

I stood up. "That's a hundred" the barber smiled.

I left the shop, hair darker, pockets lighter.

I thought wistfully of Jean Rochefort as Antione, in Patrice Leconte's La mari de la coiffeuse watching Anna Galiena as Mathilde, sitting in the barber's shop window. I yearned for those moments of intense fulfilment - to be a hairdresser's husband, to be at one in the now and beyond life itself.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hairdressers-husband-1990

The road not taken, from Göreme to Malatya

"No bus to Malatya! You must go to Kayseri." The surly ticket agent ushers me to the map of Turkey on the wall. "From there you must go to Kahta, then from Kahta to Malatya." He taps the map on Kahta circled emphatically in ball-point ink as if to give it more importance than the mapmaker had thought it merited. I stare at the map in disbelief. It's like being told at Portsmouth Harbour Station that you have to go via South Benfleet to get to London. Has someone ripped up the Silk Road?

"OK" I say sceptically, "I will go to Kayseri today." determining to find a direct bus from there. No further information is volunteered while the agent fills out the ticket.

"How much?"

"Fifteen"

If he is right about the buses, my friend Ayse is heading east, this very moment, on a non-existent coach. 

As I leave the ticket office, I am thinking I'm smart, not to be outwitted. That is before I go for a shave and haircut.

Transcendentalism on the Silk Road, Göreme, Cappadocia.

The Köy Evi Restaurant took some finding. I toiled up the winding streets past the Arch Palace Hotel, away from the centre's shops and bars. An occasional sign on a stone wall spurred me on past dilapidated rock houses until these petered out. I turned back for a moment, with the thought that it might now be one of the rubble strewn plots I had passed. Had the latest edition of the Lonely Planet guide let me down? One last attempt was rewarded when I rounded an extra corner. 

There it was. At the entrance, an affable youth offered me portions of warm, freshly baked flatbread. I took a seat at a garden table surrounded by kitsch statuettes under shady apricot trees. A woman in traditional dress sat cross-legged nearby preparing more home-baked bread on a large stone. I looked out over the narrow valley. The late evening sun cast the conical rock forms in dazzling yellow light. They, in contrast, pitched the lanes into sombre shadow. 

Having ordered the et testi kebabi, I enjoyed the evening birdsong, reflecting on the day. I had spurned the quad bike tour for obese western yabanci, though baulked at the three day hiking tour on the pretence that I hadn't brought the appropriate footwear. I had opted, instead for the contrasts of the leafy Melendiz river canyon of the Ihlara valley and the labyrinthine Derinkuyu underground city that my friend Chris had explored on his drive with Ken from Karabörtlen to Cappadocia a few years before. He had written so eloquently of their trip, casting magical spells in my imagination of these places and summoning the ghosts of the travellers making their stops at the caravanserais strung like pearls, each separated a day's journey by camel, along the Silk Road, all the way to China. I was envious, back then of his brilliant weaving of place and history and a sense of ever present spirits of the past. I envied, too, the companionship for travel he had evidently forged with Ken. I have not met Ken but I have an image of a big man, perhaps a courtly man, rather self-contained but with a big and true heart. 

The waiter had brought a plate, cutlery, a basket of bread, a yogurt-based appetiser and a glass of local red wine. Now he arrived with a bowl of bulgur and an unglazed, sealed pot. With a sharp, firm tap, he broke off the top to reveal the slow-cooked beef. I made short work of the tender meat and ordered a rice pudding and bottle of Dark Efes. 





I asked for a Turkish coffee with the bill. A chilling breeze made me wish for my fleece. The arrival of several women at a table nearby failed to warm my blood. Suddenly, the clatter of hooves on the stone road yanked me out of my self-absorption. I looked up to see horseriders rounding the curve of the street, cantering up the hill. I marvelled at their confidence on what seemed a treacherous surface. 

Later, at a main-street restaurant, with an Efes Pilsen, my thoughts return to the day's events, meeting Memrut, the tour guide, who said his name meant 'Happy', and the mother and daughter from California. I had talked about nature and a progression from my youthful days of a sense of separation to a growing feeling of connectedness with all things. My words now seem to mock me as I notice that I was the only lone customer in the place. Nevertheless, I reflected on my wellbeing in this visually attractive region, its dreamlike landscape and warm hearted people. I am increasingly relaxing into a kind of normalcy of a traveller, trusting that there will always be a place to stay, a toilet round the next corner, a cash dispenser and a ticket office for the next bus trip or flight. Perhaps I can also trust that there will be another friendly hotel receptionist, waiter, bar owner or tour companion to connect with for a short while. 

For this traveller, however, to travel alone is to trade companionship, with its inevitable chatter, negotiation, irritation and compromise, for self-containment, self-negotiation and self-determination. I wondered how it might have been for Henry David Thoreau during those two years in the cabin at Walden Pond, his writings about individualism, self-reliance and the unity of all things in nature. I resolved to read my old leather bound copy of Walden; or, Life in the Woods, upon my return home. 

Tomorrow, I will catch a bus to Yukari Ulu Pinar - or not, as I wish. The night breeze carries the mezzuen call out over the town. The air is chill, the beer is drunk, my bill is paid. I look around to see it's couples on every table. I am done.