This Is This

22. One More Highway Song
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That afternoon it rained in Cappadocia for the first time in two months. One minute it was any other lazy, clear afternoon and the next it was coming down in sheets. In a rush, we moved our belongings away from the edges of the terrace and just sat back enjoying the unusually moist air. I braved the rain to buy a beer around the corner and returned to Hemingway.

We spent the afternoon practising what seemed to be a local pastime, swatting flies. They were trying to get out of the rain, too. As the rain grew thick, one of the French guests ran into the courtyard below, clutching a newspaper.

“Regardez!” he called out enthusiastically, “Le Figaro!”

“When is it from?” I asked in French.

“Doesn’t matter!” He shouted back as he dived for shelter.

Buying a foreign newspaper in Avanos was harder than buying a roll of toilet paper (you could only buy packs of twenty). I hadn’t heard any news since I left Barcelona in mid-July and we were now into early August.

After a couple of hours reading Hemingway, I went down below the courtyard to another shelter where the musician I had seen on the first night was playing his baglama, the Turkish equivalent to the lute. He sat in his wheelchair and played to himself. I sat opposite him and listened. After a few minutes I picked up a drum, a sort of bongo with a long body and tried to reproduce the rhythms I had heard in the bus. He nodded in approval and we broke into a long ethnic jam session.

After a while, he handed me the baglama. Seeing that it had six strings, I tried some standard guitar chords. It sounded awful. The baglama, or saz, is a long-necked lute with three pairs of strings tuned to D-C-A.

This was the instrument of the asik, who, like the medieval French troubadour, travelled from village to village in fifteenth century Anatolia. Because the instrument is open tuned, it sounded better strummed, changing the pitch of the bottom two strings. I sat out when Mustapha appeared and he began playing the drum beautifully.

After five hours, the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, without warning, leaving behind a clear blue sky and fresh air.

That we joined fifteen other French guests in the courtyard for a large, delicious traditional Turkish meal. After this, the master showed me how the baglama is meant to be played. A man called (I swear) Ali Baba who worked at the hostel accompanied him on the drum while we clapped and danced to the music. After each song the baglamist basked in our applause and the newfound sunshine with a smile that let us know that all the hours spent practising had paid off in a few seconds of praise.

I woke up the next day and unzipped my sleeping bag knowing it was time to leave. There was the indescribable and impulsive urge to move. I washed some clothes, which took half and hour to dry in the morning sun, had some breakfast and packed up. I had decided I was going to Iraq. Jean-Luc and Bertrand were going to the Mediterranean coast to sit on a beach for a while.

I changed some money and decided to travel by bus to Ankara, only because the next bus to Iraq left four hours later than this one. I said goodbye to my companions and exchanged addresses before stepping on to the large Mercedes bus. I intended to get to Ankara and catch a train to Istanbul and go west from there, but I arrived late. Even thought the seven hour train trip took three and a half by bus, we were an hour late. Normally I wouldn’t have complained, but the train station closed at eleven o’clock. I walked away back to the bus station and nearly got run over by someone who had jumped a light that was apparently red. Someone ran up to me.

“Where you go my friend?”

“Istanbul”

He led me to one of the many ticket agency booths and I paid 20,000 for a ticket which would get me to Istanbul in the morning. With half and hour until the bus left, I decided to amuse myself with a little civil disobedience.

I stood with my rucksack in the middle of the bus station and started to pivot in a circle, looking choicely at the bus company ticket offices, trying to appear as helpless as I could. I got through about thirty degrees before an envoy rushed up.

“Where you going my friend?”

“Istanbul, but-”

It was too late. I was being led to a bus company at the far end of the station. The scout presented me to the ticket office and said something to the agent in Turkish which was probably “One ticket to Istanbul”. The man behind the counter started writing out the ticket. He slammed it one the surface between us. He said a figure and pointed to the price, 20,000 lira.

“But,” I said innocently, “I already have a ticket.” I showed him my ticket, bought at a rival bus company.

He was furious. “You say ticket to Istanbul,” he shouted in English, “I give you ticket; 20,000 lira!”

“I never said I wanted a ticket. This man,” I pointed to the scout, “comes up to me and says, ‘Where you going my friend?’, and I say, ‘Istanbul.’”

I showed him my ticket and pointed to the line which read Ankara-Istanbul, “I am, you see? Then he brings me here and tells you I want a ticket. I don’t understand, what’s going on?”

He swore at me and waved me on, so I swore back in English and waved myself away. Brilliant. I got five more of these in before heading back to challenge make a bid for the title of Europe’s Biggest Asshole.
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