Walking

For the past two days, we’ve the worst snow in Cappadocia in 15 years. This morning, there was no evidence that I had helped shovel the night before. I learned an important lesson though. It's much nicer to shovel with a wooden shovel than a metal one.

Because the roads were so bad, the personnel service bus left early, and I had few friends with whom to speak. I was bored, so I wrapped myself up warmly and walked up the hill to the very small shopping area in Uchisar to buy some chocolate. I also wanted to buy a toy or something for a German boy who is staying here with 3 adults. He seemed so stir crazy. I got him some pastel pencils (no regular colored pencils to be found) and gave him an old sketch book. Before dinner the following evening, he shyly presented me a drawing of fairy chimneys with an erupting volcano in the middle. It’s really sweet.

As I was walking and talking to the few people who were shovelling snow, I noticed one open shop. It looked so cosy and warm from outside the steamed windows that I decided to enter and look around. Three men were sitting on low chairs, eating from an equally low table. In the center of the table was a huge terra cotta cooking vessel with a shallow edge, filled with ground meet and eggs cooked on top. No forks, just scoop up the food with a little bread. They invited me to eat (I am so well-fed at the hotel that I can never fit anything else in my ever larger person) and tea. After the meal and tea were finished, Taner showed me the rest of his shop concealed by a kilim hung over the doorway. I found some lovely things and learned that what I had thought was part of a pulley was actually a carved walnut, roasted coffee bean cooler. Such a beautiful solution to an everyday task. I looked at the special combs women used to comb the wool for kilim yarn. It's a very different technique than carpet yarn combing. I couldn’t resist one made of metal, like a bent and incised fork for pulling wool through to retain the length of the wool fibers. According to Taner, I have very different tastes than most people. Guilty.

Taner later showed me some of his kilims and carpets. Of course the first thing I saw was a beautiful, 40-50 year old tuylu of naturally colored wool. Tuylu means “furry.” This kind of rug is called tuylu because, after it’s woven, long strands of mohair are pulled through and knotted on the underside. They look kind of like shag rugs but furrier. And nicer. It's a very good thing I didn't have my wallet with me. Besides, what am I going to do with one more tuylu in addition to the three I already own? I told Taner about my silly dream to buy a nomad’s yurt and fix my living room (when I have my own, of course) as a tented space. He didn't think that was odd because he intends to do something similar with one of the rooms in his shop. It would be a place for his guests in the pension above to relax and drink tea. So, maybe I'm not completely crazy. When I told him about my project (not yet abandoned) of learning about kilims, he said the best way would be to stay in his shop during the summer and watch the repairmen. In exchange, I would sit in the front of the store and say hello to passersby and woo them into the shop. If I went on a tour, I could, without pushing of course, steer the tourists in the direction of A la Turka Collection. Now, this is the second time that someone has offered me a job selling carpets. Is it my winning personality and enthusiasm for the merchandise that compels them to do this? I don’t care. It’s nice to be offered random jobs.

When I told Taner of my plan to ask a local boy (who knows secret places better than a kid?) to be my guide to the hidden spaces in Uchisar, he recommended I call a friend of his who can show me the cave churches and chapels in Uchisar. I know where two are. These aren't painted churches. Apparently there weren't a lot of Christians in this village in comparison to Urgup and Goreme where there are plenty of paintings.

Later that week...
By coincidence, my friend Irfan was shovelling snow in front of his closed shop at the time I was walking past it. I drank many glasses of tea with him in his shop last year. He’s an art historian and guide, so we have much to talk about, especially regarding Byzantine churches in Cappadocia. Because it’s so dead here in the winter, it's better for him to lead tours than to have one or two little sales every day. We stood in the street and talked about some of the buildings in Uchisar. He's got quite a bit of knowledge in his head about the town, and I want to pick every last bit of it. He told me that there was a caravansary in Uchisar, not a large structure similar to others on the Silk Road, but one carved into a cave. lrfan played in its stables when he was a child. He has a project to convince the municipality to move the road that is covering parts of the now rubble-filled caravansary and restore it to a decent condition. I'm all for that. I shared my bright idea to propose a graduate seminar on historic preservation in Uchisar at the Middle Eastern Technical University. Some say it’s too late for Uchisar, but I can have my little fantasy.

I stopped by to say hello to Taner in his carpet/antiques shop. I have this huge problem (yep, it's really a problem) that when I stop to say hello for a few minutes, I'm offered a glass of tea and wind up talking for a while. Maybe it’s because people are bored in the winter. Or maybe it’s because I talk a lot. It’s more likely due to the fact that people here are incredibly welcoming. When I told him I was interested, he immediately called his friend who was there in five minutes. I recognised Nevzat, a nut brown, wrinkled man with a few missing teeth. He often hangs around the castle to offer his services as a guide. We had even spoken briefly the day before in front of the castle near my favorite antique shop. He doesn't speak much English, but he guides other guides from elsewhere because he knows the area so well. For 30 YTL (I could have bargained for less, but there's a hell of a lot of snow here,) he will show me the churches we can actually reach, and many of the old abandoned houses. Life is good.