Into the Mystic

I moved deeper into the cave, there were human bones amongst the rubble beneath my feet. My torchlight couldn't  quite reach the darkest corner so I pushed on, the crack of daylight shrinking behind me. 'I am literally Indiana Jones!' I thought to myself. Though I don't know that Indiana Jones would have turned back when it got a bit slippy and I'm pretty sure his wife wouldn't have been waiting outside ready to tell him off for being all dusty.  I was in an old rock hewn tomb in Sille, Turkey. Outside, snow sat heavy on the hills and the ramshackle roofs of the village. Nic and Emine, a former student of mine, were waiting patiently outside for my fantasy to subside.  We were staying with Emine and her family in nearby Konya. Konya is a city of God, a place where Rumi once ruminated and where his legacy, the Whirling Dervishes, still spin themselves into a holy trance. The city streets were thawing, meltwater dripped from the mosques, medressas and mausoleums. We went to watch one of the weekly dervish performances but it felt more like watching prayer in action than a dance piece. Thirty dancers unfurl like flowers and whirl across the floor, arms raised to heaven, minds in commune with their creator. It was unlike anything I have ever seen and strangely moving. The highlight of our trip to Konya though was staying with Emine and her family. For a few days we had a warm home and a new set of brothers and sisters. We sat on carpets around a round table guzzling çay and being force fed the most delicious food. So insistent were they in their fattening of their English guests that I began to wonder if we were not part of some human foie gras experiment. The level of generosity was quite unbelievable, we were not allowed to pay for even a single bus ride. It was all quite wonderful. I seem to have got overexcited here and somewhat messed up the chronology. We had spent the previous week on the Med where green mountains gather at the coast and stretch their rocky limbs languidly into the turquoise waters. The landscape is strewn with ruins, tombs are carved from cliffs, Roman amphitheatres  scooped from rocky hillsides, bizarre burial chambers hide amongst the trees. We were staying with Nic's aunt and uncle overlooking a foaming sea. After a day of glorious sun, the clouds that have doggedly followed us for weeks swept from the mountains and unleashed hell.  The gods, it seemed, we're against us, so where better to go than to the Chasm of Heaven? That divine depression and its less appealing neighbour The Gorge of Hell will have to wait for the next missive as these fingers they grow tired. Like dervishes, we whirl ever closer to our own slice of heaven...