The Land of the Disappeared

I didn't mean to write another entry so soon but when you've got a blog in you, it's only healthy to let it out...

Leaving the blissful lanes of Sanliurfa we headed out into the dusty plains. The black tents and tarpaulin of nomad camps sending smoke signals toward the distant mountains. We had organised a homestay in a Kurdish village through a British woman who, having married a local man and given up a high-flying career, had dedicated her life to improving the life in tiny Yulacali. Most people here live on less than a dollar a day, 50% are illiterate, 80% intermarried. The result of all this is a 20-30% infant mortality rate. Apologies if I've begun to sound like an Oxfam advert. The village itself, a patchwork of concrete, adobe and animal dung, lay on an ancient site. A Neolithic settlement mound rose from the muddy ground, paths were littered with fragments of Roman mosaics, ancient pots and flint tools. We were in the land where civilisation began, where hunting and gathering first  became passé. We watched some village men rolling flat the mud roof of their house, they were using an ancient Roman column.

We stayed with a kindly family in a house of carpets and doilies. Outside, sheep, chickens and cows scratched the earth. Various relatives came and went (our hostess was one of 16, the oldest 60, the youngest 12) and we watched the daily bread baked over a straw-fueled fire.

As Kurds, the children are forbidden from speaking their own language at school (even though it is sometimes their only language), on a Turkish census form there is not an option to say you're 'Kurdish'. We headed next to Diyarbakir, a stronghold of Kurdish defiance, a place that strikes fear into nationalist hearts. We were received with open arms and soon found ourselves in the depths of the bazaar discussing politics with a group of Kurdish men. Here, the godlike Ataturk, whose face graces every school, restaurant and public park from here to Istanbul was denounced as a 'motherf**ker' (they had a highly sophisticated grasp of the language). They even spoke openly of the silent Armenian churches that scatter these lands and the 'disappearance' of their former parishioners.
In the west of Turkey I had been regularly assured that 'everyone loves Ataturk!' 

We spent a few nights in Erzerum, where two metre icicles hang from the eaves and white mountains diffuse into snowy skies before bussing up into the mountains, slipping over the icy roads between sliding lorries. We are now in Dogubayazit, our last stop in Turkey. We are encircled by mountains including Mount Ararat (believed to be where Noah's ark ended up) and overlooked by an amazing palace that looks out over the dusty plains to Armenia on one side and Iran on the other.

Our journey in this fascinating country is coming to an end, soon we leave the the long shadows of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires (in which we've been travelling since Croatia) and enter the ancient heart of another great civilisation, Persia. In a few days we'll cross an infamous Silk Road mountain pass (in years past, the spring thaw would reveal the petrified corpses of unlucky travellers) into Iran...

...no, we're not mad. Trust us.