A Shore, and an Island, of Lost Souls Found

Yet more nostalgia.  In fact when this was written, sometime in the late nineties, it was an indulgence even then, cobbled together from notes taken during a cycling trip of some 300 kilometres along the west coast of Turkey in 1993.  It was a magic time.  Those who weren’t there then wouldn’t quite ‘get it’, but some of my readers who were might.  It was a very happy time – one I, we, had a feeling would never be equalled, or forgotten.

This one’s for many friends from that time, and still, namely: Ross, Şinasi, June, Tamer, Zeki, Hülya, Klaus, Feto and others.  Thanks for the memories.

            




“En güzel deniz henüz gidilmemiş olanıdır” 

     “The most beautiful sea is the one as yet undiscovered”

                                                     Nazim Hikmet (1901 – 1963)

The hill you sweated to climb up, and all the discomfort it caused you, is quickly forgotten when you reach its summit.  All the better when presented with a tantalising view of where it is you are headed, looking better than you ever expected...

Ayvalık is a wonderful place.  I want my ashes sprinkled atop one of its wooded hills when I die.  Let them gaze out over its red rooftops, islands and churches for the rest of eternity.

The town, like virtually all of them along Turkey’s Aegean coast, was once a Greek port.  Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, this Hellenistic past seems to have ceased only moments before you arrived.  The old stone townhouses still carry the date and builder’s initials in Greek letters on lintels above the front doors.  Cluttered corner shops seem as if they have never been re-decorated since the days of Dimitri or Stavros the shopkeepers.  Only the goods on sale have changed, but the ancient man dozing behind the counter might still remember either of them.  And when he’s not to be found – maybe away at prayers – an upended broom leaning against the open door serves as his ‘back in ten minutes’ sign.

Greeks lived here alongside Turks, happily engaged in fishing, commerce and smuggling up until 1923, after a bitter war with Greece ended in a tragic mass population exchange.  Greek-speaking Turks from Crete were re-settled here while the Ayvalık Greeks were sent back to Thrace or Athens.  So the story goes that before they left Ayvalık, they buried their gold and family heirlooms under the floorboards then got on the steamers that took them away to their new homes in a strange country.  Many thought the diaspora to be temporary – surely Greece and Turkey would make peace – hence the hidden gold.  The peace never came, and none of them ever returned.

This tragic tale was repeated everywhere along the coast until they were all gone.  Today only their architecture remains and, once in a while, a coach-load of Greek pilgrims, come to see the towns their ancestors had to leave behind.  Every time a sudden gust of wind stirs up without warning and as quickly subsides I fancy imagining their returned souls wandering past amongst the islands, hills and olive groves still, wishing, like me to spend eternity here, or maybe try and get at the gold.

It is still a beautiful, if somewhat melancholy, place.  Nestled in a small bay surrounded by pine forests and olive groves, it looks out upon a beautiful scattering of islands.  The biggest among them is Alibey, or Cunda as it is known by the locals, and more or less encloses the bay.  On Cunda and some of the smaller surrounding islands small abbeys and monasteries sit abandoned amidst wildflowers.  The scene at once fills you with joy for having found such a place and pity for those who had to leave it all behind.

The signs I’d seen since the outskirts of the town kept their promise of a fully equipped campsite though I had to pedal right over the island to get to it.  I was well-rewarded for my efforts.  Ada Camping is a little piece of Paradise hidden away in a small wooded cove.  From there it looks out on a few of the smaller uninhabited islands rising out of a crystal-clear sea and, ten or so kilometres beyond, the island of Lesvos.  When I arrived, the girl at the reception hut said, “Welcome, how long are you planning to stay?”

“I don’t know, a night probably.”

“Oh, that’s not enough, once you’ve settled in you’ll never want to leave.”

Next morning I was up to my neck in the sea, paddling about by the wooden pier when she called siren-like to me from it, standing hands on hips and looking vindicated:  “So, are you leaving today then?”

“Errr, no, I think I’ll stay a bit longer.”

“See, I told you!”

Shortly after dawn a couple days later I was up and paddling gave way to peddling back up the road that takes you to the town of Alibey itself.  In the harbour is an old coffee house known as ‘Taşkahve’, or the stone café.  What I believe used to be a big old dance hall – all fanlight windows, high ceiling and plaster cornices – is now a wonderfully derelict coffeehouse-cum-aviary.  High up in the cracked cornices and sagging ceiling braces are scores of swallows’ nests and the atmosphere is alive with their chirping and rush of wings as they fly in and out through the open windows and doors. 

When someone has left their table covered in crumbs from breakfast, the birds descend and peck it clean again.  The place is vast.  Amongst the forest of mismatched wooden tables and chairs sat a few old men staring into space through great clouds of cigarette smoke while their coffee went cold.

The great days of provincial fetes and ballroom evenings are long gone.  Now the old hall is a repository for old furniture, birds and tall stories over short coffees.  On the walls hung huge Victorian framed mirrors, the silvering wearing off the backs, which never again will reflect back happy dancing couples, or the stern looks of their anxious mothers and fathers sitting on hard chairs in the corners.  Where they once kept vigil over the moral well-being of their children now sit old washing machines and stacks of soft drink floats covered in tarpaulins.

Leaving my bike in the care of the owners, I left the café to wander around town before I left.  I decided to walk up to the top of the hill above town where sat a small ruined church.  At nine o’clock the narrow, winding streets were virtually deserted.  The wind raced down through them from the windward side of the island, stirring up mini cyclones and sending bits of paper flying.  The old townhouses, in varying states of decay, were mostly still shuttered up.  A horse and cart clattered down over the uneven cobblestones and stopped outside one of the houses.  The old driver called up to the window to tell those inside that he had a sheep to deliver.  This morning was Kurban Bayramı, the Feast of the Sacrifice, and any family that can afford to slaughters a sheep and gives the meat to the poor.  The doomed creature was taken in, legs bound, by the man of the house and a bundle of notes pressed into the old man’s hand.  He tilted his cap to all in the doorway, wished them a happy bayram then climbed back up onto his cart.

Coming up the hill past the houses, I started scrambling over rocks until they gave way to a grassy knoll.  It was covered in hundreds of bright red tulips, waving gently in the sea breeze.  The silence was total save for the wind, which made a mournful whispering sound as it passed through the crumbling stone walls of the little church at the top.  I stopped once to look back down on the town and the bay.  Beyond the tiled rooftops and the old cathedral the water basked in a silver glow.  A few sailboats floated lazily past the small island and its ruined abbey in the middle of the bay.  Looking back up to the church again, I beheld a strange sight.

Next to the ruin stood a brown, emaciated woman wearing a tatty old flowery dress.  She stood still, hands on her hips staring straight at, or through, me.  I stopped in my tracks to watch her as she wandered around the church.  She ran a bony old hand through her matted black hair, looking forlorn, as if she had lost something.  This lone spectre stared off into the distance wile the wind moaned through the walls of the gutted old church.  She seemed not of this world and I felt a slight shiver.

Then suddenly, I must have blinked, she was gone.  I jogged the rest of the way up to the ruin to see where she had disappeared to.  I looked all around, but she was nowhere to be seen.  I scanned everywhere and had finally given up when I caught another glimpse of her, apparently gliding down the other side of the hill.  In another instant she was gone again, for good.  Only the wailing of the wind remained.  But very soon after she had disappeared so to did the strange howling sound.

Later on, back in the old café, I fell into conversation with an old fisherman.  His name was Murat and had retired several years ago to, it seemed, take up permanent residence in the café.  He knew a lot about Ayvalık and could vaguely remember when the Greeks still lived there.  Somewhere in our conversation I mentioned the woman I had seen up on the hill and he looked at me and smiled strangely.  “Oh, so you’ve seen her too, have you?” he chuckled.  “She’s a famous old ghost here in Ayvalık.  You’re not the first one to spot her.”  I asked if there was a story attached to her.

“That woman, or ghost if you like, that you saw was a Greek girl – Maria Charalambos was her name.  She was the daughter of a quite well off merchant here by the name of Spyros.  I don’t know what it was he actually sold, but I do know part of his wealth came from smuggling alcohol in from Lesvos.  You couldn’t get it here in those days.

“Anyway, he had just the one girl, Maria, and she was a beauty so I’m told.  All the boys in the town were after her – Turks and Greeks alike.  Partly because her father guarded her jealously, none of them could ever get to her – he rarely even let her take the ferry over to Ayvalik to shop.  But the main reason was that she already had a beau and both were madly in love.  They must have both been in their late teens and wanted to marry.

“There was one big problem though – the boy was a Turk, by the name of Ahmet, I think…I can’t really remember.  Anyway, as you can imagine, a Christian girl and a Muslim boy getting married in those days was not an easy thing to do.  I mean it did happen quite a lot, but as I understand, both families were very much against the idea.

“So, some time passed and they had to find a way to meet in secret so they used to go up to that old church where they could be alone and so their romance carried on for some time, by all accounts.  The church was usually empty, except for Sunday mass, so they had the perfect hiding spot.

“One day they were seen together up there by a neighbour.  As you know, gossip spreads quickly in Turkey and it wasn’t long before Spyros found out.  He was furious.

“Not many people know the rest of the story very well, but it seems Maria’s father somehow contrived to make acquaintance with Ahmet.  Ahmet was poor and helped out his family by doing odd jobs for people in Moshonis – that’s what they used to call this town.  So Spyros offered him some pocket money if he would help his ‘fishermen’ go out and lay their nets at sea one night.  Ahmet jumped at the chance to make a good impression on Maria’s father and a few nights later off they went.

“The boat came back hours later without Ahmet.  What happened no one knows for certain.  The men on the boat said he fell overboard and drowned.  Most people believe he was murdered by one of the other men on Spyros’ orders.

“So, when Maria heard of her lover’s death, she was heartbroken as you can imagine.  She never got over it.  Some years later she just vanished and no one knows what became of her, though some say she went to Istanbul – what for I don’t know.  Some say she went to work in a brothel, some that she dove off a bridge and drowned herself.  She never did get over the loss of her beloved Ahmet.

“That was just before the Greeks left.  A few years later the Charalombos’ and all the rest were gone from here as well.  But, as you’ve seen for yourself, her ghost still wanders up there looking for Ahmet.  People don’t see her very often, but usually on a windy day, when it’s the Poyraz, some say you’ll hear a strange wailing sound up there.  They say it’s Maria crying for Ahmet.

“Myself, I don’t take it too seriously, but it’s a good story, don’t you think?”

Indeed it was, and one I thought of on the ferry crossing back to Ayvalık.  I mulled it over as I left there and set off down the coast road on my way back home.  In fact, I’ve thought about it on and off the past years and it still makes a good story.  Whether or not you choose to believe it is not important.  Perhaps Murat Bey made it up.  Maybe I did.  Whatever its provenance, it’s the kind of story you hear everywhere up and down the coast, and you can never be certain whether it is fact or fiction.  But then, a good tale is always better than a dull truth and it may tell you more about the facts than you think.

Whatever the truth is, it’s hard to escape the feeling that this coast is haunted day and night by the lost souls of times passed.  The ghosts of returned exiles and unrequited lovers, like Ahmet and Maria, and their stories, real or otherwise, are as much a part of the landscape as the olive groves and old towns they once roamed and, as such, they have never really left. 

 Muchlaterward

This past summer I had a chance to return to the area for the first time since this trip was made.  I saw Ayvalık and Cunda again in more or less the state I remembered them.  Some things are the same, some changed.  The Taşkahve is still there, though the birds have seemingly moved on elsewhere.  The stone church on the hill has been unsympathetically ‘restored’ and a museum complex and restaurant added to it.  Still, though, the streets remain spookily quiet and that haunting wind stirs up, then disappears again.  Ada Camping is still in business and the owners even remembered me after all these years. 

You might laugh, but I did look out for Maria around the church.  I didn’t see her.  I assumed she didn’t like the renovations.  However, I’m sure one day I will.  We might even become friends.  She was probably luring me up that hill, that day, to look at something.  Looking back now I like to fancy that trip in 1993 was me, with a little help from a ghost, casing the coastline that is to be my own haunting place one day, when all the hills I’ve sweated to climb up will quickly be forgotten and  the tantalizing view of where it is I’m finally headed looks better than ever expected.