Whether or not this was so, it was wonderful to have the freedom to speculate. In Europe detailed research has dropped a weighty academic veil between the amateur antiquarian and his ruins. He must tread carefully for he treads on someone's PhD. In contrast, the state of Cilician archaeology is only as advanced as its English equivalent was at the time of John Aubrey and William Stukeley, and the traveller can still write books of dilettante observations like Stukeley's
Itinerarium Curiosum,
without fear of being contradicted. He is on virgin territory.
I thought of the bloody Armenian chronicles that I had read in translation in the libraries of Cambridge. Very few of the castles mentioned have ever been identified with the small crumbling ruins which dot the plains and hilltops of Cilicia. Where is Binag, the castle of Sempad the Marshal? Where is Tchelganotz or the great monastery of Trazarg? After being caught and manacled in
flagrante delicto
on a clandestine visit to the brothels of Antioch, King Rupen was forced to retire here and spend his declining years in book illumination and penance. What has happened to Molevon, Neghir or Skevra? What of Maidzar? In 1245 the Armenians swept out of here and won a great victory against Kai Khusrau the Turk, but the Armenians have gone and its site lies forgotten.
From the top of the keep we looked out over the fertile Cilician plain, in Polo's day still a malarial swamp, 'by no means a healthy region, but grievously the reverse', and through the haze to the nearby Armenian citadels of Toprakkale and Yilan Kale, the Castle of the Snake. Below, a Yimik was cantering towards the nomad camp, throwing up a slipstream of dust, and between the purple tent tops small plumes of smoke were rising from the evening fires. The flat roofs of Sis lay to the left, partially obscured by the hillside, and behind us, the peaks of the Anti-Taurus rolled off towards the Cilician gates. On a distant slope you could just see a horse trap moving slowly uphill, pulling a tethered milk cow behind it.
After a while I broke the silence.
'We could be the first people to have seen this view for hundreds of years.' I said, moved to unusual lyricism.
'Balls.' said Laura. 'People come up here all the time.'
As she spoke, a pair of goatherds appeared with their flock from behind the citadel walls. We had not seen them climbing up behind us. nor, until that moment, had they seen us. They looked at each other and, intrigued, walked towards us to investigate further. The elder came very close, pointed, then bunt into fits of hysterics. His brother joined in and the pair rolled about on the keep's flagstone floor.
'It’s those shorts of yours,' said Laura disdainfully (referring to my precious pair of long, baggy empire-builders). I had the impression that the goatherds had found us both equally amusing, but kept a tactful silence and we set off downhill to collect our rucksacks.
Here we were given a more respectful reception. The cafe was now crowded with the (male)
jeunesse dore
of Sis, and we were sat down beneath a freize of posters of Sylvester Stallone and Madonna, and were plied with bottles of Coca-Cola. Twenty new pairs of stone-washed jeans clustered around.
'Or sir, may I ask question?'
'Certainly.'
'The English people. Do they need PT teachers?' 'Oh. there's an enormous demand. Everyday you read about the lack of PT teachers in the papers.' 'Oh sir.'
Another boy pushed forward.
Sir, sir. Do the English women want to marry Turkish men?' 'Ask Laura.'
'Madam. Do the English women want to marry Turkish men?'
'A few might,' said Laura, noncommittally.
'Sir -' it was the PT teacher again '- do you know aerobics?'
'No.'
'No?
'No.'
'No.'
'But all England knows aerobics. It is the modern method of keep fit.'
He looked genuinely shocked.
'Well you must know breakdance.'
'I know a little rock and roll,' replied Laura.
'Rock and roll,' said the boy, 'is very old fashioned. Do you know any other dance?'
I thought foolishly of the postcards of the Kaa'ba at Mecca that I had, at enormous expense, brought from a Pakistani grocery in Cambridge in order to try and woo my way into Muslim hearts. With a sheaf of Samantha Fox pin-ups Turkey could have been mine.
'Do you think they would like the Gay Gordons?' I asked Laura.
'Who is gay Gordon?' asked the PT teacher.
'He is a dance.'
'A new one?'
'Brand new.'
'You will teach us?'
The tables and chairs were cleared into a pile at the far end of the room. Laura and I took our position in front of twenty Turks, all chattering excitedly. Laura raised her hand and everyone shut up. I got into position, one hand holding her right hand above her right shoulder, the other grasping her left hand at waist height. We stood still for a dramatic, silent moment while I cocked my head in a show of mock confidence and tried desperately to remember what I had been taught by the Huskey-clad Scots woman in the cold village hall near Portree.
Then we were off, Laura in the lead. We hopped up the length of the room, pirouetted and headed back the way we had come. We turned, and did the same in reverse. We twinkled back and forward, clockwise and anti-clockwise, hopping and swaying our way around the length of the cafe until we drew to a halt near the great samovar at the end of the room.
We bowed, and the Turks bowed back. Most of them looked utterly bewildered by our demonstration. But Gay Gordon was modern, and they were determined to master him.
We lined them up in pairs according to height; two fragile-looking farmers' sons at one end, a couple of yelling savages, fat as bouncers, at the other. Laura stood on a bench and shouted 'one, two,
three!'
As if kicked from behind, the line moved off towards the samovar. Our Gay Gordon was not an enormous success. We failed to demonstrate properly how to manoeuvre at the end of the room and the dance sewn ended in a calamitous pile-up.
But we were not to be allowed off without teaching them something. Despite our choreographic failure they cried for another dance and Laura suggested we try to teach them an eightsome. Someone was sent off to find the village musicians. A few minutes later two men appeared bearing a long balalaika and a pair of small calfskin drums. We got them to play
something
that sounded roughly like the correct rhythm, dismissed the savages and some other less enthusiastic dancers, then organized the remainder in two circles. The fragile boys were in my circle; Laura got the PT teacher.
Surprisingly, this time our teaching was successful, perhaps because the eightsome was not unlike some Turkish dances. We showed them how to
pas de bas
and set, and how to turn each other. Then we demonstrated how to spin the centre of the circle and cross in a figure of eight. The musicians struck up the beat: twang-twang-twang Padum! Padum! Padum! The
pas de bas
remained a stumbling block, but they all seemed to enjoy themselves and all in all took to reeling with remarkable ease.
After our exertions we felt we had earned the offers of supper which were thrust upon us; the night bus did not leave until
eight
o'clock and we had worked up a healthy appetite. We were billeted with a boy called Rajep who had been Laura s partner in the eightsome. He was, so he told us, not only from the richest family in the village, but also the cleverest. He studied law at the Bosphonis University in Istanbul - and had a T-shirt to prove it. He was appalled to learn that we both studied history. 'In Turkey history has no value,' he said as he walked us to his home. The only serious subjects are engineering, medicine, law and economics.'
He was, however, reasonably impressed that we were from Oxford and Cambridge: 'I have heard people say that they are quite good universities.'
We were taken to his house, and sat outside beneath the fig trees. It was evening and outside the compound you could hear the dogs of the town barking. They always began howling at this time of day, during the evening call of the muezzin, and generally took at least half an hour to calm down afterwards.
'My father did not want me to go to university,' said Rajep. He thought it would be anti-Islamic, and only let me go after I begged him on my knees. The people here are very conservative, and they are frightened of progress. There are many - how do you say? - fanatics. They do not like what Attaturk did for this country: creating democracy, making industry, freeing the women. Many of the old men want their mullahs to rule them, like in Iran.'
'Do you still go the mosque?' asked Laura.
'Sometimes. I believe in Allah and read the Koran, but do not like the mosque. The mullahs do not talk to me or my friends because we go to university, and they will not discuss our ideas with us. This country has two problems. One is the mullahs, the other is the army - both want to rule the country, and to stop democracy.'
'I thought the military had stepped down,' I said.
No. It is better now, but still we do not have full freedom. Many of my cousins are socialists, and there are many problems for them. My cousin - my uncle's son - was arrested for his socialism and given electric shocks by the police. They wanted him to tell them the names of all his friends, but he refused and denied everything, and eventually they let him out of prison. Still he talks about the prisons. The robbers, they beat up the political prisoners and the guards they beat up everybody. There are gangs, and many killings. Another problem for our country is that the military censor the Press: we still do not have a serious newspaper. When the military came they closed down all the good ones and left only the bad. Like
Tan
- have you seen
Tan?'
We certainly had.
Tan
was a wonderful paper, a strange cross between the
Guards' Magazine,
the
Church Times
and the
Sun.
Most of its news items concerned the highly respectable doings of the President, General Kenan Evren, or those of the senior mullahs, but on the outside were splashed huge colour
pictures
of topless Western tourists photographed on the beaches of the Aegean coast. If none were being worn, bikini bottoms were always drawn in, and any visible nipples were covered with a tiny black mark. Underneath were captions reading something along the lines of, 'Lovely Helga comes from Copenhagen where she studies geography. This is her second visit to Turkey. "I love Turkey," says Helga. "Kebabs are my favourite food." '