Big Trouble on the Last Bus to Batman (Journal)
Trip Start
Apr 15, 2011
1
6
7
Trip End
May 25, 2011
Midyat, Mardin, Turkey
Sunday, May 1, 2011
I'm in the 2nd row seat... a good view, but in this case I might know too much. So when you hear the following, remember it is coming from someone who grew up in Southern California: I soon found myself in the weirdest traffic jam I've ever witnessed.
Looking back now, the whole trip really started out weird. Just hearing the instructions "Look for the mini-bus to Batman" was enough to arc my portside brow. The trip would be an hour max, and halfway to Batman i was to tell the driver to let me off in the village of Hasenkeyf. No one around here spoke any English, but I am getting really fluent at waving my arms about and using entirely inappropriate Turkish words to get my point across.
I had been hearing about this town from many folks,both seasoned travelers and local Turks, and knew I should see it. Should is the operative word here. I should see it not only because it's an ancient townsite, built in a strategic position along the old silk road as it crosses the iconic Tigris river. I should see it not only because of the massive old bridge arches that have spanned the Tigris for thousands of years, and the village itself, clinging impossibly to a sheer cliff with fortresses, churches, palaces, and miles of tunnels honeycombing the soft stone. These factors alone make some call it a "little Cappodocia", and deem it worthwhile for a visit.
But most importantly, I should see it because, if the forces of "progress" get their way, it will soon all be underwater.
Dam it all, says the government, bent on "development" of more hydro power for industry, turning the desert into a blooming petro-garden to feed the masses.
To quote the late-great Kurt Vonnegut:
So it goes.
And so I go to the bus station today, a bit later than planned. That's when the omens started appearing. I pile into the van with a bunch of other locals. Nothing out of the ordinary here.. My Sprinter van, with all of it's seats in, locked and loaded for passengers, holds ten with seat belts. The gleaming fleet of Turkish Sprinters now ubiquitous throughout the country, is for the most part in these public applications set up to seat about 19. That would be without seatbelts. But who's counting?
I hauled that many when shuttling folks to see Amma, but then there were kids in parents laps, Indians (from INdia, dude), Pakistanis, Europeans, even Canadians piled in and laughing, looking forward to a divine hug.
But this mornings Sprinter ride was not like that. At the station it soon became clear that there was trouble. This was the last bus to Batman, and boy am I glad I got on early. Out there, staring with panic into the van, were about twenty villagers, realizing that they would be spending the night away from their kith and kin back in Batman. Some were looking at me, but I hadn't shaved in a few days, had my Haines Brewery baseball cap on, and even without those props look so entirely weird that they wouldn't even THINK about trying to dislodge my lily-white ass from that van. The driver pulls away from the station after cramming all aboard that he could. The sight of all of them standing there watching us go won't make it onto the cover of the Lonely Planet Turkey guide.
Along the way we dropped a few off. But by the time the storm hit, things had settled down on board to a sort of, hmmm NOW what's gonna happen? curiosity amongst the intrepid souls on the good ship BatmanBus.
I was looking down when it happened. Suddenly the bus veered off the road. Well it wasn't really a road, it was the shoulder of the New Road. But now we were on the shoulder of the shoulder, more like a drainage ditch, bouncing and sliding along in the mud, while all around us appeared the answer to my sudden wonderment:
Sheep!
Thousands of Sheep!
With Shepards too, and lots of them, trying to get their charges off the road!
Our driver was cool at first, then I heard him cursing under his breath, and after a while, when we were stopped and surrounded, he resorted to that age-old sheep moving technique: he mashed on the horn.
These aren't your sheep-like sheep, though. They're Turkish Sheep!
Long-haired. Stocky. And fiercely independent, as these Shepards, all the folks in our Sprinter-bus, and the hundreds of other vehicles all horn-mashing around the scene will attest.
Our driver, perhaps the dreary scene of abandoning all the villagers at the station still fresh in his mind, seemed to have a heroic mission driving HIM, so off the shoulder road and onto the shouldershoulder we slid, moving through the horned hoards like Moses parting a sea of wool.
The rain fell, the slapping wipers kept time, and we eventually emerged from the bleating riot and got back to the relatively safer shoulder.
I look around at my fellow argonauts, and they are mostly smiling now. Probably had been cheered immensely along the way just watching my face!
I got to Hasenkeyf, my destination, just an hour late due to the scenic tour. Ancient, beautiful, or as they say here for just about anything they really like; 'Chock Gyucel!"
This time, though, the old saying really proved out:
It's the journey that counts.
