MORE OF UNDERGROUND TURKEY

By Charles N. Stevens

We sit down on benches around the wall in the dim room as an exceedingly dour manager serves us small glasses of their red and white wines. The red wine tastes quite good, but we had already sampled this wine as it is the same type of wine presented to us by our tour director in Kusadasi. As souvenirs, the sour-faced manager gives each of us a bottle of red wine to take with us.

Driving on to Dervent, we see more natural tufa wonders all wreathed and hung with snow, spire after spire of surrealistic shapes, a Daliesque landscape. Some formations are shaped like camels, some like a group of dancers and others like The Three Kings, the Virgin Mary or any other thing or person people want to make out of them. At Zelve we pass a rock village where Turkish authorities moved everyone out in 1967, relocating them in housing in a nearby village. At Pasabag we get out to look at other tufa formations that had been honed into a monastery. Our arrival stirs up the hawkers who had been waiting in a group near their stands. They look at us curiously and expectantly. One salesman works at an ice patch on the road, attempting to pry up pieces of it with a stick, a futile effort. We view the monastery with the same awe that we have witnessed everything else and wonder to ourselves whether we are really seeing what we think we are seeing. As I walk up the street I see a spire with a broken wall that reveals curved ledges and designs in what had been a tufa house. A metal door opens in a spire next door. The young man looks out at us and says hello. The vendors approach us and gesture towards their wares, but on the whole they are not too aggressive or rude. We buy a small tufa model of a tufa spire house.

At Avanos we visit a pottery factory that like everything else is carved out of tufa. We first watch a master potter fashion a large vase on a foot-operated potter’s wheel. As we watch, another young man serves us small ceramic cups of wine, a ploy to loosen us up so that we’ll buy. We walk through a series of tufa chambers where the pottery is displayed for sale. It is strange walking through the small tunnels that lead from one chamber to another. One room is filled with swatches of women’s hair attached to cards. Each represents a woman who has visited the pottery shop, women from all over the world. Each year the cards and hair are placed in a lottery, the winners being invited to Turkey to participate in a pottery school each summer.

We return to our hotel about 5:00, marching straight up to our cold room. With the small, inadequate radiator still not putting out enough heat to matter I must wear my heavy jacket in the room.  I write some notes while Dolores naps deep under the covers. At 6:00 the prayers begin to fill the air, the chants winding around among the cold buildings like a strange-sounding wind, reaching every ear in Nevsehir.

At 7:00 we assemble for dinner in the restaurant dining room. Our first course is a delicious cream of mushroom soup, its soothing heat good for our cold souls. Waiters bring out spaghetti for our next dish. The main entree is shepherd’s stew which seems to us like most Turkish dishes, cubed meat and vegetables, with french fries on the side. We end with a refreshing dessert of sliced apples and tangerines.

MONTEREY PARK AUTHOR PUBLISHES 4th BOOK – Seeking More of the Sky: Growing Up in the 1930’s:

Charles “Norm” Stevens, a 49 year resident of Monterey Park has recently published his 4^th book: Seeking More of the Sky: Growing Up in the 1930’s. This is the story of a young boy growing up in Inglewood, California in the l930’s. This was a time during the depression when unemployment was affecting many and the banks were closed, while the clouds of war were gathering in Europe. But he was lucky enough to be raised in a loving family, the power of that love reflected throughout his stories.

Stevens is the author of three previous books about his experiences during WWII:

An Innocent at Polebrook: A Memoir of an 8th Air Force Bombardier (Story of his 34 bombing missions from his base at Polebrook, England over Germany and France)

The Innocent Cadet: Becoming A World War II Bombardier (A prequel to the first, telling of his training in the U.S. before going overseas into combat.)

Back from Combat: A WWII Bombardier Faces His Military Future from Combat: (This book details the time from when he returned from combat in England until the end of the war.)

He is known to the readers of The Citizen’s Voice as the author of Travel Log Articles including “Cruising the Rhine and Mosel”,” Best of the West”, “In Search of Snow” ,  “From Paris to Normandy on the Seine”, and “Exploring New York”.  He is retired, having taught for 32 years, primarily in the Montebello Unified School District.

Those interested in purchasing an autographed copy of any of his books, may contact the author at 323-721-8230 or  Normstevens24@gmail.com.