It was renamed after the War of Independence because of the city's spectacular contribution to the war effort. In really olden times it was called Edessa, and before that Ur. It is between the Tigris to the east and the Euphrates to the west. Abraham, the patriarch of Islam and Judaism, was born here, according to long tradition.
It just doesn't get any older or cooler than Şanlıurfa, history-wise. We arrived by bus from the sun-drenched, mysterious Mardin. Of course, the Şanlıurfa bus station was out a ways from the city, so we came by taxi through what appeared to be a huge and prosperous new city, to get to the older part where our hotel was.
I mean, Şanlıurfa isn't, say, Ankara by any manner or means, but the shiny new shops, the fashionable people (granted with a heavier mix of more traditional types), the street lights and the new cars providing the traffic chimed closer to that big city than it did with little Diyarbakir, or even the newer parts of Mardin; it was a little dizzying, after traveling across miles and miles of open agricultural land and stark, rock-strewn desert. The positive results of the new damming craze, in this case the Euphrates' Atatürk Dam, are much in evidence on the outskirts of the city -- large tracts of land planted and irrigated with modern, new-looking aqueducts and pumping stations. This is apparently what is driving the new prosperity, including the ongoing building of acres and acres of concrete apartment houses. Fortunately, the hustle and bustle calmed down once we got to the older part of the city.
We had made reservations in an old stone house that was being run as a pansiyon by a rather ambitious schoolteacher. My husband called him from the taxi (yes, even I must admit that cep telefonu are handy once in a while) when we got close to the part of the city where we thought we should be. After his giving directions to the cabbie, we all started looking for the right neighborhood, as if we knew where we were. When we slowed down near a little alleyway, a rather scary-looking gentleman, very dark-skinned, wearing a very white shirt and black, low-crotched, tight-legged şalwar, jumped out of the shadows, right in front of our taxi, holding both arms up to stop our progress.
The three women in our party squealed in an embarrassingly girly way, and the driver grunted a surprised curse, but Lütfü somehow recognized that İbrahim (for that turned out to be the fitting name of our first friend in Şanlıurfa) was our greeting party, and not an irate bodyguard or watchman, or worse. This was, after all, the scary east of Turkey! A home away from home İbrahim led our little party of five down darkening alleys to our temporary home, the Aslan Konuk Evi (Guest House). Access was though an unprepossessing door in the otherwise unbroken alley wall. Once again, my husband had totally lucked out, although we all attributed his fortuitous choice of lodging to his skill as an experienced travel agent, which he actually is. The Aslan turned out to be my real dream house, the one I had envisioned for decades, made flesh, or stone, in this case.
With six guest rooms, this old Urfa residence was an example of a totally different time and space. It had two original stories, with an enclosed courtyard of very comfortable dimensions; a later addition on top was more of a closed terrace than a real story. A large stone kitchen was on the lower floor off the courtyard, as were the living quarters for the serving staff and at least one child. Several tables were in the center, with comfortable chairs for dining or reading. A little pool with a fountain, decorated with the ubiquitous plastic flowers of Turkey.
A separate, arched nook off to one side had cushioned wooden sofas, with a little library of travel books in different languages. Plant and vines that would later boom with real flowers provided the only other decoration. Nothing was luxe or precious, just lovely and comfortable. They had me at the courtyard, for sure. Bev, Craig and Chantel had a family suite on the second floor, which consisted of two open, airy rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room, which were the original quarters of the couple who had built the home. Lütfü and I had one of the son's family's rooms, big enough for a nice bed and a later-addition bath and room to spare.
Deep niches in the thick walls had at one time held the family's bedding, freeing up the room for living space during the day, which seems like a more intelligent use of space than a queen-sized bed. The walls were so thick that not much noise crept in at all, except when people were in the little library nook right outside our window. The temperatures on the rooms stayed consistent day and night, again due to the thickness of the stone walls. After quaffing some of Efes' finest, welcomed after our hard day's travel, we enjoyed a very good meal as well as the company of a young German student, whose brothers seem to follow us everywhere, from İstanbul to Aleppo and now to Urfa.
We all slept the sleep of the dead, and rose to another lovely repast, this one a recognizably Turkish breakfast on a plate, with eggs cooked to order. It was time to hit the streets. Even though I protested rather loudly that I would be perfectly happy staying in my dream house all day, we went together to the Ulu Camii, the wonderful Urfa Pazar and generally enjoyed the sights and street food of the old downtown.
The big highlights of this part of our trip, Abraham's Pool and mosque, the adjoining park and King Nemrud's Castle (King Nebuchadnezzar to us) will have to follow in my next article because just thinking about the Aslan Konuk Evi has made me weary with pining, all these weeks later.
Today's Zaman
