Odd-Eyed Cat
I’m writing this from a cave. There is wifi in the cave. I am sitting on a pink Hannah Montana bedspread. All of the beds are pink. This is a dorm in a cave. That’s Capadocia tourism for you.
The view out the little front lounge of this “pensian” is a landscape of huge limestone towers, a strange spiky panorama. It’s like living on the moon. The towers in and around the town are even riddled with moon-cheese holes, long ago carved into dwellings.
But I couldn’t immediately see that in the darkness without my hat. I stared at my guidebook map under a streetlamp and headed in the general direction of the accomodations. Several places sounded promising, but no one answered the door. Too early.
I arrived in Goreme at 5:00AM, kicked off the bus in the very cold dark with my eyes half open and my brain not booted. That’s how I left my Darjeeling beanie on the bus. It’s the only piece of souvenir clothing I ever owned, because, well, it said Darjeeling on it. Damnit.
I eventually walked into the only building with light. It was a bakery. Three men were rolling a cart of fresh loaves out of an enormous, closet-sized oven. “Hi,” I said, “nothing is open. Can I stay here… for… out of the cold… until…” I smiled sheepeshly. They immediately pointed me to a chair and brought me tea. All smiles. I thought they understood perfectly, until another man showed up and asked me in thick cheerful English what the problem was. I explained, he translated. Oohs and ahhs of recognition, but I think they had understood enough already. They cracked apart a loaf of steaming-hot crusty white bread and gave me half.
The first call to prayer rung out over the valley, still dark. (I have this theory that perpetually rising early is the leading cause of Islamic angst.) The sky began to lighten at last. Winter. Dabs of snow that had not melted the day before and could not be expected to melt today either. I missed my hat. I knocked on doors again. Nothing!
I wandered until I found a guesthouse with someone inside. There were three Asian kids there eating a breakfast of kim-chee and noodle soup. The proprietor spoke Korean.
Great, I said, I love kim-chee. I took a bed and ordered a meal. I was tired of Turkish breakfast anyway.
So here I am in an international back pocket I would never have claimed as fiction. The posters on the walls are in Korean, Turkish, and English. A Turkish double-tea pot sits on the wood-fired stove that keeps the multi-room cave warm. A laptop hums in the corner, playing Lionel Richie’s “Three Times A Lady.” All the bedspreads are pink with Disney brands. Outside, a bread truck rumbles over cobblestone streets and old men drink sugary tea. Maybe they go to the white marble mosque and pray; the minaret is almost as tall as the fairy chimneys that dot the moonscape.
An old white cat roams the cave with classic Anatolian eyes: one green, one blue.
