Days 45-48: Diyarbakır

Hasan Paşa Caravansaray

What’s the news from Diyarbakır? Well. It took a lot longer to get here than I thought it would, I’m sick as a dog and I’ve been here one day longer than I should have been. But that doesn’t diminish how amazing the city is!

The bus ride from Gümüşhane was supposed to take 14 hours but it ended up taking 16 ½ hours because our bus broke down, which gave me horrible flashbacks to Tanzania. I don’t think I got very much sleep at all. The roads were bumpy and under construction a good deal of the way. The seat next to me was officially unoccupied but people kept rotating their children in and out of it so I constantly had kids sleeping on me. But finally we arrived in Diyarbakır…and then I learned there was no shuttle service to the city centre. Blasphemy! Turay is a horrible bus company.

Door to one of the two churches in Diyarbakır

I shuffled outside the otogar to try to find the dolmuş into the city. First I asked some taxi drivers, who offered to take me. Whenever I declined and said I wanted to take the dolmuş they just pointed out where it was. THEY. JUST. POINTED. OUT. WHERE. IT. WAS. They didn’t try to force me into their cab, they didn’t try to persuade me about “A good price for you, my friend,” and they didn’t refuse to give me directions. I thought maybe I had died on the bus trip and gone to Heaven or something.

True to form, I couldn’t follow their directions for the life of me so I stopped inside the little otogar police station. Four police officers were having their breakfast and the second I said “Hello” they pulled up a chair and started motioning to the food. But eating was the last thing on my mind after 16 hours on a bus with no sleep so I politely declined. They pointed me over to the bus stop but when I got there it was dead. I felt like there should have been tumbleweeds blowing by. Another lady eventually wandered over and she spoke a little English. We worked out that the bus would be there in 10 minutes and it cost 1.5 TL. Then she started chit-chatting with me. A lone woman in Turkey started chit-chatting with me. Unbelievable! After the death stares in Gümüşhane, I was beginning to think people in Diyarbakır had some kind of mental illness.

Kurdish singers

Once on the bus, the lady told the driver where I wanted to get off and then we wound our way through the new city, which is absolutely bustling with construction. Thanks to the conflict between the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the government, people have fled to Diyarbakır for safety. In 1990 the metropolitan area’s population was 400,000 but now it’s approaching 2 million.

The bus dropped me at Dag Kapı (North Gate) and I stumbled bleary-eyed toward a hotel I remember being recommended by some other tourists. Before I made it to the door, a tour guide had latched on to me. I wasn’t opposed to hiring a guide but I was exhausted, so I guess he thought I was giving him the cold shoulder. “Do you want me to leave you alone? It’s okay, I can go,” he said. What was that? Was that sincerity I heard in his voice? I’ve never had a tout or guide offer to go away before, much less offer to do it with sincerity. Inside the hotel we had tea together while my room was being prepared, and we agreed to meet again after I had a 5 hour nap.

Domed roof of mosque entrance

So my friend Murat wasn’t a bad tour guide, he was just wildly inappropriate. The problem with being an American is that everyone draws their conclusions about us based on our movies, television and music. Understandably they get the impression that we are foul-mouthed, crass people that talk about sex, violence and drugs non-stop. So the tour with Murat was peppered with wildly inappropriate sexual conversation that made me feel quite uncomfortable but sometimes it just doesn’t seem to be worth it to correct someone’s behavior. He told me he wanted to move to New York and be a gigolo. Who am I to crush his dreams?

I spent my second day in the city alone visiting the sites I didn’t see the first day, which was somewhat of a mistake. I spent like 6-8 hours wandering around in 115 degree weather and I paid for it dearly. At night my head was pounding, I had a fever and I was shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t get much sleep and when I woke up this morning I still felt very bad. I was also pretty dizzy, which made going downstairs for breakfast quite the adventure. I decided I had no choice but to stay in Diyarbakır one more night because I was in no condition to travel. It throws my schedule off and I might have to drop something in order to be in Trabzon on time for my flight, but unexpected things are bound to happen.

Cultural center

Yesterday I was having a hard time finding this cultural centre, so I stopped and asked several shopkeepers who all gave me directions in meters. Like I know how far a meter is, damn metric system. Eventually one of them called two children in off the street and asked them to escort me. I was pretty convinced they were going to yell “Money, money, money!” but instead they just waved and said “güle güle (bye bye).” When I was leaving the cultural centre I turned to go down a side alley but a shopkeeper came running after me and through various gestures and my broken Turkish he told me that I would get robbed if I went down there. When I pointed back to the main street he gave me a thumbs up and grinned!

Evli Beden Tower

Finally, on my way to dinner, I decided to cut through the gold bazaar to have a look. As I was admiring something from a shop, I see this guy making a beeline for me. “Ugh,” I thought, “somebody who wants to take me to their uncle’s carpet shop.” But it turns out he was just a university student who was desperate to practice his English. We spent an hour talking about tea before I said goodbye and headed to dinner.

I’ve seen and done a lot in the city, but I’m still not feeling quite 100% so I’ll spare you the long details. Tomorrow I’m heading to Midyat and Hasankeyf, which requires that I get up at 5:30 AM and catch three buses. Oh joy of joys!