Sacred Fish

From Kahta it was on to Şanlıurfa, or Urfa for short, famous for aptly named Urfa Kebabs and the “Balıklı Gol”, which literally means “Lake with fish”. Upon arrival at the bus station, my three companions and I were in the midst of deciding what to see first when an elderly couple began beckoning us. “Where are you going?” they asked, not quite waiting for an answer before shuffling us into the backseat of their tiny car. “We want to see the lake with fish!” we replied, earnestly. Before we knew it, we were whisked away in the car with the now-familiar stop-and-start jerkiness of a driver who is still not completely comfortable with the necessary act of changing gears manually. While exchanging pleasantries and being complimented on our Turkish, we learned that our chauffeur and his wife had two daughters who were about our age and that they wished we were staying longer so they could treat us to a home-cooked meal. Ah well, we had other fish to fry.

Urfa has more character than most of the Turkish cities I've seen in my time here. It has charm. It has a lake, with fish. Sacred fish! They are sacred because apparently they are made of the ashes of Abraham (the story behind it is unclear as per usual, and we deduced that it probably comes only from the Koran and is not featured in other holy books, because otherwise one of us might have remembered that one time Abraham was engulfed in flames and then his ashes turned into fish). The lake is more of a pond on the grounds of a mosque, but there is a whole park nearby which unites it with Urfa Castle and a small bazar. The whole area is reminiscent of what one probably imagines when one thinks of Turkey, based on Hollywood notions of “The Orient” and the like. It is beautiful nonetheless.

This trip, much like a Russian nesting doll, also involved an inner jaunt to Mardin, a mere three hour bus ride away from Urfa. Mardin is a tiny, tiny city on a hill, and it is famous for its brilliant panoramas, a former monastery, and I believe the type of stone used in building the majority of its buildings. Here in Mardin the Turkishness of the story continues, since again in our quest for our next bus we were offered a tour of the city from a native. This time the native in question was a cab driver, so he requested a nominal fee. Still, we felt looked after. Our driver was very gentlemanly, patiently smoking by the car while we took pictures and even stopping at an ATM so we could all replenish our cash reserves. He spoke a mixture of Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic, as most people do in that part of Turkey, which sounded very interesting as he chatted on the phone.
After a whirlwind hour and a half in Mardin, we headed all the way back to Urfa in order to catch our next bus to Van.