Post offices are rarely gorgeous. But in the southern Turkish city of Mardin I found one that was. Housed in a 19th-century mansion, with yellow walls coloured, it is said, with saffron, Mardin post office, which doubles as a police station, overlooks the Mesopotamian Plain.
From the rooftop terrace where policemen take their tea breaks, on a clear day, visitors can see the border with Syria.
“Al Jazeera, the island, that is what the Arabs call Mardin. The Mesopotamian Plain, like a great ocean, stretches from the city of Diyarbakir down to Baghdad. Mardin is in the middle,” a policeman, named Suleyman, said. “A lot of people here are of Syrian Arab origin. The people of Mardin are of many different kinds.”
A lot of things about Mardin caused surprise. The old city sits along one wide thoroughfare from which ancient streets and bazaars wind off like detours into the past. My attention was not totally arrested until I saw some white doves strutting about in the courtyard of a romantically beautiful derelict mansion.
Noting my interest, a passer-by clapped his hands and I watched, entranced, as the doves responded by turning somersaults.
Advertisement
I had come to Mardin, one of the oldest cities in Turkey, to attend a Syrian Orthodox church service. It was Easter and I had some notion about incorporating parts of the ceremony into my next novel. But once inside the most popular church in the city, Mar Behnam, I was rendered almost oblivious to my project.
Here was real fervour, real belief. From the ornately robed priest down to the shy custodian who proudly showed me to my seat, everyone was caught up in the magical drama of Christ’s Resurrection. As a cross draped in red cloth was carried ceremonially around the body of the church, the female parishioners ululated — as their forebears in this most ancient of places must have done more than 1,000 years before.
The Syrian Christian community, or Syriani as they are known in Turkey, still speak Aramaic, the language of Christ. One of their number, an elderly woman called Nasra, also produces traditional ecclesiastical textiles depicting the lives of the Syriani saints. One caught my eye. Alarmingly, it showed a holy man swallowing a clearly enraged snake.
“This is a city where great magical deeds are done,” the policeman said. “We have evil vipers and scorpions.”
A coppersmith in the bazaar had a charm that didn’t, thankfully, involve eating anything venomous. “This is the Shahmeran,” he said as he showed me a colourful picture on glass of a creature with a woman’s head and a snake’s body. “Queen of snakes, she will protect you.” I bought the picture.
Advertisement
I also took the coppersmith up on his offer of a tiny cup of pungent mirra coffee. Brewed to a thick consistency on the coppersmith’s brazier, this was Mardin’s signature coffee at its most authentic. As I left, I thanked him for his hospitality and then enjoyed the caffeine-enhanced city.
Mardin is a city of mansions: vast, terraced edifices. Some are still the homes of powerful families, others have been converted into hotels, schools and public buildings. Behind soaring walls, enclosing tiny alleyways, great churches and mosques lurk, many accessed only by passing through a stone tunnel known as an abbara. In this multicultural labyrinth, a 14th-century building is “new”. But then dates in Mardin can be changeable.
The most iconic building in the city, the Ulu Mosque, is “officially” dated as a 14th-century structure. But evidence in the mosque itself points to not just an earlier 11th-century genesis under the Seljuk Turks, but an even earlier 10th-century Artukid Turkish incarnation.
Before I left, Suleyman asked: “Have you enjoyed Mardin?” I said that I had, but was relieved that I hadn’t been bitten by anything ghastly. Smiling, he mumbled that snakes and scorpions are shy creatures. When I said, with some irony, that maybe I should thank the Shahmeran for my good fortune, Suleyman nodded gravely. “Certainly,” he said. “The Shahmeran has been here for ever. Like me, she patrols day and night.”
Was he having a joke with me? I think, as I look at the Shahmeran picture hanging in my office now, that he was probably serious.
Advertisement
Barbara Nadel is the CWA Silver Dagger award-winning author of the Inspector Ikmen series, set in Turkey. Her latest Ikmen novel, River of the Dead, is published by Headline (£7.99)
Need to know
Getting there Barbara Nadel travelled to Mardin on a four-hour bus ride from Sanliurfa. Information Turkish Culture and Tourism Office (020-7839 7778, www.gototurkey.co.uk).
Anatolian Sky (0845 3651011, www.anatoliansky.co.uk can tailor-make nine-day trips in Turkey that include Erdoba Konaklari and Mardin. The cost of £1,199pp includes scheduled flights, B&B and transfers.
Four remote places to see in Turkey
Advertisement
Gaziantep
A large city in the south east dominated by a 12th-century moated castle. Tiny doorways leading off from narrow alleyways offer access to enormous houses with ornate integral courtyards. Once the homes of rich 19th-century merchants, many of these buildings have been turned into caf?s, pensions and, in one case, the Gaziantep Ethnographic Museum. One I discovered was like a tableau frozen in time. Above a caf? called Papirus, the former Syrian Embassy is a jumble of 19th-century portraiture, Bakelite telephones and dust. Gaziantep Archeological Museum houses the fantastic Roman mosaics recovered from the flooded Roman city of Zeugma, above right.
Hasankeyf
Straddling the Tigris, Hasankeyf is famous for the monumental ruined bridge that once connected the two huge rock escarpments on either side of the river. Pre-Ottoman ruins, including a Byzantine church that was later converted to a mosque, and the remains of a vast castle complex pepper the cliffs above the Tigris. Until the Seventies, many residents still lived in cave houses that can be seen in the gorge skirting the castle mound. Another must is the turquoise tomb of Zeynel Bey, a central Asian-style jewel of a building alone in a riverside field. Hasankeyf is under threat from a proposed dam project, so go soon.
Olimpos
Advertisement
On the Mediterranean coast, southwest of Kemer, is the ancient ruined city of Olimpos, a beachfront site amid trees, flowers and grapevines. Popular with backpackers, Olimpos offers accommodation in the form of treehouses. However, the main reason to go is to see the Chimaera. This cluster of about 30 gas-fuelled, unquenchable flames that burn from holes in the rocks of Mount Olimpos is best seen at night.
Sanliurfa
Once named Edessa by Alexander the Great, Sanliurfa is also the place where, according to legend, the Prophet Abraham was set on fire by the Assyrian King Nimrod. But God turned the fire into water and the hot coals into fish. The water, now corralled into pools in the G?lbasi district of the city, is home to the well-fed descendants of those magical fish, and it is considered a blessed act to feed them. Sanliurfa also has a fantastic bazaar.