Well, here I am…back from the figurative, and nearly literal, dead. I came back to
For the past week-and-a-half I’ve been in recuperation/reorganization mode. Illness recuperation was pretty much a cinch, not including the one day where I couldn’t stand up very effectively and was so unbearably tired that I fell asleep on the floor of my balcony amidst high pitched machine squeals and loud drilling noises from the construction on the roof. Reorganization of my life has been a little less straightforward.
It’s been a bit of an adjustment to come back to
There has also been an incredible turnover in businesses, including some I used to frequent and the super movie theater down the street (!!!). It’s really quite impressive—to go away for a month and have so much change with little warning is quite unexpected. I suppose there’s not too much you can really call stable here. Well, except maybe the epic “memory of Ataturk”…
It’s also strange to be out of the village and back in the city, bombarded by summer pollution and incessant noise, women who don’t wear heascarves, and skeevie men. It’s nice to have a flush toilet, regular access to grocery stores, more than just peanut butter + cokokrem for breakfast, lack of petty drama and condescending treatment, control over my time, not being criticized for the way I cut a watermelon or peel an eggplant.
On the other hand, it’s not nice to be away from the fresh air, wide open spaces, wonderful views that never grow old, spending most of the day outside, feeling productive, being tired because you worked your butt off, koy soccer games, the good humor/conversations/laughter of village residents/friends, being with kind people and not being smothered by unfeeling crowds, fresh chickpeas stolen from fields and apples/cherries from trees, excessive amounts of tahini helvasi, kuru kayisi [kooroo kahyeuseu; dried apricots] and misir fistigi [meuseur feusteu; corn nuts] on a regular basis, not being bored.
All in all, my time at Kerkenes was…inconsistent. Some things I could count on:
1. Our schedule:
Wake up:
Prepare breakfast picnic and get some coffee:
Hop in the Land Rover and head up to site: 6-6:30
Realize you forgot the bread for breakfast and you’re going to be stoned by your workmates:
Morning excavation:
Brekkers:
Back to work: 10-12:30
Lunchers:
Back to work: 1-3:30
Clean-up and head back down:
Bring in finds and record: 4-4:15
Bring large boxes of stone out of the Depo after a long hot day of…moving stones:
Go to the cami and fill up the water canisters with water just barely trickling out of the cesme:
Break or, for me, go hang with the girls in the kitchen:
Dinners:
After dinner activities, usually entailing a quick shower, making the hard boiled eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast picnic and hitting the sack by 9:00: 8:30-?
2. Osman Bey’s fake teeth were always going to be shiny white
3. The picnic baskets would never be clean and nothing would ever be refrigerated
4. I would be the one washing 90% of the pottery
5. “Kara” Mehmet was always going to be tired [and rightfully so!]
6. The girls in the kitchen were going to ask me what to make for dinner every single day
7. A Friday trip could not occur without some sort of ridiculous mishap
8. Breakfast and lunch on the mountain would never start a second late—the workmen would revolt if they didn’t get their cup of cay with an average of nine sugar cubes
9. No one would ever tire of discussing the trenches
10. If you begged Osman Bey to not get another box of helva, he would get another box.
11. Food = super salty
12. The representative would always finish his dinner, leave his plate on the table, then walk into the kitchen where the dishes are put in a tub of water, and make his tea…just to show his authority.
13. Waking up at
Other things I couldn’t really depend on:
1. How the workers would treat me on a given day
2. How the government representative would treat me on a given day
3. How other persons would treat me on a given day
4. My level of happiness/sadness/frustration/anger/calm at the end of the day
5. My day-to-day responsibilities
6. The status of laundry
7. If there’d be enough sun to have a hot shower
8. If the green melon would be have cantaloupe or cucumber flavor
9. If Ilhamid would engage me in a difficult conversation about Fidel Castro/communism/ the Nixon-Gorbachev relationship/American salaries/why Israel sucks/what my religion is/why I can’t speak Turkish if my father is Turkish/if humans came from frogs or monkeys orrrrr if he’d let me off the hook and talk about why I like tel kadayif [kadayeef; yummy sweet] so much
10. If the evening’s soup would be hazir corba [hazeur chorba; ready-soup, like
11. The exact moments when Natalie would belt out some frog noises and scare the living daylights out of me
12. Who the crappy pigeon would attack/fall in love with next
13. Whether the girls would give us cake or watermelon for lunch
So, in the end, it’s about 50-50, no? Thirteen dependables, thirteen undependables. Fair enough. It was an adventure, I suppose.
An gigantic adventure in a tiny village.
As for the details of this adventure, the ups-downs-all arounds, I’ll save that for some future posts. For now, I’ll use this as an introduction, ending with the Cast of Characters. As I expect to drop alotta names in coming stories, I thought a pseudo-reference guide might be helpful.
Cast of Characters
Excavation Team and House Staff
1. Geoff – Co-director of the Kerkenes archaeological excavation; Professor in Settlement Archaeology at ODTU; hilarious and interesting; was at the site this year but is mainly writing, so didn’t participate much in excavations; skeptical skeptical skeptical ornery…which made him a profoundly useful person to have around; relatively open-minded about alternative explanations; old school archaeologist—a dying breed
2. Francoise -- Geoff’s wife and director of the Kerkenes ECOCENTER; architect focusing on eco-friendly building; intense; ruffles feathers
3. Natalie – Geoff and Francoise’s eldest daughter; currently studying marine biology at Universite de la Reunion (
4. Scott – Co-director of Kerkenes excavations and Director of CAMEL at the
5. Ismael Bey – Representative from the Turkish Government; oversees excavation and determines who gets hired/fired, what goes into museums, what pictures can be taken; bureaucrat supreme
6. Osman Bey – Muhtar (moohtar; mayor) of Sahmuratli Koy [shahmuratleuh keuy]; dealt with financial matters concerning employees; supreme grocery shopper; has a set of fake teeth that are eternally bright white; drove us into Sorgun on Thursday afternoons and was our transport on Friday excursions; disapproved of the way I cut watermelon
7. “Kara” Mehmet – Bekci (bekgee; guard) of Kerkenes Kazi Evi; delightful man with a wonderful laugh and smile; works his butt off; first recipient of EU money for drip irrigation in the village; told me I was fat
8. Burcu and Nuran – The girls with bad attitudes that cooked and cleaned at the Kazi Evi; asked me what they should make for dinner every single day, even though we had written a detailed menu for them and didn’t really care what they made
9. Noel – Conservationist; world traveler; carpet lover; constant photographer; spent most of her time in the Depo looking for stones to put together
10. Tuna – Nicest fella I’ve met in Turkey/the World; starting graduate study at the University of Arkansas in August; loves a good beer and hand-rolled cigarette in the afternoon; crazy hard worker; was helpful beyond belief, mostly for transactions in Turkish such as buying geotextile, hiring/firing workers, communicating with staff; had a few mishaps making chocolate chip cookies near the end; trench acrobat; likes good music
11. Robert – Assistant Director of CAMEL; PhD student at the
12. Sepi – Recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin; starting grad school at UCLA in the fall; loves archaeology; really really loves metals; likes chocolate and coffee; smokes, but only when he’s in Turkey; likes nomads and nomadic things
13. Tiffin – Recently graduated from William & Mary; has participated in a number of archaeological digs and is currently considering a foray into conservation; spent a lot of tortured time trying to put stones together in the Depo but also learned how to gap fill which is cool; adorer of dried apricots; quick learner, hard worker, greatly loved and revered by the workmen; picked up Turkish like a fish to water; shared helva and saved me many times; really loves bird(s)
14. Ben – Dutch; professor at
15. Kagan – Ben’s son; 11 years old; on the annoying side of the spectrum; apparently has an imagination because he is young but still can’t keep himself occupied
The Workmen
1. Adnan – Sneaky little devil; mealtime cay maker; somewhat creepy but redeemed himself when he told
2. Haci Mahmut/Haci Baba – Slow worker, serene man; has gone on the Hajj to Mecca [hence the Haci in front of his name]; apparently wanted by the police for managing a crime ring/mafia in Istanbul
3. Gazi – Silly man who makes funny faces; loved by
4. Mustafa – Hilarious old deaf-as-a-doornail man who I am secretly in love with; routinely blew me kisses; impossible to understand; has absurd rage-filled moments which are, apparently, his way of impressing girls/asserting his authority as a man; incredible at cleaning/straightening walls and making squares pits out of holes; father of Tahir; randomly rips trees out of the ground
5. Tahir – punk/bully supreme; hated my living soul until the last two days of excavation; most toned man I have ever seen; incredibly strong; incredibly necessary force; has a super duper cute little boy; smokes like a chimney; has worked on Kerkenes excavations for nine years
6. Ilhamid – uberleftist but believes money is the most important thing in life; hard-working with no interest in the archaeology; likes to bring up controversial/difficult topics; really tall; wanted to marry me, pay me, and get a visa; moving to Antalya to become a Karpuz farmer…apparently, that’s where the money is these days
7. Salih – incredibly quiet man; somewhat slow worker; brother of White Hat Mehmet
8. White Hat Mehmet – always wore a white hat…that thing never came off; apparently, he’s 23 and bald; went as far as middle school; very intelligent; doesn’t like meat, loves lemons, tomatoes, and yogurt; eats yogurt because “it’s very important for your bones”; doesn’t drink and smoke because it’s unhealthy; father likes Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce; opinionated; hard worker; incredibly thin; wore long sleeves and two pairs of pants in 97-degree weather; dedicated; wore bell-bottom pants; interested; proper and respectful; good soccer goalie
9. Talking Mehmet – never stopped talking, unless Tahir was around; other workers thought he was a big weird; liked to be ornery and opposite; taught me lots of useless Turkish words; believes love is the most important thing in life; continuously professed his undying love for me saying that within the five surrounding villages including Peyniryemez I was the only girl worthy of anyone’s love
Sidenote: Flattering? Hey, I was being compared to girls in Peyniryemez! Totally flattering…except when it didn’t stop. Ok, imagine directing a trench, spending your entire day as a lone young American girl with five Turkish village men…and then one of them starts professing their love for you…I can’t even begin to describe the awkward silence and the ridiculous fumbling of Turkish I spewed when trying to ease the tension. Ok, now imagine that happening for an entire week, every single day. Eventually, it stops being sweet and starts getting creepy. Additionally, Peyniryemez is known for being the only village around that has bulls and Murat didn’t even think people lived there...
10. Ahmet – another talker; only worked 1.5 weeks; student at
11. Servet – believes he’s hot stuff; incredibly well-toned muscles but doesn’t put much effort into digging; fired after “sleeping in late” which really meant his girlfriend from Ankara came to visit—scandal!
12. Lokman – very nice guy who became a good friend; secretly brought me and Tiffin cherries and apples from his trees; was in love with Tiffin and carved an ‘L’ into her trowel handle; pretty good soccer player; says he’s 22 but is actually 19; uses the identity of a brother who died; believes health is the most important thing in life
13. Murat – youngest of the bunch at 18; married with a baby on the way; got married when he was 16 and isn’t really excited about having a baby, especially a girl, because he knows that one day he’ll have to give her up to someone else just like he took his wife from someone else; is married to his uncle’s daughter; didn’t want to get married and there are conflicting explanations for why he did; has humongous ears and an incredible smile; so so sweet; secret love of Tiffin; makes hilarious noises; great soccer player
And that's the lot of them. They'll be featured prominently in upcoming posts. Whew, what a crew. I must say, they left me with quite an array of memories, some of which I'm currently attempting to forget...
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