Bodrum Bodrum

”When you reach the hill, you will see Bodrum. Don’t think you’ll leave as you came. Others before you thought the same, as they departed they left their soul behind in Bodrum” wrote Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı (1886-1973) The Fisherman of Halicarnassus, poet, writer of novels and short stories and essays, ethnographer and travel writer. 

In 1945, Cevat Şakir wrote a letter to his artist, writer and poet friends and asked them to be in Izmir on the date he determined. If they came, he  promised to sail them to heaven - at the time there was no access to Bodrum by land. 

Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, Bedri Rahmi, Erol Güney, Sabahattin Ali, Samim Kocagöz, Fuat Erol Keskinoğlu and Necati Cumalı answered his call and met in Izmir on the same day. 

They sailed to the Aegean Sea by taking bread, cheese, water, Kos rusk, tobacco and lots of rakı on a boat. They agreed they will not read newspapers, they will not listen to the radio, they will not go ashore unless they have to, they will be cut off from the whole world, and they will be lost in the blue paradise called Bodrum, where no one has gone until then.

They did not know, the boat trip they made to Bodrum changed the fate of a once sleepy fishing and sponge diving village profoundly. 

Bodrum was a quintessential bohemian holiday town in early 70’s. If you are a baby-boomer who lived in Turkey then, it is likely that you had worn flare jeans, owned a Cat Stevens vinyl, protested 6th US Flotilla, and visited Bodrum in the summer with a Beetle or a Renault 12. 

Bodrum was much smaller then, it had not sprawled its satellite towns yet, Gümüşlük among others was a sleepy village with cow dung smell in the air, hippies sleeping outdoors, with no trace of gold rush that would soon bring the tourism monster and destroy the peace that boomers had given a chance. 

Today you may wonder what went wrong, but what happened to Bodrum is not unique - other places had similar chance encounters that started the decay, eventually turning the paradise into something unrecognisable. 

In Saint Tropez, Brigitte Bardot was photographed by Willy Rizzo, in July 1958. She had a leading role in Roger Vadim’s debut movie “And God Created Woman.”  BB wasn’t a hippie (this was nearly a decade before counterculture hippiedom was invented), but she was one of many alternative culture influencers who rebelled against popular norms of 50’s. What followed was a boom. 

Life is short and can be cruel. Everyone, rich, poor, famous, or ordinary seeks their paradise on earth.  

Soon after BB posed alongside fish stands and fishing nets, the wealthy, yearning to productise bohemian lifestyle without being bohemian, and the poor, who would drive, wipe, feed or serve wealthy, both types of outsiders rushed into the sleepy village like flies on a cow dung. 

Overnight, the sleepy village is no longer a sleepy village but a place where annoyingly poor guitar performers wake up everybody else into a cheap wine hangover. Before you knew, hotels and villas popped up like mushrooms. The invasion had begun. 

People on vacation are loaded with cash, but short in time, they demand comfort and convenience to maximise their return on investment. The result is fast vacation economics. 

Tourists don’t care about sustainability, they drink water in plastic bottles, use plastic bags, use plastic packaging, turn on air conditioning units, overuse water for personal needs, use cars even for short distances, shop in shopping malls, look for fast food stalls. 

It is nighttime. We are waiting in a car at a red light - traffic lights are mere suggestions here, sometimes drivers ignore the red light. 

A motorcycle with a rider and a passenger, no helmets, swooshed in from the refuge and stopped in front of us with dust swirling in spotlight. The young passenger sitting at the back, a cigarette in his left hand, was scrolling his cell phone screen with his right hand - his smile was visible under the screen’s light, it’s an Instagram share from a girl he was looking at. The lights turned green, the rider released the bike like a longbow arrow. The passenger, legs in air, almost fell, barely held the rider’s shirt, before both vanished into the darkness. 

As our vacation nears its end, eternal quest for paradise continues. Paradise is where we move and live slowly and thoughtfully, in harmony with nature, not in spite of it. The idea of  vacation is to vacate our hectic work lifestyle. With more people working  remotely, there is now a good chance to move to the paradise for good, connect with nature, live slowly while respecting the environment, favour local commerce and economic sustainability, and involve with community work to protect the paradise. 

The Seven Elephants

The term meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme, which comes from Ancient Greek mīmēma (μίμημα; pronounced [míːmɛːma]), meaning 'imitated thing', itself from mimeisthai (μιμεῖσθαι, 'to imitate'), from mimos (μῖμος, 'mime').

People collect all sorts of memorabilia from where they travel. 

Collecting elephant trinkets is a superstition, a strong meme that survived as a pagan tradition, supposedly bringing you or your household all good characteristics associated with elephants. 

Even if you are not superstitious, collecting elephant trinkets may be sensible, they don’t weigh or cost much, therefore they make perfect presents. 

We bought these elephant trinkets in Bodrum, from 3 different shops. 

From right to left, the single blue elephant with embedded evil eye design costed us 75 YTL, the orange elephant costed 50 YTL, and the 7 elephants with embedded evil eye design connected by a rope, and additional evil eye beads costed 25 YTL. 

We cut the rope and obtained 7 elephant pieces, identical to the ones we bought individually. 

Each elephant rescued from the rope costed 3.5 YTL. Ignoring the cost of evil eye beads, they were 14 to 20 times cheaper than the other options.  

You should never hope to have good deals when you travel - a tourist, by definition is an idiot, a clown to be cheated and made fun of. 

Lets now wish, rescued elephants would not escape to the wild or crush their mahout. 

Hot Peppers

This image is about red. 

I was walking in the Yahşi village and suddenly I saw this striking image, a table full of red peppers. 

They reminded me Pedro Almodóvar’s films. 

In Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s world red represents, death, women, passion and ironically life. 

The Fishermen’s Coffee House

It is a late afternoon in August, a pleasant breeze is strolling around the fishermen’s harbour. 

I am in Gündoğan, sitting at a table under the shade of trees with thick canopies that belong to an outdoors coffee house. 

It wasn’t crowded. Retirees, men and women, and fishermen, sparsely occupy tables. They are having tea or coffee. Coffee is served with ice cold water at the side, served in small paper cups. 

The estate is made of a small cottage that belongs to the Fishermen’s Cooperative. 

In past years this place had been a more traditional type of Turkish Coffee house, with waiters running around to serve patrons. 

During covid years they introduced self service. I think this works better, as it feels cleaner and simpler. 

There is no TV, nor music, nor plastic chairs. It has authenticity, good old wooden tables and chairs, a lovely garden and a young black cat. 

A woman is managing the estate, couple of teenagers are assisting her. 

The atmosphere is civilised and peaceful. There is this slow movement, a sense of being part of a community around me. Retirees and fishermen are chatting in low voices as shades of trees grow taller. 

In front of me I see a long line of boats docked, fishermen are mending their nets. The sun, loosing its battle, begins to set behind western hills. 

While Turkish flags are waving on every boat, the sunlight is filtered through them, making reds stand out. 

I cannot help to think this must be the best place on earth right now. As if I am teleported to 50 years earlier, a naive but more peaceful world where things are taken easy.

The minibus to Gündoğan

 It was a hot August morning.

The minibus was turning sharp curves of the narrow winding road like a raging bull. 

Giant cacti and bougainvillea were sprawling on hills where white houses with blue frames were scattered. 

In the minibus, retirees, tourists, and kids were travelling from their houses to downtown Gündoğan. 

The driver was a soft spoken man with blue eyes. 

Occasionally he had to press a button to reset the ticket reader mounted on a pole next to the passenger door. 

Commuters who had blue plastic cards held them against the machine, but sometimes it malfunctioned, forcing the driver reset it. 

To the driver’s and passengers’ dismay, resetting the reader took long time, with an animated hourglass appearing on the screen, creating anxiety among passengers entering the bus. 

Almost everyone had an opinion about the ticket reader. 

“It’s not reading, can you reset it again?” cried one woman, her voice muffled by a face mask, holding a large beach bag on her shoulder. 

“Is there anything we (Turks) do that works?” protested another one. 

The minibus took a left turn and entered a straight street shaded by tall needle pine trees. After a minute’s drive it entered the terminal area where it stopped. 

Passengers raced to get out, almost toppled out of the minibus, took their face masks off in relief as if surfacing from a deep sea dive.

Remains of the day

 When the sun leaves us with fleeting lights, and fireflies sing in melancholy, we need to reflect. 

No regrets from past should flow into this moment, nor we should let worries of tomorrow spoil it. 

This magical light, here and now, is ours.