Urfa

Twenty minutes west of Gobekli Teki lies Urfa, the third largest city in the region and famous for being the birthplace of Abraham, the father of western monotheistic religions and red peppers.  No sure if there is a connection there,  but I will tell you the  food was hot as hell.

Our first stop was lunch (no chance of slimming down on this trip). We ate inside an enclosed two-level courtyard open to the sky and centered by a beautiful fountain spewing a steady trickle of water into an aquamarine pool. Other than dessert, it  was the only cool thing about our lunch. We had spicy yogurt soup, spicy kebabs, eggplant and roasted peppers stuffed with a spicy rice mixture....and if things weren't spicy enough for your taste, an assortment of red peppers with varying heat indexes were served on the side.

After our "last supper" we went to visit a famous 1,000 year old mosque, which had once been a church...I don't remember why it was  famous...there are just too many religious sites to track.  What I do remember is that the caretaker had wedged a pair of old shoes in the belfry windows, to keep the pigeons from roosting there and shitting on the walkway. Ingenious!

We walked through the streets heading to Abraham's birthplace and the lake which was supposedly created when King Nemrut attempted to set Abraham afire. In a miraculous turn of luck, the fire turned to water, and a lake with holy fishes appeared on the very spot where he  was to meet his demise.  The lake with its swarms of holy fish now stands not far from the caves where he was purportedly born.

On the way, we ran into  a wedding party.  A parade of family and friends encircled the young bride and groom.  The whole entourage marched and danced in the streets accompanied by their own musicians.  As we walked beside them, they invited Nabil into the circle of their celebration hooting and hollering as he shimmied and pranced with the best of them.  Soon after, a huge dump truck lumbered down the street, heaped with furniture, housewares and bundles of clothes and linens.  This was the bride's dowry.  The truck pull up to her new home and another swarm of young Turks began unloading the bounty and ferrying into the house.  Later that evening, our parting image was of the same young couple entering a local hotel for the kind of traditional wedding celebration you might see at any US holiday inn.

We made another stop at a famous madrasah, one which was  built on the remains of a pagan worship site.  (Another reminder of the layer upon layer of beliefs stacked up in this corner of the world where people seem astonishingly comfortable with marrying  past traditions with  modern living.)

The Abraham complex sat at the foot of a sheer rock cliff. Landscaped and lined with souvenir shops and restaurants, it had the feel of a small amusement park, without the rides. The lake was more like a concrete pool, lined with broad walkways and benches.  The fish swimming in it were grey, slimy looking creatures that swarmed to the surface as people threw sprays of fish food onto the holy waters.  The inside of their greedy mouths were the color of the yellow fat that clings to raw chicken thighs and gaped open as they jockeyed for position to receive their communion.

A wooden barrier had been constructed to wall off the entrance to the cave, and there was  a side for women and a side for men.  The vestibule was lined with shoes and smelled of dirty feet and dank earth.  Fluorescent lights flickered and lit the way to a small room at its end which opened into the cave.  Women in head scarves prostrated themselves on the dirty floor, fingering prayer beads and muttering prayers.  A plastic divider walled off the sacred spot on the cave floor where the baby Abraham was birthed. The water in a small well behind the plexiglass shimmered green in the artificial lights.  A thin film of dust and dead insects floated on its surface. I couldn't breathe and made a quick escape.

Jews, Christians and Muslims all hold Abraham in high esteem. Millions make the pilgrimage to Urfa to pay his respects.  It is hard to imagine that this place could be a source of solace or inspiration to anyone, and even harder to believe that that from these early stories and legends millions of followers had been swayed and convinced of the divinity of the teachings that followed. I felt deeply disappointed in the gullibility of the human population and emotionally drained.

We spent our last hour hunting down bargains in the old bazaar.  When we could spend no more, we drank Turkish coffee in an open air shop crowded with old men playing cards and backgammon. We were done! Life's big spiritual questions faded into the background as we looked forward to our return flight from Urfa to Ankara.