Day 16 – September 16 2024 – Dalyan, Kaunos –Selçuk (classical purity versus christian aberration versus turkish restoration)

Party-goers returning home in the night. Roosters all through the morning. J caught some more sleep. And then kahvaltı by the pool. Delicious omelet, cheese, fresh tomato and cucumber and a homemade harissa, nutty and çok güzel.

We set off for Kaunos, on foot, a now familiar route (and, isn’t it strange? from the first day, in İstanbul, despite the feeling they were shifting and changing from day to day, as they did from morning to evening, shutters going up, then going down, street restaurants occupying the streets, we had routes we would follow, and joked then, how we’d seen, passed through the same streets, multiple times, even within the same day, there, the loop around the mosque of Süleyman the Great, here, in Dalyan, the several blocks to the town and river, the same empty lot with the wheelybin, open, as they all are, for the cats to get in and out: spatial refrains; perhaps I have from this the idea which has consoled me since my return, that space is a social construct), to the river, too early for the bars and cafes to be filled with English tourists, their proprietors hosing down the streets of beer and food scraps. So came to the little dinghy we’d seen rowed the day before by a young woman, forward, the rower facing the bow, unlike we do, face the stern, and the oarblades barely thicker than the handles. That is, we steered past the touts for the rivercruises we’d seen, already out; trying to put them off approaching was useless. Today the dinghy had an old guy in charge the fee was as little as a loaf of bread and included the return trip. He told us his name so that when we wanted to come back we could shout for him. I didn’t record his name but it was something odd to shout, like a saint’s name. And he, like the young woman yesterday, rowed backwards; that is facing the front.

Arches remain at Kaunos, a 20 minute walk from the jetty; we’d shared the dinghy with a Scottish couple, the guy had gone, as if an ordeal he would not endure today, like Dave and his beach walk, I’ve walked it many times. It was still cool in the fields we passed through …

These belong to a Byzantine church, where, some details,

Kaunos, a beautifully laid out town, with two basilicas, both having three naves, one Byzantine, the other adapted from the earlier Greco-Roman temple. Now, this is cause for confusion. The information around these sites simply calls them Greek as if there were no continuity between the Greek and Roman, or the Roman via the Greek, which is in Turkey what happened: from the 4th century, from Constantine, and the Edict of Milan, the Roman Empire was Christian and in the East a Romanised Greek-speaking culture, otherwise known as Byzantine.

It is made to sound like an aberration, as if the Christian churches built on top of amphitheatres and over existing temples spoilt an earlier Classical purity; and, as if Christian art ruined what was there, painted over, the earlier and more perfect works of art of classical antiquity.

The Romans were to all intents and purposes Christians and the Roman Empire survived in the East until May 29 1453. Whereas, in the West, claims to the seat of Holy Roman Emperor are early attempts at brand theft.

… Further confusion arises from the iconoclast period (periods actually, 726-787 and 814-842) but it seems as if this became an excuse for the later Muslim iconoclasts, for the defacement, quite literal, as we saw repeatedly in Capadoccia, the scratching out of the faces, and, as we saw in Ankara’s Museum of Civilizations, the beheadings of the statues, of artworks of both Christian and Classical provenance.

Here more wildlife occurred to us than anywhere else. Lizards a foot or so long sunning themselves on the marble blocks at Kaunos.

Zooming in to snap a lizard,

Note the perfectly inscribed line on the remains of this circular platform: an astronomical instrument.

How quickly the refrains (discussed above) become familiar: another amphitheatre,

This one accommodated 5,000 spectators.

Above the theatre on the hill, taking in the sun, a snake, fat and easily three-foot long, shiny and black-brown and tan. (I yelled Holy Fuck! causing J in her open-toed sandals to take a step or two back.)

A plumbing detail,

Showing where preservation rather than restoration might be better,

Restoration,

another sort of effect,

Stairwell into the bathes, where there is also said to have been a frigidarium,

On the way back, iced pomegranate juice from the orchards lining the road. Water of life is how it tasted.

And some sleek donkeys.

at the cafe by the jetty, waiting for our oarsman (we didn’t need to but yelled anyway),

He’s in the middle of this snap,

avoiding these,

Things we didn’t do in Dalyan: İztuzu Beach, we didn’t go to see if there were any turtles; J had read of the luring out that goes on, against their will, for the tourists; and on Köyceğiz Lake, the Sultaniye Spa, the hot mud on a hot day, in our still parlous condition gut-wise didn’t appeal. (About which, we conferred in serious discussion, in the Ottoman camera, on whether to quit the five giant antibiotics we were taking daily. I was feeling like a chemical sump. We decided, if a superbug were to arise, it would be several days later and we would be in Berlin and my brother could drive us from the airport to the hospital.)

Drove across where the sea had been, now producing electricity from geothermal activity; drove through mountains, perfect hairpin bends, an area of rocks piled on rocks, a valley with small lakes that looked like Mars, to Selçuk, which is not anything like, for Ephesus, the top tourist site in Türkiye, being so near, what we might have expected.

the approach, not auspicious,

already feeling better,

Our hotel a former prison.

A fight was breaking out. Follow the seated figure’s sightline. See the guys gathered behind the powerpole?

Yeah, there. They spotted me snapping, and did not yell tamam.

Kids everywhere (and kediler), playing, more locals than tourists on the streets, many many dogs and cats, many tractors,

a Byzantine acqueduct that cuts through the main square, stork nests on top of the remaining pillars,

Fermented red carrot juice and kebaps. Yum yum.

These little tikes popular with the ladies. Saw one, full of the fully-veiled, taking on the motorway.

Took some baklava back to hotel. And I have just eaten some. The honey is so light here, like the wine, and the sweets like this reflect that.

while behind the hotel.