On a Slow Boat

There was once a poor farmer who could afford to own just one horse. He cared well for the animal, but one summer night, the horse escaped through a weak fence and ran away.

When his neighbors discovered what had happened, they visited to offer their condolences. “What bad luck!” they exclaimed. The farmer replied,
“Maybe. Maybe not.”

A week later, the fugitive horse sauntered back to the homestead, accompanied by six wild horses. The farmer and his son managed to corral all of them. Again the neighbors descended. “What great luck!” they exclaimed.
“Maybe,” the farmer replied. “Maybe not.”

Soon the farmer’s son began the work of taming the new arrivals. While attempting to ride the roan stallion, he was thrown to the ground and half-trampled. His leg was badly broken. The neighbors came to investigate. “What terrible luck!” they exclaimed. The farmer replied, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

The next day, soldiers visited the farmer’s village. Strife had recently broken out between two warlords, and one of them had come to conscript all the local young men. Though every other son was commandeered, the farmer’s boy was exempted because of his injury. The neighbors gathered again. “What fantastic luck!” they exclaimed.

“Maybe,” the farmer said. “Maybe not.”

~ a Chinese folk tale

We’re currently marooned in Singapore – well, marooned being too harsh a word, because we could think of many other places we could’ve been “stuck” in – unsure of what the future has in store for us, along with the rest of the world. Thankfully by now we’re accustomed to the nomadic life, to not having much besides our backpacks, to not having a job or a well-defined routine, to not knowing where we’ll be or what we’ll do afterwards. We’re still used to planning not more than two weeks at a time, though recently we’ve increased the range to 3 months. With two thirds of the world on lockdown and most borders closed to international traveler, we know where we’ll be next week, next month: we’re staying put in Singapore until our visa expires.

I remembered the first time we heard about the coronavirus. We were somewhere in Zambia, one of those rare times when we had Internet access and I was scrolling through the BBC front page. At that point it was still called the Wuhan virus and I had thought of it as a curious bit of news from China, something that most likely would be contained within the country. The border post in Malawi was the first time we saw a public health official who was checking people’s temperatures and asking for everyone’s travel history, but I thought it was a standard border procedure even when the officer told me to take the form seriously because of coronavirus. The news of the virus quickly got shelved at the back of my mind and didn’t come up again until a few weeks later when we were in Malawi. We were cooking dinner, accompanied by a Dutch couple we just met, who jokingly said, “Well, at least you don’t eat bats,” when Gabriel commented that I was an adventurous eater. We all laughed. Coronavirus was still funny then, when we still thought of it as another country’s problem.

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Picture this: a quiet beach with gentle waves softly lapping at the shore. It was a sunny day but not searing hot as warm rays of early fall filtered through wisps of clouds, the kind that reminded me of the thin layer of milk foam on a cup of latte. It helped that our sunbeds (ours for the whole day for less than $5) were well shaded by a beach umbrella made of reeds.

We took the river boat (that picked us up right from our BnB’s dock) to this beach, one of the nicest ones I’ve ever been to. It’s right by the estuary where the Dalyan channel empties the water of Lake Köyceğiz into the sea so the water isn’t as salty as regular beaches and the seafloor tapers ever so gently that the water was still only waist-height 200m from the coastline. Waves of tourists would come every hour and then they all left at the same time after an hour or so, as they were ferried off to their next stop on their packaged tour itinerary. As for us, we happily stayed on our sunbeds the whole day, reading our books, enjoying the warm sun and the sea breeze, occasionally dipping in the shallow water to cool off when the sun got too hot. For lunch, we went to the only cafeteria on the beach for chicken döner, which was surprisingly tasty and priced the same as the one in town. Guess the owner hasn’t realized or doesn’t see the need to capitalize on his prime location.

I can assure you that not every day on our travel is this beautiful and serene. We just happened to luck out, being here in Dalyan just as droves of summer tourists had left town. Being low season, we were able to get a cheap room in a bed and breakfast by the river. From the BnB’s dock – which also doubles as the breakfast patio – we had a clear view of the famous Lycian rock tombs that were carved into the karst hills more than 2,000 years ago.

“This is easy living,” I thought, grateful to have found this little piece of paradise. It was the second time that day that I wondered what makes regions around the Mediterranean so well-practiced in the art of good living. Earlier in the morning I had the same thought about la bella vita as we enjoyed the wonderful breakfast spread, cooked by a cheerful woman with a radiant round face and a resonant hearty laugh. She was so amused to hear us say please and thank you in Turkish that each time she saw us, she took it upon herself to teach us more Turkish phrases. Good morning. Günaydın. How are you? Nasılsın? Good, and you? Ben iyiyim, ya sen?

Ever since we arrived in Turkey, breakfast quickly became the highlight of my days. The Turks have really mastered the art of breakfast spread. Kahvalti is what they call their ‘traditional’ breakfast spread. Think of a continental buffet with different types of freshly baked bread (my favorite is a bagel-like sesame-crusted twisty round one called simit), fresh fruit, homemade jams, farmer’s cheese, olives, fresh vegetables (parsley, arugula, sweet green peppers), protein (eggs and cured meat) and pastries. Of particular mention is sigara boregi, fried feta-stuffed phyllo roll that is just heavenly when it’s fresh off the fryer with a bit of homemade jam (made of watermelon rind!) or drizzled with tahin pekmez (tahini mixed with grape molasses). And finally, a freshly brewed demitasse of kahve or cay that’s meant to be sipped not gulped.

Is it the mild climate that makes everyone so friendly and welcoming, the harvest of the land and sea so delectable on the tongue, the sun so warm in one’s bones, and the water so rejuvenating for our soul?Whatever the secret recipe is, our days on the Aegean coast is going to be a lovely memory for a long time to come.

We took the train from Izmir to Selçuk, to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. We hadn’t heard of it before even though my dad told me Ephesus is mentioned in the Bible as one of the seven churches in Asia. Apparently St. John the Baptist spent quite some time preaching and converting people here and it was thought that the Book of St. John was written here.

Walking through the huge archaeological site, I couldn’t help but noticed the dissonance between the apparent past grandeur of the city and its current state – abandoned piles of rubbles. And unlike mining ghost towns that at most support a few hundred people in their heyday, Ephesus was an illustrious city with administrative centers (agoras), multiple bathhouses, a wealthy neighborhood, an advanced aqueduct system, a military barrack, and an impressive colonnade that went all the way to the harbor. The Celsus library had stored a large collection of scrolls. The amphitheatre could contain 25,000 spectators – thought to be the largest in ancient world. The list of past accomplishments goes on and on. And one can see evidence of this just walking through the expansive site. This was not an ancient village of a hundred people. Ephesus was a proper metropolis, until it was not.

How strange to think that a city could go from a major city of the world to a pile of rubbles in a span of a few generations. First it was ransacked by the Goths, though it seemed that it was economic reason that slowly brought it to its knees. As the river silted up the harbor, commerce – and along with it, people – moved to other cities closer to the sea until there was no more city to speak of. I wonder at what point cartographers decided to omit Ephesus from the map?

Still musing about the fate of Ephesus, we walked a few kilometers to the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Pliny had written that the temple used to stand at 400ft (130m) tall; a feat of engineering at the time it was built. I had expected to see a smaller version of the Temple of Athena we saw in Athens and was confused upon seeing an empty field of grass. Are we in the right place? Were we supposed to go further into the bushes? It turned out, that was all that’s left of this ancient wonder. There isn’t even a column standing as most of the column blocks had been repurposed in other buildings. If there was no plaque to mark the site, it would have been forgotten.

I suppose these were good reminders that nothing lasts forever. Not even the most advanced building, an illustrious metropolis, nor an advanced civilization. Nothing is permanent.