A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat by Jeremy Seal

Author:Jeremy Seal [SEAL, JEREMY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Europe, Turkey, Fashion, International Relations, Social Science, East and West, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, General, Design, Middle East, Political Science, Headgear, Fiction, Customs & Traditions
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 1995-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

chapter ten

‘The origins of the fez, you say? From the penis, of

course. Like your English top hat, it represents the

primal human instinct.’

From a conversation with a Turkish

anthropologist as recorded in my notebook

At Friday lunchtime, the muffled waitings of Yozgat’s

muezzins floated across the wintry town and mingled among

the wind-tugged plumes of coal smoke. From the window of

my hotel room, I watched huddled figures streaming towards

the mosques, making fresh tracks through the snow or picking

up the spoor impressions of old ones to guide them safely in.

Every lunchtime, the deskbound hotel receptionist turned

his place of work into a place of prayer, his body into a vessel of obeisance to the will of God, his mind into a pure conduit

of divine communication, his thoughts towards the Almighty,

all of which he did most assiduously on Fridays. In spite of Ataturk’s adoption of the Christian weekend, Friday’s religious significance has endured, and on that day thousands of faithful

foreheads were buffing up desk surfaces in country towns

throughout Turkey, leaving rounded patinas of shiny, reverential sweat as testament to their devotions.

The receptionist’s forehead lay between outstretched palms

upon the counter in front of him. Every so often he would lift

his head a few inches to offer up rhythmic mutterings. And

whenever he did so, I would lean forward with a raised finger

to signal my presence. I was beginning to worry about the

time, and increasingly hoped he was working up to a

devotional climax.

It was the old dilemma: he had a God to talk to; I had a bus

to catch. I respected his God, but I also knew that the Turks respected their bus timetables. Perhaps I only imagined the

signs in the gloom of the lobby that read Do not disturb upon

sentence of ritual emasculation by Yozgat’s Islamic Tribunal, but even imagining them convinced me that anything as earthbound

as bill settling would have to wait.

I was running short of patience. I’d had my fill of supine

receptionists, and of being trailed, cornered, and finished off

by hunting pairs of angry young men peddling their confused

Turkish mantras. If only for the weekend, I had decided, it

was time to get Christian. And Yozgat being no place to get

so, I was doing the Christian thing, and fleeing.

When the receptionist finally surfaced, I informed him a

little briskly that I was leaving.

‘You’re leaving Yozgat?’ he asked, eyes narrowing. Didn’t

anybody tell you? You can’t just come and go in Yozgat; you have to stay, for ever. In fact, he-asked me for my room key, and where

I was going.

‘Church,’ I told him.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Christian.’

‘One of the very best,’ I replied, handing over a few bank

notes.

‘Perhaps you should think about—’

‘Don’t,’ I interrupted him, and left for Cappadocia.

Cappadocia was the obvious choice. I knew that much

wine was drunk there, and that the Cappadocians played host

to large numbers of wine-drinking tourists. Cappadocia had

churches, four hundred of them. Besides, Christians had been

evading the Turks in Cappadocia for hundred of years.

History’s example was enough to prompt this harried Christian

to seek sanctuary there, if only for the weekend.

The long road took us past the country town of Kirsehir

where, a passenger told me, Ugur Mumcu had been born.

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