Embedded Files
My sister left some grapes for the fox. says Metin. And then he tells about the famous Cappadocian wine, and how the fox helps spreading the seeds when the farmers themselves do not.
They were farmers, in his childhoods home. They grew grapes and vegetables and oranges and walnuts and apples and apricots.
The roof is gone on family's main cave. Erosion works, like it has done for thousands of years, and if not maintained, Mother Nature takes back what man has carved out. He points out hte fireplace, the lamp niches, the beds and the windows.
When the snow came and it was winter, the cave was warm. In summer, vhen the sun burned, the cave was chilly.
He shows where they used to tread the grapes, how sophisticated the workingplace is made.
You know - this is not long time ago. We left from here in the early 1960ies. But grandfather stayed till he died. He was more than 90, it was less than 30 years ago.
DeDe on the mountain
There is a small, hardly visible contour of a house on the mountain top. It is DeDe's house, Metin tells. DeDe is resting there, in a sarcophagus.
- He was i wise man, he did good things to the people all his life. Still - one day a numerous crowd of people came to kill him. Then he said to God: I have acted for the good in all my life. Now, it is Your turn to help me. God heard his prayers, and he turned the crowd into stone statues. Look - they are still here.....
And they are everywhere around his grandfather's cave. Three young women are trying to catch his attention as he passes by. Three old, sceptical women, surrounded by shy kids sere stopped nearby.
- Grand-dad used to tell me to go all the way to the mountain top with a bottle of fresh water. He said it was for DeDe. I did not like it. It took a long time. But I did it. And every time, the bottle i brought last time was empty. Grand-Dad said that DeDe had taken it. I do not know what is true. dI only know what I saw.
Of course, I do not know either. But I understand his point: You have to be there for a while, you have to study the sculptures to see what it is, you have to wait for them to become alive. Then you can get an idea about how it would be to have a childhood here, among all those phantastic figures.
The church
- By the way - we had a church, he says, and leads us through the garden and in between the petrified killers. In one of them there is a narrow niche carved out - and inside there is a Byzanthine church.
This area was the land of St. Paul, he sais. It is one of the oldest christian areas. They took refuge here from the romans, most of the underground cities hav beautiful churches carved out. And this little one, in my village, proves how christians and other religions lived together through all centuries. Till the populations were shifted, after world war 1 and the turkish liberation war.
- In 1924, all the Christians went to Greece. And all the muslims were expelled from there. Cappadocia is a land of mujahirs - immigrants.
Page updated
Report abuse