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Neither Asia nor Minor
| Article
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11453 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1994 |
4,721 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
We went to Trabzon because Xenophon traveled there in the fourth century B.C. From Babylonia he moved noith on foot with ten thousand Greek soldiers, often fighting along the way and having particular trouble with the Kurds, who, in those days, were called the Carducchi. After a bloody, exhausting journey his troops scaled a height near what is now the Black Sea coast of Turkey above Trabzon and cried out, in one of the famous quotes of classical literature, 'Thalassa! Thalassa!"--The sea! The sea!
For years I had wanted to stand on that ridge, and so I came, with my wife and daughter for company. Our journey was first via Turkish Airways and then by Turkish Maritime Lines along the Black Sea coast, with a shoreline prospect of pale blue mountains in the haze, a view that was once familiar to Ovid and Diogenes. Expecting an encounter with history we find a young nation whose soul is in dispute.
Like Xenophon, we fetch up at the small Black Sea port of Trabzon. He knew it as Trapezus, named for the peculiar trapezoid rock formations in the area. Later the name altered, first to Trebizond, the last capital of the eastern Roman Empire, and, after the Turks had taken it, to Trabzon. During the Cold War, it was a sleepy little place, an observation post for spies. With the Iron Curtain down, Trabzon is filled with commerce: some of it legal, some not, much of it carried out by a ragged stream of refugees from Georgia, a days drive east.
This is nothing like the hot Aegean coast featured in travel brochures. Up here the climate is moderate, moist, green, and misty This is trout-fishing country. It is what Turks call the Laz region, whose people tend to be the butt of jokes like those told by Brits about the Irish.
In 'frabzon, there is a scarcity of stereotypical Turks: olive-skinned, dark-haired levantines. The people in the streets are often blond or red-headed, with keen blue eyes and pale faces that could belong to Celts or Germans. We soon make friends with Serdar Bey, a kuyumdju (jeweler) who has a fashionable little shop just off Meydan Square in the center of town. With Turkeys economy groaning under barely controlled inflation, he says that bricks, mortar, and land are the safest investments. Serdar Beys most profitable business is feeding Thrkey~s construction boom with cheap building materials imported across the Blačk Sea from Sochi.
There is almost no sense in Trabzon of the Helleriistic or classical past, or even of
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