Meet Almond..

Sunday is the time to rest. So let me introduce you to Almond (Badem) who is quite good at it.

Almond is a Mediterranean monk seal who happens to be a well known character in my little peninsula as well as the areas around it. Badem rescued in Dec 2006 as an orphaned pup and underwent rehabilitation for sometime and then released. However during that time he learned to love us humans more then his own kind. So he repeatedly appears in the shores for human contact and do not forget to take a good rest whenever he finds a suitable place..
1 photo from here, 2. is from here

A Ring and A Story - Damascus

( I wrote this piece 2 years ago after a trip to Syria, and as I was wearing my ring today, I remembered and wanted to share it with you...)

I bought a ring from a souk in Aleppo. On it’s round silver surface, a sentence from Koran engraved in Arabic with a beautiful calligraphy. It says, ‘everything will die/change except the face of God.’

Deaths, funerals and cemeteries have always created different feelings in me. On the one, hand there is the feeling of loss and the end, and on the other hand the feeling that I don’t have to take myself and what I have too seriously, as everything will end one day and the urge to fully enjoy every remaining minutes of my life.

I felt those feelings in the most acute sense when I lost my father. One part of me was senseless due to pain, but the other part was urging me to f… the problems at work or the boy friend who was not calling and telling me that everything will change, and I have to start living and do whatever I want to do as soon as possible.

Since then, those feelings have remained with me. I always know that happiness or sadness, whatever it is, will pass one day, and I try not to indulge myself to either of them strongly.Those feelings were with me in a small cemetery in Damascus. There is a small Ottoman cemetery near the Takıyya al Sulaimaniyya, the current day military museum. There are 40-50 graves here belonging to some dynasty members as well as the Ottoman rulers of the period. One of the graves that is the most important one historically but the most unpretentious one, is belong to the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Vahdettin.

Vahdettin was 57 years old when he ascended the throne on July 4, 1918. He waited this moment long enough at his house at Çengelköy. And that day, he first reached to Sarayburnu pier with a steamboat.. Ministers, members of the parliament and all the staff of the Topkapi Palace were waiting him in an orderly way at the gilded door of the palace. Vahdettin along with Enver Pasha who was escorting him in his car, got off from the car in the most dignified manner, and walked to the Baghdad pavilion…

He rested at the pavilion for a while, then he took Abdulmecit, the son of his uncle Sultan Abdülzaziz, the new heir of the Empire and they went to the Babüssade and he sat at the emerald throne according to the Ottoman customs.

At the same moment, cannon fires were announcing the ascending of Vahdettin while all the Ottoman Princes, leading religious, civil and military figures, were offering their loyalty to the new Sultan.

The next scene is from villa Magnolia in San Remo, Date was, May 15,1926. Eight long years and lots of events passed since that day. After a while he called for Nevzat Kadıefendi who was always around him, and asked for a bowl and said he has pain in his gall, and vomited a little. And then said,’ Oh! Throw this immediately so that it won’t stink. After Nevzat Kadıefendi cleaned the bowl, he found the lifeless body of the Sultan Vahdettin in his deck chair. Those were the last minutes of the last Ottoman Sultan.

The debtors and bankruptcy officers prevented the removal of the body for 4-5 days in San Remo. When they broke into his bag for money, all they found were medallions and decorations, stripped out of their diamonds and valuable stones long ago for the expenses. While the households were negotiating with the debtors in the living room of the villa, Prince Omar Faruk and Tahir bey, secretly loaded the body to a horse cart at the back door, hidden under heavy carpets and the funeral reached to San Remo station.

That was how the body of the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire kidnapped from the debtors, whose predecessors ruled and protected numerous kings and shahs through the centuries and regarded as the ‘holy emperor’ of the all seas and lands in the world. A cart pulled by a single horse moved slowly in the streets of San Remo and the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was starting his last journey.

Vahdettin who was coming from the bloodline of the likes of Fatih the Conqueror and Sulaiman the Magnificent, buried in Damascus that is the closest Islam land to the city that he was born. This is a story that I will remember every time I wear my ring.

I roughly translate italic parts from the book of Yilmaz Cetiner, Last Sultan Vahdettin.

Temple of Apollo at Didyma

The only question came to my mind when I was standing in front of the Temple of Apollo was if I was going to lead a happy and fulfilled life..

Although the famous oracle of the temple gone long ago, I still heard her answer in the silence of my heart. '' - You can, if you choose to...''

I'd better believe her as it was she who told Alexander the Great that he will beat the Persians right at this place.

In 313 BC, the Milesians began to build this temple on the site of the earlier shrine, which they intended to be the largest in the Greek world. Construction continued during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC and the Oracle of Apollo at Didyma rivaled that of Delphi. However it was never entirely completed.

In those days , pilgrims walked 20 km along the Sacred Way from Miletus to the temple to worship Apollo and also to find answers about their future. Well, in modern times we did not walk that distance but drive. I guess it still counts...

While we were leaving Oracle also whispered to my heart that I will always be happy with this man :))

Flip Flops

I am not one of those women who is crazy about shoes. Well, I have a thing - for big bags, but let's say it's on a managable level.

However when it comes to flip flops, I cant get enough of them. Where my shoe expense for the summer is almost close to nothing, I constantly keep buying flip flops of all colors and shapes. Luckily they are not expensive.

I even succeded in converting my husband in to them who used to think that it was not a -man- thing, before me. Now I cant get him to wear a decent shoe when we are going out.

They represent all the things that I love.. Summer, freedom, simplicity, outdoors etc..God bless who invented them..

PS: As for my little model, she had a happy but short life. After she started her life in my balcony,my neighbor adopted her. She soon became a lazy and fat cat but unfortunately she got hit by a car..

Priene

I love visiting ancient cities. A couple quiet minutes spend by sitting on a thousand year old pillar always reminds me that nothing is permanent. I like imagining the people, how they lived, what they cherrished and even sometimes try to hear their sounds in the blowing wind. It's always a great meditation about life for me. All those beautiful ruins, much loved cities, temples and Gods, gone long ago, remind me not to cling on to anything. Nothing is permanent: All our material treasures, all out loved ones, our lifes..... What we really have is the moment we are in, rest was and will be history..

Luckily we have plenty of ancient cities around here for me to meditate. Today I will take you to ancient Hellenistic city of Priene. We stopped there 2 weeks ago on an early morning. I was quite hungry so before starting to climb the city, I fed myself with grilled goat cheese and tomatoes, which were the only available things in a small restaurant at that hour.

Priene is a beautiful city established on a mountain around 8th century BC. Pillars of the Athena temple welcomes you to the city. They are magnificent. For my day dreaming time I found a shadow under a pine tree, near the temple. I tried to visualize Alexander the Great and the time he spent in this city during his siege of another nearby city Miletus.. Well, as Hollywood gave us the image of handsome Collin Farrell as Alexander the Great, it was rather easy to imagine him ordering the construction of this temple and probably standing right by my pine tree to decide where to built it.

Our last stop on the city was it's small theater with VIP seats.. Theater originally built in the 4th century BC by the Greeks, and later was expanded by the Romans in the 2nd century AD to hold 6,000 spectators.. One of my guide books said that whoever visited this theater had not miss the opportunity to photographed himself sitting on one of the 5 VIP chairs. So that's what exactly we did..

BLACK & WHITE Sunday

When looking for new blog posts, I found out that Julie at BeingRuby and Anne Marie at

NaDaFarm are playing a game of Black and White Sunday.. I dont really know what the rules of the game are but just for the fun of it and as I love B/W photos so much, here are mines. I took them last Thursday on Oludeniz - Fethiye..

Oludeniz - Fethiye

I have been away from Datca and internet for the last 2 days. We went to Fethiye and Dalyan. This time my mother and my niece were with us. On day 1, we were at Fethiye a well known tourist center about 3 hours drive from here. Although we spent the night at Fethiye our main target there was Oludeniz.




It is a small resort village famous with its beach about 20 minutes away from Fethiye. It is frequently rated among the top 5 beaches in the world and probably one of the most photographed beach on the Mediterranean.


It is also famous for paragliding and regarded as one of the best places in the world to paraglide due to its unique panoramic views, and the Babadağ Mountain's exceptional height.



While we were there we also drove to nearby Valley of Butterflies to see the magnificent view from the top. The road was so narrow and it was a scary ride but it worth...






Later in the day the weather gets cloudy and it started to rain a bit, but the view was still magnificentHowever as someone coming from the Datca peninsula, I did not like the quality of the sea. First of all water is hot. It's not cool and refreshing. We call it as hamam/ bath water here. Second it does not look very clean. There were lots of sea weeds swimming with me. But dont take me too seriously, Iam sure it was OK but I am a bit fanatic about the waters of my lovely peninsula. I swam on so many seas and oceans but couldnt find a match yet..