Turkish Idyll Cappadocia’s fairy chimneys & cave churches

Emmie Abadilla – 2/6/13

I gazed with yearning at the 13,000-foot, snow-capped Mt. Erciyes, Turkey’s second highest peak, after my plane touched down at Kayseri, Central Anatolia, along the ancient Great Silk Road on the mountain spur.

Just then, a man brandished my misspelled name on a white board in the arrival area.
“Jemal, your driver” he grinned as he hefted my backpack and ushered me in his van, rattling off the merits of my destination as he sped off.

Once the residence of the kings of Cappadocia, Kayseri is Turkey’s third largest city, after Istanbul and Ankara.

But my accommodation is still 30 kilometers away in Cappadocia, the “Land of Beautiful Horses” spoken of in the Persian Empire of Darius I and Xerxes.

The Bible mentioned Cappadocia as well. St. Paul, the Apostle, passed through here in the fourth century and established one of the earliest Christian communities. The place itself produced many hermit-saints.

St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, patron of hospital administrators, reformers, monks, teachers, exorcists and liturgists, was born in this place. His younger brother, St. Gregory of Nysa and St. Gregory Nazianzus joined him here and lived as hermits.

Interestingly, Alexander the Great tried to rule the region but failed.

Now, I saw neither handsome steeds nor ascetics, just gypsy trailer camps and tents on the road, women with kerchief-bound heads tending to dusty herds of sheep among scatterings of beat-up motorcycles.
Jemal’s face darkened as he swerved away from them. “Only the gypsy women work,” he grumbled. “Men do nothing but booze. And they steal from us folks.”

Further out, bare fields of rocks stretched out endlessly, strewn with cairns, hiding rabbit warrens and fox dens.

In winter, when pickings are lean, wolves come down from the snow mountain to hunt. Golden eagles patrol the skies, nesting in eyries in the high cliffs. In some places, they even have grizzlies.

Jemal fretted. I’m running late for my bus bound for Goreme (which means “You Cannot See From Here”), a town which persecuted Christians built amidst fairy chimneys in the 4th century.
After Mount Erciyes erupted 2,000 years ago, the lava it spewed out formed soft rocks that blanketed the land over 20,000 square kilometers. Gradually, wind and water eroded the pale porous limestone, leaving the dark, hard, basalt on top of natural pillars, columns, pyramids and minarets. The “fairy chimneys” emerged.

Stranger still, whole communities inhabited the rock formations. In fact, I was booked inside one – in Peri Caves Hotel Pension.

After Jesus died on the cross, Romans hunted down Christians and fed them to lions in the Colosseum for sport. So, the faithful fled to Cappadocia where they discovered the soft rock can be carved into hiding places, houses, churches and monasteries.

To honor their faith, they built 600 cave chapels all over the region and painted them with Byzantine frescoes. To protect themselves, they dug out 26 underground cities, the biggest of which goes down a hundred feet deep and accommodates 20,000 people.

Derinkuyu’s Underground City in Nevsehir is in my itinerary. But today, Goreme’s cave churches top the list.

In haste, I dumped my backpack inside my own private fairy chimney furnished with a bed plus en suite toilet before boarding the bus waiting outside the gate.

My guide was a Turk with a Mongolian name, Chinggis. As we shook hands, he told me he preferred to call me in the Turkish version of my name – “Emine”, which means beautiful.
And so we rumbled into town, a forest of fairy chimney dwellings sprouting among modern concrete houses, mosques and tourist shops peddling basalt replicas of the heads at Mt. Nemrut, coal-fired “shisha” water pipes for smoking flavoured tobacco and “nazar boncuks’ to ward off the evil eye.

In a short time, we reached Goreme Open Air Museum – masses of towering limestone mounds carved into a complex of over 30 chapels and monasteries in the 9th century.
Wandering in the Apple Church (Elmali Kilise), I eyed a red orb in the hand of Archangel Michael in the dome – supposedly the fruit from which the church took its name. Brilliant red ochre frescoes of angels, saints, bishops and martyrs stared back at me from the walls and ceilings.
On the other hand, Snake Church (Yilanli Kilise) was named for the frescoes of Saint Theodore and Saint George slaying the dragon – described as a snake. Other frescoes depict Emperor Constantine – the first Christian Emperor of Rome, and his mother, Saint Helena, holding the “True Cross.”

A dream showed her where to find the cross where Jesus was crucified. Now, a piece of that cross lies entombed in the foundations of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Other fragments are in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem and in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.

A fresco of hermit Saint Onuphrius, patron of weavers, shows a holy man with a long gray beard wearing nothing but a fig leaf. He was once a pretty lustful woman, they said. When she repented, God turned her into an ugly old man to save her soul.

The Dark Church (Karanlik Kilise) is literally dim. Light pokes in via a small oculus – a round hole – in its narthex. Still, I could make out the frescoes of Christ Pantocrator with his right hand in the gesture of blessing, the Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, First Bath, Last Supper, Betrayal of Judas and the Crucifixion.

The Church with Sandals (Carikli Kilise) shows two footprints cast from Jesus’ own feet near its entrance. Among the frescoes were its three donors who looked like wealthy peasants.
The Church of the Buckle (Tokali Kilise) derives its name from a long gone decoration on its twin arches.
It’s the largest church in Göreme with the richest frescoes – the 12 apostles, the saints, scenes from the life of Jesus, in vivid blue, a pigment so rare in the region, it must have been imported elsewhere at outrageous cost.

An empty crypt, which could have held church donors or dignitaries, lies beneath the nave.
The Church of Saint Barbara (Barbara Kilise) was a tribute to an Egyptian whom her own father imprisoned, tortured and killed for converting to Christianity.

Another fresco shows a large locust representing evil, warded off by two adjacent crosses. The church’s monk builders even drew red ochre lines on the rocks, to make them look like cut stones.
Breaking off for lunch, I dined on Turkish rice and chicken kebabs with harem food for dessert – chewy lemon squares with pistachio nuts, while gazing out at Pigeon Valley, pockmarked with pigeon holes, natural and man-made.
“We love our pigeons,” Chinggis remarked. Local farmers traditionally lure pigeons, putting out grain for them, so they can collect their guano to fertilize their fields.
On the way back, I visited Uchisar (Fortress at the Tip) Castle – a 200-foot tall natural formation hollowed out all over its face to accommodate living quarters for its residents, complete with a fortress.

Even the work rooms and entire shops here, like AvanosPottery Center, have been dug out of caves.

Avanos – Venessa in ancient times, is an old city of Nevşehir separated from Cappadocia by the Red River, Turkey’s longest. It’s the source of red silt used by seven generations of potters.
Craftsmen make vases, jugs and plates the way their ancestors did 4,000 years ago, with foot-pedalled mill stone wheels. Fathers passed on their craft to sons but never to daughters, perceived to be too weak to turn the heavy kick-mills.

Still, no father gives his daughter in marriage to a man who can’t throw his clay well and make earthenware.
Browsing among the glazed pots, I inspected a Hittite wine jug – a loop painted with hundreds of miniature warriors and horses. It came with a spout and handle and was meant to be worn, slung on the server’s shoulder and poured from there.
“Wine is important to us,” Chinggis acknowledged. “First thing Noah did when he got off the ark after the great flood was to plant his vineyard and press wine.”
“On the other hand, this is a teardrop holder.” With a flourish, he plucked a little ceramic vase. When a Hittite man leaves home, he expects his wife to cry into this and show him her tears when he comes back.”

Next, he led me up the Urgup fairy chimneys at Monk’s Valley (Pasabaglari) among the local gardens and fruit trees.

Ürgüp, another mountain town in Nevsehir, was founded on the outskirts of the Hill of Wishes and was known by various names in the Byzantine period – Osiana, Hagios, Prokopios. Today, it’s famous for hotels, nightclubs and bars built right inside limestone caves, for its wines and hand-made carpets.

Urgup’s most renowned landmark – a fairy rock chimney family complete with mom, dad, son and granddad, could be seen in most post cards of Goreme.

Finally, at dusk, I watched Rose Valley’s bleached limestone blush into pink as the sun sank. Before I knew it, the day is done.

I was back in my hostel, cozy inside my own fairy chimney.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

(For questions, comments, suggestions, etc. please contact the author at emmieabadilla@yahoo.com.)

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