TALES
FROM THE BALCONY
To
Bozdag and back
It was 23rd of June 2010. Dave and I had
decided see the recently identified late Roman marble quarry at the top of
Bozdag Hill, which Dave had read a report about in Halicarnassian Studies. Some
years before with Arif, we had climbed Bozdag on foot in a failed attempt to
find remains of Lelegian walls and
foundations of a tower. Asking Arif the best way to get there was a bit of a no
brainer, as we all remembered the difficulty we had climbing the 1 in 3 hill
before.
‘We’ll go
in my fathers car’ was Arif’s quick reply. ‘I’ll drive you to the top’
We couldn’t remember seeing anything like a road
going up it, let alone a car.
So there we were in Arif’s dads old fiat 131, soon
discovering there was no road but found ourselves bouncing up a loose dirt
track that would have easily qualified as a stage in the WRC Rally of Turkey.
The trip to the top whilst full of bounce was
uneventful. The return trip however was
to prove otherwise.
The journey down allowed me to film shots of the
valley. The track from the summit ran into a road passing through the
Munipicality refuse tip, which, as well as containing rubbish also held
ramshackle building structures, a sort of shanty town for workers on the tip.
My camera was still running as we reached the tip
area. As workers saw us and the camera,
people started remonstrating shaking their fists and shouting in Turkish, running alongside the car. Arif slowed down and attempts were made to snatch
the video camera from the car. Arif stopped and got out of the car and started
arguing aggressively with them. As the crowd and noise increased Arif pulled
out his phone, made a call then passed it to the leader of the angry mob.
After the phone call, things were calmer, Arif
returned to the car to explain that the people working/living on the tip
thought we were an undercover film crew sent to film them. Arif’s phone call
had been to the Jandarma, and the only way he could persuade the group to let
us leave, was if we reported to the Jandarma station with one of the group’s
leaders.
During the journey to the station, with Arif as an
interpreter and using the maps and documentation we had, we tried to impress on
the leader that we were only interested in the quarry. Arif said he seemed suitably
impressed and had asked if Dave was a Professor. To which we all readily
agreed, he seemed a little more impressed, as was Dave.
At the station I agreed to delete any footage of the
tip that had caused offence. With everyone satisfied, we took the leader back
to the tip. During the course of the journey the leader was chatting and
laughing with Arif in Turkish. We just hoped that he was not about to try and
raise his status with other members of his group by asking the Professor and
his companions to have a glass of raki with them.
We had both seen Midnight Express, so the first beer
on our return to Hera seemed like celebrating freedom.
You can see a short video of the road trip to Bozdag
and back (of course minus the angry crowd scenes deleted to appease the
authorities ), at: Link To You Tube Video
