Tipping Point

Merhaba. Have you found yourself wondering recently about death, ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’ to quote Hamlet.

My recent passage into my 70th year along with Coronasitis have prompted the occasional reflection on mortality.

Not often though. On a more regular basis, I do find myself pondering Islamic attitudes to Life and Death. Especially with Turkish builders around the home. The Islamic fundamentalists – all mentalist but no fun – like to demoralise their infidel Western enemies with the taunt “We love Death as you love Life”.

And Atatürk observed that his troop’s willingness to die was his country’s great military asset.

There does seem to be an apparent indifference to death, in the Turkish working man, that runs through the country’s Islamic culture like an inscription through a stick of seaside rock.

Seeing our builders wobble up a near vertical and unsecured ladder recently, I just had to intervene. Adjusting it to a safer angle and securing it top and bottom with rope I admonished them

“What is the matter with Turks that you take no care with your safety?”

(My concern was not wholly disinterested, Ramazan brings me pies, cakes and scones everyday from his English wife, Kalkan’s best baker)

“Yes,” he replied with a wry smile “we just say Inşallah”,.

We resident foreigners all have our stories of Turkish workmen and their indifference to personal safety; the Special once saw a workman standing on his mate’s shoulders to lop a branch with his chainsaw.

My most dramatic moment was seeing a long plank slide out of a window opening on the upper story of some flats under construction. Laid out on the board on his back was a painter. His colleague, who was holding the end of the board from inside, then passed him a loaded roller on a pole.

Suspended on his back, ten metres above the earth, on his precarious plank, the Imperturbable Turk rolled out a coat of paint between window and roof, pausing only to pass the pole in to get the roller recharged.

I could not breath until the plank with its occupant intact was hauled back in.

Up here above Islamlar we often see trucks piled high with huge tree trunks lurching down the precipitous mountain road, air brakes squealing their constant protest. The legend Allah Korusun blazed across the windscreen, is probably the only insurance policy. But the following story tops them all.

Arriving home the other day I was fascinated to see a small lorry of the type favoured by Hurdaci, the scrap metal men who ply their trade up and down the mountains, pulled over on a side road. On its truck bed was a small house! Actually an ambar, the grain stores made of cedar you can still find on village farms. Bezirgan has a famous collection of them.

With its little house, complete with fully pitched tiled roof, the strange vehicle looked like a village version of the increasingly popular mobile home. These have become something of a trend during the Pandemic. Travel in your own Bubble. Several friends of mine are investing thousands of pounds in them,

They could have got an ambar for a few hundred!

Anyway to cut a long story short, turns out this ambar is heading for a little roadside restaurant called  Gazkesmez, near the local village of Üzumlü.

Now are you ready? Here is the thing. The men had driven this wildly unbalanced cargo 35km down from the highlands. A terrifying crawl, like something out of the 1953 French masterpiece La Salaire de la Peur. Yes you do know, the one where four guys drive two trucks of nitroglycerine across the Central American desert.

But now, just ahead of a hairpin bend on the precipitous drop below our house the Imperturbable Turks had got perturbed. They had pulled in, nervous about proceeding.

“I was scared it would go over,” the driver said to me. “So we have called in the Winch from Kalkan.”

What! So there is a step too far, a tipping point (boom! Boom!), a fear reflex deeply buried in the Turkish man, that can, just occasionally make Allah’s job of protection a tad easier.

Meanwhile a small crowd gathered to watch the flatbed arrive and begin the lengthy and tricky rescue operation. With many a shout of “Gel! Gel!” and “Dur!Dur!” the cargo was winched on to the flatbed and the journey resumed.

You can go have tea and breakfast in it at on its new site at the whimsical  Gazkesmez restaurant and campsite.

I, however, must return to my task of applying for a Turkish Driving License.

Death, where is thy sting?