Turkish Delight

Still hotheaded, I left proud Istanbul and burrowed under the Bosporus. As Europe receded in mind and mirror, I sensed the ground coursing with energy radiating from Bursa to Baku, Baghdad to Beijing. If it weren't for the wind in my face, I might have heard the footsteps of 5 billion people.

I headed south, struggling to weave my way along the coast as more sensible roads attempted to hem me inland. For this effort I was rewarded with expansive vistas of undulating sapphire, tight hairpin turns, and gossamer seabreezes to extinguish any lingering fever.

I stopped to ponder the ruins of Ephesus, then continued to Olympos, a place so tempestuous that the very rocks combust. With another guest’s laptop and a setup Bin Laden would pity, I spoke with Conan O’Brien’s producer, Aaron Bleyaert, whom you might know from the clueless gamer segments. FYI, he’s also the masturbating bear - a true renaissance man. Most of our time was spent discussing my off-grid pooping strategy, which was apparently all he needed to hear to give me the greenlight.

Until now, it has been easy to write about my journey. But Turkey is not so amenable to abbreviation. My time in this vast country was nonlinear. I could show you sequential pins on a map, but I’ve been perpetually rearranging them in my head, trying to stitch a narrative together.

I only appreciated the severity of inflation - 186% this year alone - when an innkeeper told me that she revises her rates every day.

I couldn’t fathom why every island in the Aegean should fly a Greek flag until I learned about the population exchange of 1923.

I simply thought the Hagia Sophia a splendid mosque before discovering that it had been a secular museum until last year. Now its carpet fibers are aligned with Mecca once more.

I’ve spun a yarn about each country in my path, so perhaps it’s just that I spent more time in the fabric of this great society. But of this I'm sure: Turks are some of the warmest, most hospitable people in the world, and what really sets them apart is the ubiquity of their generosity, the homogeneity of wholesomeness. It's in everybody. There are no seams to pick at. Turks are truly cut from a different cloth.