Year In The World Part 13

SUSAN'S MOTHER'S SUMMER PUDDING 1 pound raspberries, strawberries 14 pound red or black currants (or any mixture of above fruits) 12 cup sugar day-old white bread, sliced as for sandwiches, crusts removed 2 teaspoons cherry brandy or blackberry ratafia (optional) Wash fruit and place about one cup of it in a saucepan with the sugar and liqueur, and cook lightly for three minutes. Cool.

Line a pudding basin with the bread, leaving no gaps. Gently spoon in the uncooked fruit interlaced with spoonfuls of the cooked fruit, pressing the fruit down gently with the back of a spoon. Place a "hat" of bread on top when the basin is full, cutting bread to fit inside the surrounding bread.

Puddle remaining juice in center of the hat. Cover entire basin top with a piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap, and place a small plate on top so it fits inside the basin. Place a weight (such as a can of tomatoes) on top to hold it down. Refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.

To serve: Remove saucer and waxed paper. Place serving platter over basin and invert. Your summer pudding should be quite pink. Use extra berry syrup to cover any white spots. Serve with ice cream.

Note: Ours rested only a few hours and was fine. We served it with good Scottish cream, rather divine.

The green countryside and quick little burns with lush gra.s.sy banks invite us to walk in the early morning and evening. The house is surrounded by pastures with paths that lead to oak copses and vistas of lochs. The s.h.a.ggy cows amble to the fence to greet us. Ed and I are out early. Over a rise we see a wooden cross, about thirty feet tall, with dangling leather straps hanging from the crux. This is not a piece of sculpture.

At breakfast Ed tells everyone about the cross on the hill. Then he discovers that he does not have his cell phone. When Kate comes downstairs, she's holding a pad. "I counted eighty-six Jesuses and Marys. Also, just so you know, there are a hundred and twenty-nine paintings and prints on the walls. The downstairs bathroom is separate-ninety items on the walls. Not to mention that fake fish that sings 'Take me to the river, drop me in the water' when you sit down on the toilet."

"I wish we could invite the owners for dinner," I say. "They must be fun." We feel half acquainted with them and their four children through the distinct personality of the house.

Everyone searches each room for the cell phone. It's command central for our restoration-in-progress in Italy. The number of all the technicians and workers involved, and they are legion, are on that phone. We are in daily contact with the work going on. Ed has called so many times that the numbers have worn off the b.u.t.tons. He goes out and retraces our walk. We call the phone; no response. He searches the car. "I'm sure I had it this morning because I meant to call Fulvio." Lost.

Today we're driving over to Kinross. We're finding gardens we want to see, fine walks, and plenty to do nearby but nothing compelling, so we linger over coffee, catching up. Cole's music drifts through the rooms. We don't care if we get a late start. We brake for bakeries. We circle towns to look at mossy churches and prim houses enlivened by ma.s.ses of hollyhocks.

Kinross, a stately, austere Georgian house dating from 1693, stands inside a ten-acre walled garden that slopes down to Loch Leven. The present owners descend from the proprietor who took it over in 1902, after eighty years of neglect, and restored the original garden. They can look out their windows every morning and see that the ruined castle on a tiny island in Loch Leven is not at all the fairy-tale illusion it seems to be. Kinross's main garden axis lies from the front door of the house, down the gradually lowering garden, out the gate, and across the water straight to the castle. Famous for imprisoning Mary, star-crossed queen, the castle always was the focal point and orientation of Kinross and provides a thrilling prospect.

Mary tried several escapes during her ten months of confinement. One plan was to jump from the tower into a boat below. This made no sense until I learned that the water used to lap the castle before the loch was lowered in the nineteenth century. Mary endured, with the help of her cook, doctor, and two ladies-in-waiting. She loved falconry; I wonder if she was allowed out at all. Just before she was taken to Loch Leven Castle, she had given birth to stillborn twins and felt extremely weak from loss of blood. Her life rivals Job's, beginning with the death of her father when she was one week old. She finally did escape, when a servant grabbed the keys during a banquet and let her out. The daring episode did little good; she fled south to seek help from Queen Elizabeth, but the two had old issues, and her cousin promptly put her under lock and key again.

The gate, which frames the castle from Kinross, has an arched door. Over it there's a carved stone basket full of the seven types of fish of the lake: salmon, blackhead, pike, perch, speckled trout, char, gray trout. When the loch was lowered, the char died out, and the salmon could no longer reach the loch.

Robin remarks on the variegated sage as a border. The soft gray-green with some leaves edged with pink, some purple, frames the beds delicately. Four stone arches parallel a path in the garden at the side of the house, two with sculptures underneath. The arches are not to walk through; they serve as architectural points in the rectangular garden. Susan identifies a plant I don't know as fleabane. We're all charmed with the informality of the formal rose garden-a big mix of colors, all vying for attention. Clumps of catnip throw off a lavender haze. John is snapping millions of photographs. I take one note: plant variegated sage along the top of a wall at Bramasole.

Lochiehead-head of the lake?-is the name of our house. I wish one of us could buy it so we could come back often. Christmas would be ideal. July is perfetto too-no rain, balmy days. Cole goes fis.h.i.+ng. Susan reads in the living room, and everyone else goes for a walk. Ed launches into making ragu for dinner. The downstairs fills with aromas of sauteeing carrots, celery, and onion. Soon a big pot will be simmering on the Aga. I take a book down to the secret garden. A little bell chime rings in a tree somewhere on the land. There is no wind; who is ringing it? I envision a hidden stone church under immense trees. A robed monk tolling the hours, forgetting the hour and just ringing the bell for the pure tone settling over the countryside. The serene landscape has moved into me, and I feel sleepy all the time. I want to curl up under the potting table in the greenhouse, fall deeply into the sofa cus.h.i.+ons, tune out as we hurtle along the wrong side of the road toward a tearoom or a castle where the docent will go on forever with cute anecdotes about the earl. At the castles I want to throw myself onto the earl's bearskin by the fireplace and snooze. I'm walking through the gardens like a somnambulist. The light swaying of the ma.s.sed delphiniums puts me into a trance. The nearby river walks only make me want to lie down in the shallow water and drift. Can it be that I am finally relaxed?

Kate, our house sleuth, solves the mystery of the cross on the hill. She's read a framed article in the downstairs powder room, the one with ninety separate objects on the walls, and discovered that the house's owners put on a play every year and people come from miles around to see the reenactment of the crucifixion. "Hence the donkey," she says. We all rush to the bathroom. She points out, too, a faded photo of the walled garden. Only ten years ago the s.p.a.ce was derelict. We read other articles-a miraculous sighting of the Virgin in now-ex-Yugoslavia, a prize at a dog show. Is that our Trumpet, the Scottie, in the picture? I gaze at the derelict secret garden. The owners have performed their own miracle.

Violet arrives early, bearing a ginger cake with toffee sauce. We fall upon it for breakfast and ask her for the recipe. She has wiry curls and a fresh Scottish complexion. She tells us how terrible traffic will be if we go to Glamis Castle. She does not say Glahmiss, as we do. She says Glams.

VIOLET'S HOT TOFFEE SAUCE FOR GINGERBREAD 6 ounces soft brown sugar 4 ounces b.u.t.ter 14 pint double cream Heat in a pan until sugar dissolves and b.u.t.ter melts. Bring quickly to a boil, then switch off.

She serves this also on waffles. At home we don't get the same kind of double cream that blesses the British desserts. Heavy cream, perhaps thickened with a little creme fraiche, would subst.i.tute.

We do drive to Glamis, a castle fit for Sleeping Beauty. We're Californians-what could Violet know about traffic? Almost no cars are on the roads. Glamis was the childhood home of the late Queen Mother. They must have longed for a cozy apartment in Edinburgh during the winters. Most rooms are small, probably the better to heat them, and chilly even in summer. Nothing opulent, all rather rigorous. The picturesque conical towers are, on the inside, spiral stairways of stone. Whence camest thou, worthy Thane? From Fife, great King. We could meet someone carrying a bloodied head but instead meet day-trippers like ourselves. The captivating room is the playroom, furnished with doll beds, small stove, high chairs, and stuffed toys. Odd to imagine a tiny Queen Mother there, rocking her bear.

We don't linger but instead drive over to St. Andrews. We stop first at a shop to buy a cloth-wrapped cheese from the Isle of Mull-nutty and golden-and several local pale cheddars and a blue similar to Roquefort. The produce looks better, though nothing compares with our secret garden's tender lettuces. The day is so warm that we're not attracted to the cashmere shops. The name of the town is most holy-St. Andrew, one of the apostles and the patron saint of Scotland. He, the venerable university, and the long history of golfing are the positive history. Much else seems to center on martyrdoms, sieges, reformations, and burnings at the stake. The notable local invention was the thumbscrew. All feels serene along the leafy streets and in the tidy shops. We walk the length of the bustling town and back, find a tearoom for lunch, then decide to go home.

The slack caused by my long absences from my friends seems taut again. I wonder if they a.s.sumed I had changed and now see that I did not, or if I did (and yes, I did), it's okay. When everyone walks the same path and then one veers off in a different direction, balance goes out of kilter. We've all always been independent and ambitious. Our first bond was books. Susan, Kate, and I wrote poetry and Robin published a range of poets in her spare hours outside her college teaching job. Kate and I went to graduate school in creative writing together, commuting up to San Francisco and trading secrets along Highway 280. After I graduated, I began to teach in the same program. Susan and Kate, with their friend Jerry, then opened Printers Inc., a literary bookstore on California Street in Palo Alto. They installed a coffee bar/cafe, which was revolutionary. No other bookstore in California, or maybe the United States, had done that in 1978. We were sipping cappuccino and reading Merwin at Printers long before Starbucks ever pulled an espresso. The bookstore for its whole life was a fulcrum for the entire community and surroundings. Meet me at Printers. Eventually they expanded into an adjacent building for a larger cafe. The reading series was stellar. They opened a second store. We always were swapping books, talking books, reviewing books, publis.h.i.+ng books. Kate began to study Chinese and travelled alone to China several times. Then she left to live in Vermont for a few years, and Susan and Jerry continued to run the stores. When she came back, she started her La Questa Press.

This afternoon we're staying home, the women dozing on the sofas, reading without the need to talk. One of us suddenly giggles. "I just remembered." (Discretion prevents identification of the speakers and person spoken to.) "What?"

"The Valentine's Day when Philip got to your office early and filled the whole room with balloons and roses and left that note, If you're free some evening stop by for breakfast."

"What a good memory you have."

"Well, that affair with Philip raged for a year."

"That note was the best. We all envied you."

"Yes, more for the note than anything else!"

"He was divine. And so was that English guy you went off to St. Croix with."

"We fell out of bed in a heap."

"And that therapist who asked why you divorced your first husband, and you said 'I don't remember'?"

"What about that student?"

"Oh, come on, he was twenty-six. And had poetry on his lips."

"That's not all he had on his lips."

"What about that watch left on the bedside table?"

A slew of rowdy memories ensues. If men only knew how women talk.

We drive too far to a country inn for dinner. The wild salmon and game are delicious and the atmosphere clubby and cozy, a half-timbered room hung with copper, baronial tapestry chairs, and a long table set with crystal. I'm loving Scotland. This is my first time here. I want to go to the Hebrides and to the monks' island of Iona, if they allow women.

On our walk at midmorning Ed experiences a miracle in the shadow of the Golgotha cross. We're crossing the fields and meadows talking about the lost phone. "The charge is probably dead," Ed laments. At that instant we hear a ring in waist-high weeds next to the path. We both shout and begin parting the gra.s.ses. "Hey!" Ed shouts and holds up the wet phone. He answers, "p.r.o.nto." Chiara is calling from Cortona, wanting to know how our trip is going. At the very instant we are pa.s.sing by. Four ragged cows witness the miracle of the phone.

"Ed! This is fantastic-Santa Chiara is the patron saint of telecommunications."

"Thank you, Jesus." With the remaining flicker of charge, he calls Fulvio.

Our favorite garden, probably because it seems within reach, is House of Pitmuies near Forfar. The felicitous and rambling house overlooks wide, blowsy borders blooming so overabundantly that as you walk between the paths, you're brushed by blue, lavender, and pink flowers. What a glory. Stacked from front to back with ascending blooms, they have a "gay abandon about their dress." Like a rigorously trained ballerina, the garden appears spontaneous, as though the flowers just happened, rather than having been carefully planted to bloom in height, sequence, and color shade vis-a-vis all the other plants in the border. The white lilies are not staked, but instead the gardener devised a taut string web for them to grow through. Each one's square opening supports it nicely. In the kitchen garden their berries are netted but not as elaborately as in our secret garden. Small flowerpots top the low posts around the perimeter of the bed, and the net drapes over them without snagging on the posts or tearing. Very clever. We wish the lady of the house would invite us into her sunroom, pour a smoky oolong tea, and tell us her life story.

Violet tells us to go to a field nearby for the Scottish games. We find the immense field, where men and boys are going at tug-of-war, vaulting, races, and wrestling with verve. We watch several bagpipe solo contests and follow a marching band of pipers around the field. Bagpipes make me smile. I can't understand how they ever worked as the music of war. An advancing group of mad pipers should make the enemy jump up and jig rather than shoot or run in terror. Several people ask where we're from and seem amused that we're on vacation where they live. Most of the men wear kilts in their family plaids. They look gorgeous. We're all glued to the Highland Fling and other traditional dance compet.i.tions performed by serious little girls in folk costumes. The sets begin with a group of eight or ten, and gradually the judges knock off one after the other until the winner is left performing alone. Only then does she usually break into a smile and miss her steps. The community has come together for this sunny afternoon of play. If we lived here, we'd be right where we are.

Having succ.u.mbed to sausage rolls at the games, we're content to stir up a simple risotto primavera, using carrots, onion, beets, and celery from the garden. And of course, we gather a magnificent salad, the best salad in the world. Kate quickly a.s.sembles Violet's toffee sauce recipe. She and Susan bake gingerbread, pouring the sauce onto the cake. Susan and Robin arrange a sublime bowl of roses for the table. Tonight we are launching into our summer-stock performance of Macbeth in the drawing room. Lay on, Macduff.

After our morning yoga session, the men propose a hike. Not that they have not enjoyed the endless a.n.a.lysis of herbaceous borders. All of them garden, too. John's guidebook describes a ten-mile coastal walk. Perfect for our last afternoon. Tomorrow we all will be folded into airline seats, except for Robin and John, who are spending another week farther north. We're the only ones on the trail for most of the way. The few we pa.s.s greet us heartily. I'm sore from all the yoga contortions. They've taken twice-weekly cla.s.ses for years, while the most exercise I've had has been on the computer keyboard and running for flights. The long motion of walking makes me breathe deeply. I imagine the sun warming every cell in my body. Everywhere the people have been effusively friendly, not just cordial. They're more like the Australians than the reserved English. We find a ruined tower to explore and s.h.i.+ning water to look at all the way. Lord, ten miles is long, and some of the paths cross loose sand. We've been only in this wee bit of Scotland, and yet I think we luckily found a core sample. I never came before because I thought it would not be exotic enough. I feared it would seem too familiar. I didn't know how deeply refres.h.i.+ng the landscape could be. The place does seem familiar, perhaps at a genetic level, but in a nouris.h.i.+ng way. Or maybe I'm just familiar with these friends, and when one is at home with friends, the surrounding world becomes friendly, too.

Aboard the

Cevri Hasan

Turkey's

Lycian Coast

I'm inside the advancing light, my hands are hungry, the world beautiful.

-n.a.z.iM HIKMET Is the one I love everywhere?

-RUMI Bramasole exerts a magnetic force, never stronger than now-the gazebo covered in celestial-blue morning glories, dahlias finally adorning themselves with gay pink pompoms, the Rose Walk making a late August comeback, the fountain repaired and splas.h.i.+ng a concerto to the night, dew-soaked gra.s.s at dawn, the variegated sage tall enough to brush my legs with scent, thousands of b.u.t.terflies hovering around the lavender, the basil brought from Naples burgeoning onto the paths, wigwams of weighty ruby-dark tomatoes, and Beppe's rows of lettuces that soon will bolt, the last of the sunflowers drooping their dry faces in shame on the upper terrace, the zucchini flowers blowing their loud yellow party horns. Why leave the last, deliciously heady days of summer?

We're going. Already banging our duffels and carry-on bags down the steps and across the lawn, smearing them with gra.s.s stains.

Our friend Giorgio drops us at the Rome airport, where we meet Fulvio, Aurora, and their princely eleven-year-old son, Edoardo. We've seen each other only a few days ago but greet in the Turkish Air queue as though it has been months. We've been friends with the Di Rosa family, who live across the valley in Lucignano, for four years, but we have travelled together only once, when we rented an apartment on the Grand Ca.n.a.l in Venice to celebrate Ed's fiftieth birthday. We experienced then Fulvio's extraordinary energy as he showed us around the Biennale art exhibitions for hours, then led us in a walk all over Venice before we launched into cooking every crustacean we could find at the Rialto market and feasting in our apartment where the floors sloped precipitously toward the ca.n.a.l and dour family portraits looked down on us with remote and foreign gazes. Recently Fulvio has masterminded our restoration of a second property, a ruined twelfth-century hermitage in the mountains above Cortona. Because the house was built by followers of Saint Francis of a.s.sisi, who roamed our hills, we constructed a shrine and had the artist paint Francis with his arms held out to welcome all creatures. The saint, however, has Fulvio's face, since he was saintly himself during three years of restoration. Aurora, his elegant wife, always dresses in the bella figura Italian style. She has large blue eyes and the figure of a twenty-year-old girl. She likes jewelry. She's impeccably put together. Her clothes make you wish you paid more attention when you shop. She is also thoughtful of the other person and a bit fierce when her own family's interests are involved. Edoardo, their marvelous child, actually likes adults and, without losing any of his own childhood, relates to them in a natural way. He has his mother's great azure gaze and thick ashen blond hair, his father's wit and searing focus. Slender as a broom, he pokes Ed in the stomach, quite taut really, and says, "You'd better watch that." We love them individually and as a family.

The five of us are embarking on a sailing and hiking expedition to the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey, from Antalya up to Kusadasi, on a traditional Turkish gulet (the t is p.r.o.nounced) with two other people I know and four strangers. This will be our first guided group trip, but the Di Rosas had a fine experience on a small tour in Morocco. First we will stop in Istanbul for two nights.

From Rome, I barely settle into my Turkish novel, Mehed, My Hawk, before the descent begins into mythic Constantinople. The other time I came here, the approach was by sea. From the deck I watched as rounded silhouettes of mosque domes appeared against the dawn sky, imprinting forever. From the perspective above, a giant has strewn cubical houses like a sack of dice. How vast the city, and how fortunately it cradles among the waters. Within three hours of leaving Fumicino, we're checking into the Arena, a small hotel owned by a family in the historic quarter.

Walking to a restaurant the hotel recommended for Aurora's birthday, we pa.s.s an outdoor cafe where two whirling dervishes are spinning on a platform under the trees, their white gowns forming storted pyramids that break and re-form. Although I know these must not be the ecstatic mystical dancers of the Mevlana Sufis, they still astonish. Like figures in dreams they reel, right palm up to receive divine energy, left palm down to convey it into the ground, turning on their own axes with irrational control, a feat, a dancing trance on the threshold of Allah's heaven. Open your hands,/if you want to be held, I remember from the poet Rumi. The lines always reminded me of the Beatles' aphoristic lyric about the love you take being equal to the love you make. Born in 1207 in what is now Afghanistan, Rumi inspired the whirling dervish order. During his visit to the goldsmiths' quarter, the dainty sounds of all the hammers falling hit him as music, and he began to dance. He danced and danced until he reached a mystical state. My students loved him, as translated by Coleman Barks.

How long can they continue this angelic swirling? I feel holy myself, just standing in the street across from the bazaar's hawkers. At ballets, audiences break into applause when the dancer executes a few perfect spins. In comparison to these twirlers, that is no feat. The dervishes move like water toward the drain; beyond the motion, something magnetic pulls the psyche.

Our table is set right in the street. To extend the garden, the restaurant has simply blocked off an area, strung some lights, and let loose their accordion player. Of course, we ask him to play "Happy Birthday," and the other diners join in singing, as they often do in Italy, as well as raising their gla.s.ses. There's no menu and we don't know a word of Turkish, so we just give ourselves over to the waiter. The wine list does exist, and I wish I could have one because the ill.u.s.trated bottles pop up, as in a child's book. Again, we point and ask with our eyes, and he selects a fragrant little white, suitable for more toasts. Soon we're served various mezes-shrimp with arugula and lemon, grated and roasted zucchini with yogurt, several kinds of eggplant, fried calamari. Meze, which means "a good taste," is quite inadequately translated as "hors d'oeuvre." Meze, instead, can be hors d'oeuvres or can be like tapas.

Then he brings monkfish with tomatoes and peppers and more shrimp, these batter fried. We're all high with excitement. We stroll back in the exotic night through the heart of the old city, looking in windows of rug stores, skirting the great corms of the Blue Mosque, the ellipse of the ancient Hippodrome, where chariots used to race and the condemned lost their heads, then by the outdoor cafes where people talk the evening away while sipping tea from gla.s.ses.

At first light the call of the muezzin jerks me awake. The hotel is across the street from an intimately scaled mosque, whose loudspeakers must be aimed at room 306. The caller tunes up a moment, e-ya eee ya ya; like a cicada, before he launches into his wailing appeal to prayer. This call equals the church bells in Italy, marking time, sending out a summons that seems to unzip all the way down the spinal cord. I'm thrilled every time it happens. Ed rolls over and says, "Someone hit the wah-wah pedal." We start laughing, and I look out the window at the small boats and silvery water. We have a whole day to play in Istanbul before we fly south tomorrow to board the boat.

First to the Grand Bazaar, where Fulvio reveals a talent for bargaining and Aurora and I acquire sage, apricot, black, taupe, and beige pashmina scarves for a fraction of their cost at home. Usually I hate bargaining and ask at the Arezzo antique market for a prezzo buono only because I know the dealers think you're stupid if you don't. Fulvio starts having fun, and I realize that the scarf man does, too. For the first time, I can see the process as a game rather than an annoyance.

We quickly want to leave the touristy shops and the pushy rug merchants. It must be said: the Grand Bazaar, all cleaned up, lacks atmosphere. We exit quickly into the light rain, walking downhill toward the Spice Bazaar, where we hope for more medina ambiance. That happens, I see quickly, actually between the two bazaars in the muddle of streets where most of the women are covered except for their eyes. Everything imaginable is for sale. We pa.s.s shop windows displaying those impossible gray and sand clothes the women wear, white circ.u.mcision outfits for boys, with fake (metaphoric?) swords at the waist, school uniforms, and whole clumps of closet-sized shops selling just collars or thread or b.u.t.tons. Belly dancer costumes with fringed and spangled gold and silver trim-polar opposite to the gray and sand-zipper shops, plastic kitchenware, toilet seats, laundry baskets. Ah! No rugs! No tourists, either. A former mosque, stripped down, holds racks of cheap children's clothing under its dome. This is what I imagined, a souk, a cramped labyrinth of tiny businesses with street food to sample-kofte (little spicy grilled meatb.a.l.l.s), roasted corn, a cheese and phyllo pastry, kebabs, and dried figs stuffed with nuts. In the Spice Bazaar we buy garam masala and strawberry tea. Bins are heaped with dill, mint, pistachios, curry, hot paprika, black chili, turmeric, hot peppers-all the colors in the rugs. I don't see fresh herbs at all and have a distrust of dried ones in open bins. The prized item seems to be Iranian saffron, but since it is a seasoning I don't like, I am not tempted. We see mounds of various nuts, honeycombs dripping, heaps of dried apples, apricots, and figs-some look rather dusty. Lok.u.m, Turkish delight, appears in many sugary pastels.

We decide to visit the New Mosque we glimpsed on the way here. One merchant calls out to Ed as we leave, "You, my friend, are very handsome."

The five of us don't fit into a single taxi and so rendezvous at each juncture. We communicate by phone that we are lost, found, abandoned by the driver, or heading in the wrong direction. While we wait for the Di Rosas at the Galata tower, we duck out of the rain into a cafe where everyone is playing okey, tile rummy, and drinking tea. More tea must be consumed here than in England. Both teenagers and men are playing, the square chips clacking pleasantly and the wooden racks sc.r.a.ping the chips into piles around the table. When the Di Rosas arrive, we run across the little plaza to the tower. From the catwalk around the top, strangely accessed through a nightclub, we get a rainy 360-degree view of the city. The tower was built in the fourteenth century by the Genoese, who lined many a coast with towers. The area surrounding the tower thrived as a tight Italian enclave-is that why the five of us were drawn here? Noted especially for Florentine banks, the rich neighborhood also had Italian-style stone houses and piazzas. The Ottoman sultans feared the Venetians but valued the rest of the Italians. The Galata area represents so well the mix of cultures that was intermittently encouraged by the Ottomans. Jews, Greeks, Croatians-so many came together in the city and lived, more than in most, in mutual respect and harmony. The level of tolerance is inspiring, but sometimes the sultan simply stamped his foot, a signal to execute the bore.

I am devouring Philip Mansel's Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 14531924. How talented you have to be to write the cramped and twisted history of Istanbul as a page-turner. This book captivates me night after night, building, subject by subject, a world like no other. Istanbul-the most multinational city, the quintessential crossroads of east and west, violent, poetic, melancholy, raucous, fleshy, austere, rapacious, sublime-this seems to me the most fascinating city on earth. The city's saga through time not only crowds the brain with contradictory information, it challenges chronological development with disruptive acts and with backward and forward movements in time.

"The city is all about water," Ed says. Yes, that's true. We inch all the way around the tower, and Istanbul appears as a low abstracted gathering of domes with minarets piercing the sky. Only muted colors-no hint of harem wives killing off their innocent sons who might seek to rule over the other sons. No cast-off concubines stuffed into barrels and thrown into the Bosporus. A city the color of tinsel in the rain, the mysterious waters holding it aloft for our speculation.

The highlight of our day is the Suleyman Mosque and its cemetery, where the gravestones are tall slabs of curvaceous marble carved with floral and vegetal designs. No living figures were allowed. Fulvio interacts with those usually avoided so we have a long visit with a shoe s.h.i.+ner-Istanbul is full of fabulous shoe s.h.i.+ners with bra.s.s stands-who even manage to polish tennis shoes. Isn't it a bit odd to have your shoes s.h.i.+ned in a cemetery? Old trees shelter and cool the paths among the stones. The dead are the same everywhere, commanding an aura of peace and tranquillity. The mosque, too, seems especially peaceful. Outside, stools along the wall provide places to sit in front of a font and perform ritual cleansing if you are going inside to wors.h.i.+p. Mosques are carpeted, often in the repeating pattern of a small prayer rug, which gives each wors.h.i.+per his own s.p.a.ce. Your shoes are left at the door, although at some mosques you are given a plastic bag so you can carry them. Just inside, a part.i.tioned section behind a carved wooden screen designates where you pray if you are a woman. You may see, through a scrim, but not be seen. I find these erasures, even before Allah, hard to fathom. I suppose that women would, if free to prostrate themselves like the men, distract attention from wors.h.i.+p. As tourists, Aurora and I cover our heads to enter mosques with the new scarves from the Grand Bazaar. The late afternoon call to prayer begins while we are on the mosque grounds and electrifies us as we comb the neighborhood of wooden Ottoman houses in search of a taxi. Soon we run out of pavement and find ourselves in a squalid neighborhood with many collapsed houses. I have never been in a city with so many houses that have simply fallen onto themselves. Near the hotel, near the Hippodrome in prime tourist territory, you see these Ottoman houses in piles. Our street is dwindling when finally we see downhill to the right a busy road.

At dusk we meet Bernice and Armand from Baltimore, who have just arrived. Ed and I met Bernice on another sailing trip around the boot of Italy two years ago, and we have seen each other since in Reston, during the Was.h.i.+ngton sniper days, when I was giving a talk and Bernice and Armand bravely came to see me. Armand, tall and scholarly, looks as though he should be a senator. I love the way Bernice pays attention to everything. She doesn't talk a lot but you wait to hear what she will say when she does. We had such fun exploring the boot of Italy on the other sailing voyage that I e-mailed Bernice immediately when we decided to go on this trip, "Are you ready for Turkey? Almost every day we will moor and hike to a different archaeological site." She responded within the hour saying that they would love to join us. They have a farm in Virginia where they garden and raise exotic chickens. She and I have corresponded over the past two years about roses. We meet in the lobby just as the hotel waiter wheels in a cart with a birthday cake for Aurora, somehow forgotten yesterday, and fruit drinks in goblets.

After an endless taxi ride, our increased band of merry pranksters arrives at Marina Restaurant, perched over the waters of the Bosporus, miles from everywhere. We choose fish from a tilted marble slab as we go inside. Large open windows, varnished as on a boat, let in the scent of the night and the water. Soon we are ravished by sole on skewers threaded with lemon and bay leaves, and by grilled scorpion fish steamed in broth with potatoes and tomatoes and sprinkled with oregano and red pepper. En route home in the taxi, I glimpse along a wall photographs of Ataturk. The taxi driver says we are pa.s.sing the palace where he died. You see this great reformer in Istanbul the way you see the Virgin Mary in Italy, a prevalent presiding presence in banks, restaurants, hotels, everywhere. I wish we had an Ataturk in America now. He had force and vision and a deeply familial love of his country. He's most known for banning the fez and discouraging women from the veils, but his most sweeping change was the adaptation of Latin characters for the alphabet. Imagine our president decreeing that henceforth we will use Cyrillic or Greek letters. I've found it hard to take kilometers and the metric system. But Turkey did forsake Arabic, and that change brought them into the western European neighborhood, enabling him to create a secular Turkish nation. I like his jaw and his eyes that look as though they see what you don't see.

Our flower-filled room must be the bridal suite. Although they are fake, I like the impulse. The bed draped with curtains looks romantic, and the cloth petals scattered across the floor stick to my feet. From the entrance you pa.s.s into the bedroom through filmy gauze curtains. Bedside lamps with the lowest wattage possible do not encourage me to read my guidebooks, and since we are too exhausted for a honeymoon night, I lie awake. The phrase when Mother married Ataturk keeps floating across my mind, as though a memory would be uncovered. But he was married in 1923 and divorced by 1925, too early for my mother. His true wife and family were Turkey. Rare for a strong-arm president, he had the interests of the people at heart.

We depart at six for a short flight south to the sprawling city of Antalya along the sharply delineated blue Mediterranean. We're met by our guide, Enver Lucas, a Turkish American who strides up to us in T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He's forthright and friendly. He looks like someone you want to hug. His legs, I notice, are muscular enough to hike to any location. We meet Cheryl and Karl, a couple from San Francisco, and Ian and Sara, a Canadian who recamped to New Orleans and his fifteen-year-old granddaughter. Ian took this same trip with Enver years ago and wants his granddaughter to experience his memories. Enver escorts us out of the airport, into humidity and heat and onto a bus in minutes. "There is a lot to do today, folks," he announces, and somehow I have a feeling we will be hearing this every day. He wastes no time in heading to Perge.

I'm unprepared for the first ruins. I expected a piece of amphitheatre, a few fallen columns, and some stone foundations. But Perge extends as far as I can see. The city axis, a long colonnaded street with cuts from chariot wheels, ends at a fountain, where the water source from the hill above poured over a statue of a river G.o.d, then entered the city. No water now, only weeds. I lean to pinch leaves for their scents of thyme, oregano, and mint. The heat bears down harder than history. We stand in clumps of shadow while Enver tells us of the Greeks who settled here in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The baths must have been Las Vega.s.spectacular. Walking the ledge around a deep pool, I see traces of the green marble that once faced the surfaces. The raised floor of the columned caldarium, the hot bath, still exists enough to see how they channeled steam to heat the floor, and how part of the heat was shunted to the tepidarium. We are the only visitors at first; then we see three others. The smell of crushed herbs and dust must be somehow the smell of time. I have the sense that I am actually discovering the site. No ropes, no signs, we're free to amble, scramble over blocks of carved stone to see the others behind them-portions of friezes and porticos, bases of columns, keystones. Some are carved with nine, ten layers of egg and dart, acanthus, denti (tooth pattern), and vegetal motifs. One, lying in the dirt, is exquisite: a border of Etruscan wave design with cl.u.s.ters of grapes between. When I push aside weeds with my foot, a Medusa face stares back at me. How many standing columns are there? I lose count.

We then drive to the huge theatre at Aspendos, still used for performances. I start to learn the names of some of the features of these ancient theatres: diazoma: horizontal aisle in the cavea cavea: the auditorium, from the act of digging it out like a cave parodos: the area between the cavea and the stage And a vomitorium is not what I'd always heard but a covered exit from a theatre. How little stadiums have changed really, except to close the oval: the same seats with someone's knees in your back, the same narrow access aisle at a steep pitch. Of course, everyone claps to hear how fine the acoustics are.

Half a day, and we've already seen two stupendous remnants of history. I hope that the sc.r.a.pes and battles of the Persians, Lycians, Greeks, Romans, and various others who set sail toward this coast will at last reach some kind of coherence during our travels. Alexander swept by and had an enormous impact, killing and conquering, but I'm not too clear on his itinerary. Right now I'm content to slip into a state of awe.

In the late afternoon the curator of the Antalya Museum shows us the statues archaeologists found at Perge. Such finds usually get carted off to the capital, but the museum has managed to keep them. The beauty of the statues makes me wander away from the group, double back, and visit them alone. How eloquent those early people were. Perge was a wonder of a city, with extensive carved facades and fountains. What happened to town planning in the modern era?

We park the bus one more time at the outdoor market. At the strictly local scene I get to see hundreds of Turks shopping for dinner and visiting with friends. One gnarly man with a single tooth has picked all the apples from one tree and sits cross-legged behind a mound. We smell, then see a whole area where fishmongers display the catch of the day. The local women all wear "harem" pants in dark prints, capacious to permit bending or squatting. Barkers sound as if they're about to commit murder but only are extolling the virtues of their garlic braids, peppers, fantastic melons, and tomatoes that we call heirloom at home but are simply tomatoes here.

All these stops are a long buildup to boarding the boat, our home for eleven days. And at last we meander out to the marina where the Cevri Hasan is docked. Enver decided to use a marina outside the hubbub of town, and he does not say but I imagine he was influenced by last week's bomb in the Antalya marina. A small incident, but to wary travellers four hundred miles from the raging Iraq war, possibly a source of worry. Mustapha, the captain, welcomes us along with Ali, the chef, and two shy young men who will crew. The gulet, about ninety feet long, is s.p.a.cious, with a long dining table and inviting tangerine-colored cus.h.i.+oned lounging areas on deck both fore and aft. The galley kitchen has marble counters. Under the window Ali grows pots of basil and oregano. What a fun place to cook. A bookcase of paperbacks abandoned by previous voyagers tempts me immediately. For bad weather, a comfortable salon/dining area adjoins the kitchen. The cabins below are small, each with a minute bathroom. If you were obese, you would get stuck. We have twin bunks, hard as pavement, probably like beds in jails. Not that I expected a stateroom-but this is challenging. There's nowhere to put anything, except for a small shelf and a foot-wide closet. We stuff everything in, and I resign myself to mingled heaps of mine and Ed's clean and dirty clothes. I am the sort of person who has my drawers arranged by color-all light T-s.h.i.+rts in one drawer, medium and dark colors in the next two, all sweaters in plastic bags, socks paired, my underwear folded a particular way, my nightgowns very, very tidy. I will not be spending leisure time in our cabin. Also it is hot as the hinges of h.e.l.l down below. We stow everything we can and burst back upstairs for air. Soon Ali is pa.s.sing champagne, and we're on deck in the slight breeze; then we have our first dinner on board with Turkish white wine flowing and Ali presenting a variety of mezes and roast chicken. Enver barely gets to eat because everyone has questions for him.

Tomorrow I will start my s.h.i.+p's log. I loved reading Colombus's account of his voyages. The idea of a captain writing at his desk each day, gimbaled lantern overhead and a draught of rum near the inkwell, appeals to me. Although this trip is a bit minor in comparison to those crossings of unknown seas, all trips are voyages within as well as without. A log: "the record of a s.h.i.+p's speed, progress, and s.h.i.+pboard events of navigational importance," according to the dictionary. I will keep one, although I won't know speed and navigational information. I will simply record what becomes important to me as we progress along the edge of the Mediterranean.

We motor along the quiet coast for a while after dinner. See, I am not an accurate logger-that "a while" is quite imprecise. But after the long dinner that will have to do.

The Log MONDAY, AUGUST 30: TERMESSOS.

A stony trail, up, up Rose Mountain for almost two hours, harder than climbing the Empire State Building several times. The original inhabitants spoke a language all their own-easy to understand why. Once up, you'd stay put. The not-easily-thwarted Alexander gave up his attack here, saying, "Let's move on. I have a long way to go and cannot waste my army in front of an eagle's nest." We're scrambling over fallen stone columns and cornerstones and arches, looking up at spooky tombs cut into the rock face of the mountain. They're smaller than one-car garages, with bas-relief columned doors and simple trims. Some have faces carved on the sides. Wild roses cover the carved stones, along with carnations and oak-holly. This is not just a stony path; the stones littering the way actually are part of the ruined fortress city of Termessos. The theatre rivals Machu Picchu for dramatic setting. But this is more impressive because we are alone on this perch, and Machu Picchu's crowds dilute some of its majesty. This aerie overlooks backdrops of distant mountains through arches of the ruins, the vast landscape dropping behind the theatre's walls. As Enver lectures in the top rungs of the stone seats, I imagine a spectacle performed below. What did they see? Music and poetry? Surely no wild animal fights and gladiator events in this sublime place so close to heaven. Huge tumbles of stones lie in piles where they fell when the earth shook.

We continue climbing over columns, immense sarcophagus lids and building blocks, up higher to the odeum, the covered theatre, and to a necropolis of enormous tombs cut from single stones. Someone chiseled each one for months. We come upon a carved Medusa head and a pair of wrestlers worked into the flat end of one sarcophagus. Most have circles incised, where I imagine some metal or wooden disk was attached. These monumental tombs-any museum would covet one-litter the hillside. This is one of the most impressive places I've ever seen. We are all elated at discovering tombs, arches, houses, temples. The sensation of newness seems ironic on such ancient ground.

Enver describes this as a "Pisidian" city. Now who might they be? Simply the tight little wad of people who lived in this area even earlier than the eighth century B.C. Enver sketches out Alexander's path along the coast in 334 B.C., the Lycian war in 200 B.C., then moves onward hundreds of years later, when under Imperial Rome the city flourished. No one knows exactly when or why it was abandoned. Dreary, dreary history-so many wars. And why do we make no progress? I pick up bits of marble and terra-cotta shards. An impressive stone gate for Hadrian survives the loss of the rest of the structure. Piles of stones make me wish for Superman strength; I'd like to lift them like pick-up-sticks and see the carvings no one has seen in centuries. Enver once found a marble foot and hid it in the bushes. I kick up pieces that are clearly rims and handles of ancient pots. We've been cautioned to take nothing, and fearing Midnight Express scenes, I leave all my finds in a pile near the gymnasium, the school complex.

The most frequent word on the hike is "Look!" I remember the end of the Rilke poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo": You must change your life. His surprising reaction, after looking at and contemplating the beauty of the marble fragment, was that it must prompt you toward change. This impulse begins to seed in my mind. This place alters the currents in my brain waves.

Termessos, a place of myth, casts a mysterious spell. Pegasus, the winged horse, flew Bellerophon over this spot, lifting him high enough to be unreachable by the swords and arrows of the belligerent tribe living on the mountain. Bellerophon, legend goes, defeated them by hurling down rocks. How they carried enough rocks goes unrecorded. I guess if you can have a winged horse, you can have enough rocks, too.

After our first real hike, we're all exuberant at lunch. We're seated under trees in the garden of a roadside restaurant, and a stream running by adds to the coolness. We feast on mezes-fava puree, eggplant, a dip that looks like melted bricks, tiny okra with tomatoes (I love this), grilled sea ba.s.s and puffed bread, then slices of watermelon and yellow figs. No matter how many plates arrive, we clear them immediately.

We sail out of the harbor in late afternoon, the water changing from pewter to obsidian. The coast, backed by craggy mountains, resembles a Chinese painting on scrolls. I almost expect a calligraphic poem to appear in the sky: Above shadow-dark waters Of this ancient port, where Alexander Launched war, the hills reign In mist, always peaceful.

The two young Turkish boys who crew for our captain, Mustapha, drop anchor in a small cove. We swim in the dark water around the boat. Late, late, Ali serves a roasted lamb in the warm night air. We attack the plate of various goat and cow's milk cheeses. The food is a great good surprise. I should start a list of mezes. One I like is yogurt with watercress-the peppery, sharp tastes accent each other. Instead, I write words I learned today: ashlar-large stones square cut heroon-shrine to a mortal hero or a demiG.o.d ostothek-urn for bones kline-funeral bier The Di Rosas and we lie on the bow watching the full moon appear to rock in the sky as the boat sways. More stars than I've seen in years rock along with the moon. We're cradled, we're lulled. Way in the distance we see fireworks celebrating the anniversary of Ataturk's defeat of someone. I hope it was not the Armenians. What was it like to put out the last lights of the Ottomans and to catapult the country into the twentieth century?

Ah, Ataturk, I have a longing to know you. I imagine my mother at eighteen, invited to the emba.s.sy in Istanbul. She's wearing burgundy silk, and her dark hair fans over the side of her translucent face. She is twirling a long loop of pearls, thinking of escape, thinking of a sail with the English boy on the Bosporus tomorrow, when he walks in. The music sinks briefly, then quickens. His white silk handkerchief arranged like a flower in his lapel pocket catches her attention. Then his jaw like the back edge of an ax. Then his moody Turkish black eyes pin her. She pauses midlaugh. His eyes, the color of charcoal. He motions to an aide, then suddenly stands at her side. She smiles. Those all-American teeth. He kisses her hand. She meets his gaze with her eyes as blue as these sapphire seas. He's accustomed to deference that he does not want and she does not provide.

Peaceful evening, much laughter. If they knew I am dreaming of Ataturk . . .

Cheryl, Karl, and Ian have abandoned their cabins and sleep on deck.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31: PHASELIS.