A VILLAGE BEYOND THE EUPHRATES: YUVACALı
Today’s Zaman
July 8 2012
Turkey
The sun was sinking fast behind us as we skirted the massive, brooding
hump of an ancient settlement mound, dark evening shadows slipping
inexorably between the pale, neat rows of recently harvested wheat
at its feet.
In the distance, beyond a sprawling patchwork-quilt of sun-bleached
fields criss-crossed by meandering dirt roads, a line of purpling
mountains blocked the northern horizon. Swifts wheeled endlessly in
the dusky skies above in search of airborne insects, whilst floating
down from the upper reaches of the mound came the distinctive,
liquid trill of bee-eaters, nesting in tunnels they had bored into
the detritus of many millennia of human occupation.
A rural experience
“So where are they?” I queried our guide, Fatih. “Over there” he
pointed for the third time in good-natured exasperation. “That’s
wheat isn’t it?” I countered, following the line of his finger to a
stubble-field dotted with low stacks of some reaped crop or other.
“Come on then, I’ll show you,” he sighed. Leaving the line of ancient
walling — Roman or even earlier — tracing its way around the foot
of the mound, we dutifully trailed in his wake across a rare stretch
of uncultivated, sun-crazed earth to the field in question. My fellow
guests must have wondered what the detour was all about until Fatih
stooped down, picked-up a handful of what looked like straw and
shook it into his hand. Then, his dark, youthful face grinning in
mock-triumph, as he displayed a few dusty yet smooth, reddish-orange
pellets. “What are they?” asked Willow peering, curious now, into
Fatih’s cupped hand. But before he could get his words out she
exclaimed excitedly, “Wow, they’re lentils!”
Few people — let’s make that nobody — would go on a holiday, no
matter how specialist, to see a lentil. But if, like me, you’ve eaten
millions of them in your lifetime but never seen them growing, it’s
an experience. So this is what lentil plants look like, this is the
kind of place they grow. And perhaps most importantly of all, perhaps,
you learn that Fatih’s fellow villagers are the kind of people who
cultivate what is one of nature’s most versatile and important crops.
A plant, what’s more, that derives from the wild lentils that grew in
abundance on the surrounding plateau and were “harvested” hereabouts
by our hunter-gatherer ancestors following the retreat of the last
ice-age around 12,000 years ago. That’s what a visit to Yuvacalı,
an ethnically-Kurdish village just across the Euphrates in southeast
Turkey, is all about. Experiences. Of the kind you just don’t get on
the average trip.
Starry skies, fat-tailed sheep and helping hands
Perhaps one day, if an archeological team is let loose on the 20 meter
or so high settlement mound dominating the small village clustered
around its skirt, and they come up with anything half as exciting as
the unique Neolithic temple complex at nearby Göbeklitepe, visitors
may come here to see a fascinating prehistoric site. For the moment,
though, they are drawn to this small rural community, a few kilometers
outside the town of Hilvan, by the opportunity to spend some time in
a “typical” Kurdish village, eat with a local family, sleep under a
star-spangled sky on the flat-roof of a village house, try their hand
at milking the family’s fat-tailed sheep (a lot more difficult than
it looks, as those of my fellow guests who tried it for the first time
found out!) or learning the deceptively tricky art of making tray-sized
discs of that most essential of village foods, nan (lavaÅ~_) bread.
They come also to put, in the least invasive and most responsible of
ways, a few of the billions of dollars Turkey earns annually from
tourism directly into the hands of the people who need it most —
hard-working but invariably poor villagers. For Yuvacalı is the focus
of a responsible tourism project begun by village born and bred Omer
Tanık and his English wife Alison, both resident here. The families
who host visitors get to keep all of the proceeds — nothing is
creamed off for administrative costs or commission. The same goes for
the money earned by the drivers who take some visitors further afield
on tours run by well-regarded Nomad Tours, also set-up by the couple.
All guests are politely requested to make a donation, no matter how
small, either in cash or kind, to the project. Donations have already
helped establish a pre-school in Yuvacalı, help supply books and
other equipment to the school, plant trees and distribute free tooth
brushes and paste to local schools.
A prophet, a path and a birthday
Continuing our sunset sojourn with the charming Fatih, we came to what
looked like a basalt boulder field at the eastern end of the mound.
According to our guide this used to be an Armenian village, the lines
of weather-worn boulders the first course of the walls of what were
once predominantly mud-brick houses. Yuvacalı means “nesting place,”
the Turkish translation of the Kurdish name for the village, Hellun,
and was called such because the Kurds “nested” in the Armenians’
houses following their unfortunate departure in 1915. Beyond the
abandoned village the tinkle of bells alerted us to a mixed flock
of fat-tailed sheep and goats being driven to a watering-hole and,
arriving at the same spot from the opposite direction, a herd of cows.
It was a biblical scene, an image reinforced when Fatih proudly led
us to the start of Abraham’s Path, a Harvard-sponsored, way-marked
walking trail that begins in Yuvacalı and runs all the way to Harran,
south of Urfa, where the Old Testament prophet is reputed to have
spent several years. Despite his tender years, Fatih is the official
homestay co-ordinator for the Abraham’s path project. He also painted
many of the neat red and white flashes on the rocks lining the route
and, with his fast-improving English, works as a guide on the trail.
My fellow guests were an adventurous young American couple, Dave and
Willow, who’d arrived here by way of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia,
and a couple of intrepid Australian girls not yet out of their teens,
Ashley and Sasha who, having spent much of the winter freezing their
toes off in a remote yurt in Mongolia, were totally unfazed by life
in a traditional Kurdish village. We sat cross-legged with our host
family on the floor of their verandah, tearing-off generous hunks of
home-cooked lahmacun, which we ate accompanied by refreshing bowls of
iced cacık (cucumber and yoghurt) prepared by Pero, the ever-smiling
wife of the head of the household, Halil.
It was Willow’s birthday, and at the end of the meal, Fatih emerged
with a sticky-cake in her honor. Faruk, his younger brother, blew
up some balloons, which the “baby” of the family, 11 year old Aylin,
enjoyed batting around with her new foreign playmates, and we all sang
“Happy Birthday” in a mangled mix of Turkish and English. The need
for a pre-school in the village became evident when Fatih explained
after dinner that he hadn’t learned Turkish until he was seven years
old, his father was barely literate, and his mother not able to read
and write at all because she’d never attended school. Although I was
able to have simple conversations with Halil and Pero in Turkish,
the family spoke amongst themselves in their native Kurdish.
A timeless landscape
That night, whilst our hosts slept en famille on one big bed, raised
on metal stilts and covered with a mosquito net, we visitors were
placed in separate corners on the roof of the house, sleeping on
thick quilts rolled out beneath an insect-proof net. I woke soon after
dawn and slipped from my canopy to emerge into the soft, warm light
of a Yuvacalı morning, leaving my fellow guests sleeping with the
(compared to me at least) innocence of youth.
Soon, coiling my way up the settlement mound I caught the occasional
iridescent flash of a bee-eater over head, whilst at my feet columns
of ants were already toiling their way across a slope liberally
littered with fragments of pottery left by the successive groups
of people who had made this place their home. From the top I looked
out over the wide-sweep of the plateau and the seemingly haphazard
juxtaposition of fields of wheat, lentils and chickpeas. This is a
timeless landscape, a region where man first learned to cultivate,
as opposed to merely gather, the kind of crops spread out in the
fields below me — a revolution in the development of our species.
In its own small but caring way the Yuvacalı project is a revolution
as well, bringing the right kind of tourism to an oft-neglected region
where small bucks really can make a difference to ordinary people’s
lives. It’s very beautiful and welcoming, too.
QUICK INFO
For details on how to visit or make a donation to the Yuvacali
homestay project check-out , email or ring
+90533 747 1850. Nomad Tours also run half-day tours to local villages
and sites, full-day tours further afield to Urfa, Harran, Mt. Nemrut,
Göbeklitepe and Diyarbakır, plus four-day tours further afield in
southeast Turkey — and even trips into Iraqi Kurdistan.
For more on Abraham’s path, projected to extend across into neighboring
Syria and beyond, see
To get here from Urfa take one of the regular buses to Hilvan from the
otogar (TL 5) — it takes around an hour. Ring Nomad Tours ahead and
someone from the village will collect you from Hilvan. With your own
transport follow the D-885 to Hilvan (the Siverek/Diyarbakır road)
and turn right (signed Gölcuk) at the second set of lights. Follow
the road for a few kilometers before taking the second right to
Yuvacalı village.
www.nomadtoursturkey.com
www.abrahamspathturkey.org.