360 Degrees Longitude

Thirty-six hours after leaving Pompeii, we found ourselves sitting in the main cabin of an all-night island-hopping ferry leaving Athens, Greece. An elderly woman about 200 pounds overweight went up and down the aisles singing at the top of her very capable lungs. No one paid her any attention, because she seemed the most sane person in the crowd. This was our first experience with Greeks in large numbers. I was reminded of a scene from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding in which a lamb is being roasted in the front yard, except we were missing the guy with the bottle of Windex.

Pulling out of port we had to leave behind any notion that we could ever blend in again. Our Northern European skin and hair betrayed the fact that we were not members of the surrounding clan; two little girls, about ages four and five, stood staring at me through wide and unblinking eyes, mouths so agape that I could scrutinize their dental work.

Although we could no longer blend in, fitting in seemed within reach—at least in the midst of a ship full of Greeks. Surveying the scene before me, I could not help but sit back and fully relax for the first time in ages, realizing that my noisy children and our tendency to spread our belongings out for all to trample would not raise an eyebrow. Throughout Europe I had felt like we were water buffalo stampeding through a delicately constructed society.

But no worries here; people were setting up little fiefdoms throughout the cabin, with blankets on the floor, sleeping bags, pillows, boom-boxes, and all manner of stuff. Each fiefdom had its own crowd and they all seemed to be making political ties with the neighboring tribes.

This wasn’t some college student’s coming-of-age drinking party, either. With each tribe having its share of kidlets, aunts, uncles, and cousins, this was an affair the entire family could enjoy. While nobody was roasting a lamb on board, it looked like all the maternal types had brought a potluck dish to share.

“I thought we’d try and find a quiet corner of the deck and try to sleep,” I said. “But I don’t think this deck comes with a quiet corner.”

September gave me a mischievous look. “Well, then … when in Rome, do as the Romans. When on a party boat, party. Did you bring the Bundt cake?”

We were dumped unceremoniously on a Greek island I had never heard of at 3:30 in the morning. The Greek party boat sailed onward into the night toward its final destination. Rumor had it that at dawn we could catch another boat to Çesme on the mainland of Turkey, 30 or so minutes away.

Ordering a round of hot chocolates gave us, I assumed, the privilege of sitting at a table in an outside café overlooking the pier; we waited to see what might happen when the sun rose. I thought for sure that the kids would fold their arms on the table, put their heads down, and collapse, but they both put their books in front of them and nursed their hot drinks.

Thus composed, I spent a few hours contemplating what it meant to leave easy, predictable Europe. Ahead of us were a few weeks in Turkey, then the Arabian Peninsula, Africa, East Asia, and eastward. In Europe it was possible to blend in with the local population; going forward, this was simply not possible. With disconcerting news stories filling up my e-mail inbox from well-meaning friends, I was not feeling completely confident about setting foot in this new land. It was beyond dispute that folks in most of the Middle East were not too keen on Americans at the moment. There was the wretched war going on in neighboring Iraq, and as hard as I tried to wish it away, every morning when I woke it was still there. Whispers of doubt echoed in my mind: “You are all walking targets.” What was I getting my family into?

Yet, we were on this trip to get past the stereotypes and prejudices in order to “know” and “experience.” But talking the talk is one thing; it was now time to walk the walk. I looked at my children lost in their books in the predawn hours. I was envious. They didn’t feel my anxiety, because they weren’t encumbered by the stereotypes of my generation. I simply had to appear completely confident, even though I wasn’t.

While I was lost in my thoughts, another ferry arrived and with it, a young Turkish woman named Dilara. She asked if she could sit at our table, explaining that it was, of course, rather dangerous for her to sit alone outside in the dark, in “the West.”

“Of course!” September answered, as she pulled a chair up to our table. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

September excels at extracting life stories from the unsuspecting. Maybe it was because being lost in their books, Katrina and Jordan never entered or otherwise aborted the conversation. Or, maybe it was just because I was too tired to take one of my normal “wireless walks” where I wander off looking for an unsecure Wi-Fi network. Whatever the reason, I was able to quietly observe an artist practice her craft and I would grunt approval or disapproval when prompted by the Lean, Mean, Talking Machine.

Dilara was returning home to Turkey with only hours to spare before her student visa expired. “Some of my family disapproves of my studying in Europe,” she explained. “But I want a career in which I can meet lots of different people and do something important.” She explained that she loved studying in Europe, even though she bristled at the idea of the upcoming “ascension” talks for Turkey to be admitted into the E.U. “As if Turkey needs to ‘ascend’ to Europe!” Then she added, as if an afterthought, “I simply must make it to Turkey today; otherwise my student visa will be lost. Do you know when the Çesme ferry leaves?”

“No idea,” September replied. “The good folks on our ferry gave us a gentle shove down the plank when we asked them that question. We’ve looked, but there’s no obvious ferry service, no postings, nothing. The waiter is pretty sure we can find ‘something’ in the morning, though.”

Dilara informed us that she keeps abreast of world events by watching CNN. “I watch it in English to help learn the language better.” Over a period of an hour Dilara gradually approached the subject of life in the United States. It felt like she was tap dancing around something; finally, it came out. “Life in America must be … difficult with so many guns and all those gangs.”

That comment caught me off guard, but I let September do the talking for the two of us. I gave her a one eyebrow raised, one eyebrow furrowed look, to signal her to probe deeper.

“You’ve been watching too much CNN,” September replied conversationally; then she shot me a meaningful glance. “A lot of us are guilty of that.”

Dilara was proud of her liberal cosmopolitan attitude. She told us that in spite of all the “obvious” dangers, she even planned to visit the United States someday. “I’m certain that some parts of the U.S. are safe,” she explained. “By the way, could you please tell me which parts those might be?”

My reaction was to blurt out, “It’s safe everywhere!” But I knew that wasn’t true, nor was Dilara’s view that nowhere was safe. The truth was somewhere along the continuum between “nowhere” and “everywhere” and it was impossible to portray that concisely with economy of words. After being together for so long, September and I are able read each other with just a glance; I could tell she was thinking of the best way to respond. After a pause she said, “You’ll find most people in the United States are friendly wherever you want to go. Just go, and trust your instincts; you’ll be fine.”

That is, after all, what we were doing now. I saw in Dilara a reflection of my apprehension of traveling to an unknown country. Thus continued the process of discovering how alike we humans all are, no matter which passport we hold.

Several hours later we found ourselves on Turkish soil. We hadn’t yet been through customs when a machine gun-wielding official at passport control decided that Jordan’s blond hair looked too flat and tousled it. Trying to keep the encounter positive, I said, “Wow, Jordan. A guy with a machine gun touched your hair. Can I touch your hair, too?”

“Dad,” Jordan protested, pushing my hand away, “when we left Italy you said personal force fields didn’t get any smaller than six inches.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “Guys carrying machine guns feel like they can get away with anything. It probably won’t happen again.”

The pier and passport control in Çesme is a long walk from anywhere. We started to slowly make our way toward town. Katrina was hobbling along with her one crutch, pulling her suitcase with the other hand. Jordan was still using the other crutch, occasionally for its intended purpose, occasionally to pole vault himself over some imagined obstacle.

Suddenly, ten weeks of frustration came out. “I hate this crutch!” Katrina exclaimed, tossing it aside. “I’m going to try to walk without it.”

September and I froze. “Katrina, you don’t want to rush it,” September advised. “Remember your last X-ray wasn’t that long ago and …” But September couldn’t finish the thought.

“You’ve already told me, but the doctor said I would know when I was ready, and I’m ready now.” Katrina had come out of the womb with her will forged in iron. Nothing we could say would change her mind. I just stood there with a look of horror on my face as she took her first steps, preparing myself to pick up my daughter from the sidewalk after her leg folded under the weight.

Her stride was slow and each step deliberate, but she left her crutch there on the sidewalk and never looked back. Picking up this newly discarded treasure, Jordan exclaimed, “Cool. Can I have it?”

Fresh off the boat, we hadn’t yet acquired any local currency. It was time to feed ourselves and I had a hunch the corner shop by the dock would accept my euros, but had no idea what the exchange rate was. Selecting a few food items, I handed the cashier a 20-euro note and acted as though this was a perfectly normal transaction. To my relief, he simply handed me a bunch of Turkish lira as though this were a perfectly normal transaction.

When I got out of the store, I looked at what the clerk had handed me, eager to familiarize myself with the exchange rate. To my extreme befuddlement I found myself holding three five-lira notes, three one-lira coins, and a one-MILLION-lira note. Being an engineer, I can only work with two, sometimes three, significant digits. Looking at the one-million-lira note I wondered why I cared about the fives and the ones.

“Check this out,” I said, handing Jordan the one-million-lira bill. “They gave me a million dollars.” We had been using the word “dollars” to denote the local currency, whatever it happened to be, because through Europe it seemed we changed currency types every other day and couldn’t keep track of what they were called.

What we later found was that Turkey had recently devalued their currency by a factor of one million (!) and that there are both new and old flavors of lira in circulation. The one-million-lira bill and the one-lira coin were equivalent.

The difference between the “new” and the “old” money, however, was lost on Jordan. Over the next few days whenever I got another one- (or five-) million-lira bill, Jordan would hoard it, thinking that the store clerks kept making mistakes. By the time we left Turkey he almost had enough to buy himself a Happy Meal, but to hear him talk about it, you’d have thought that Donald Trump had better watch out.

Çesme is a beach town; in late September Çesme skies were a brilliant blue and the sun seemed to be brighter than normal. After a quiet day of recovering from disembarking at 3:30 a.m., we were ready to head to the beach. It was pleasantly warm and the lightest piece of clothing I owned was my Bill’s Burger Barn shirt.

“Cheap communist construction!” I said, pulling the shirt on. “It’s little wonder that this shirt was on the clearance rack.”

“Oh, it’s just this cheap shirt. Now the seam across the shoulder is unraveling. That’s the last time I buy a shirt from the clearance rack in a former Eastern Bloc country. I’m throwing it away.”

“You don’t have to. I can fix it,” September said, reaching for her needle and thread. “It’ll only take a minute.”

“That’s okay,” I said, wadding up the shirt and tossing it into the circular file. I put on my old T-shirt.

We strolled along the shops on the way to the beach when a man approached us. “Hello my friend!” he said. “Where are you from?”

I eyed my new “friend” with suspicion. Then he continued, “We have all types of beautiful handwoven carpets that will complement your home in California.”

“No thanks,” I said, without breaking stride. “I don’t need a carpet.”

We continued to make our way toward the beach, but it wasn’t long before we were approached by another carpet salesman, then another.

After we had disappointed a few carpet salesmen, Katrina gave me a devilish smile and said, “You need to replace your Bill’s shirt with one that says, ‘No Thanks, I Don’t Need a Carpet!’“

“Yes, I suppose I should,” I said, but something at the beach took my mind off shirts. “Wow! Check out the bikinis!”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Well, perhaps a bit. But I never would have guessed I’d see women in bikinis in a Muslim country.”

“Yeah, if it weren’t for the five-times-daily call to prayer blasted over loudspeakers from every street corner, I’d have thought we were in Mexico.”

Of course, I didn’t have a clue what the muezzin, aka Mr. Singy-Person, was saying during the call to prayer. In fact, he doesn’t say anything. The call to prayer is a song, sung in a bluesy, country-western twang. I speculated that it is really a song about how Mr. Singy-Person lost his job, lost his dog, and his mother-in-law is moving in. But I didn’t have the nerve to ask the locals if this was the case.

Turkey is a huge country, but with much less transportation infrastructure than Europe. There are few trains that crisscross the country, nor are there villages around every bend. Distances between towns and regions can be vast and the terrain desolate. Our options for getting around were limited to renting a car, taking the bus, or flying. When it was time to move on, we opted for the clean, efficient, and ridiculously inexpensive bus network.

As we made preparations to leave Çesme, I glanced around our hostel room to be sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. Katrina had already left the room but her crutches were leaning against the wall near the door. As I went to retrieve them, September shot me a glance; the glance was all I needed to tell me that it was time to leave them behind.

Katrina hadn’t used the crutches since setting them aside after first arriving in Çesme, though her stride was slow and deliberate and would be for weeks to come. Jordan wanted to keep the crutches as they were a cool toy, but September and I hoped they would find use by someone who needed them. We quietly slipped away.

Initially the broken leg was a bitter blow, but it changed us, improved us, somehow. In the first weeks of our trip we had struggled with the issue of too much time together. When Katrina had her accident, for a brief moment packing up and going home seemed the logical thing to do. I struggled with emotions from rage at the person who had hung the rope to despair that we couldn’t engage in the activities we had come for. In the weeks that followed somehow the fact that we couldn’t “do” as much seemed less important and our ability to enjoy simply being together gradually increased. Without warning, our original problem of “too much together time” simply evaporated. Now what once threatened to beat us was quietly left behind without fanfare. We would be challenged again before coming home, but we faced these challenges differently from the outset—with the experience of knowing that if we banded together, we could overcome almost anything.

We boarded a bus to Selçuk, the modern city near ancient Ephesus. September and Katrina plopped down onto a bench seat and Jordan and I took the bench directly behind them. Jordan and I busied ourselves with watching a sitcom I had downloaded onto my e.brain an hour earlier. We spent half an hour glued to the tiny two-by-three-inch screen when I noticed September and Katrina giggling and shooting me the occasional glance, telling me that whatever they were laughing at, I was the butt of the joke.

“Your shirt wasn’t cheap Commie construction,” September said, trying to keep her composure. “It was robust Commie construction.”

I had no idea what September was talking about. Katrina and September looked as though they had just won the lottery. Relying on one of the wittiest retorts in my arsenal I said, “Huh?”

“It was virtually indestructible,” September replied. “Tightly woven poly-blend fabric, triple-stitched seams—the works. It wouldn’t have come unraveled without a little sabotage.” I should have suspected such from the woman who once sewed the flies of my underwear together to remind me to either sit or put down the seat.

“I’m sorry,” she continued, “but I just couldn’t bear to be seen in public with you wearing that shirt.”

My mouth was moving but nothing came out. Finally, I was able to form the words, “And so you waited to tell me until we were well out of the city so I couldn’t retrieve it from the landfill.”

Jordan, in particular, was scandalized to learn that his own mother was capable of such seditious behavior. “Well, Jordan,” I explained, “I should have known better. Your mother once donated my California Superbike School T-shirt to a homeless shelter. But she promised that she would never throw away any of my shirts again.”

Katrina, not being able to hold back any longer, burst into giggles. This called for more than just soap squished together. Jordan and I started scheming over how to get even with Team Estrogen.

We pulled into Selçuk and checked into a hostel near the bustling town center. One of the hostel workers decided to make it his mission to get Jordan to smile. He knelt down so he was at Jordan’s eye level and, tousling Jordan’s hair, said, “Such blue eyes!”

He ignored me. He was rapidly learning to avoid every adult he saw; our intention of giving the kids an appreciation of other cultures was backfiring in Turkey. Jordan’s blond hair and blue eyes were something of a novelty, and he was getting way more attention from well-meaning strangers than he wanted. Initially, we were having some success getting him to smile as strangers rumpled his hair and told him how cute he was. But by the time we hit Selçuk, we were judging these encounters as successful if Jordan didn’t grimace and clench his fists.

“You’re getting attention only because they love children here,” September explained.

We didn’t want Jordan to have ill feelings for those who were trying to be friendly, but a kid from the United States is used to having strangers keep themselves at arm’s length. Katrina, being a middle-sized girl in a Muslim society, was largely immune to the pats, pokes, and prods, and so every time we transitioned through the hostel, she became a human shield to protect her little brother from “Mr. Patty-Head.”

Selçuk is adjacent to Ephesus, one of the greatest cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. Ephesus was first occupied by the Greeks, then the Romans, and was abandoned in the sixth century when the harbor silted up. Ancient Ephesus was best known for the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

When we went to see the Temple of Artemis it was just a stone column sticking up out of the ground, pieces of it having been carted off to the British Museum some decades earlier. Of course when we were at the British Museum the previous June, we naïvely assumed that this Wonder of the Ancient World would still be on location and not relocated to downtown London.

Luckily for us, the amphitheater where Paul the Apostle preached had not been relocated to downtown London. Interestingly, the audio guide we rented didn’t tell the story of Paul the Apostle. It told the story of local artisans, whose livelihoods depended on making figurines of the many-breasted Artemis, Goddess of Fertility.

As the story unfolded, we heard about a new-fangled religion being preached by someone named Paul, claiming to be an apostle. Paul started gaining converts and preached that the worship of Artemis was wrong. The local artisans whose livelihoods depended on the Artemis figurines saw Paul as a threat to their livelihood, as the Temple of Artemis was famous and drew crowds from far away. The artisans incited the crowd at the amphitheater to jeer at Paul by chanting “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” A riot ensued and Paul was obliged to leave.

If only those artisans could have seen 2,000 years into the future, they would have known they could still make a living crafting crosses and crèches for the hundreds of pilgrims who now file in daily.

Today we went to the ancient city of Ephesus. It has a marble street. It is really slippery when it rains. We played hide-and-seek. I got “gum” flavored ice cream, except I think it was actually like the tree-sap kind of gum. It was really bitter. We hid it in a napkin and threw it away. All of the patting on the head and tickling and poking is getting even worse. I hope the next town we go to isn’t as bad. I want a hat with metal spikes on it.

The following morning September was doing laundry by hand and I was doing homework with Katrina and Jordan in our room. “I’m going to make breakfast,” I announced. “Finish what you’re working on and come down in 15 minutes.”

As the kitchen was located adjacent to the lobby, Jordan’s eyes narrowed to slits and he clenched his teeth. Omar—Mr. Patty-Head—was usually found busying himself in the lobby.

Fifteen minutes later, I heard Katrina and Jordan talking as they approached me in the kitchen. Then I heard the heavily accented voice of Omar. “What’s wrong, don’t you like me? I just want to be friends.”

I thought about intervening, but I also knew that if Omar was successful in coercing a smile from Jordan, he would let the kids pass. Then I heard Katrina say, “My brother doesn’t like that.” I knew something was up; Katrina wouldn’t stand up to an adult, especially a stranger, unless something was wrong.

I hurriedly finished what I was doing only to hear her repeat the same words, louder, “My brother doesn’t like that.” I peered around the corner in time to see Jordan on Omar’s lap, struggling for freedom. There was nothing nefarious happening. I believe Omar simply wanted to make a friend and took Jordan’s reluctance personally; he was reaching out in his way.

As I was about to make my presence known, Katrina took hold of Jordan’s hand and said pointedly, “Jordan has to come with me,” and she pulled him free and then walked into the kitchen where I was.

I knew confrontation was difficult for Katrina. “You’re a good big sister,” I said.

Katrina turned a chair toward the wall. I heard a sniffle and saw her hand dab at her eyes.

“Jordan,” I said, “Omar wouldn’t pester you if you simply gave him a smile.”

Jordan looked up. With ferocity in his eyes, he growled, “Sometimes it’s no fun being a kid.”

Later, when September and I talked about this incident, we agreed that Omar’s motivation was innocent and he was merely trying to be friendly. We had observed that open gestures such as this were part of the culture. But at home, picking up a child of an acquaintance and placing him on your lap might land you in jail. Nevertheless, the situation had become so uncomfortable for us that we couldn’t stay, and we made arrangements to leave earlier than planned.

A few hours later we were on a fourteen-hour overnight bus ride to the interior of the country. We stepped off the bus at four in the morning in the tiny town of Göreme. The gray sandstone towers gave the landscape an alien feel.

“Back home, the terror alert is being raised to orange because unrest is expected.” I paused. “My mom thinks we’re nuts being here during Ramadan.”

“Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. To Muslims, it’s a holy month marked by fasting.”

Katrina looked surprised. “Wow. I don’t think I could fast a whole month.”

“When the sun goes down at night people can eat all they want, and when the sun comes up in the morning, the fasting starts. This goes on every day for a full lunar cycle.”

Katrina looked confused. “I don’t get it. You mean people at home are nervous about a bunch of hungry Muslims?”

“It’s human nature to be afraid of things you don’t understand,” September said. “Remember Dilara, who we met on that island before we came to Turkey? She was afraid to visit the United States because she saw news clips about gang violence, but we think of the United States as safe. It’s the same kind of thing.”

“Some believe that during Ramadan Muslims become more devout, and therefore, terrorists act more extreme,” I said.

“But not all Muslims are terrorists!” Katrina protested emphatically. “Nor are all terrorists Muslim! Everyone we’ve met here has been so nice!”

“You’re forgetting about all the Mr. Patty-Heads,” Jordan said, scandalized. “They are not nice!”

Isn’t it interesting, I thought to myself, how we can share the same experiences, and reach such different conclusions.

Göreme is in the heart of the vast Cappadocia region of Turkey. Large towers of rock adorn the landscape. The canyons are riddled with tunnels, caves, and spires of stone. The stone is actually volcanic ash, solidified into soft sandstone that has eroded over eons leaving behind tall, chimney-shaped rock formations. Many homes and dwellings are dug out of the rock, as was our hostel.

Just a few steps from the front door of our cave hostel a gentleman named Karim tended his shop, where he sold fruits and vegetables. Karim could frequently be spotted sitting outside his shop making small talk with passersby; even when he wasn’t, it was impossible to walk by unnoticed. He wanted to know all about our trip, where we had been and where we were going, and how we liked his country. Karim always had a piece of hard candy for each of the kids, and always had a pat on the head or a pinch on the cheek for Jordan.

Karim explained that the popular thing to do in Göreme is to go hiking in and through the weird rock formations. As Katrina was still walking stiffly, he suggested an easy walk from our hostel into Göreme National Park and into “Love Valley.”

That afternoon as we started out our hostel door toward Love Valley, Jordan protested. “I don’t want to go outside the hostel.”

“Just put on your baseball hat and sunglasses,” I said, “and come along. Remember to smile if Karim talks to you.”

“I already smiled once today!” Jordan protested, but he dutifully grabbed his hat and sunglasses as we headed out the door.

Love Valley is so named because of the three-story-high phalluses that nature has made out of the sandstone.

Surveying the arid landscape from the road above the valley, it looked as though nothing could grow here. As we descended into the little valleys between the rock outcroppings we were surprised to find an abundance of wild grapes along the valley floor, despite no evidence of water.

We stopped for lunch. “Don’t you just love this place?” September asked, grabbing a handful of deep purple grapes.

“Yes!” Katrina responded. “Turkey has the friendliest animals. Jordan and I love to feed all the stray cats.”

“I meant right here in this place—Love Valley,” September said. “It feels like a whole different world. I love the feeling of being lost, wandering around these stone towers. We should come back here in a few years and spend more time exploring—”

“We should plant these apple seeds!” exclaimed Katrina, cutting September off, holding an apple from our picnic lunch.

“I think one long-distance apple tree is enough for one family,” September said.

As we left Love Valley we walked past homes that appeared the same as they would have a thousand years ago—conical towers of stone excavated to make a living space, then sealed with a simple handcrafted wooden door and window.

I was studying one of these homes when a woman opened the door and smiled at us, then beckoned us in. While from the outside the house may have looked the same as it would have a millennium ago, inside the floor was covered with wall-to-wall Turkish rugs, and the home’s one room sported a big-screen satellite TV.

Our host then announced, “I wove all these carpets myself. Where are you from?”

I groaned. We had been asked that question at least once an hour since arriving in Turkey and I had long since begun making up home countries at random. It seemed that no matter how we answered, the would-be salesperson had either lived there or had a cousin there. “Namibia,” I answered.

I was suddenly embarrassed for being so flippant. I also wasn’t entirely sure where Namibia was. Luckily, September came to my rescue. “On the west coast of Africa, bordering South Africa. Your carpets are beautiful, but I’m afraid we have no way to carry them with us.”

We all came out with several Nazar Boncuk stones to ward off the evil eye. The “stone” is actually a blue glass bead set with a white “iris,” and a black “pupil” in the center. Our host was aghast when she realized we weren’t wearing them.

“You must wear one so it is visible at all times!” She exclaimed. “It is our tradition.”

As we were returning from our walk, Karim surprised us by sneaking up behind and pinching Jordan. “Argh!” Jordan screamed.

Karim held out two pieces of hard candy, one for Jordan and one for Katrina. Jordan scowled, but took the candy anyway. As we walked away Jordan removed the Nazar Boncuk from his belt loop. Handing me the stone, he scowled. “This doesn’t work.”

“Make it stop!” I groaned. For all practical purposes it was the middle of the night, the silence shattered by the now-familiar call to prayer.

“Why so early today?” September asked. “Mr. Singy-Person wasn’t up so early yesterday.”

You would think that the room in our hostel, carved into solid sandstone, would be impervious to Mr. Singy-Person. You would be wrong. “Today’s the first day of Ramadan,” I croaked. “It’s time for the feast before the fast. Go back to sleep.”

Mr. Singy-Person does the call to prayer and the call to begin the Ramadan fast based on local sunrise and sunset. I couldn’t help but wonder if the less devout ever moved north of the Arctic Circle during the summer, when the sun doesn’t set for weeks. I would make a lousy Muslim.

We enjoyed several days exploring the sites of Cappadocia, such as the underground cities and second-century churches, using Göreme as a base, and learned to love the friendly people, inexpensive food, and other-worldly towering stone landscapes. Eventually it was time to move on and we took the opportunity to comb through our belongings, culling items no longer needed and packing them to be shipped home.

I took a fairly large package to the fairly tiny Göreme post office. The lone postal clerk looked up from his crossword puzzle. I made the internationally recognized hand signal of mailing a package surface mail to the United States, which consists of pointing to the address on the label and then using an imaginary pencil to draw a boat.

We went through the motions of mailing a package. As the clerk made to weigh the package, I noted that the scale was a modern-looking digital unit, and that it needed to be plugged in. After plugging in the scale, the clerk placed my package on it, noted the weight, and proceeded to fill out a bunch of paperwork, leaving the package sitting on the scale.

I watched the clerk for a few moments while he filled in the forms. Suddenly the sound of a gunshot ripped through the silence. The clerk gave me a look of abject horror and put his hands up as if he were surrendering. My ears were ringing from the blast. The sound clearly came from the direction of the scale … or from the package sitting on top of the scale? A few seconds passed that seemed to stretch in an unnatural fashion. The clerk gradually began to realize that the Göreme, Turkey, post office was not under siege by a lone American. Ever so slowly, he put his hands down.

He gave a quick nod toward the package sitting on the scale and with a quizzical look, it was clear that he wanted to know just what in the hell I was mailing. My mind raced as I tried to think of what item in the package could have exploded like that, but I just couldn’t fathom how our REI Four-Man Half Dome tent could spontaneously combust. Plus, the package looked perfectly tranquil sitting atop the scale. I shrugged, a gesture I hoped was universally understood as “beats the heck out of me.”

It wasn’t long before we understood it was the scale that had exploded. To the casual observer the scale looked perfectly innocent, but it had weighed its last package.

My time in Göreme convinced me that for an American family, Turkey was at or near the end of the safety continuum. We found most Turks friendlier and easier to talk to than Europeans, but, curiously, they were cautious about talking freely about the United States. It seemed they did not wish to offend us by discussing the current state of affairs back home or the war in Iraq. My experience with the shaken postal clerk reinforced the notion we had gotten from Dilara: that we Americans were viewed as approachable, but also as quite possibly hazardous.

With our package in the mail, we were ready to make our way to Istanbul. It had taken fourteen hours to get to Göreme on the bus. It would take another fourteen to get back out. At the appointed time, we left our hostel in our familiar formation: Dad, Katrina, Jordan, and Mom, walking with our suitcases in tow to the bus station. Seemingly out of nowhere someone streaked in, swooped down, and hoisted Jordan into the air.

“I have three lovely daughters at home, but no sons.” Karim put Jordan back on the ground but held him by the shoulders. Karim turned to me. “I will trade you your son for all three daughters!”

I knew Karim wasn’t serious, but Jordan didn’t; he was fighting back tears and not doing very well at it. The situation was very awkward, as I thought of Karim as a friend. He had been very kind, reaching out to us in his way, but it just didn’t bridge the gap in the cultural divide, especially not to an eight-year-old boy who was still trying to find his place in the world.

I told Karim I was tempted, but I would keep Jordan with us. And with that, I took Jordan in my arms and carried him the rest of the way to the bus station.

Perhaps the most historic place in all of Istanbul is the site of the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. The Blue Mosque, which isn’t blue, and the Hagia Sophia face each other across a large public park.

The Hagia Sophia was built and destroyed a few times before the current structure was dedicated by the Byzantines in the year 537 A.D. It remained the largest cathedral in the world for roughly a thousand years, despite suffering from the occasional earthquake. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the cathedral was converted to a mosque. Across the street from the Hagia Sophia is the Blue Mosque, which was completed in 1616. In 1935 Turkish president Kemal Atatürk concluded that the good people of Istanbul didn’t need two massive mosques across the street from each other and the Hagia Sophia was secularized and turned into a museum. Both structures are impressive and historically important to Christians and, more recently, to Muslims. Shortly after we visited, the Pope visited the Hagia Sophia. All the buzz on the news was about what would happen if the Pope decided to genuflect while at the Hagia Sophia.

Since the Blue Mosque is a place of worship it has specific dress codes, especially for women and for girls over eleven, who must cover their heads. We weren’t in the Blue Mosque very long when Jordan grabbed my arm. “That lady over there isn’t wearing her head scarf!” Soon we saw another woman sans scarf. Jordan’s little body quivered with excitement at the thought of someone openly disobeying the rules. Soon, he was clutching his notebook while darting in and out of the crowds, creating a tally of all women without head scarves: forty-two in about thirty minutes.

The entire area surrounding the Blue Mosque had been transformed while Jordan busied himself with his Naughty Tally. It was approaching dusk when we exited and families had put down picnic blankets covered with towering plates of food. On their faces people wore eager expressions and were poised to pounce on their dinners. Folks kept glancing at their watches and as soon Mr. Singy-Person shattered the silence, there was a great blur of elbows as the picnickers broke their daily fast.

In a few hours we will leave Turkey for someplace altogether new and different. Although Jordan may disagree, Turkey has been a high point of our trip so far. Not just because of the friendly people and the stunning sights, but also because of what we have learned about ourselves. I’m embarrassed that I was nervous to travel here. There were no mobs trying to find us because September wore shorts, and Mr. Singy-Person aside, Ramadan at the Blue Mosque has been more like a carnival than a terrorist recruiting ground. My preconceived notions were completely off mark and I’ve never been so pleased to be wrong.

Upon leaving Turkey, I felt much lighter, leaving behind prejudices I had brought with me. As travelers, we were starting to walk the walk.

www.360degreeslongitude.com/concept3d/360degreeslongitude.kmz

Sunset at the Blue Mosque was livelier than a tailgate party at the Superbowl, only more family oriented. The carnival like atmosphere of Ramadan was enhanced by the mosque’s minarets, which were lit up like, well, like Christmas, for the occasion.

10.

Exploding Postal Scales