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\title{Antioch}

\author{David Pierce}

\date{\today}

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\begin{multicols}{2}
On Monday, February 4, 2008, at 10 a.m., we left Ankara by bus.
We were my visiting mother, my spouse, and I.  As we
travelled south, we saw less of the Anatolian steppe, and
more snow covering it, until everywhere was white.  But the
sky was blue, and in the afternoon, passengers on the right
drew their curtains against the sun.

We passed the great volcanic cone of Mount Hasan.  On the
horizon ahead of us loomed the Taurus Mountains.  The bus
rolled on across the plain, slowly climbing.  We passed
within a few miles of the ancient Tyana, which Xenophon
called Dana; we continued on through the defile known as the
Cilician Gates.

Xenophon had passed through the Cilician Gates in 401 \textsc{b.c.e.},
with the Greek troops who were marching east from Sardis
with Cyrus. Cyrus aimed to unseat his brother Artaxerxes
from the Persian throne, though the troops did not know this
yet. Xenophon described the passage of the Gates in the
\emph{Anabasis} (I.2.21--22; the Loeb translation):

\begin{myquote}
From [Dana] they made ready to try to enter Cilicia.  Now
the entrance was by a wagon-road, exceedingly steep and
impracticable for an army to pass if there was anybody to
oppose it; and in fact, the report ran, Syennesis [king of
Cilicia] was upon the heights, guarding the entrance;
therefore Cyrus remained for a day in the plain.  On the
following day, however, a messenger came with word that
Syennesus had abandoned the heights...At any rate, Cyrus
climbed the mountains without meeting any opposition, and
saw the camp where the Cilicians had been keeping guard.
Thence he descended to a large and beautiful plain,
well-watered and full of trees of all sorts and vines; it
produces an abundance of sesame, millet, panic, wheat, and
barley, and it is surrounded on every side, from sea to sea,
by a lofty and formidable range of mountains.
\end{myquote}


We too descended into the green fields of the Cilician
plain, now called \c Cukurova and filled also with orange
groves.  Before reaching the sea, our bus turned east, and
we were at the Adana bus station around 4:30 p.m.  From
there it was another three hours to Antioch, this time
through the Syrian Gates.

Antioch is today Antakya or Hatay.  It is the capital of
Turkey's Hatay province, which was the Ottoman \emph{sanjak} of
Alexandretta.  The name Hatay, or ``Land of the Hittites'',
was given by Turkish nationalists; the Hittites were held to
be ``proto-Turks''.  But the province was ethnically mixed,
and instead of being included in the Turkish Republic in
1923, it fell under French control.  However, fifteen years
later, as war with Germany approached, France was looking
for Turkish support.  Elections in the province, held under
French and Turkish military control in 1938, produced a
parliament that declared an independent Republic of Hatay.
Union with Turkey was announced a year later.

My source here is two paragraphs in \emph{Turkey: A Modern
History}, by Erik J. Z\"urcher (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).
Z\"urcher does not go into claims, which can be found on the
Web, that Turkey sent busloads of its citizens into Hatay to
influence the elections that led to its annexation.

As an Antiochene tour guide in Cappadocia told me in 1998:
``We used to be Arabs, but now it seems we are Turks.''
Antiochenes I met later told me they grew up speaking
Arabic.  In Antakya itself, we heard Arabic spoken on the
street.  Indeed, some passengers that joined our bus in
Adana were speaking it.

From the Antakya bus station, a taxi took us to our hotel.
There was a taximeter, but the driver didn't turn it on. He
said the meter might read twelve or 13 lira, but he would
ask only 10.  However, on the return trip three days later,
our driver tried to charge 15 lira.  We never did understand
why meters were not used.

According to its leaflet, the Antik Beyaz\i{}t Hotel was built
as a residence in 1903.  In the room given to Ay\c se and me
was an oil portrait of Mehmet Akif Ersoy, lyricist of the
Turkish National Anthem.  Apparently he had lived in the
house.

After a beer and pistachios from the mini-bar in the room,
we followed the directions of the hotel receptionist to the
nearby Anadolu (``Anatolia'') Restaurant.  The place seemed to
do good business.  I am not somebody who recalls in detail
what he eats; but Ay\c se reminds me that we enjoyed cold
dishes of broccoli, hummus, eggplant salad, and ``Russian''
(potato) salad, washed down with more beer; my mother also
had \emph{lahmacun} (a small thin pizza topped with minced meat).
The \emph{lahmacun} and hummus seemed to show the Arab influence:
in my experience, they are not so common in western Turkey.
At the start of our meal, a plate of herbs and sliced
radishes had been placed on our table: this would happen at
our every meal in Hatay.

After dinner, we had a glance at the Protestant church near
the hotel.  It was a stone box of a building, age
indeterminate.  A brass plaque gave service times in
Turkish, English, and Korean.

We were in the old part of the city, east of the Orontes
River---today the Asi Nehri.  On Tuesday morning, we
crossed the river on foot to visit the archeological museum.
There were rooms whose floors and walls were covered with
mosaics, all dug up from the ruins of Roman villas in the
area.

We were carrying the Lonely Planet guide to Turkey (7th ed.,
2001).  This described some of the mosaics, as had the older
Rough Guide (3rd ed., 1997) that we had left at home.
First I wondered what the point of the descriptions was.
One should take the writers' word that the museum is worth
visiting; one can see for oneself what is in the mosaics.

Then I understood that seeing is difficult.  I could be
impressed by the spectacle of the mosaics, without grasping
what I was seeing.  After looking at the mosaics, I did
consult the book.  Had I really seen the Narcissus and Echo
described there?  I went back to check.  It turned out that
I had seen the pair in the second room; but I hadn't noticed
that the sitting figure might well be gazing down at his own
reflexion.  Mosaic tiles had spelled out his name, and
Echo's, in Greek letters; but I had not paid attention to
these either.

In another room, I had wondered at the unusually bright
colors in a figure, without catching on that it was Orpheus,
playing to the animals.

One can be amazed by the lifelike faces of a man and woman,
without knowing that they are supposed to be Oceanus and
Tethys.

Elsewhere in the museum was a sarcophagus that had
supposedly been manufactured in Iconium, today's Konya.
Could this monstrosity really have been transported by cart
through the Cilician Gates?  A couple of figures reclined on
the lid, but they were unfinished: they were still waiting
to be given the features of the people whose bones would lie
underneath.

When leaving the hotel that morning, having been warmed by
the sun on our balcony, I had optimistically worn only a
light pullover.  This wasn't enough in the unheated museum,
so I was glad to get out in the sunshine of the museum's
garden, overlooking the river.

A museum worker explained that the government had forbade
the sale of books in the museum.  (Why?  Perhaps such sales
had been used to augment the salaries of the workers, rather
than to enrich the state.)  The worker directed us to K\"ult\"ur
Miras (the ``Antioch Heritage Centre''), a bookshop and cafe.
There we found a surprising selection of Christian-oriented
literature, in Turkish and English.  We bought two copies of
a book on the museum mosaics, along with two Turkish
volumes: a memoir called \emph{Hatay, My Endless Love} (Sonsuz
A\c sk\i{}m Hatay), and an expanded translation of a master's
thesis called ``The Dynamics of Living Together and
Abstaining From Conflict:  A Case Study of Nusayri Alawite,
Arab Christian and Armenian Communities in Hatay'' written at
our university in Ankara.  But there were books on the
journeys of Saint Paul, and on the Seven Churches of Asia;
and there were Christian Bibles in Turkish.  Behind the
counter was a calendar from the Syrian Orthodox Church.

The proprietor said that tourist visits had dropped in the
last couple of years.  Perhaps the books that we bought had
been on his shelves for quite a while.  We sat on the
cushions in the cafe and had coffee and orange juice.  But our
host would not take money for these refreshments.  Instead
he took our picture.

On a shelf of books in the cafe was a volume on Habib-i
Neccar (Habib an-Najjar, or Habib the Carpenter).  What I
gathered was that Habib was an Antiochene of the first
century C.E. who had heeded the words of followers of the
Prophet Jesus.  It appears that, according to some people,
the story is told in the following verses of the 36th Surah
of the Quran (Mohammad Asad's translation).
\small
\begin{enumerate}
\setcounter{enumi}{12}
\item
AND SET FORTH unto them a parable---[the story of how]
the people of a township [behaved] when [Our]
message-bearers came unto them.

\item Lo! We sent unto them two [apostles], and they gave
the lie to both; and so We strengthened [the two] with a
third; and thereupon they said: ``Behold, we have been sent
unto you [by God]!''

\item{} [The others] answered: ``You are nothing but mortal men
like ourselves; moreover, the Most Gracious has never
bestowed aught [of revelation] from on high. You do nothing
but lie!''

\item Said [the apostles]: ``Our Sustainer knows that we have
indeed been sent unto you; 

\item but we are not bound to do
more than clearly deliver the message [entrusted to us].''

\item Said [the others]: ``Truly, we augur evil from you!
Indeed, if you desist not, we will surely stone you, and
grievous suffering is bound to befall you at our hands!''

\item{} [The apostles] replied: ``Your destiny, good or evil, is
[bound up] with yourselves!  [Does it seem evil to you] if
you are told to take [the truth] to heart?  Nay, but you are
people who have wasted their own selves!''

\item At that, a man came running from the farthest end of
the city, [and] exclaimed: ``O my people! Follow these
message-bearers!

\item ``Follow those who ask no reward of you, and themselves
are rightly guided!

\item ``[As for me,] why should I not worship Him who has
brought me into being, and to whom you all will be brought
back?

\item ``Should I take to worshipping [other] deities
beside Him?  [But then,] if the Most Gracious should will
that harm befall me, their intercession could not in the
least avail me, nor could they save me:

\item ``and so, behold, I would have indeed, most obviously,
lost myself in error!

\item ``Verily, [O my people,] in the Sustainer of you all
have I come to believe: listen, then, to me!''

\item{} [And] he was told, ``[Thou shalt] enter
  paradise!''---[whereupon] he exclaimed: ``Would that my people knew  

\item ``how my Sustainer has forgiven me [the sins of my
past], and has placed me among the honoured ones!''
\end{enumerate}
\normalsize

The township mentioned in verse 13 is supposed to be
Antioch; the first two apostles of verse 14 are John and
Jude; the third is Simon Peter; and the man who came running
in verse 20 is Habib the Carpenter.  Mohammad Asad, however,
suggests that the parable is an allegory, and the three
apostles are Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad.

Nonetheless, the Habib-i Neccar Mosque exists in Antakya: it
was on the little map that we had been given at the hotel.
One might get there by walking through the market district.
I tried to lead the way.  I was unsuccessful; but meanwhile
we saw for sale all of the products that working-class
Antiochenes might like to buy.

In several shops on one market street, batter was drizzled
through a row of holes onto a large rotating griddle.  The
threads baked for a few seconds, then were scooped up and
offered for sale.  A purchaser might use these to wrap a
slab of cheese: the combination would then be cooked in
syrup to produce \emph{k\"unefe}.  Not far away there were \emph{k\"unefe
salonlar\i{}} specializing in this dessert. Unfortunately we
ate so much at our regular meals that we could never visit
one of these salons.  For our last dinner in Antakya, we
would eat nothing but lentil soup and \emph{k\"unefe}: but the
restaurant (called Han) had to bring the \emph{k\"unefe} from
somewhere else.

After lunch on Tuesday (at Sultan Sofras\i{}---the Sultan's
Table), we made our tour of the houses of worship that were
on the hotel map.  In town, none of these houses opened
directly onto a street; rather, you passed through a gateway
into a courtyard, and from there into the temple itself.  So
they might be hard to find.

We found the courtyard of the Syrian Orthodox Church first.
The church itself was closed, and the man sitting there did
not move to open it.  He did however point out another exit
to the courtyard.

This exit led us into a maze of narrow alleys, but with the
help of signs, we eventually found the Catholic church. In
its courtyard, a man was cultivating orange trees.  A woman
invited us into the church proper, but she had us remove our
shoes first.  Three local boys came up behind us, and they
too were invited inside.  We all poked around a bit, but
there wasn't much to see---to our eyes---in the small dark
room.  When Ay\c se, my mother, and I left, so did the three
boys.

We found the main road that led out of town to the so-called
St Peter's Church.  The road first passed the Habib-i Neccar
mosque. We popped into the courtyard.  But we did not try to
enter the mosque itself.  There were worshippers kneeling
and bowing on the carpeted portico.

It is held by some believers that the grotto called St
Peter's Church is where Peter and Paul preached in Antioch.
This may be merely a fantasy introduced by Bohemond and the
other Crusaders who captured the city in 1098.  The grotto
is found among the Roman tombs carved into the hills outside
of town.  One pays five lira to enter. In the dim light that
comes through the openings of the Crusader-built facade, one
sees little but a simple cave. There is a stone block for an
altar, with an alpha and an omega in relief.  Behind the
altar is a stone chair.  To one side is a depression that
collects water: a tin cup is available for those who think
the water has magical properties.  On the other side is a
blocked passage, sized and angled like the Jefferies Tubes
on the original Starship Enterprise.

Back near the entrance are two stone columns.  On one is
displayed a text in English; on the other, Turkish.  The
texts have some differences, inconsequential but curious.
Only the English says that one of the twentieth-century
popes (I don't remember which) granted plenary indulgences
to all pilgrims who came to the grotto.  Only the Turkish
says that masses can be held there with the permission of
the local governor.

I mentioned the differences to a couple of visitors who were
reading the English.  Thus began a conversation in which I
learned that he was German and she was American; they were
living across the border in Latakia, Syria, for the sake of
their doctoral studies on the Middle East; they had come
over to Turkey to renew their visas.

Helen and Christian seemed impressed that we had walked out
to the Grotto.  But with them we caught a bus back into
town.  We invited them to join us for dinner; but apparently
we didn't wait long enough for them in our hotel lobby.
When we came back from dinner, we found a note from them.

We had eaten at Antakya Evi, an old house with high ceilings
where Greek music was playing.  For no obvious reason, there
was little custom.  To go with our \emph{rak\i{}}, we ordered too
many dishes, which we could not finish; still the waiter
brought us several plates of fruit by way of dessert.

Antakya was a pleasant place; at least the older part of
town where we were was pleasant.  Drivers actually stopped for pedestrians;
there were restaurants
like Antakya Evi; there were a number of bookstores; there
was a juice bar with a sign apologizing to the doctors and
pharmacists for reducing sickness by 20\%.  Little was to be
seen of the \emph{t\"urban,} the scarf covering all of a woman's
hair that is so controversial in Turkey today.  There were
also few Turkish flags.  I don't know what might be going on
behind the scenes in Antakya. But the continued presence of
Christianity in the city is used as a selling point, even in
tourist brochures printed in Turkish.

On Wednesday, for a hundred lira, we hired Fevzi \emph{Bey},
father of one of the hotel workers, to drive us around the
countryside.  There were two possible destinations: one,
inland, was Harbiye, the ancient Daphne, where many of the
mosaics in the museum had been found; the other was
Samanda\u g, a resort on the coast.  The route to the latter
was said to be more interesting, so we went there.

For most of the journey to Samanda\u g, we did not take the
main road, but wound our way among the villages of the
mountains.  In H\i{}d\i{}rbey village, we saw a great plane tree,
in whose hollow trunk several people could stand. It was the
Moses Tree (Musa A\u gac\i{}).  A plaque said the tree had
sprouted from the staff of Moses himself when he visited the
spot with Khidr (H\i{}d\i{}r), the ``Green Man''.  It is apparently
held by some that this Green Man is referred to in the 65th
verse of the 18th surah of the Quran.  The following is from
the Marmaduke Pickthall translation.
\small
\begin{enumerate}
\setcounter{enumi}{59}
\item And when Moses said unto his servant: I will not give up
until I reach the point where the two rivers meet, though I
march on for ages.

\item And when they reached the point where the two met, they
forgot their fish, and it took its way into the waters,
being free.

\item And when they had gone further, he said unto his
servant: Bring us our breakfast. Verily we have found
fatigue in this our journey.

\item He said: Didst thou see, when we took refuge on the
rock, and I forgot the fish---and none but Satan caused me
to forget to mention it---it took its way into the waters
by a marvel.

\item He said: This is that which we have been seeking. So
they retraced their steps again.

\item Then found they one of Our slaves, unto whom We had
given mercy from Us, and had taught him knowledge from Our
presence.

\item Moses said unto him: May I follow thee, to the end that
thou mayst teach me right conduct of that which thou hast
been taught?

\item He said: Lo! thou canst not bear with me.

\item How canst thou bear with that whereof thou canst not
compass any knowledge?

\item He said: Allah willing, thou shalt find me patient and I
shall not in aught gainsay thee.

\item He said: Well, if thou go with me, ask me not concerning
aught till I myself make mention of it unto thee.

\item So they twain set out till, when they were in the ship,
he made a hole therein. (Moses) said: Hast thou made a hole
therein to drown the folk thereof?  Thou verily hast done a
dreadful thing.

\item He said: Did I not tell thee that thou couldst not bear
with me?

\item (Moses) said: Be not wroth with me that I forgot, and be
not hard upon me for my fault.

\item So they twain journeyed on till, when they met a lad, he
slew him. (Moses) said: What! Hast thou slain an innocent
soul who hath slain no man?  Verily thou hast done a horrid
thing.

\item He said: Did I not tell thee that thou couldst not bear
with me?

\item (Moses) said: If I ask thee after this concerning aught,
keep not company with me. Thou hast received an excuse from
me.

\item So they twain journeyed on till, when they came unto the
folk of a certain township, they asked its folk for food,
but they refused to make them guests. And they found therein
a wall upon the point of falling into ruin, and he repaired
it. (Moses) said: If thou hadst wished, thou couldst have
taken payment for it.

\item He said: This is the parting between thee and me! I will
announce unto thee the interpretation of that thou couldst
not bear with patience.

\item As for the ship, it belonged to poor people working on
the river, and I wished to mar it, for there was a king
behind them who is taking every ship by force.

\item And as for the lad, his parents were believers and we
feared lest he should oppress them by rebellion and
disbelief.

\item And we intended that their Lord should change him for
them for one better in purity and nearer to mercy.

\item And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in
the city, and there was beneath it a treasure belonging to
them, and their father had been righteous, and thy Lord
intended that they should come to their full strength and
should bring forth their treasure as a mercy from their
Lord; and I did it not upon my own command.  Such is the
interpretation of that wherewith thou couldst not bear.
\end{enumerate}
\normalsize
So much for H\i{}d\i{}r \emph{Bey}.  We continued our journey.  Around
one bend of the road, we found several soldiers with
firearms and bandoliers.  They studied the identification
cards of the two Turks among us, and the passports of the
two foreigners; they asked a lot of questions about what we
had been doing and were going to do; they gave our driver a
lot of advice about where he should take us.  They named all
of the places that Fevzi \emph{Bey} was going to take us anyway;
he was annoyed at their presumption.

The soldiers mentioned Turkey's last Armenian village.
This was indeed where we were headed next.  There did not
seem to be much to see.  There was a fairly new church,
locked; there was a cemetery with headstones graven in
Armenian and Latin letters.  Fevzi \emph{Bey} suggested we walk
around amongst the houses.  We did this, though there did
not seem to be much point in poking around somebody's stone
cowshed, just because that somebody was supposed to be
Armenian.  We could hear children inside one house, but we
saw nobody.

When we came back to the road, we did meet one man, who was
supervising two youths as they tinkered with a piece of farm
equipment.  He cheerfully explained that there used to be
seven Armenian villages in the area, but the residents of
the other six had fled; the residents of \emph{his} village,
Vak\i{}fl\i{} K\"oy\"u, had stayed, and nothing happened to them.
Ay\c se thought he gave the year of flight as 1918; but perhaps
he said 1938, when it appeared that Turkey was going to take
over Hatay.  Wikipedia gives the year of flight as 1939; but
according to that source also, in 1915, the local Armenians
resisted deportation or worse by Ottoman soldiers, until
they were rescued by French forces; they \emph{returned} to their
villages in 1918.

Ay\c se expressed her concern that tourists might be annoying
to the villagers.  The man said they had got used to the
tourists.  He regretted not being able to accompany us to
the village coffeehouse further down the road.  We went
there anyway, at his suggestion, and we were welcomed by
several elderly men; but there was no coffee.  The men were
dressed as warmly as one might do in Ankara.  There was a
wood stove in the middle of the room.  The end of the
stovepipe was next to the door, which was left open, and
wind blew the smoke back into the room.

Returning to the car, we continued down the road towards the
sea.  Reaching the shore at Samanda\u g, we turned right for
\c Cevlik.  Besides the sea, the attraction there was the
Tunnel of Titus and Vespasian, apparently dug to divert the
water of mountain streams from the port of Seleucia Pieria.
One walked along a deep channel carved in the rock.
Eventually, as the surrounding hill became higher, the
channel did become an enormous tunnel.  Not having the torch
recommended by the Lonely Planet, Ay\c se and I decided it was
too risky to scramble in the dark over the rocks to reach
the far end.

Still, our entering the tunnel seemed to give a group of
young people the nerve to do the same.  We had heard them
speculate in Turkish on whether we were German.  We first
encountered these kids after a side trip to a nearby
hillside, which had been carved into several storeys of
tombs.  The human obsession for saving dead bodies struck me
as quite strange.

Fevzi \emph{Bey} took us for lunch at a seaside restaurant that
he knew.  My mother selected a fish from the three that were
offered; Ay\c se and I had \emph{menemen}, along with hummus and one
or two other dishes; we all drank beer in the open air under
the February sun by the Mediterranean Sea.

The guidebooks had warned about the filthy beach.  It was
indeed strewn with plastic bags.  Our \emph{restaurateur} claimed
that they all blew over from Syria.

He also suggested a local attraction that Fevzi \emph{Bey} did
not know about: a church, synagogue, and mosque, all next to
each other.  So we drove out along the unpaved Church Street
(Kilise Soka\u g\i{}).  Eventually we did find some sort of church
complex, looking fairly new (or at least not medieval), with
a locked gate.  Above the gate was a Merry Christmas (\emph{Mutlu
Noeller}) sign, and no other identification; but the church
building itself appeared to have Arabic lettering over the
door.  Across the street, there was not a mosque exactly,
but a domed Alawite shrine (\emph{ziyaret}), dedicated to one \c S\i{}h
(``Sheikh'') Rih.  We didn't see a synagogue.

From the main road to Antakya, we turned off at the sign for
the St Simeon Monastery.  After a surprisingly long drive
across treeless slopes, we reached a mountaintop ruin of
massive stone blocks, all surrounding the stub of what could
have been the pillar that accommodated a saint.  The painted steel plaque
at the entrance (graven with many graffiti) claimed that the
saint had lived on the pillar for forty years, till he died
in 592.

I remembered seeing Luis Bu\~nuel's film \emph{Simon del Desierto}
when younger.  Now I was where the saint had really lived.
But we were not in a desert, and there was no obvious path
down which a woman might stroll, exposing her breasts to
tempt the saint as in Bu\~nuel's movie.  In any case, the
monks living around could have kept her away.

I learned later that Bu\~nuel's movie featured Simeon Stylites
the Elder, who had lived over in Syria.  The monastery we
were visiting was dedicated to Simeon Stylites the Younger.
I could only wonder at who would go to the expense of
building and maintaining such a place.

The wind was high and the sun was low on that lonely peak.
We drove back down the access road.  On the way, I noted the
white dome of what must have been another Alawite \emph{ziyaret};
but our guide did not take us there.

On Thursday morning we caught a bus to Adana.  Along the
way, I looked at a Turkish magazine that Ay\c se had picked up.
Called \emph{Multikulti}, it featured Gypsy (\emph{\c Cingene}, Tzigane)
musicians on the cover.  On pages two and three were the
photos and words of four bearded gentlemen: the Greek
Orthodox Patriarch of Istanbul, the Bosnian Muslim leader
(\emph{Reis-ul ulemas\i{}}), the world leader of the Bektashi Sufi
order, and the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul.  I translate
the words of the Bektashi leader, Hac\i{} Dede Re\c sat Bardi:

\begin{myquote}
Bektashis teach tolerance for all humanity; they defend the
unity, the brotherhood of all religions.  They do not
discriminate among people, be they Catholic or Orthodox.
For us, all people are equal before God (\emph{Tanr\i{}}).  Every
kind of good comes from God (\emph{Allah}); evil is from humans.
Religions are for protecting people from this evil.  The
blessed Ali said, 'If you are going to do something bad,
wait till tomorrow; if you are going to do something good,
do it right away.'  When you go to the next world, God
(\emph{Tanr\i{}}) will not ask what religion you were, but will ask
an account of what good and what bad you did.
\end{myquote}


In the heart of Adana, cars jammed the streets, and people
crowded the sidewalks.  We were in Turkey's fifth-largest
city.  But people were hospitable, volunteering their aid
several times when we seemed lost.  In the ethnographic
museum, housed in a former church, two girls latched onto
Ay\c se and chatted about their dream to become medical
doctors.  They couldn't believe my mother was old enough to
be that.

We saw also the archeological museum---not so impressive as
Antakya's, but containing a sarcophagus illustrated with
scenes from the Iliad, as of Achilles dragging the body of
Hector.  Nearby was an enormous mosque, with six minarets,
built by one of the country's richest industrialists.  We
strolled along the Seyhan River to the restored Roman
bridge, which could have served as the model for
Washington's Memorial Bridge.

After picking up supplies of beer and \emph{b\"orek}, we caught the
overnight \c Cukurova Express train back through the Cilician
Gates to Ankara.
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