The day dawned
bright and sunny in Selcuk, as my family and I entered our hotel’s
picturesque dining room. Ancient crossbows and scrolls of Arabic and
Persian script vied for room on the walls with a plastic singing bass
and an Efes beer advertisement. A laden buffet table snatched
my
gaze from the wall hangings. Turkish breakfast is quite to my
liking. You start with fresh melon, figs, sliced tomatoes and
grapes, add white cheese, yoghurt and simit – a roll
configured like a soft pretzel with a crispy crust smothered in
sesame seeds, baked fresh every morning. I must confess that
I’ve become a simit addict. I’ll truly miss it when
I get back home. Mindful of my future dearth of simit, I plucked up
three rolls. Turkish jams – cherry, fig and apricot –
are heavy with fruit and perfect to dip one’s simit in.
Good olives, hard-boiled eggs and hot peppers rounded out my personal
menu.
Between tasty
bites, we - wife Phyllis, twenty-something sons Jon and Jeremy and I
- contemplated a day of full-blown tourism, for visits to both Mary’s
House and the ruins at Ephesus were on the agenda. Our rather
shy hotel clerk suggested that we needed a driver for the day. We
agreed and he went off to make calls.
When breakfast was
done, we stepped out the front door and found a yellow cab awaiting
us. Its driver, Ibrahim, was stout, gray-haired and perhaps a year or
two past sixty. His moustache was bushy gray and he had last
shaved a couple of days before we met. He opened the rear door
of his cab for Phyllis and me. Jon slid in with us and Jeremy
took the front seat.
Jeremy’s
mastery of Turkish - after living and studying in Istanbul for a year
- insured that he and Ibrahim became fast friends within a few
minutes. They quickly worked out a deal and exchanged cell
numbers.
Ibrahim was willing to stick with us through a trip into the
mountains and back down to the ruins of Ephesus. He would
come
at our call when we were ready to move and pick us up at the end of
our explorations.
Sitting back in the
cab’s comfy seat. I reflected on how much the Selcuk region
reminded me of California’s Santa Lucia Mountains. Trees
growing on northern slopes of hills to our left were quite similar to
digger pines. They were just enough shorter, though, that I never
stopped looking for Romans to stroll from between their trunks. As
with the Central Coast, this area is also plagued by wildfires during
the summer and there was a big one this past August. We
noticed
the burn scars immediately and Ibrahim told us that several square
miles had been lost to the flames.
We also noticed
that an extensive and industrious effort to mitigate damage and
reclaim the burned area was underway. A worker loading a
donkey
with cut logs struck me as a glimpse into the area’s distant
past. I asked several questions of Ibrahim through Jeremy and
he was eager to reply, sometimes using both hands while explaining an
important detail. When his replies seriously affected his driving,
he’d pull off the road and continue talking. Selcuk, a
stone’s throw above sea level, was now a thousand feet below
us. The road we were on ascends three thousand feet and has
serious curves carved above serious precipices. Phyllis poked
me
with her elbow. I soon got the picture and kept my mouth shut until
we were safely stopped.
Near the summit of
Nightingale Mountain is Meryeana Evi, Mary’s house. It’s
said to be the place where she spent the final years of her
life.
There is a fine weave of circumstantial scientific proof that
supports this idea. The Bible clearly states (John, chapter
19,
verses 26 and 27) that Jesus entrusted his mother to John. Shortly
after the crucifixion, John, along with other early Christians, made
his way to Ephesus from Jerusalem. There is no reason to suppose that
Mary did not make this journey with him. Local legend and oral
history place Mary in Ephesus for a few months until the house on
Nightingale Mountain was prepared for her. The exact year of
her death is uncertain, but she is said to have resided in her
mountain home for more than twenty years.
There are
proofs of faith, too, and they are interesting. I’ll sketch
them briefly. In 1812, a German nun, Sister Anne Catherine
Emmerich began having intense visions. The visions continued
for
twelve years - until her death in 1824 - and were carefully
recorded. Only a few of them touched on Mary’s life after
the crucifixion of her son, but these several visions contained
descriptions of both the house’s location and the house
itself. Sister Anne never traveled outside of Germany during
her
life.
In 1880, A French
priest, one Fr. Gouyet, became intrigued with Sister Anne’s
visions and set out to find Mary’s house. He traveled to
Smyrna, received help from the Archbishop there and mounted an
exploratory expedition. An ancient trail and the remains of an
ancient road led him straight to the ruins of the house. He
recognized it immediately from Sister Anne's descriptions. It took
many years and much research, but the Catholic Church eventually,
accepted and endorsed both the history and the holiness of this
house.
We arrived at the
end of the road around mid-morning after a rather longer-lasting
drive than we’d anticipated. Ibrahim, already impressed
and delighted with Jeremy’s gift of Turkish gab, was charmed
when I invited him to have tea with us after our visit to the
house. He positively beamed as we walked away from the
cab. To
improve any social situation in Turkey, ask the folks to have
tea!
We passed trough a
shaded area, which sheltered the ticket window, the teashop, some
tables and a trinket shop stuffed with merchandise. However
large a Turkish shop may be, I’ve found, it’s always too
small by half to contain everything that’s for sale.
We continued down a
sunny, slightly declining path for seventy yards or so and reached a
paved plaza. As we stood there, I glanced up toward the summit
of Nightingale Mountain. The ridge-top was very close, only a
few dozen steps away. The previous year’s fierce fire had
crossed its top, burned a few feet down the western slope and stopped
just above Mary’s house.
I always expect to
learn a great deal from my travels. However, my approach is somewhat
minimalist and differs from that of friends who read up on the
details of places they intend to visit. I try to enter a journey’s
experiences with a minimum of prior knowledge and, hopefully,
innocent of preconceptions. My intention is to delve more
deeply
into the places, objects and histories that have piqued my
interest. About all I initially knew of Mary’s house was
that she was supposed to have lived there.
The reconstructed
house (only partial walls and the foundation were discovered by Fr.
Gouet) is made of native stone, golden in color. It is small,
though solid and well conceived for living simply. Originally shaped
roughly like an L, a modern entrance vestibule has been
added.
The main room is now a small chapel lit mostly by votive
candles.
Through an arch are an altar and a statue of Mary in an arched alcove
behind it. Smaller images of her are found in smaller alcoves
to either side of the large one. A low door leads right to a
sleeping chamber. Archaeologists believe that Mary’s bed
was situated in a vestibule against the south wall of this
room.
A modern door through the west wall leads outside. That’s
it.
Jeremy and I
dawdled somewhat behind Phyllis and Jon, enjoying a breeze from the
not too distant sea. We reunited in the plaza and stood
quietly
together for a few moments. The calm beauty of the place
subdued
our usually boisterous family interactions. We each thought private
thoughts as we walked down a lower, more deeply shaded path that
would lead eventually back to the entrance and shop. We came
to
Mary’s spring, now equipped with three brass faucets and a deep
basin. We each took a sip of cold, mountain water before
continuing down the path.
We then came to a
curious edifice, a kind of open-air bulletin board where bits
of
every possible kind of paper had been affixed. Each bit of
paper
was symbolic of a wish or a prayer. I had silent doubts about the
efficacy of labels pulled from water bottles and cigarette
packages.
The vast majority of these “prayers” in paper were left
by Muslims. Mary is a very holy woman in the Muslim faith.
She
is mentioned 36 times in the Koran, though most American Catholics
are unaware of this fact. The idea of Grace, with Mary as its conduit
and focus, resonates in both religions - still.
We strolled on
beneath the shade of pines and sycamores, walking slowly, happily and
- for Waltons - without a great deal of conversation. Looking down
through the trees, old friends came gently to my mind, friends now
departed from this world. I thought of them, but was not
sad. It
came to me that, whether or not Mary lived and died here, her spirit
abides here now. Loss is part of every life, but somehow loss
is
eased here, no questions asked. Those who truly offer peace, offer it
for all. Mary did and her good will, like the sea breeze, touches
all who visit her mountain.
We did our
tourists’ duty at the overstuffed gift shop and were pleased
with our purchases, among them an excellent book about this site by
Donald Carroll. We left the shop and wandered toward the car
park. Before we reached it, Ibrahim rose from a table where
he’d
been seated with several other taxi drivers. He grinned,
motioned us to a table farther back beneath the arbor's shade and
insisted on treating us. We shared sweet tea and conversed as
the morning became warm. Ibrahim laughed a great and admiring
laugh when Jeremy told him that Phyllis is the eldest of fourteen
children. He raised his glass in a salute to Helen Glassmaker.
We shared more jokes - only slightly complicated by linguistic
impediments - before our tea was done and we finally clambered back
into his cab. Roman ruins awaited us.
None of us said
anything, but I could tell as we roared around the first
roller-coaster curve that all of us were reluctant to leave. It would
not have been the waste of a day to spend it all at Meryeana Evi.
