Free In Xanadu by William Dalrymple Page B

you.'
'Sir, you like Turkey?'
    'It's wonderful. Jesus Christ, what time is it?' This time is seven clocks and fifteen minutes. Good sir, my friend, what is your business?' 'I'm an aspiring writer.' 'Good sir! Are you famous?' 'No. What do you want?'
    'Sir, I am a student of tourism at Mersin University. Permit me to ask you a few questions in connection with studies I am engaging.'
    He was off. For thirty-five minutes I lay on the beach, trussed up in my sleeping bag while the Turk fired an endless series of questions, noting down my replies on his form. Had I been to Turkey before? For how long? Where did I go? Where was I going this time? Sir, please forgive the question, why was I going to Iran? Didn't I know about the modem tourist facilities available in western Turkey? Didn't I know about the beat h resorts at Bodrum, Canakkale and Antalya? Every modern convenience a tourist could dream of was available. Sunbathing, windsurfing, sailing, modern hotels with luxury
    fittings, casinos. Didn't I know about the new facility in Ayas?
A motel with a flushing toilet in every chalet    
    He came to the end of his questionnaire, wished me 'happy tourism', and strutted off towards the town with the boy-scout air of a job well done. I had forgotten how boring Turks could be. I got up and went for a swim.
    It was early morning and the water was completely still and clear. The sun had just risen over the Syrian Jebel and the mountains stretched out at a right angle to the Turkish shore, a solid ridge leading down towards Beirut, Tyre and Sidon. There was a slight haze over the water. I swam out to sea.
    Turning and looking behind me, I saw the old harbour. For the century following the Mongol invasions, Ayas had been the busiest port in the entire Mediterranean. The long overland trade routes which stretched through Turkey and Iran to China, India and Samarkand terminated here, and it was to Ayas that merchants from Italy, Egypt and all over the Mediterranean came to buy the merchandise of the East. Polo describes it as 'a city upon the sea ... at which there is great trade. For you must know that all the spicery, and the cloths of silk and gold, and the other valuable wares which come from the interior, are brought to that city. And the merchants of Venice and Genoa, come hither to sell their goods, and to buy what they lack.'
    There was now little left to indicate its former prosperity. It was a small, ramshackle place, not the 'wretched village of fifteen huts' described by Yule at the end of the last century, but not much grander either. The harbour was formed of two moles, one ancient and half-sunk, the other modern and topped by a sea wall. Around the shoreline stood the ruins of the sea gate and sea walls, crumbling masonry towers now used by the fishermen for storing their creels, nets and harpoons. Further back, but still within the mediaeval walls, stood a few later buildings: wooden merchants' houses with latticed windows and carved balconies, a domed Ottoman mosque, some fishermen's cottages, flat-roofed and dung-walled. Debris and flotsam lay scattered around, piles of discarded tackle, troughs for sheep and fodder for cows, an upturned dinghy, a billy goat picking among old fish boxes. On a nearby tower, a pair of storks with scarlet walking-stick legs had made a nest of driftwood, and beneath it fishermen were mending their nets and untangling their lines.
    The younger men were thuggish-looking, muscular creatures, their faces tanned and tough, sitting about half-naked on fallen pillars, smoking. Their fathers kept to the sea wall, two hundred yards away. From the waist up they looked like Geordies. They wore tweed jackets, shirts with large collars, fine clipped moustaches and on their heads dirty tweed flat caps. Given a pint of brown ale their top halves could have comfortably fitted into any Jarrow pub; only their flapping charwal trousers betrayed their true provenance. They looked amiable and slightly senile,