Ramadan and Churches

Ramadan started yesterday, which means that for the next month between the hours of about 5am and about 8pm, when the muezzin sings the evening call to prayer, most of my fellow-employees will abstain from eating, drinking, engaging in or thinking about sex and basically everything else that defines humans’ base functioning. Oof. Apparently the first day is the worst, and the mood around the hotel yesterday could definitely be characterized as listless. A lot of uniformed employees slumped over tables or sitting limply on the stairs, staring balefully at passersby. This has got to be particularly punishing for anyone who spends all day mixing drinks and ferrying around platters of honeydew and watermelon. Ramadan is also particularly tough this year because it hits right in the middle of August, when the weather is hottest and the days are longest. Ahmet, the hotel owner’s young son, is fasting for the first time this year; all afternoon he lingered by the drinks counter, periodically pulling out a bottle of water and juggling it from hand to hand for a while before putting it back in the cooler. I got to the restaurant at 7:45, just minutes before the evening call to prayer. Ali and Ramazan had already set out their food—huge piles of sliced melon, chickpea soup, spinach pastries, and two giant bottles of water—and were circling the table like hungry wolves. Hakin, the chef, already had a cigarette between his lips, lighter at the ready. My coworkers are not terribly religious—as far as I know, none of them pray regularly or go to the mosque—which makes their efforts seem all the more impressive to me. To go through what is clearly a difficult trial (and for a whole month!), I think I would have to be motivated by some pretty heavy religious fervor. On the other hand, absent such fervor, why do it at all? Ali tells me it’s in order to empathize with those who have very little, and that the Koran instructs us that Ramadan should be welcomed as a time of joy and celebration. But if you’re not a devout Muslim? I think I’m just confused. Turkey is a country so devoted to secularism that headscarves are banned in all universities and government buildings, and yet even non-practicing Muslims do this very difficult fast for a month (and, so far as I can tell, not in a spirit of joy and celebration, and without all the additional prayers and traditions also associated with Ramadan—just the fast)…what am I missing?

I finally made it to the Goreme Open Air Museum, probably the biggest tourist draw in town—and the only part of Goreme to be an official, preserved UNESCO site. “Open Air” because even once you buy your ticket and pass through the turnstile, what you’re actually there to see are a string of cave churches dating back to the second half of the 11th century; to see them all is actually a bit of a hike, but definitely well worth it. (For a while I had an entire house to myself, but a few weeks ago a Dutch architect named Nico moved into one of the rooms next door. According to a somewhat garbled, rambling account he gave me over breakfast the morning he moved in, turning Goreme into a tourist destination—including creating the Open Air Museum—was his idea back in the ‘80s. Now, he wants to make another museum. When I asked where the second museum would be he replied, “The whole town.” “You want to make…the whole town…a museum?” I was trying to picture how you would go about charging admission. It turns out, though, that what he has in mind is more of a walking tour, with each of the stops preserved as it’s own cultural heritage site.) I have to say there is just something incredible and moving about a church that on the outside looks like this:

And on the inside looks like this:


And now a special segment…after hours at the restaurant:

On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, we have live music at the restaurant. Unis plays the sas, a seven-stringed lute-like instrument, and Burak plays the frame drum. It turns out that our man Ibrahim is no mean sas player himself, though. After all the guests leave (or if no one has ordered one of his wood-fired kebabs) he often plays Turkish folk songs; sometimes Metin plays and sings along.


Erkan and Ali roast eggplants, hot green peppers, garlic and onions in the embers of the wood stove to make salad for a late-night dinner.


Ramazan is a ham.


So is Erkan.