Two episodes in my life had spurred my interest to go to Mardin – the first was reading William Dalrymple’s splendid “From the Holy Mountain” in which he describes his visits to a handful of Syrian Orthodox monasteries in the South East of Turkey. The second has been a long-standing fascination and admiration for all things to do with Kurdistan, nurtured at the outset by my once-upon-a-time residence in Green Lanes, Harringay.
But the time has never been right to visit – either it has not been deemed safe. Or otherwise, it has been considered safe, but i didn’t have the time. This time, neither conditions were satisfactorily met, but I decided to go anyway.
And so it was that i had agreed a meeting with Turcel Bey of the Mardin Tourism Information Office on the Saturday morning of my arrival. The agenda was succinctly Turkish “we’ll make some plans when we meet”.
On my own agenda was my firm determination to adhere to FCDO guidelines and not to stray within 10km of the Syrian border. Mardin itself is only about 20km from the Syrian border and indeed on a clear dawn, from Mardin you can see into Syria. After the explosion in Istanbul two weeks previous to my visit, the blame was pinned on the Kurdish YPG in Syria and precipitated a consequent recommencement of the Turkish bombing of Northern Syria. The FCDO subsequently reinforced their ban on any travel within 10km of the Syrian border.
This was an inconvenience since at least two of the sites I had wanted to visit – Dara and Mor Yacoub, lay with this 10km exclusion zone.
Turcel Bey introduced me to Muzafer as if he were a colleague though it wasn’t immediately clear that Muzafer was to be my driver and guide for the time I was in Mardin.
So, how was it that the two of them so easily talked me into including both of these sites in my itinerary? Later that evening, I felt angry with myself for agreeing and thought several times of reneging on the whole agreement.
But a crisp dawn the following morning and beautiful clear skies instilled me with confidence that all would be well and Muzafer picked me up as agreed at eight. When we got to Dara, it was still only half past eight in the morning.
A Roman site from the 6th century, Dara has some impressive ruins and an extensive necropolis. Less than half a day’s march from the border with Persia, the Emperor Justinian had been forced to rebuild much of it and his architects diverted the river to flow through the city. They installed an impressive dam and series of cisterns to regulate the river’s flow.
A sign graffitied on the wall of a house pointed to the “zindan” – the Turkish word for a prison. Muzafer explained it was what the locals called the water cistern which was where he took me to next. Although not as extensive as the Yerebatan Saray in Istanbul it was far deeper and required descending several flights in pitch darkness to arrive at the floor. Its interior dimensions were about same as those of Kings College chapel.
Later I read that Dara had been the location of some of the massacres during the genocide of 1915 and that the cisterns had been filled with the bodies of slaughtered Armenians. The word “zindan” graffitied on the wall took on a darker meaning.
Leaving Dara, we headed south towards the Syrian border and the main Mersin-Şırnak highway where we turned left toward the East. It’s a modern, well-built dual-carriageway mainly used by the frequent lorries plying goods along the south of Turkey.
By now, we were only about 200m from the Syrian border, which followed us on the nearside of the road. Immediately to our right, beyond a narrow roadside verge, was a wire fence separating us from an empty field. And beyond the empty field was the unmistakeable wall of the Syrian border. I was gazing at the empty field.
“It’s a minefield,” Muzafer told me – which accounted for it being completely barren. “It has always been there, long before the present troubles, and was created to stop smugglers.”
In all of our journey, we were flagged down by only one police check – just on our entrance to the town of Nusaybyn. These check-points are rather forboding affairs – not dissimilar from the ones in Belfast and Northern Ireland of thirty years ago. As the gendarme waved us to a stop, I steeled myself for the eventual conversation, trying to reassure myself by remembering the only ban on British citizens travelling in this zone was imposed only by our own government. Muzafer handed the soldier his identity card and told him i was a foreigner. Where from? Asked the soldier and I calmly told him I was English and handed him my passport. He turned it back and didn’t even want to look at it.
We drove into Nusaybyn. My determination not to come this far had resulted in me coming completely unprepared for what we were to visit. We drove through the city in the direction of the Syrian border.
On our right, Muzafer pointed out the neighbourhood of brand new, and rather beautiful looking, apartment blocks. They were placed, somewhat incongruously in a vast plain of bare earth. No roads joined them. No garden walls surrounded them. Only a few of the flats looked inhabited.
Muzafer explained that during the tensions of 2016, the Turkish army had bombed Nusaybyn to splinters and then had raized this quarter to the ground. These new apartment blocks had been the Turkish government’s recompense.
We cruised the streets somewhat aimlessly before drawing up at a shop selling washing machines and white goods. Muzafer beckoned for me that we were getting out. Of course, how could i not have thought! This was a friend of his and the whole journey had been an excuse to come and see him and catch up on old times!
His friend Zahit was cheerful enough and we sat down amongst the fridges and freezers while he made us cups of tea and coffee and the two of them smoked their way through a packet of cigarettes. The talk took a turn for the worse when they reminded themselves it was Sunday and would be a good occasion for a picnic and some raki out in the countryside. Not entirely jokingly, i felt, Muzafer asked me if i wanted to abandon my plans of seeing the monasteries. I had to be firm.
After numerous coffees and teas, Zahit took us across the road to the children’s playground, which – he told me – until a few months earlier had been a minefield. At that point, we were so close to the border they i could have picked up a stone and slung it into Syria. I resisted the temptation.
On the other side of the border was Al Qamishli – a large and prosperous looking town.
I dragged Muzafer reluctantly back to his car and we said goodbye to Zahit. Another block further and we were at the old border crossing between Turkey and Syrian- closed since the troubles of 2016.
Muzafer told me that before its closure the town of Nusaybyn had existed mainly on smuggling – and you could buy there anything you wanted. But since the closure of the crossing unemployment in the town had risen by 90%. No wonder so many of the old inhabitants had settled elsewhere and the new apartment blocks remained empty.
But just round the corner was the real reason we had come to Nusaybyn – the church of Mor Yacoub.
Built by Jacob of Nisbis between 313 and 320 AD it is considered one of the oldest churches of Upper Mesopotamia. The remaining part is perhaps just the baptistry of what was once a cathedral complex, though only the foundations remain. The crypt houses the tomb of its builder St Jacob of Nisbis once the bishop of Nisbis.
“Mor” – I found out – and as in the prefix to the names of all these churches, is the Suriyani word for “Saint”.
We left the Syrian border and headed north to Midyat. A feeling of relief came over me as I realised we had once again more than 10km from the border.
Later that afternoon we visited the Mor Gabriel monastery near Midyat – a Syrian Orthodox monastery founded in 397AD. The open countryside of rolling hills and olive groves was evidently sufficient isolation for its founders not hide it amongst mountains, valleys or caves. The archway to the inner courtyard is ornate and beyond it, a staircase leads to another archway. The honey-coloured stone of its entrance burnt golden in the afternoon sun. The entrance gives the impression of lavishness.
Inside, we are taken to see the chapel, which is surprisingly plain in comparison with those of other orthodox monasteries I have visited. The barrel-vaulted nave is flanked on either side by an arched colonnade, but the stone masonry is bare. There is no apse: just a curtain drawn across the lower section of the eastern wall. The curtain bears a depiction of Chirst rising from his tomb whilst two guards sleep nearby, but it looks as if it could have come from a cheap carpet stall in Istanbul. Like all Orthodox churches, it serves to hide the sacristy. And apart from two other pictures at the back of the nave, the church is almost bare. There is none of the iconography one associates with other Orthodox or Catholic churches. In plainness, it beats even an English village parish church.
In alcoves around the walls, there were tablets inscribed with writings in the Suriyani script – the meaning of which I had no way of guessing To look at, the script has a vague resemblance to Arabic, but closer inspection reveals there is really little in common and the characters are more angular, less rounded.
Once we had finished in Mor Gabriel, we continued to Anıtlı village – the whole population of which is Suriyani Christian. We were going to visit the Meryem Ana Manastırı – the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, but as we approached the monastery, it was clear that some kind of ceremony was going on. A large group of men dressed in dark suits were sitting on plastic chairs. We were later to find out that one of the men’s father had just died and they had held the funeral that afternoon.
But for the time being we went ahead and visited the monastery complex. And though it is not as famous or perhaps as important as Mor Gabriel, it is arguably more impressive. Despite this though, there are no monks, and as I was to find out, not even a priest at the present time.
The following day, Muzafer took me to visit Deyrulzaferan monastery near Mardin. More correctly known as Mor Hananyo, it is known local as Deyrulzaferan – the saffron Monastery. After visiting Mor Gabriel the day before, the layout felt familiar, but the setting is more dramatic. Set before a backdrop of mountains, with erstwhile cave-dwellings carved out from the crags high above it makes an impressive picture.
A gaggle of local women were harvesting the olives and an obvious hurling of insults erupted between them. They were spekaing in Kurdish and I couldn’t understand but a smile broke out across Muzafer’s face. Apparently they were haranguing each other for smoking.
Inside, the layout felt familiar and thought the portal is less ornate than that at Mor Gabriel, the staircases leading to the inner courtyard were reminiscent of the ones I had seen the previous day. The whole had more the air of a European seminary than a some of the cave-monasteries I have visited elsewhere.
Muzafer came into the monastery with me and then told me he was going off to meet the monks and that I should come and find him after the visit. I wondered what business he must have with these monks.
At the end of the visit, I pushed open the gate to the “private” part of the monastery with the apprehension of a trespasser. I turned a corner of the courtyard and found Muzafer sitting on a bench sipping a coffee. “They made me a coffee,” he grinned impishly, as if he might have been smoking a cigarette. A couple of moments later, we were joined by one of the monks – brother Gabriel. Muzafer, introduced me to him as “his uncle”. With his white beard, as wide as a spade, Brother Gabriel could have taken the part of Father Christmas. His jovial round face showed deep lines behind his eyes, from years of smiling. He was dressed in black with a black kerchief covering the back of his neck and a black kalimavkion (orthodox priest’s headwear) on his head. His two-tone appearance, between the black of his habit and the white of his beard, was deceptive.
In his hands he cradled a glass of weak tea with what looked like cardamon seeds at the bottom, which he kept stirring as if to punish the flavour from them. He asked me where I had come from and as soon he understood I was English, the conversation turned to King Charles. Prince Charles (as he was then) had apparently visited the monastery back in 1997 and was well remembered. Father Gabriel asked why King Charles hadn’t got rid of all our politicians and was seemingly aghast to learn that our King was merely a symbolic position.
I have always felt somewhat intimidated by the monks I have come across in monasteries. They seem to be mainly concerned with making sure tourists don’t take photographs, or worse still, use flash. I associate them with constant berating of visitors – in short, people to be avoided. However, Father Gabriel, was different. He was the kind of person you warmed to immediately.
He and Muzafer then chatted about their common relatives and talk turned to who was retiring and when. There was then a discussion on pension contributions and Father Gabriel was evidently concerned that he would miss out on receiving his pension. I hadn’t been aware that monks are also due for it.
As we left the monastery, he asked me to pass on his best wishes to King Charles – as if the monarch is a close associate of mine. And he also asked me to pass on his regards to Mr William. I must have looked puzzled.
“Mr William”, he repeated, “your famous writer”.
“Ah, you mean Mr Dalrymple?”
“Yes, Mr William Dalyrmple – a very important man!” I was inclined to agree, and I told him it had been his book “From the Holy Mountain” which had been the inspiration to come to Mardin.
