When I came down for breakfast in my hotel in Trabzon, there were only two tables, and someone was at each of them. I sat down at the table with a Westerner, an Australian woman named ``Karin". She was not especially attractive, but deliberately so. It made traveling in Turkey easier. A petite woman about my age, baggy green jeans and baggy sweatshirt, wisps of red hear peeking out from under a green scarf.
She had been traveling around Turkey by bus for six weeks. She was headed for Amasya that day, as was I, and she seemed amiable enough, so I offered to take her there. She accepted.
We left around 8:30. It was 330 kilometers to Samsun, along the Black Sea coast, and the hours flowed together. We talked most of the time, although I don't remember about what. At first the road ran between lush forest and the edge of the sea. Later it was one town after another. Around eleven, we stopped in a town called Pershembe, with a cute harbor with fishing boats in basic colors. We had tea at a seaside open-air café, and then walked out onto the pier.
Samsun is a large town with not many road signs. We spent half an hour circling the interior of the town looking for the Ankara turnoff. A sign pointed left and we followed it, but there was no sign half a block later where we should have turned right, and instead we went straight, on a road that then bent around to the left and back the way we came. Then we hit a long detour around road construction that took us up hills and down. We finally asked some men directions. They spoke only Turkish, but we watched their gestures. One pointed behind us, and then two others pointed ahead. We decided it was two to one--we'd go ahead. It was another mile before we figured out that the first man was telling us which way we had to go and the other two were telling us where we had to go to make a U-turn. Eventually we made it back to our missed turn and were underway again.
In Amasya we drove to the center of town and parked on the south side of the Green River, with the wonderful view of the Ottoman houses hanging over the river and the cliffs rising behind them with the large cave tombs of the kings of Pontus carved in them halfway up. We were in tune. We both immediately wanted to cross the footbridge over the river and climb the rock stairs up to the tombs. They were just excavated chambers, but the main chambers had passageways carved around and behind them, though they were fenced off. I got a bit ahead of Karin, and when I turned around, she was gone. I apprehensively looked over the cliff. But then I heard something behind me, and I saw that she had slipped through a gap in the fence. I followed her, and we explored the passage behind the tomb.
Then we climbed up a rather chancy slope to some less accessible tombs. At the top I confessed to her that I was petrified of heights. She said she was just admiring my crazy sense of adventure, just like her own.
I had planned to drive on to the town of Çoram that afternoon and find some sort of hotel there. But it was 5:30 and it got dark at six. Better to stay here, I decided, and spend a pleasant evening in pleasant company in the nicest town I had seen in Turkey. I could leave at 5:30 in the morning and lose no daylight.
We stopped in at a pansyon in an old Ottoman house overhanging the river and looked at the rooms. They had two next to each other, for 20 million lira ($12) each.
Karin also wanted to look at a place mentioned in Lonely Planet on the other side of the river. When we got back to my car, the two high school kids, Esra and Çari, materialized beside us, wanting to practice their English. They walked with us to the other pansyon. It was nicer and charmingly historical. They had one large room available, with three widely spaced single beds and a bathroom that you had to climb through a cupboard to get to. It was 60 million lira ($36).
The four of us left and went for chai at an outdoor restaurant. On the way I laid out the two possibilities for Karin. We could each get a room for 20 million lira at the first place, or we could share the large room for 60 million lira at the second. I said I was in a relationship, so I didn't expect anything, but I had no problem with sharing a room. She said she didn't either, but 30 million lira was more than she normally spent. I said I could afford 40.
But while we were drinking tea, I began to have qualms. Afterwards I told her I would be more comfortable with separate rooms. We went back to the first pansyon and got rooms next door to each other, with the bath across the hall.
We cleaned up and then went out to dinner. She looked much better now, with her scarf off and her hair down. I felt I had to explain myself. I said that it was not so much that I was afraid we'd sleep with each other, but that when I told Cynthia, she would feel envious that I was there in the exotic locale with someone else rather than with her.
``Don't tell her," Karin said. She said she had learned that total honesty was not always the best policy.
I said, ``I'm trying to do this one different."
We went back to the same restaurant. I had lamb kebob; she, a vegetarian, had eggplant kebob. We shared a kind of spicy yogurt soup, and traded life stories.
Back at our hotel, as we were about to enter our respective rooms, I moved forward and gave her a hug, a warm but chaste California hug. She folded into me, and then stepped back, and then stepped forward and kissed me on my lips. Her lips felt good.
If we had shared a room, we would have shared a bed.
I did a quick laundry, and then went down to the café on the first floor to write up the day in my journal. There was beer and cards at one table, backgammon at another, and the Americans and Osama bin Laden on TV. I went to bed at eleven.
I got up at five the next morning. I tried to be quiet, but the plumbing made a lot of noise, and of course there were the muzzeins at 5:15. On my last trip out of the room, Karin came out of her room as well, in a brief sheer white nightie, to say goodbye to me. We hugged again, and this time I kissed her on the lips. Her body felt soft and desirable.
``I missed you last night," she said.
``Yes," I said.
And I drove on to Hattusas.