I`m in a town called Mardin near the Turkish border with Syria. It is beautiful and really damn hot. So hot that I don`t have much energy to write but I am still drinking record amounts of tea and having some good adventures.
Yesterday, I was wondering if I was going to get stranded in a shitty big town, called Batman of all things, after the bus driver tried to let me off at a gas station nowhere near a bus stop. When I found myself in that position, it hit me how much trust I am putting in humanity these days... a woman traveling alone in a Muslim country where I don`t speak the language and no one speaks English. I just say the name of the town I want to go to and ask bus where? Then I just have to follow where they point me or lead me. While I have a sense of being vulnerable I actually don`t find myself too worried.
And while I have complained before about being tired of struggling to communicate, I have to take some of that back: there is actually something quite beautiful about trying to relate to someone when you do not share a language. Many times now- usually over a cup of tea- I will go through my phrase book and do all the introduction questions with people and then will soon reach a point where there is not much else we can talk about... so we will just sit there in silence and sip tea. It is a bit awkward and humbling and yet beautiful.
After all the time in Morocco, I am already used to the feeling of not understanding much that is going on around me and here, even more so. But again, there is something quieting and almost meditative about feeling so cut off from your surroundings and always being the observer, always on the outside. However, even while I am on the outside, I am engaging by putting so much trust in strangers every day.
I guess it just comes down the to fact that I have faith in humanity... I whole-heartedly believe that the majority of people out there are good and helpful. I try not to do stupid things but I like taking a bus to a strange city, seeing how I feel when I get off the bus and deciding whether to stay or keep going.... and then getting by with a handful of Turkish words.
It feels a bit like closing my eyes, spreading my arms and falling backwards, trusting that something will be there to catch me... but I can honestly say, I trust that I will be caught.
Tomorrow I think I will head to another remote village before I begin moving a bit more north and west, slowly working my way back west to eventually end up back in Istanbul in three weeks.
