“In the Steps of St. Paul.”

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVI, Issue 86, 2 November 1936, Page 4

“In the Steps of St. Paul.”

A SERIES OF ARTICLES BY

H. V. MORTON

ARTICLE No. 29

My Turkish guide, Mustafa, had been in Konya years before, in command of a squadron of Republican cavalry. He was eager, as the train approached the town, to see again the scenes of his exploits. “Look!” he cried excitedly, pointing towards a belt of trees, “a farm I burnt to the ground! Rebels were hiding in it. I biynt it over their heads; and they ran out in the smoke right into the arms of my men.” He looked again, and seemed disappointed to find that the place had been rebuilt.

I looked, with curiosity, not at his farm, but at the town, once the Iconium of the New Testament, which I h|ad 'come so far to see.

Pounding across the flat, central plain of Asia Minor, the train approached miles of feathery trees and bright green gardens, a welcome contrast to the brown, stone-scattered steppes which we had endured since morning. Wherever I looked, there were blue mountains rising on the horizon like islands from a sea; only to north did the flat plain vanish in brown distance.

Above the tops of trees I saw the roofs of one-story town buildings, with here and there the minaret of a mosque. I saw affile of camels slowly padding along a track on the outskirts of the town. I saw an old Ford car full of Turks trying to race the train on a fairly good road that sprang up from somewhere and went beside the track for a few miles.

And as I looked at Konya and tried to imagine what Roman Iconium once looked like —the city Paul knew so well —I realised how he must inevitably have compared it with Damascus. Both these places lie in a sudden burst of green due to the. presence of water. Just as the Abana, gushing through the limestone rocks of the An-ti-Lebanon, has created Damascus, so water flowing from the mountains of Pisidia irrigates the plain of Konya.

Both Konya and Damascus are high above sea-level; Damascus 2300 feet and Konya 3370 feet. In Paul’s time both towns were commercial stations

on the great caravan routes of the world. When the train stopped we jumped down to the. track and found ourselves in the motley 'crowd that in Turkey greets the daily train. Weary - looking men leaned down from the windows of the coaches in their shirt sleeves and bought skewers of kebab,

bottles of water and oranges. Turkish officers gazed out from the windows of first-class carriages; men who look rather British in their khaki tunics, but German when they put on their high-waisted, full-skirted great-coats of field grey.

In the station yard were waiting per haps thirty incredibly shaky od Victorias, each one drawn by two lively little well-matched horses. The boxseats were occupied by whip-waving and whip-cracking drivers who, in preRepublican days, would have worn a fez (and anything else they fancied), but now are obliged to wear the Kcmalist reach-me-down: caps so old that fhey collapse on the. head like greasy puddings, and suits so ancient and patched that they would create despair in the Louse Market of Paris.

“I know they look awful,” said Mustafa, “but that, is not the point. The point is that these clothes represent a change of mind and a break with tradition. That is what our great Leader seeks: a break with tradition and a—new Turkey.” For the hundredth time that day he, metaphorically speaking, took off his hat to Ataturk. We selected a Victoria and set off with much whip-cracking for the town, some distance from the station. On the outskirts I saw a newly-erected statue of the Dictator, standing on a decorative plinth in the middle of a smjall public garden. Ataturk was shown in military uniform, but the statue was redeemed from the commonplace .because his hand rested, not. on the hilt of his sword, but. on a huge stalk of ripe barley. I admire- this statue which is the work. I am told, of a Turkish sculptor. Its dignity and its symbolism are admirable. Statues no longer horrify the Turk. Forbidden by the Moslem religion in Old Turkey, they are now springing up everywhere, although, of course, they are slightly monotonous. I am told that the most ambitious piece of sculpture is the Monument of the Republic in Istanbul, the first statue ever erected in Turkey. We clattered over a paved road into Konya which, as befits the greatest

town between Smyrna and the Taurus, has a spaciousness about its new streets in strange contrast to the narrow, winding labyrinth of the old bazaars.

Old Turkey built with wood. New Turkey is building in stone. For centuries the only fine, stone buildings in a Turkish town were the mosques round which clustered a confused huddle of wooden houses.

Istanbul, which is Old Turkey, contains some of the finest mosques in the world, but its domestic architecture is deplorable. Kemal is changing all this, and stone houses on each side of wide ro{ads arc growing up in all the towns of Turkey.

Side by side with these new houses and shops are ruined Seljuk buildings which date from the eleventh century, ■crumbling town walls of the same period, and miles of narrow hen-coop shops, open to the street, where the traders of Konya make and sell their goods.

Above this strange muddle of old and new rise the slender minarets of m/any a fine mosque and the stumpy candle snuffer cone, covered with sagegreen tiles, that marks the ancient headquarters of the now expelled Order of the Mevlevi Dancing Dervishes. We caused great interest in Konya, where visitors in real European clothes —one of them obviously a foreigner — iare not seen every day. Every time I saw a policeman’s eye on me I though with contentment of Mustafa, ready always to explain that I was not a spy. We had some difficulty about lan .hotel. Tho first one wo tried had a loud speaker attached to a gramophone, which .blared out Turkish dance music incessantly. The stairs also looked sinl ister. Eventually we discovered a place called the Seljuk Palace, a small, modest looking house standing some way from the road in a little garden. I was told that it was owned by Russians. The people were charming. They rushed to take our bags up the one uncarpeted staircase. They rushed to take possession of my passport, and, no doubt, they rushed it to the police. I found myself in a small bedroom containing a wardrobe, a chair, and a bed. Two worn rugs covered the scrupulously 'clean floor boards. The window curtains had shrunk at both top and bottom so that complete privacy was impossible. Tho most important object in the room, as I was to learn later, was a stove standing almost in the middle of the room, with a big black pipe that spouted up to the ceiling and traversed the room on its way to a chimney outside. Konya, lying over half the height of Ben Nevis above sea-level, can experience hot days; but. during the night the temperature may ,hc a little above freezing point. When wood is put in these Russian stoves, the heat runs along the pipe and the room is warm in about ten minutes.

The bed looked good, but I was taking no chances. I sprinkled it freely with that which killeth the moth, the bug, and the beetle; but in the morning I felt ashamed of my suspicions, for

the place was clean. I awakened to a morning of dazzling sunlight, and decided to visit the Mosque of the Dancing Dervishes. (Article No. 30 will appear in our next issue).