Gürün Prison Blues in Rural Turkey — Page 2
Story and photos by Marco Ferrarese



Gurun

Flat crunchy breads and olive oil-drenched feta cheese accompanied the steaming pot, which was filled with a delicious mix of eggplant and greens. After my first mouthful, I stopped feeling cold.

"I told you it was better to stay here tonight," the captain remarked from the head of the table.

Our hosts ate, drank and laughed in Turkish, using spare simple English sentences to keep us into the loop. I explained how we wanted to reach Cappadocia the next day.

"Hitchhiking," the captain giggled.

"No bus?" All of the policemen looked at us in a mix of awe and pure compassion.

"It can be very dangerous," the captain cautioned firmly, "I certainly wouldn't do it with my wife. Let me help you stop a car and go in the right direction tomorrow."

When the plates were completely swiped clean, the captain excused himself as he needed to wake up quite early the next day. Another officer led us back inside, showing the way to a forgotten bathroom covered in a thick layer of dust at the furthest end of the corridor. On the opposite side, with their heavy concrete doors sinisterly stiffened on their frames, the lock-up cells seemed to beg for occupants.


Sleeping with the Afghans
At 7.30 a.m. the next day, I almost screamed as I walked out to go to the toilet, and found the black mouth of a rifle's barrel pointed at my forehead. Behind it, a bored young soldier stood in front of one of the lock-up cells whose door was now closed shut. Upon seeing me, he staggered back and awkwardly moved the barrel away from my eyes. "Very sorry… man inside," he excused himself in rusty English. I gestured at him to explain more.

"Afghanistan man, catch no papers. Sorry my English not good," he shrugged and let me squeeze past before blocking the corridor once again.

When I and my fiancée emerged from the police station's bowels, we noticed that two other young men wrapped in torn wind jackets were loitering outside the main gate, bundles of wrapped blankets slung across their backs. They gesticulated before a group of armed and perplexed policemen. I stepped closer to have a better look: the two boy's faces still looked decent, but their clothes had been severely beaten by the sand, wind and dirt of too many dog days spent on the road.

As he noticed us, one of the officers detached from the group and came towards me.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Afghan refugees…" he sent a reprimanding stare to the two boys. "Farmer found one in field last night."

"You mean the man in the lock-up?" I asked.

"Yes. Farmer call police. We go arrest man, and man have no passport. Friends come here this morning, I think they want arrested man back. No Turkish spoken, no English…more bad than me." The cop shrugged. "What to do?"

In truth, we couldn't do much, besides feeling a deep lot of sympathy. If those boys had made it all the way to Anatolia, it meant that they had already risked their lives cutting their way illegally across several risky international land borders. To them, going west meant to start living their hopes. In comparison, I felt that our own way of pursuing "adventure travel" was just the whim of pampered children with too many opportunities on their plates. The only dignifying thing we could do was to leave awkwardly without ever looking back.

Gurun station Turkey


Next Stop, by Thumb
With guilt stirring our stomachs, we walked for a couple hundred meters until we reached the edge of town. In our perspective, it was still a beautifully fresh late September morning tainted by the sun's blinding reflections against the asphalt. I started showing my upward thumb to a number of passing cars to no avail, my mind floating elsewhere to the mountains of Central Asia. Did those guys really have to leave home?

After a discouraging half hour, we noticed a black car coming towards us at great speed. Without waiting for my signal, it pulled over right before me; a balding man in a suit and tie rocked out of the backseat, his eyes hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses. He had the secure moves of someone who already knew me.

"Good morning." That voice: it was our captain. Dressed to kill like that, I didn't recognize him at first, for the previous night he had constantly worn a simple jogging suit.

"You didn't find a car yet?" his voice didn't hide his concern. "I'm afraid I can't give you a lift now, I'm going the opposite way; but I saw you on the street, and wanted to make sure you are fine. Did you have breakfast?"

"Yes, no problem."

"Good then… take care and keep your wife out of trouble." He winked at us, and as fast as he got off, he got back in the car. Right after his vehicle made a turn and drove off, a truck appeared down the road; I waved at it with my outstretched arm, and the driver immediately hit on the brakes and stopped a dozen meters ahead of us along the highway's shoulder. Once again, it seemed that the captain had really come to our rescue. As we ran to the truck's open door with our dental guns' magazines loaded with our widest smile-bullets, I turned around one last time to see the captain's car shrink into a shiny lightball at the horizon. I wondered if he was really heading back to the station to help cook lunch for those two Afghan boys.




Marco Ferrarese is author of subcultural noir Nazi Goreng, freelance travel and culture writer, and metalpunk guitar-slinger based in Southeast Asia. He toured most hellholes of Europe and North America, hung out with Kurt Cobain's alleged murderer, and rode with truck drivers from Singapore to his native Italy. He blogs at monkeyrockworld.com and you can follow him on Twitter @monkeyrockworld.




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Related stories:

Out of Smyrna by Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer
In the Offering: Two Sides of a Turkish Sacrifice by Jennifer Eaton Gökmen
Breaking Frontiers by Maliha Masood

See other Middle East travel stories from the archives


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