Wild leaving day

 

Getting ready to leave this morning was complete madness. Ks father
borrowed his uncles minibus to drive us to Siverek to catch another
minibus to Diyarbakir to fly back to Istanbul. Ks mother had
everything ready that she wanted us to bring back to the US and
Istanbul with us which included a 20lb bottle of homemade cheese,
15lbs of tomato paste from her garden, a 4lb jar of pepper paste,
about 30 eggs, 2lbs of fresh butter and 2 huge soda bottles filled
with pomegranate molasses and she wanted us to bring bread too. With
lots of shouting we took about a third of it--the final word was
mehmet suggesting that she should pack us some animal poop to take
too. The eggs and butter were carefully packed in a bucket with straw--
I thought they were all cracked after the insane hour of bumping
around in the minibus to get to Siverek but everything arrived intact.

 

We got ready early and then waited as a bunch of people were coming
along for the ride since we were driving a minibus. Suddenly there was
lots more shouting and arm waving and stalking around from Ks father--
it turned out that one of the bad visiting sons stole his favorite
pair of pants. I'm not sure why this makes me laugh so much but it does.

 

There was some confusion about whose house we were going to for lunch
on Siverek and it turned out we went to the one house that wasn't
expecting us. Later K went out to get some of the indigo paste that we
had last time we were here--it's boiled in milk like coffee and tastes
similar but is made from ground, roasted indigo seeds. Inexplicably
the only place to buy the indigo paste was a gun store so I wasn't
allowed to come.
We got to Diyarbakir 4 hours early so we sat in a park and ate
lahmacun and some kind of really sweet baklava-ish thing that is
special to the region. When we got to the airport it was completely
quiet and when we got back it was madness--all flights at Diyarbakir
fly between 8pm and 11pm. And that giant watermelon that I took a
photo of last time we were here is a fake, I just found this out.
Arriving to our cute apartment at 1:30am I have never been so
appreciative of indoor plumbing.
The photo of the tree is from last evening when we got some sheets and
Tuba climbed the tree and shook it so the ripe mulberries would fall.
The village photo was one I managed to snap out the jolting minibus
window of another village.