The crack in the Iceberg.

Gilgamesh was in his late forties, bold, robust, Persian man with dark hair and blue eyes, he had found success in the pottery trade and had saved enough to live his dream of traveling to unknown places.
family and friends were not of his interests, his only motto was ‘I, Me and Myself,’ though it sounded self-centered and selfish to the core, he never tried to hide his ideologies but rather flaunted them to his employees as selfism being the ultimate secret to happiness.

On one of his expeditions to savor serenity, Gilgamesh landed in a small town in Turkey. That evening he sat at his hotel window, looking down from the hillside at the settlements below, little lights twinkled from within the Turkish homes that beamed with colours and life.

He had spent the day out there walking his legs off from shop to shop, tasting local delicious delicacies off the Turkish cuisine and absorbing the warmth and dust on his tanned skin.

He had had a lovely day and now there was one last thing, he needed to do before he sunk himself into the soft folds of his bedding. Gilgamesh had a habit of entering about his ventures into his three by five yellow pocket notebook.

He kept a number of them and carried a new one to each destination. Taking a deep breath of fresh moist earthen aromatic air, exhaling all tiredness, fueled his enthusiasm to write.

He wrote “Everything about this town is beautiful. The people are a simple type. The houses are mostly white with red-tiled roofs complementing the greenery and stone paved roads. The air is so fresh that it almost smells like home.

The Turkish have a great sense of beauty, intricate design coloured tiles and carpets are used to beautify the interiors. There are plenty of artifact and handicrafts here.

The food is amazing but most of all I liked the taste of ‘Kuzu guvec’ it’s, lamb cooked in an earthen casserole, so tender that it just melts and lingers on the taste buds and Oh! Yes, the tea is commendable, it’s kind of addicting actually, I must have poured down a dozen or two from morning. It’s a wonderful place I could spend a lifetime here.”

At the end of the page, he added a  P.S in capital letters and wrote Top on the list- “I must visit the Aladaglar ( The Anti- Taurus Mountains in southern and eastern Turkey).”

He had been fascinating about them since he had discovered them in a magazine at the Syrian railway station on his way back home after his yearly break, not knowing that his life was on the verge of taking a three sixty degrees turn from there on. Throwing him up into the sky and dashing him down to his knees, altering the very cosmology that dwelled within him.

The next morning Gilgamesh was up before the sun could rise, he packed his backpack and now eagerly waited……

To be continued.

© Annadine Charles.