The ads showed adults exulting in such simple pleasures as watching snow fall for the first time (and flying Emirates for the first time, of course) and I couldn’t help remembering it when I took my own first stabs at whitewater rafting and then kayaking. Those were, of course, fun firsts. However recently I found myself trying out a rather less entertaining novelty. Having set up our Old Göreme Restoration Fund (OGRF) to improve the village’s visual appearance, we need to find a way to turn good intentions into action. As a first step, the steering committee agreed that we needed to assess the scale of the problem, and so I found myself stepping out one fine morning with camera in hand, only this time I was not going to take pretty pictures of the beautiful scenery but rather photographs of the ugly excrescences that threaten to submerge the old cave houses.
My friend Ruth embarked on a similar mission and what we found made grim viewing. “I had always thought I lived in a beautiful place,” Ruth sighed. “But now I see that it is actually very ugly.”
Yüksel at the Ottoman House Hotel loaded our pictures onto his computer and converted them into a slide show. Then the OGRF committee headed to the belediye (municipality) to beard the mayor in his den. Ours was an amiable gathering, a group of like-minded people, local and incomer alike, drinking tea and chatting as we prepared to unveil our findings before the mayor, the town planner and assorted other belediye bods.
Blown up to big-screen size the photos looked even more hideous, and there were audible intakes of breath as we homed in on caves stuffed full of rubbish, corrugated iron roofs held in place with old tires and garages entirely created from breezeblocks. Of course that was as far as unanimity of opinion went before some voices were raised in favor of retaining the “traditional” white-cheese-tin flowerpots and others started arguing over what constituted permanence. Then of course we had to assign responsibility for seeing that something was done about the problems - rubbish (the belediye), some ugly new building work (İstanbul incomers), everything else (the OGRF).
As we emerged into daylight again I couldn’t help thinking how well the meeting had gone. After all, Bristol Labour Party meetings had been known to end more acrimoniously, with participants emptying the contents of tea cups over each other after disagreements. As we parted the mayor suggested collecting a second set of photographs to illustrate the good work already done in the village. Showing both sets of pictures side by side at a public meeting might, he argued, help win over hearts and minds.
Enough of the firsts for the time being. Next week I’ll be back to ho-hum normality -- snapping pretty pictures of Göreme again.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
