While London was experiencing the traffic chaos that is the downside of the proverbial White Christmas, here in Göreme we were sitting in the sun and toasting missing guests from the frozen north who’d been prevented from joining us by the bad weather.Still, there’s no disguising the fact that the nights are getting distinctly nippy. It’s commonly claimed that cave-houses are warm in winter, but while it’s certainly true that the temperature inside the caves remains consistent throughout the year, no one could really hope to get through the winter without proper heating any more than they could survive the heat of summer without a fan or air conditioning.
Which brings me to the soba (stove), the ugly if versatile heat-generating mish-mash of pipes and panels that still rules the roost in most Göreme homes. Greedy for wood and coal, these mean machines pump out heat as if there were no tomorrow. Or at least they do if they’ve been lit by a Göremeli woman. Let one of us yabancıs near them, however, and they immediately turn sour and recalcitrant, reluctant to emit the smallest of flames no matter how lovingly we tend them.
One of my friends employs someone to go to her house every evening and get the soba going for her. Result -- a warm-as-toast welcome to come home to. “But do you remember…?” she asks, and how could I forget that miserable day when she and I and a visiting German huddled round her stove, coaxing it with matches and paper, then with cologne, then in desperation with a gas lighter. As the stove spluttered and spat and then fizzled out again and again, an image on the television mocked our efforts. Forest fires had broken out in Australia. The authorities were blaming them on a discarded match -- a match -- when we couldn’t get our stove going with three pairs of hands and three brains focused on the effort.
I’ve long since retired my stove, which doesn’t prevent me shivering whenever I remember what it put me through. Worst of all was the day when I invited someone to come to the house and try to unblock the pipes with a mysterious new ingredient that turned out to be naphthalene. This was duly tipped into the stove and a match thrown in after it. At first nothing happened. Then suddenly the temperature shot up and flames started to shoot from the tiny holes in the sides of the ancient apparatus. Within minutes the stove was emitting explosive pops and bangs and the windows were rattling in sympathy. For a minute I thought the stove might actually start dancing around the room. Then just as suddenly as it had started this performance it stopped dead again. The friend tapped the pipes with a broomstick.
“Still blocked,” she said sadly.
Years later when I was dismantling the stove to give it to a neighbor I discovered that its heat had burnt right through the floorboards underneath. Thank goodness for central heating is all I can say!
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
