Still, I couldn’t fault the logic behind their suggestion and, after a bit of faffing about in the hope of finding an appropriate alternative way to show my gratitude, I embarked on a project to restore the old Ramadan drums that were lying forlorn in the basement of the belediye (municipality) building with their skins ripped apart. Meanwhile our Ramadan drummers were making do with hammering on a much less romantic old olive-oil tin. Those were early days in my Turkish love affair, when I was still a little wide-eyed and innocent, and it’s a story recounted in the “Tales from the Expat Harem” anthology for anyone who’s interested. Suffice to say, one year later Ramadan rolled around again and, surprise, surprise, the drummers were still tapping out their refrain on an empty olive-oil tin despite the arrival of my nice new drums.That olive-oil tin was such a disappointment to me. In the backstreets of Güzelyurt near Aksaray I’d watched a drummer and his aged mother striding around with a real drum, an impressive drum, something that reeked of honorable tradition. Instead of its deep bass rumble, our wretched tin gave off a hollow rattle, despite which it was still capable of giving me a nasty scare. At that time I was living at the top of a hill with just a handful of houses nearby and then a long stretch of track running out to the solitary residence that is now the Traveler’s Hotel. The rat-a-tat-tat of the approaching drum would wake me up before it faded out into the distance as the men started down the track; then silence would descend enabling me to doze off again. Then they would retrace their steps to my house and recommence banging immediately beneath my window. It was amazing that I didn’t have a heart attack the first time this happened.
Now we have a new local government for whom proper drums seem to be a higher priority. Last week I’d just turned out the lights when I heard the familiar sound of the drummers making their way uphill to my house. Since it was only 2:30 a.m., I hauled myself out of bed again and went to watch their progress from my terrace. The night was quiet and the yellow lights on the Merkez Cami (Central Mosque) ringed the minarets like twin diadems. Slowly four young men marched round the corner and to my delight I saw that they now had a real drum just like the one in Güzelyurt. What was more, every now and then they broke into the same shouts I had heard before in İstanbul where they had sounded almost like choral singing. Around the village I saw lights coming on again as people roused themselves for suhur. Then a car alarm punctured the night with its furious screeching. The drumming was all that was needed to set it off, putting paid to all ideas of romance, and reminding me just how much things really have changed around here.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
