Looking for Aphrodite. David Price Williams
the flag staff. After an hour or so the mainland of Turkey loomed out of the morning
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sea mist, becoming more and more rugged and daunting as we came close in to the shore. So rocky and threateningly forbidding were its cliffs and peaks that I could not imagine who could possibly live in this wild country. The captain broke out the Turkish flag on the stay, a sinister blood red with white crescent moon and star. I really began to wonder where I was going; it seemed so far from any kind of civilisation, and so alien. But finally the less inhospitable harbour of Marmaris hove into view at the far end of a narrow inlet surrounded by towering mountains and we moored near the tiny customs house on the quayside. In those days, before mass tourism and endless hotels along the sea front, Marmaris was a small fishing village with only a couple of streets opening off the maydan, the village square, overlooked by the unkempt ruins of a 16th century castle.
The captain showed me into the customs building where I at once began to ask nervously about transport to Knidos. The port police there were very helpful and as they stamped my passport, they pointed to a row of Ford Transit mini-buses on the corner of the square. I walked over and started mouthing my final destination. After a very short time, in fact what felt like almost immediately, some dollars changed hands and I was ushered into the back of the nearest of these minibuses, the doors were closed, and off we went without further delay; it was as though they had been waiting half the morning for me to arrive. This, I learnt, was a dolmuş, a shared taxi, and it was already full of passengers who, I reasoned later, must have embarked maybe an hour or more earlier and had sat patiently for the bus to fill up. I happened to be the last. Occupying all the main seats in front were leathery faced men with flat caps, rather rotund apple-cheeked women with head scarves, and a number of small children. I was given a wooden stool by the back door which as I soon found out rocked and rolled each time we went round a bend so I had to wedge myself in such a way that I didn’t fall forwards every couple of minutes. I just hoped that the back doors had been properly closed otherwise I would be propelled unceremoniously into the street.
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We left the village behind and started to climb slowly up a winding dirt road, higher and higher above the harbour, until Marmaris eventually disappeared from view and we were travelling in rough mountain country ever westwards – at least I hoped it was ever westwards as I had no idea where we were going or how we were going to get there. It was clearly no use asking my fellow travellers as no-one spoke any English. I tried to work out where the sun was to discover the direction, but the sun was high overhead and the twists and turns in the road made it impossible. I had to trust that the assembled villagers, I assumed that’s who they were, were hoping to go the same route as me and that my initial description of the destination had been fully understood.
Periodically the mini-bus would come to a stop and one or two of the occupants would disembark. This seemed to me to be in the middle of absolutely nowhere, amid trees and scrub along the road-side. There was no sign of any habitation, no village, no farm or house – just what appeared to be an empty and craggy landscape. Other times we would be waved down and other travellers would join the party, again from what seemed equally uninhabited country, some of them carrying chickens in baskets which they kept in their laps. Now and again there was what appeared to be a field, in one case with a lone camel standing amid the stubble which gave the scene a mildly oriental flavour, but otherwise everywhere appeared to be entirely wild nature.
After about two hours of this bumpy, uncomfortable journey the road came down to the sea’s edge for a short while and ran among groves of Aleppo pine trees. My spirits rose that we were arriving somewhere, but then it dived back into the hills soon afterwards and the discomfort continued. It was not until about four hours into the drive that the road straightened out and we speeded up and curved into the first village I had seen since Marmaris. This turned out to be Datça, a collection of old houses along the sea-side surrounding a small harbour filled with little fishing boats. And Datça, it
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transpired, was to be the end of the line for our mini-bus. Everyone got out, chickens and all, the back doors were opened and I was motioned to climb down. I didn’t know where Datça was but I had arrived there in the centre of a dried out mud patch which served as the village bus station. Several other conveyances, mainly horses and carts, were lined up in the middle of this bus park. Otherwise, there was nothing. I stood with my holdall by the Transit in the middle of that warm afternoon totally unsure of what was to happen next. I quizzed the driver – Knidos? Knidos? He beckoned me over to a higgledy-piggledy clutter of small chairs and illustrated that I should take a seat. After a few minutes a glass of tea was brought to me on a little plastic saucer with two lumps of sugar. I sipped nervously and watched what was happening, trying to make some sense of the scene. I was offered a tiny cigarette from a paper packet – ‘Birinci’ it said on the front of the packet; “First class!”
The driver of the Transit was talking to a gaggle of men, pointing to me, and then pointing westwards. Heads nodded sagely. A small boy arrived with a brass tray which he held shoulder high by a tripod; more tea was handed around. I rose to remonstrate with the men, but the Transit driver nodded to me to sit down. It was all under control, as he seemed to understand it. After an hour or so had passed, the sun noticeably getting lower in the sky, and several more glasses of tea having been brought to me I was just becoming really anxious to know that I wouldn’t be spending the night in the Datça municipal bus park when an aged light green Willys Jeep puttered into view and stopped. Smiles were exchanged all round and I was motioned into the front of this ancient conveyance. As I did so, the driver alighted and went over to drink a glass of tea. I too was brought yet more tea such that I wondered if the jeep was perhaps the first tea-driven vehicle I had come across. More time passed. More tea was drunk until the jeep driver, as though suddenly remembering why he was there, jumped into the somewhat patched driving seat and we rattled off out of Datça and into the mountains again.
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The dirt road became narrower and more rutted as we climbed the slopes, with jagged peaks lacerating a sky blushing pink in the slowly setting sun. We clattered ever westwards – I was sure of that now with the sun going down in front of us – until we reached the cobbled street of a little village crowded with stone houses which I learned was Yazιköy, later to become my very own village. The driver stopped the jeep outside a miniscule café-style building and glasses of tea were handed out again and a couple of cigarettes smoked before we lurched onwards. It was getting dark by this time and the shadows of trees crowded in along what had now become a very rough single track. The jeep vibrated its slow, winding way into the dusk. I was speculating where on earth we were heading when abruptly in the headlights a classical polygonal marble wall appeared and fell behind, then another and another, with pieces of fallen, carved stonework lying about in the undergrowth. This, I later learned, was the necropolis of Knidos and my spirits rose that we were arriving at an archaeological focus of some description out here in the wilderness. The driver pointed in front and shouted ‘Kinidos’ over the noise and way in the distance I could make out the dark reflection of the sea and some small points of light. A few bumpy minutes later we arrived in a cloud of dust and I found a group of men seated watching a film being projected onto the back of what was to be my drawing office. No-one looked at us. They were too intent on the film. But in no time a couple of Brits arrived out of the gloaming and I was welcomed with open arms. My Knidian experience was about to begin.
✳ ✳ ✳ ✳
There were few if any permanent buildings at Knidos when I arrived apart from the dig house, our drawing office and the police post. The lower orders of our own Expedition staff, of which I of course was one, were billeted under canvas, three or four to a tent, pitched on the open space of the isthmus half way between the island and the mainland. We had little if any mod cons. But the workers had even less, and spent each night
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sleeping among the field walls in the midst of the ruins, with their donkeys tethered nearby.
That first night I arrived at Knidos I was assigned to a tent and I was immediately warned about scorpions. ‘Never mind the big ones, it’s the little flesh coloured ones you have to worry about’, I was told. I imagined being infested