To a Place Long Loved

15 October 2022

For me (Leah), the heart of this trip was going to Uluköy. It would have been enough to see the land around the place that was once Macrina’s home. But I’d heard that local memory could still identify a Church Place, the likely site of the martyr shrine in which Macrina and her parents were buried.

Our guide Çansu drove the short main street and idled in front of a teahouse, asking about the mayor’s office. An old man in a beret and suitcoat told Çansu that the office was closed—with its shrinking population, Uluköy has been demoted from town to village—but he could show us the Church Place. His name was Jafar. He got in next to Becca and directed us up to a Muslim mausoleum overlooking the little town. An animated conversation ensued, and Çansu reported that this was the place the other man in the teahouse thought we were looking for. Jafar thought otherwise, but he brought us here just in case.

Jafar explaining the confluence of the two rivers—by their ancient names, the Iris and Lycus

We got in the car again, Çansu navigating around gullies deep enough to gut the undercarriage. Jafar directed us east of town. We stopped by a newly-turned field that sloped up from the road. He led us up to the crest and down across another field, this one of wheat stubble with grains still scattered on the rocky ground. Then another field of thistles and dead grass. As an adolescent he’d been a shepherd, he told Çansu, and that’s how he knew the Church Place. The land has since been ruined by looters.  

 He brought us to a lone terebinth tree, older than he could remember. It was near the top of a long rise whose southwestern edge was marked out in trees. This was the Church Place. The site of the martyrs’ shrine, Macrina’s grave, Annisa.

I’ve imagined the estate to the southwest of the martyr shrine. If the shrine is located on this rise of ground, Annisa’s buildings and fields would occupy the flatter land still farmed below.

We lingered as long as decently possible, but after twenty minutes or so, Jafar quite reasonably wanted to return to the teahouse. Tea was on him, he said. When the hourglass-shaped cups were set before us, he plunked three sugar cubes into his. I took heart and added two to mine. Becca had one cube, and Çansu was the lone supporter of the tea-is-in-its-purest-form-without-sugar school.

Becca urged me to ask Jafar what happened during droughts in Uluköy. (A drought and its ensuing famine figure largely in The Sun in Slender Glass.) It took me a bit to work up the courage, but eventually I did. Çansu translated, and Jafar told us about a small dam that provides backup irrigation. A 4th century farm would have no such safety.

Emboldened, I asked Çansu to ask when wheat and barley are harvested. “About the same time, in late summer.” And when are they planted? “In the fall, so the snow softens the seeds and they grow in the spring.” He told me that the grapes are harvested in September and October, but Uluköy doesn’t grow as many grapes as its neighbors. Sheep are pastured on the hills until fall, and after the grain harvest, the cows are put out to graze the fields.

I asked Çansu to communicate my thanks. These agrarian rhythms make up the fabric of my novel, and I’ve been approximating them from an ancient Roman handbook on farming. But Italy is far away. To be able to talk to a shepherd-farmer from Uluköy/Annisa was an immense gift.

Jafar gave Çansu his phone number in case we had further questions. I’d brought along my favourite translations of the Life of Macrina, a work by Anna Silvas with Macrina’s ikon on the cover. I pulled it out to show Jafar the woman whose story brought me here. Men from the four other outdoor tables leaned in to look. Jafar asked me to bring him a copy of the book when it was done, so his nephew in university could translate some parts to him. I said I’d try.

 Then the call to prayer emptied the streets, and Becca and Çansu and I returned to linger at the Church Place. After that the plan was to seek out Basil’s retreat—but that’s an adventure for another post.