Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"No, they erased a lot that we need to know," she said. "The Kemalists and the reformers changed the culture. They threw away old words, they got rid of foreign words. But these words are part of who we are. We need to know them."

I was transfixed by her eyes, by her slender fingers, a silver chain swinging from a ring on each finger.

"We need to know about the Armenians," she said.

"You say these things in public?" I asked.

"Yes, though it's hard, especially for a woman here."

"I'm interested that you have public intellectuals, speaking their mind. Most countries don't have them."

"We have many. We fight and disagree all the time."

"How do you get on in the United States?"

"I like it, but I had to start all over there. I am someone here. There, I am no one."

She talked about her studies in Sufi literature and culture, not the dervishes of Istanbul but the cults and practitioners in remotest Turkey. I offered her my memory of Sufis dancing at sunset at a mosque in Omdurman, in Sudan, one of the most dramatic encounters I'd had on my Dark Star Safari through Africa. Mine had been a happy accident, hers were both vivid and cerebral; Sufism was a study for her. I was nonetheless distracted—her beauty was like a curse that prevented me from understanding the nuances of what she was saying. Still, I felt that meeting Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, I was looking at the future of Turkish literature.*

* Later that year, Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in literature.

In a casual conversation with a Turkish scholar I mentioned how impressed I was with the work of writers like Pamuk and Shafak. And there were many others who'd not been translated. How to explain this literary excellence?

"Nomadism," he said. "The storytelling tradition is strong in Turkey because of our seasonal migrations. Iran has been settled for twenty-five hundred years. Greece is sedentary. But Turkish society has a dynamic structure. Because of this constant movement we became storytellers."

All that remained, before I took the night express to Ankara, was a visit to the dentist. I had a loose filling, and fearing that the discomfort would only get worse over the next weeks or months, I asked for a recommendation.

That was how I came to be sitting, canted back in a chair, being examined by Dr. Isil Evcimik, who was a pleasant woman in her late forties with a reassuringly well-equipped office. Cuddly toys dangled nearby, to cheer up anxious children. They cheered me up too, and when Dr. Evcimik told me that her daughter was at Princeton, on a full scholarship, I felt I was in good hands.

It seemed part of Dr. Evcimik's technique to murmur a running commentary on what she happened to be doing at any given time. With a hypodermic syringe in one hand and a swab in the other she said, "I will first swab"—and she swabbed my gums—"and then we wait a little." We waited a little. "Then I put the needle in very slowly. Please tell me if it hurts." It didn't. "Good. Now we wait a little more."

Was the tooth cold- or heat-sensitive? she wondered.

I didn't know, but it was sensitive.

"Can be either. Can be both. But better if it's one or the other."

She explained reversible sensitivity. That could happen to me. Or there was irreversible sensitivity. "In that case, you might need a root canal. Where are you going to next?"

"Georgia. Azerbaijan."

"A root canal in Azerbaijan? I don't think so." She selected a drill, saying, "Now I will drill amalgam." She drilled the loose cement out of the tooth and said, "This is amalgam." She sprayed the tooth, she drilled some more. She then mixed a substance on a dish. "This is composite. This will taste very bad. Please don't swallow any—it's not poison, though."

I sat, mouth agape, listening.

"Now I will fill." She tamped the composite into the hole. "This"—with a flourish of a tool—"is a bonding agent. We will apply. And then"—a flash of silver—"a collar. Like a belt around the tooth, so you can floss." More manipulation. "Not done yet. It's high. I will smooth it." She did so. "Please bite on this." I did so twice. "How is it?"

"Better."

"I don't like 'better.'"

She buzzed it some more, she perfected it, she told me that she had always wanted to visit Hawaii, and to this end she gave me her bill, a bargain at the Turkish equivalent of $153.

When I told Dr. Evcimik I was taking the train that night to Ankara, she said, "That's the best way to go. The plane is expensive and lots of trouble. The airport is far and there are always delays. When I go to Ankara myself I always take the train."