An Adventure in Selçuk, in Which More Carpets Are Purchased

Another long bus ride to get to Selçuk. While there are a lot of small carriers flying from tiny airports all over Turkey, most of them have a rather inconvenient schedule and they usually only fly a couple times a week. If you could make it work for you, it's an easy way to get around. Otherwise, you are taking a bus. While we did look into car rentals at one point, gasoline here was ridiculously expensive. Filling the tank of a compact car would have cost "For a few dollars more you could have bought a house" amounts. Bus travel was cheap, they ran frequently, and they were generally on time. In fact, you barely saw any other type of vehicle on the roads in rural areas.

Selçuk is a small tourist-town that borders the ancient ruins of Epheus, and if you didn't get to Epheus by cruise ship, this is one of the only places where you can find lodging around. It claims the ruins of the temple of Artemis, but by ruins, I mean ruins. Theres an odd stubby pilar or two in a field.

At this point in our trip, our clean clothes had run out, and the hotel was nice enough to take on the job. Unfortunately, it ended up being a complete disaster and we ended up leaving Selçuk with our bags laden with still-damp clothes, and an overtired hotel manager shrugging and telling us that we simply gave him too much to do. Lesson learned. Necessitates only.

We walked around Selçuk and planeed to hit the ruins of Epheus as soon as it opened the next morning. We heard nightmareish descriptions of how packed the ruins get once the cruise ships and tour buses arrive. Like, comparisons to Times Square crowded.

Isa Bey is an 800 year old Mosque that was supposedly built by people who didn't know what a proper Mosque looks like, so they built it based on the Roman and Greek temples and churches in the area.

One of the things I really liked about Turkey was that if you were dressed properly, you were allowed to go into the Mosques as long as it wasn't prayer-time. While we were traveling in Morocco, we weren't even allowed to peer in the doorway without being shooed away, so it gave the whole country a more friendly, welcoming vibe.

Most of them were amazing inside. Light, airy places with soaring domed ceilings and intricate chandeliers.

As the sun set, I stumbled upon a row of carpet dealers.

Oh, hello there. I had happened upon Lily's, who perhaps was the only lady carpet dealer in the area, and the only one I met the entire trip. She was a chatty, friendly, worldly sort of woman. She had a very small selection, but everything was very high quality. I didn't want to wait until Istanbul to buy as it would be more expensive there, and probably more bothersome as the competition is fierce and the whole sales pressure thing drives me a bit batty.

While traditional turkish carpets are generally knotted (as opposed to flat woven) I only really cared for the really high-end ones, where the knots were tiny and the design edges were crisp. A cheap turkish carpet looked cheap. It wasn't in the stars for me to go home with a $40,000 persian carpet that took three people a year to make, but I also found some really nice kilims, which are tapestry woven and embroidered.

The traditional Anatolian designs were lovely- geometric, not too busy. The yellow one above was a favorite, but we ended up with a game plan of getting three smaller ones instead. We already have two large carpets from our Moroccan adventure, and I really didn't see the sense of buying another big one when we don't even know where we might live next year.

There's just something so appealing about handmade carpets. They warm up the room and they will last you a lifetime, and it totally makes me smile to think of all the places we've been to get them, and all the places they will move with us in the future. A real flying carpet.

Tea was poured, and we sipped as they pulled out rug after rug from the stack, and then cleared away the ones we were meh about. Lily had a great eye- as soon as I liked one, she would pull out all the other similar ones she had, or ones she thought I would like.

I told her assistant, "Go to New York, you should really consider working in pizza there", as he spun the carpets in the air overhead.

We came back the next morning before our flight, haggled like the dickens over more tea, and in the end she wrapped up three small kilims in a tiny (but heavy) carry-on bag. The lovely kilims are currently scattered around the Parisian apartment, helping me contemplate the future and envision which floors they might grace a year from now.

Furnishing my Future Palace

I had no real intention on purchasing and lugging around beautiful large-scale handmade rugs. Being a migrant with no real home makes it difficult to buy home furnishings. I'm loathe to buy as much as a tea pot without having to seriously consider the consequences of having to pack it up and ship it eventually. But alas, I am a sucker for beautiful artwork.

There were lots of places in Marrakech that had rugs, and Fes had its fair share as well. One place in particular caught my eye- Coin Berbère. The shop, a bit more enclosed than the rest, was filled with treasures. Amazing things. Antique things. Pottery and Jewelry and carved panels and weavings. I would have gladly paid admission just to look...it was a treasure trove. Not too many souk stands get a nice write up in the New York Times either.

The owner, Mohammed (oh, everyone other guy we met shared the name) motioned for us to follow across the street and up a narrow staircase. There, a room, bursting with color.

I knew this was the man I would be buying carpets from. It's just narrowing them down that's the problem.

We talked dyes, we talked tribes, we talked spinning, we talked sheep. Each Berber tribe has their own distinctive style and pattern and palate. Indigo, saffron, flowers, cochineal, roots, and henna are all used to make the amazing colors. Everything is handspun, hand woven, by Berber women, working for a pittance, with the skills passed on through the generations. It is much more than a mere floor covering.

Mohammed patiently pulled out the ones that fit the criteria. Not too huge, not small. Nothing with sparkles or too much knotting. No silk. No pressure.

I loved this embroidered one.

But they were all amazing, one-of-a-kind works of art.

Some of them reminded me of Gee's Bend quilts.

Mohammed had the habit of unfurling the rug dramatically, while simultaneously hushing everyone in the room.

I kind of fell for this slightly shabby antique:

But the more intricate ones called to me as well.

This one he called the "Berber Picasso":

It was enormous, but I wanted it. He says it sells for $40,000 at ABC Carpet in New York. Having shopped for rugs there, I believe it.

The idea of buying a house and decorating completely with furnishings and rugs from this store started playing out in my mind.

But remember, no pressure. He said, "Think about it. Discuss it. Come back when you are ready." Which no one else in Morocco has ever said, ever.

And come back we did. After browsing more rugs around town, I could honestly said he had the best of the best, and he had handpicked the finest out there. And we brought friends with us as well. And the friends also had no intention to buy, yet they went home with three of them.

I showed Mohammed the pictures I had taken of the ones we liked best. He pulled them out of the piles, put them on the floor, and sent his brother to fetch some mint tea.

I found out I was terrible at haggling. It was just too much pressure. Plus, the price he was asking, I thought it was more than fair for the amount of work that went into it. So count me out when it comes to negotiating something handmade.

"Close your eyes, open your heart, and take this rug home with you" Mohammed commanded.

Several cups of tea and bathroom breaks later, I went home with the above carpet. It's amazing. Now that it's home, I'm even more in love with it. It's my colors, all wool- natural grays and browns and mauves that were dyed with poppies and then left out in the sun to age and fade.

This one was purchased as well. It's much larger than the mauve one, with a sturdier cotton warp and it's mind blowing to have this currently in my apartment:

The colors...the patterns...

Our friend went home with the "brother" of the colorful one. It's the same pattern, but more negative space.

Which, if I wasn't so afraid of spilling wine, I would have grabbed that one too.

Everyone went home happy. Mohammed rolled up the rugs snug as a bug in a rug, wrapped them up with plastic and tape, and we were even able to put this in our hiking backpack for the plane ride home. He does ship as well, but it was going to cost way too much and take weeks (and I am just in love with La Poste in so many ways right now) so we opted to carry it out.

If you are ever in Fes, do yourself a favor. Buy a rug from this man.

Coin Berbère 67 Talaa Kebira (in the Haddadine quarter of the Fez medina) (212) 35-63-69-46.

Fes

...or Fez, if you must. Yes, it's where the little hats were made. Not so much anymore, but the name stuck.

Back across the middle Atlas to the city of Fes.

It was a beautiful ride, with lots of snow. There's even a European-style ski resort up there, and it's surrounded by an unexpected pine forest.

We were meeting a group of our friends in Fes. Original plans of spending the whole time together in Morocco went awry, so we ended up hanging out mostly in Fes. Which was fine. Fes was a great place.

Like Marrakech, it had a beautiful old médiéval medina, with lots of twisty narrow streets and souks.

It was a bit smaller than Marrakech and I just got an all around better vibe from it.

The ancient city gate.

The souk was easy to navigate. You go down the hill and the stink of the tanneries hit you, and that's where all the leather good can be had. Go up the hill, and you get carpets and food.

And did we ever.

We found a lovely, funky cafe called Clock.

After a long, ravenous lunch I decided that I would probably move in if they let me. Eventually, it was decided that the cooking class that I wanted to take (I try to take one wherever I may roam) would most definitely be in the kitchens here.

Everything we ate so far had been good, but this was a step above.

The staff was as nice as could be as well...

and there was a Camel burger on the menu. It tasted a bit like mutton.

More about the cooking class later.

Outside the grand palace, we found a souk for the locals. It was packed with locals and much more fun that the main souk in the medina. You are expected to haggle here. We had an Arabic speaker in our group (sneaky), two Chinese speakers, and four of us spoke French, and we all spoke English...so in between the 5 of us we could communicate what kind of price the locals were getting, and what kind of price we were willing to commit to. You know you are going to be paying more than the locals. It's not a tourist tax per say, but more of a "you are wealthy enough to travel here, you can damn well afford to pay a couple bucks more for that" tax. Some of the handiwork was astounding. Embroidery on handmade shoes, leather bags and belts. The shoes ended up being bargained for less than $20 US for a pair, and some really nice handbags for about $50. It's a great place to go shopping. The souk ended up spitting us out into the old Jewish Quarter, which is really no longer of anything. We found a synagog Aben Danan, and for about $2, a very old man was happy to show us around. Judaism in North Africa is very slim at this point. This used to be a thriving community all over Morocco, but the only thing he could show us were pictures of cemeteries and ruins of synagogs in different parts of Morocco. Outside, the palace. It was pretty damn opulent.