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CUMALIKIZIK -A Peaceful Afternoon in a Tranquil Village -
An article in the in-flight magazine of Turkish Airlines attracted my interest. It described a small village at the foot of Ulu Dağı (Mt. Ulu) near Bursa with several beautiful pictures as a "700-year-old village," where old Turkish houses were preserved. There didn't seem to be anything fabulously special, but somehow I wanted to go there just to spend a peaceful afternoon in a tranquil place. Cumalıkızık was the name of the village.
It was easy to find the bus bound for Cumalıkızık at Bursa's city bus terminal (Santral Garajı). The weather was perfect to hang around a rural village. But when I got off the bus at the end of the line, which was just an empty space, I was standing and looking round for a while, puzzled where to go first? The village was - just a village. As anticipated there was nothing. The village didn't have even a main street. In front of the nearest house from the bus stop, there was a signboard of a rough sketch of the town. I thought that it might be an administration office or something. Finally, with some hesitation, I walked into the building for any information or a map of the village - if any. A young woman inside kindly took me aside and showed me the same rough map as the framed one outside. She introduced herself as an architect sent from Bursa's City Office for "Cumalıkızık Protection - Preservation Project," though she looked so young that I thought she was a university student at first. According to the thin brochure that she gave me, this village was established in 1300's and has been "one of the rare examples of the history with its natural beauty and daily village life."
The village was surrounded by the lush greenery of early summer. Sunlight playing on green leaves was so bright. The roses in a house's garden were in full bloom. Apparently the Ottoman-style houses that lined along the sloping alleys looked really "ancient" - almost worn-out. - Most houses had leaning eaves or their window frames were a little warped. Yet, for this reason, they created a very charming atmosphere on the streets. They were not like restored models in a museum; they were real dwelling places. Most of them were two-storey and had the projecting windows on upper floors. The outer walls of the lower storey were built from rubble and mud-bricks and framed by timber, and on the upper storey they seemed to be covered with coloured-plaster, though it was partly flaked away. Strolling up and down the narrow streets for an hour, I found that houses were not along the street. There were streets between houses in this village!
When I was sitting in the shade of a tree at the outskirts of the village, taking a rest, half asleep - it was a perfect day to take a nap outside -, I suddenly got a feeling that somebody was looking at me. I turned around. Behind the tree there was a sort of stone fence, on which two little kids were standing and looking at me, giggling and talking in whispers to each other. As they noticed that I found them, they jumped down from the fence and ran away. Right after they disappeared from my sight, I heard them yelling in Turkish, "Mom! A foreigner's here!" I felt as if I became a rare animal or something. I rose and walked in the direction that the kids had run toward. Beyond a hedge there were vegetable fields, where a woman who seemed to be the mother of them was working. She raised her face. The kids were standing beside her and staring at me curiously. I spoke to her,
"Hello."
"Hi. Are you a foreigner?" she asked.
"Yes. Do many tourists visit here?"
"Many people come here."
"Are they Turkish travellers or foreigners?"
"Both," she replied and carefully stepped over furrows and walked closer to me.
"I seecit's nice weather todaycuh, what are you growing in this field?"
"Tomatoes."
Her answer was always brief, but she explained about the expected harvest in the fields. She was a young woman who wore a scarf to cover her hair. Then, we chatted for a while. As she became more accustomed to me, she became more talkative. She seemed to be a more open-minded person than she looked. Seeing her talking to me in a friendly atmosphere, the children went back to play, taking a brief look at me sometimes. She continued asking, dusting off the bottom of her floral print skirt. (Generally Turkish people love to talk and love to ask questions!)
"Are you travelling by yourself? Wow, it's nice. Where are you from? Oh, good. It's very far, isn't it? How many hours does it take? Really? Where did you learn Turkish? Did you already see other parts of the town? How do you like Cumalıkızık?"
Then, there was a momentary pause in the conversation. She pointed to the tree that I had been sitting under. She told me that the berry of the tree was edible. Indeed, the tree had small white clusters of berry or flowers, though it was hard to recognize them. We walked toward the tree. She reached out her hand to the lowest branch and snapped off a cluster and handed it to me. They looked like small cluster of white grapes. I hadn't seen and eaten the fruit yet. It tasted slightly sweet like the fragrant honey of flowers but faintly smelled of grass. If not, it was not ripe enough. In either case, it was hard to say that it was good. Watching my expression that showed mixed feelings, she told me amusedly that softer ones might taste better.
In the village, there was not any accommodation at that time (Year 2000.) Apart from the inevitable Turkish teahouse or teagarden, I saw one gozleme restaurant that looked newly opened. Cumalıkızık had survived the stormy wave of development and urbanization for a long time, but finally it looked captured by the order of the day, ironically under the name of "preservation." A big three-storey house across from the administration office was being under grand renovation as a part of the project. The young architect I met took me there so I could see the inside. It was a nice house with a large storage area on the ground floor and spacious living room on the upper floors, though the wooden stairs and floors were squeaking badly. She didn't seem to have any question about the necessity of the project and seemed to be very proud of being involved in it. But honestly, to my eyes, it was more like "tourism development" just to boost the village economy. I could easily imagine that it would be completely restored and would be relied on to promote tourism as if it's copying the Safranbolu's example. Even if the restoration is perfect and everything remains in the same old design, obviously "something" will be lost.