In November 2011, I was in Diyarbakir for a few days and thought it might be interesting to visit Hasankeyf again to see how things are like. As I thought the Ilisu Dam will be completed in early 2012, it might very well be the last chance to visit this village before the large part of it disappeared. (Later I read in some sources that the completion of the dam is now postponed to 2013, can anyone confirm this? Thank you very much!)
The last time I travelled to Hasankeyf was by minibus from Mardin and Midyat. So this time I decided to go via the northern way, namely from Diyarbakir via Batman. The minibuses from Diyarbakir to Batman leaves from the regional bus station in the outskirt of the city, and the journey to Batman is about 1.5 hours. I noticed a lot of cottonfields along the road between Diyarbakir and Batman; it seemed November was the harvesting season, with piles of raw cotton being bundled up in sacks and loaded onto the trucks to be transported to the processing factories.
Batman is a big town, with all the usual shops and businesses one would expect to see in a mid-size city anywhere in Turkey. It is a bit difficult to envisage that this place used to be a village of about 3000 souls. With the discovery of oil fields in the area near Batman in the 1950s, the size of the town began to expand and modern Batman has more than 300,000 inhabitants and plenty of high-rise apartment blocks and buildings. The buses to Hasankeyf depart from Batman's Ilce Garaj (provincial bus terminal), which is right at the centre of the town. Here is the tricky part though: there are two types of buses that go to Hasankeyf. First type is the municipal buses run by the municipality of Hasankeyf, and the second type is the usual mini-bus that travel between Batman and Midyat. The buses operated by Hasankeyf Municipality are bigger and more comfortable, but they do not necessarily leave on schedule. Which means it might be worthwhile to check up the mini-buses which depart for Midyat every half an hour from the same terminal. In case you decide to travel to Hasankeyf on board one of these minibuses, make sure you remain on your seat until the bus leaves, because sometimes the drivers would prefer to give seats to those going all the way to Midyat instead of passengers getting off halfway at Hasankeyf. Just do not be surprised if someone approaches you and ask you to get off the bus to make way for other passengers ^^
The minibus from Batman to Hasankeyf will pass by the refinery and some oil fields in the outskirts of Batman, before travelling along the scenic Tigris valley for several kilometers. As soon as some ancient mud brick houses begin to appear in clusters on top of the steep cliffs overlooking the peaceful Tigris, be prepared as Hasankeyf is just around the corner.
The bus will drop passengers to Hasankeyf off after the Tigris Bridge, next to the street that leads to the entrance to Hasankeyf's old quarters. A big yellow sign on the bridge with greetings in four different languages - Turkish, Kurdish, English, and Syriac maybe? - welcomes visitors to this ancient town on the Tigris. As I had already been to the hilltop citadel, the Upper Town and the old quarters of Hasankeyf during my previous visit, the purpose of my trip to Hasankeyf today was to take photos of this town from the other side of the Tigris, and to visit those parts of Hasankeyf which I missed out during my first visit, especially the area on the other side of the river, near the Old Tigris Bridge and the Zeynel Bey Mausoleum.
If my memory did not fail me, it seems the colourful tiles of the Zeynel Bey Mausoleum have all but fallen off in the last two years, as the building now looks much less colourful and in a much worse state of repair than I had remembered. As this part of Hasankeyf is due to be inundated following the completion of the dam, perhaps nobody has bothered to keep up with its maintenance any longer. Which is a pity, as the building used to be covered with attractive medieval glazed tiles in the hues of azur and turquoise, but now the whole structure looks so faded, spotty and truly down and out.
There are still a few households living on the shore of the Tigris, in mud brick houses and amongst ruins of the Old Tigris Bridge. I came across two shepherds herding sheeps on the banks of the Tigris, who waved at me in excitement as this part of town is not on the usual path of visitors to Hasankeyf.
It seems the authorities were carrying out some repair works to the ruins on the very top of the steep river cliffs, as I saw a cable pulley system frequently delivering supplies placed in a small box all the way across the Tigris up to the top of the cliffs. Which makes sense, as the ruins on top of the hills would be one of the very few parts of Hasankeyf to remain above the waterline, after the rest of the town becomes submerged in the water of the Ilisu Dam.
It is such a daunting thought that almost everything before my eyes, all these caves, bridges, houses, minaret, where several ancient civilisations have left their marks and where human beings have been continuously present since ages immemorable, would soon all vanish from the surface of the earth. Very likely this would be the last time I stand here on this side of the Tigris and admire the sight of this ancient settlement, as time is running out on Hasankeyf. In less than a year's time, 10,000 years of history would come to a complete stop, just like the case with Eski Halfeti and those ancient villages along the Euphrates.
On the way back to the town, I walked along the Tigris river in order to have a look at the dwellings on the ruins of the Old Tigris Bridge. It seems there are still several families living in this part of Hasankeyf, and the photo below shows how the modern mud-brick house is built on top of the ancient bridge. One of the men living in this house greeted me in Turkish as I took photos of his house. In the surrounding garden, livestocks and chickens can be seen running around the place. A few women were chatting to one another in the courtyard of their houses, while some guys were chopping up firewoods using a heavy axe. Soon these people will have to resettle in modern concrete houses or move to another city altogether.
As it was winter, by 4pm it was already getting dark. As I hurried back to the town to catch the minibus back to Batman, I came across rush hours a la Hasankeyf, with countless sheeps clogging the new Tigris bridge on their way home. All traffics to and from Hasankeyf came to a complete halt, with trucks and cars all lining up at either end of the bridge waiting for the sheep traffics to pass. Those who had been to Ireland or New Zealand will almost certainly have seen postcards entitled 'Rush Hour in Ireland' or 'Rush Hour in New Zealand' with the image of sheeps blocking the scenic countryside roads. Well, such sheep traffic jams are not unique to those places. And this moment of sheeps crossing the Tigris will be my favourite memory of Hasankeyf.
Copyright@2012. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.
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