Backstory: Wrestling on a mountain in Turkey
A trip for a cup of tea was interrupted by a village wrestling match.
We went to the wrestling festival by accident. My husband Jack and I are bicycling through northeastern Turkey this fall, visiting the mountains where Jack worked as a hiking guide in the early 1990s. One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, we turned off the highway and pedaled up a winding side canyon, in search of a 10th-century Georgian cathedral and a few glasses of steaming black tea.
The cathedral was there, in all its ruined glory, but the tea wasn't.
"Tea? Yok," said the village storekeeper. "Bread? Yok. Cola? Yok." Everything had been hauled several miles up the valley in preparation for the next day's wrestling festival, he reported.
Wrestling? Jack and I looked at each other. Maybe it was worth pitching our tent here in Çamliyamaç.
The next morning, the village was in a tizzy of anticipation.
We caught a crowded minibus for the white-knuckle ride up the narrow valley, and tumbled out with other passengers into a meadow surrounded by steep, mist-wrapped slopes and a scattering of wood and stone houses. The festival, we soon discovered, was a combination of county fair and family reunion; to our Western eyes, this celebration was both exotic and deeply familiar.
While we wandered around the makeshift wrestling ring staked out in the grass with plastic flagging tape, a crowd of well over 1,000 gathered in the meadow, packing the bleachers and claiming picnic spots nearby. Smoke from small cooking fires rose into the chilly air; knots of gray-bearded men sat around outdoor tables, enjoying those elusive glasses of tea; vendors loaded skewers with lamb and chicken kebabs, and hawked housewares and trinkets.
Eastern Turkey, far from the beach resorts of the Mediterranean, is a conservative place, and we were in one of its most conservative redoubts. Near the ring, women sat separately from men, according to strict Muslim custom, and all but a few women wore fringed white or patterned headscarves. Yet Turks of all political and religious stripes are famed for their hospitality, and the signs of our outsider status – my bare head, Jack's baseball cap – were met with outstretched hands and warm greetings.
In fact, the welcome was a little too enthusiastic.
During the introductions of local sponsors and visiting dignitaries, we were – to our horror and amusement – hustled before the crowd.
"These are our guests from America!" cried the emcee, with all the verve and volume of a country auctioneer. "He speaks Turkish, and she understands a little. Let's give them a hand."
The crowd applauded kindly, and we were soon allowed to slink back to our inconspicuous seats.
The wrestling began with the smallest combatants – at 66 pounds or less, they looked like energetic sparrows battling for crumbs – and moved quickly through the ranks toward experienced amateur and professional fighters. These "grass wrestlers," as they're known here, fight barechested and barefoot, most in quilted green leggings of sturdy cotton.
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