Tekkekoy Caves

All I heard was old caves in Tekkekoy. It was about a 20-minute ride from the center of Samsun. “Koy” means “village” in Turkey and although Tekkekoy keeps its village name, it looked like a small town with its small streets full of buildings. Yet, its people preserve their sense of locality that is most strong in villages: everyone on the street stared at me as if I was a tropical animal they have never seen before.
I asked a couple of people where the caves were and ended up walking up and down on both sides of a small brook. Finally I was told that the caves were far and I should take a cab. By that time I was also very uncomfortable because of the way people stared at me and didn’t want to go on a desolate dirt road towards the mountains alone. On my way to the center of the town where I could find a cab, a few 8-9 year old boys started following me on their bikes and asking me who I was. I did say something but I don’t remember now, except that I tried to be kind in my discomfort.
Men usually stare at a lonely woman regardless of their age or appearance in Turkey. Sex is a taboo and anything female attracts their attention a little too much. But the way I was stared at in this town was a different kind: I was “the other”, the foreigner, someone they don’t understand. A foreign, mature aged and single woman wearing a skirt talks about going to the caves in the mountains. This obviously didn’t make any sense to them.	Second half of this climb was hard	Roads: Thousands of years apart yet parallel
In about 5 minutes it didn’t make much sense to me either. What was I thinking wearing that skirt knowing that I was going to see caves? I’m a hike lover, how come I didn’t guess it may include some climbing? I was picturing in my head one single big cave that was on a street level, maybe even inside the village among the houses. It turned out that there were hundreds of caves carved into a very large area far from the town on the hills.
The cab dropped me off right under the biggest (and closest) cave and told me if I need help I should shout to the nearby house. There were steps climbing up to this rock/hill and quickly I realized that coming down will be way more difficult than climbing these steep, very narrow and irregular steps. The caves were quite amazing. These cave settlements are said to date some 60.000-10.000 BC. For me this is way more than I can grasp.
Many findings dated before the use of metals. The steps and some of the rock roads are also old, and of course the steps were fixed-renovated. Luckily they weren’t turned into some polished extensive granite steps, at least not yet. The caves are just what they are in their natural environment. For me this especially makes them quite beautiful and protects
them from being carelessly “packaged” and sold to tourists like me. I admit that I would have liked to be able to climb and go inside of the many other caves that were way too high up on the cliffs, yet personally I’m ready to sacrifice that to their untouched beauty. My American self here is quiet and she knows not to ask for any signs explaining the history of the caves. On my way back to the Tekkekoy I met an old man. I was staring at his beautiful calves when started talking to me. He told me that some company just signed an agreement/lease to “make over” the caves, with lights, a restaurant etc.
The blackberries were delicious on my way back Soon enough the kitsch and mundane will put their shadow on the ancient and quiet beauty. I can’t help but remember my dear teacher Brugh telling us once how some people are disturbed by plastic Jesus figurines sold next to a beautiful ancient church and how, in reality, those two complemented each other. Light and shadow in balance.

Amisos

After they learned that I was traveling for pleasure, the woman and the man who served me breakfast at my hotel insisted I should go see the “Amisos Hill.” I have seen cable cars moving up and down a hill on my way to the hotel but didn’t know what it was. They also told me about the caves in the village Tekkekoy. So I decided to stay one more day in Samsun, took my luggage back up to my room after breakfast and set out for Amisos Hill first.
It was a five-minute ride up to the hill and the view was quite nice indeed. When I arrived to the top, the first thing I saw was a big restaurant with kitsch decorations all around it in the open area. The visual “noise” of the restaurant was contrasted with quiet tapered hills on the right. There was no sign showing the way to the supposedly historic site, so I choose to move away from the irritating restaurant. There was a wooden walking path built around these two hills. I walked on it for a while, looking for some old wall or ruins. I choose this way of not researching the hell out of my destination points consciously and I still enjoy it: I had no idea what a tumulus was when I arrived at Amisos. This ignorance brings an element of emptiness in my mind to be able to receive the experience without any mental pollution. If I read about Amisos before and knew all the facts of its known history and saw the images of the sites, the site would not be virgin to me any more when we first met and I would not be virgin to it. My mind would be already filled with information, causing me to inevitably have ideas, expectations and feelings about the place before I experience the place. Now, on the other hand, I was walking around like an idiot, not seeing what I was looking at.
As the wooden path curved around the two tapered hills, there were signs on them that read, “Don’t climb on the ‘tumuli’” and I was asking myself where the hell were these tumuli. I saw a piece of ancient looking walls by the side of one of these hills and immediately jumped on it and started taking pictures, happy that I found something!  Another curve on this path finally took me to the entrance of one of the tumulus graves: it turns out that those tapered hills were the sites I was looking for. To my eye they looked more or less natural, yet now I learned that they were human made hills to bury their dead inside. The first one was carved inside the hill after the hill was “made” by piling up the earth. It had three rooms connected to each other and the last one had a skeleton lying on the furthermost section from the entrance. In a few moments after I got inside, I started feeling something extraordinary. It was a physical feeling in my body, especially on my back and in my arms. I was awestruck feeling the age of this place. It wasn’t that important to know the numbers, it was just too old and I could feel it
physically in my body. The space was communicating to me through some energetic way that it was old. I felt it almost like weight, some sort of pressure squeezing my body and I must say, I was a bit scared because the intensity of it kept increasing. I walked to the innermost part, stared at the bones of the deceased and then sat down on the floor to calm myself down. I was scared and at the same time
Second tumulus was closed curious about what this feeling might be. Was it some sort of a reincarnation story, was “I” buried in a similar place in a previous life, although I don’t believe in reincarnation? Was it that something was trying to communicate to me and I was too scared to open myself to it? As I calmed my mind I immediately dropped into meditation and watched the intensity of the pressure rise in the middle of my back then suddenly end. As the pressure “released” me I got up and stared at the bones a little more. There was no sign to tell me if this skeleton was found here in this grave and although it only feels natural that it should be as it was placed in the grave now, I couldn’t help but wonder if it could be transported here from some other grave. The way the Turkish Museums work can be described most mildly as “careless” and anything can happen.  Although this was not a museum, the case might be worse than a museum as I believe the historical sites suffer more from this lack of care. The lighting inside the grave rooms were mostly located on the ground, but the two free standing lights, together with the old wheelbarrow leaning against one of the ancient walls were distracting enough. The space felt so ancient that these objects definitely did not belong here and created confusion in my experience. The walls were bare except for some relief columns.
I quietly waited until some other visitors leave and sat down on my spot one more time. The curious pressure I felt increased again and decreased in a few minutes and it didn’t disappear until I got outside. The sign outside read that this grave was dated 300-30 BC and was previously robbed so there were no findings inside. I may be becoming oversensitive in this but am wondering if our appreciation for the historic sites is parallel to the monetary value of the findings inside. I wonder if we like a site better if we find golden treasures inside. The second tumulus was closed. Needless to say I was very disappointed not to be able to get inside the second tumulus.
My experience inside the first one felt like a first step and I was hoping to find the second step, a direction or a sign in the second tumulus. There was no explanation whatsoever about why they closed the second one. There was a lock on the door, and even the bench across the entrance was “closed.” This again is quite a familiar theme when visiting historical sites and museums. I remember years ago a large section of the big Istanbul Archeological Museum was closed for months just because the museum did not have money (the government chose not to give money) to hire enough employees to work in those sections. Who knows why this tumulus was closed now. Later I learned that the many precious findings from this second tumulus were exhibited in the Samsun Museum.

Beginning Samsun

Short History: The oldest settlements around the region go back to Paleolithic and Chalcolithic eras. Samsun (then known as Amisos) was settled between the years of 760 - 750 BC by people from Miletus who established a flourishing trade relationship with the ancient peoples of Anatolia. In the 3rd century BC, Samsun came under the expanded rule of the Pontus Kingdom.
The Romans took over in 47 BC, and were replaced by the Byzantines after the fall of Rome. The Seljuks captured Samsun in 1200, then Ottomans in the beginning of the 15th century. In the later Ottoman period the land around the town mainly produced tobacco. The town was connected to the railway system in the second half of the 19th century, and tobacco trade boomed (My father smoked the “Samsun” brand cigarettes for long years.The ferry Bandırma that took Ataturk from Istanbul to Samsun, arriving in its destination on May 19, 1919, the date that traditionally marks the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence. I actually started my travel with Samsun: it was the first city I arrived from the Western part of Turkey. I started this blog later in Sinop and decided to write about Sinop first while my impressions were fresh. I chose Samsun to be the start because I had planned to travel towards the east and thought Samsun was a good mid-point to start with. Plus it was easier to find transportation from Izmir to Samsun.
Wax sculptures showing Ataturk's arrival at Samsun to start Turkish War of Independence I was disappointed to see that it was quite a big city as my vision of the Northeastern Turkey was small little cute and green cities embracing the Black Sea. Samsun, on the other hand, promises to bury you under streets stuffed with ugly cement buildings. I immediately disliked the city and wanted to leave the next day, hopefully to a smaller town on the eastern shore. I packed my luggage next morning ready to leave.
My hotel was about 45 minutes away from the center of the city. My plan was to go see the Samsun Museum and from there not coming back to my hotel to get my luggage but directly leaving from there. I brought my luggage downstairs and told the receptionist I was leaving. He invited me for breakfast. There was another woman who seemed to be working in the “hotel” and she had made some pastries for breakfast. This was my first closer interaction with people I don’t know in this trip. They were both very nice. The man was quite handsome and he had some softness, some humility mixed with sadness, which intrigued me. Later I realized that he was disabled and used walking sticks. Turkish people’s general attitude towards the disabled is mere and severe pity and there is not much support for them. Even the sidewalks don’t have ramps for the wheelchairs and with our sidewalks and streets being so irregular, it is almost impossible for them to go out on the street without someone assisting them. The woman was in her forties and had a traditional look with her clothes and her headscarf, but she was wearing the scarf as a part of her tradition rather than a political statement (which is another huge ongoing discussion here in Turkey and one can tell from the way the scarf is worn.)
She was missing many teeth in her mouth and her remaining teeth were dark yellow. As we were chatting they were both baffled by the fact that I was traveling alone as a woman. I told them I have been living alone away from my family since the age 17. When I said that the woman looked at me in the eye and said “I wish you spent those years with them.” She was truly sad for me for being separated from my family. In Turkey people exist communally. Family ties are very strong and even after getting married the children continue their parent/child relationship in a very close manner: usually they live in the same village, town or city and quite often in the same building, if not in the same house. Decisions are made together and the “child”, whatever their age, do not easily get autonomous and are usually dependent on their parents emotionally. But it is not only dependency; it is a case of “living together” and sharing almost everything. The “privacy” concept does not exist in Turkey. Someone who doesn’t share their communal way of being is seen as cold and remote, even arrogant.  We always eat together here, we go out together and we spend time at home together.  Everyone asks about every detail of your life all the time and that is the norm. People freak out when I spend a few hours in my room alone. I have been experiencing this change from my private, autonomous and “free” self to my communal Turkish self each time I go back and forth between US and Turkey. The transition period is very uncomfortable, even painful. When I come to Turkey I have my privacy walls on around me and I get very uncomfortable with the “attacks” that challenge those walls. It takes anywhere between 2 days to 2 weeks to orient myself back to the communal life. When I go back to US, I suddenly fall into a terrible loneliness, which previously was seen as privacy. In some way that I still didn’t understand, what that woman in my Samsun hotel at breakfast stayed with me.

Finishing Sinop: Museums and Today

Sinop Museum is a much bigger and richer museum than Samsun Museum (the previous city I visited, but didn’t get to writing about it yet.) This is interesting because Samsun is a much bigger city today than Sinop, but it looks like in the past it was the other way around. Although I should add that by “big” I don’t mean really big. Samsun Museum was basically one large room. Sinop Museum at least has sections. It is built right next to Serapis Sanctuary ruins; the sanctuary is in the large courtyard that surrounds the museum.
Serapis Sanctuary Ruins	From the icon collection	In the courtyard I found another kind of “mingling”: a mingling of artifacts that carried me through time. Any museum has many artifacts from many different periods of time, and the difference in this courtyard is how they stand next to each other like neighbors: the fact that there were no chains between me and them, that I could touch them and the way they occupy the open space freely made them almost feel like people, as if all had a pair (maybe many pairs) of eyes staring at you through time. Living happily ever after here in the courtyard and quietly watching the modern city grow around them. The mosaics were leaning against any
wall they could find: since we have way too many things to exhibit than we have space for, many either lie on the ground or lean against a wall like these mosaics. The Serapis Sanctuary (3rd century BC) is neighboring an old Ottoman graveyard, or most probably the tombstones were carried here from their original spot (I wouldn’t want to be lying in one of those graves if they did so.) Serapis was “invented” by Egyptians as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians, which makes me smile as in this part of the world, the richness and variety of many cultures caused many “unification” attempts, as well as
Bones of Sinop Battle soldiers under the white mausoleum many wars. Here in this tiny city on the Black Sea shore, Serapis sanctuary is sitting side by side with artifacts from Neolithic Period, with Romans, unidentified and lonely tombs, some identifiable Ottoman tombstones, with the bones of some 4,000 Ottoman navy soldiers who were killed in the Battle of Sinop in 1853 and some current day “museum ducks.” I saw chickens being raised in the courtyards of Sinop Prison too. This is new to me; it must be some kind of a new trend. In addition to the ducks (which are not wildly walking around cities in Turkey like the ones in Boston) there were chickens and other similar birds in cages here in Sinop Museum courtyard. One fine scene was one of these birds eating a neighboring bird that unluckily decided to visit from the next cage.
Sinop Museum ducks
Past and the present
Lonely tomb
Inside the museum building there were many other tombstones, this time from the Classic, Hellenistic and Roman periods. Collected from Sinop and its surroundings many findings belonged to the old Bronze Age, Hittite, Phrygian, Archaic, the Roman and Byzantine periods (dating from 3000 BC - 1453 AD.) One gallery was filled with Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman treasures. Another one was filled with a rich Byzantine icon collection. There was a room where the numerous amphoras were exhibited. Amphoras are clay vases with two handles and they were used to	Tombstone	Beautiful mosaics also inside the museum
Part of the amphora collection transport both dry and liquid products, usually via boats and hence most of them were found in the sea. Some had a seal on one handle depicting the city the goods were produced. I was sad to see that the museum marked them on their side, directly on the clay, with black permanent marker. An interesting piece was a messed up looking amphora. The tag said it was over-fired. It sure looked over fired (comparing the colors with the other amphora’s)
but the way it was smashed together did not look like overheat to me. As a potter I myself smash a bad piece right out of the wheel like that, while it is still wet. Yet it wouldn’t survive all these years if it wasn’t fired and who would fire a messed up piece at that time? Maybe there was one visionary potter who was planting the seeds of conceptual art back then.
The kiln model	Stacking cups for the dome	They excavated a kiln that was used to fire the amphoras and looking at its plan they made a model of it. As a potter I liked seeing the way they stacked fired small cups to make the “dome” of the kiln.
	Rock-cut tombs	In many sites in this region there are numerous rock-cut tombs where wealthy people were buried. I haven’t seen one yet, although in the photos they look spectacular. It is very hard, if not impossible to reach them without a car (which I don’t have) and I never know if it is possible to climb up to the grave to be inside of it. What is the use of struggling that much to reach there if I won’t be able to get inside the actual chambers? So I didn’t even attempt to visit them, although I was attracted to them immensely. I heard that in a village in Samsun there were five other graves and my next stop will be that village. Hoping that it would be possible to get in them.
Sinop Ethnography Museum is a couple blocks away that exhibit how people lived in this region in a closer time in history. It is a historic building belonging to some rich person in the 18th century. The interior was renovated and walls were elaborately painted. Every room showed a scene from traditional scenes/lives of the people.
The first one to capture my attention was the textile production room. Textiles have been produced here for a very long time. Some “weights” that were used in the weaving were found in Samsun Ikiztepe were dated 3000 BC. I got myself a small purse that was locally woven here in Sinop and knowing the ancient weaving tradition makes it extra special.
The room with the old couple in it was almost exactly like the living room of my great-grandmother. The village where my mother and my mother are from is not in this Northeastern part of Turkey, but it seems the fabric, the seating design and the small “table” where she’s sitting are all shared traditions. That seating compound/couch is made of hay-stuffed “pillows” and they are very hard, far from comfortable. The dark fabric on the wall/pillow (under the
handmade ornate white one) is exactly the same as my great grandmothers. That small table in the middle is actually made of a wooden leg/support which is separate from the top. The top is a round tray. In the old days the villagers did not use tables. That big fabric would be put on the floor, than the wooden small legs, than a giant round tray with food on it and everyone would sit around the tray to eat, putting the fabric on their laps. My mother continued this tradition in midday meals, minus the legs though. She used to put the tray right on the fabric and we would sit and eat on the floor.
It’s interesting that she always thought most of the traditional “village” ways were backwards and not modern, but this small tradition was stuck with her. I was deeply affected to see this room: if you take the old man out (my great grandmother’s husband was killed when they were newly married), seat the old woman on the couch right in the middle and add a window behind her, it would be exactly the room I spent a summer in with my great grandmother and her son and his daughters way back when I was 8 years old.
Those shoes are called “takunya” in Turkish and they are especially for wearing in “hamam”s, or Turkish baths. This pair is special (hand made with all the intricate silver decorations): the groom’s family, together with a bunch of other gifts, gives them to the bride. Many diverse cultures in Turkey have their own elaborate wedding traditions where at each step of the several ceremonies certain gifts are (and must be) exchanged between bride and groom’s family. I even received a pair of these “takunya”s before, together with a silver bowl (to be used to pour water in a
Boyabat houses Turkish bath) and a rug (again to sit on in a Turkish bath.) At age 19, my first boyfriend’s family brought me this “Turkish Bath Set” when they came to officially ask the permission of my family to marry their son. This is the first step and if the girl’s family approves, the “word” is given between two families and the couple start wearing rings. The engagement and wedding come after this. I wore that ring for a couple of years and luckily didn’t get married to by first boyfriend.
At the basement of the museum house there was a photography exhibition of Boyabat (one of the towns in Sinop) houses: apparently they represent the old traditional regional architecture and are appreciated in this way. What struck me was the hopelessness in this appreciation: the writing on the wall read: “We know and very sad by the fact that, these houses will not be able to survive the ruthlessness of unplanned urbanization and they will be replaced by cement houses in the future. These beautiful houses that represent our culture and architecture will then only live in these photographs. Signed by the Museum Management.”	Old houses of Sinop
Nostalgia of the living way before it is dead. This feels to me as a yearning for future nostalgia, foreseeing a loss and instead of any action to prevent the loss, giving up from the beginning. I am not that naïve not to know how strong the mafia is in these matters of “building modern malls” and all, and how very difficult, if not impossible to win against them, and I still think that it all lies in the change in awareness: being aware of what we are and of this immense culture and history. As long as we don’t own our past as a part of our Turkish identity, we will only act like a little child and complain and cry about this.
SINOP TODAY
Sinop is an interesting city because a good part of it is on the peninsula: wherever you turn your head you see the Black Sea. It felt to me that it was trying to be a more “western” style vacation point, with its boat tours, seashore shops and many hotels inviting especially the Turkish tourists to spend their vacation here. Usually the Western and Mediterranean coast of Turkey are the most popular vacation places, and Sinop is a drop on the Northern coast that is trying to bring the similar type of air in the area. Many old houses still stand. My Turkish and American selves are in dispute here also: My American self would like to see these old houses renovated: all painted new and all. My Turkish self feels their oldness and brokenness is the real beauty.  That sign; “Makarna kesilir (Handmade pasta service)” warmed my heart. This was on the window of a yarn shop and like many Turkish women the owner of this shop must be very skillful in preparing food for the winter. Women prepare big amounts of tomato paste, various dried vegetables/fruits, pickles, handmade pasta etc. at the end of the summer for their own use.
It requires a good deal of experience, so this woman is offering her service for any household to go make their pasta for use in the coming winter. We used to do it too in the good old days: we used to make two kinds of paste (tomato and red pepper), tarhana (a dried soup mixture), pickles and olives.

Sinop Fortress Prison

A few steps down on the main street and there is the famous Sinop Prison. I heard about this prison before but didn’t know why it was this famous. It was a little weird to think of a prison as a “museum” and I didn’t have a clear insight about what I was going to see. I started my “visit” with a very expensive bottle of locally produced organic blueberry juice. I didn’t even know we had blueberries in Turkey. It must be a trend we imported from US. I must say it tasted wonderful, so natural, unlike the sugary plastic taste of most juices in US. Right across the little café I had the juice is the shop
where they sell the handcrafts of the imprisoned (in another prison.) For some mysterious reason I was so very happy to see those little beaded ornaments and jewelry, they brought me joy. I didn’t know of course that deep inside of me something knew how dark the prison was and it was trying to raise my happiness hormones so I could deal with it. There are two main sections of the prison, each has it’s own courtyard, isolated from each other. By the time I finished the second one, my heart already weighed a ton (as you can
see on my face.) The giant rooms were empty, sad, old, damp and very very lonely. I could feel the pain of being imprisoned, it almost emanated from the walls. It was not really like that I was “thinking” what these people must have experienced; I was “feeling” it. It was an “experience”, without much help from my rational mind.
I had experienced something similar to this about 2 years ago when I was listening to a song by Hasret Gultekin. He was a folk musician and was killed (burned alive) in an attack by Muslim extremists 18 years ago. I didn’t even know the guy before I heard his name on the “burned alive” list and although I love his voice and his mastery over his instrument; I find the production/making of his music careless. Nonetheless, when I was listening to his song on YouTube that day, which came as a sudden urge, I started crying uncontrollably. As if I was asked to
experience his feelings right before he died. I had a direct peak into his pain and horror. Even if I can’t explain this, I cannot deny my own experience: my consciousness was somehow carried to some other time and to someone’s experience. My experience in Sinop Prison was not as dramatic and as clear as this (not tied
to one person, or a specific tragic incident) and it was heavy anyway. The darkness I felt in my soul put shadow on actually how beautifully old the building and the surrounding inner castle was. But that beauty would not ease the pain of the inmates here. No way. Or so I thought. But Sabahattin Ali, a Turkish writer, poet and journalist, one of
Sabahattin Ali the many famous characters in the prison’s history, disagrees with me. His poem Aldırma Gönül, written 1933 in the prison and featuring the prison life, was composed in 1977 and became a very popular song by Edip Akbayram. He says in his poem “Don’t worry my dear heart, these days will pass, console yourself in the sounds of the waves hitting these walls.” It is the power of his words that made the song such a hit for years: they tell me that, even when we think things can’t get worse, and the situation is truly terrible, the human heart keeps looking for hope. Always. How come I never saw this poem this way before? I know the song since childhood. Everyone in this country knows this song by heart. How come, we Turks are raised to be such hopeless beings? Along this journey I find my personal definition of what it is to be Turkish in today’s Turkey. One more piece, I claim, is that Turkish people don’t
This way to the "discipline cells" have much hope for anything: we don’t believe we can do better, we don’t believe we can change things, we forget to hope in the harsh reality of everyday life. One might think that the high popularity of this song is due to the lack of hope we have in our bones so we look for that hope in the song. Not really true. We listen to that song to nourish our sadness, not our hope. I remember many years ago, two of my cousins and I used that song to help us cry. We would listen to it over and over to make sure the tears would not stop. The best attempt explaining this Turkish “huzun” (roughly means sadness) is by Orhan Pamuk. He has a whole chapter titled “Huzun” in his autobiography “Istanbul.” This deep melancholic sadness is a large part of our Turkish identity, and we can’t live without it. We feed on it. We nourish it back so stands in us like a giant noble tree. We do complain about it all the time but in reality, we protect it for our lives and we wouldn’t want it to go anywhere.  Sabahattin Ali also says, “The prison days will pass one by one and will end” but unfortunately his life after prison proved to be very harsh also. Upon his release from prison, he was afraid of being killed so
The cells on the right wanted to escape. His request a passport was refused. It is believed that an agent who had been paid to help him pass the Bulgarian border killed him on the way. Another hypothesis is that the agent handed him over to the security services and he was killed during interrogation. He was only one of the many famous writers, poets, journalists, politicians,
Closing the cell door teachers and army officers who were imprisoned in Sinop Prison. In this beautiful land soaked with history and rich culture, we kill writers like Sabahattin Ali and burn our musicians like Hasret Gultekin (together with 36 others) because they expressed their ideas. How do I own this? I remember a moment in January 2007 when I heard the news of Hrant Dink’s assassination from that Armenian girl at my school in Boston. I was checking out some cameras from the school and she was the one to help me with it. She looked me in the eye and said an Armenian journalist was killed in Turkey that day. I felt terribly ashamed and helpless. What could I say to her? I didn’t kill the man myself, but it is my people, my country who has been killing people for what they think and say. It’s easy to ignore and forget, for this happens so many times that you get used to it after a while as a harsh and sad reality of life. What is difficult is to make sense of it. I know if I start talking about this they will kill me too.  The third and most horrifying section is somehow hidden and even more isolated. In the first two sections, the inmates could socialize outside in the courtyards.
In the cell The third section is between the outermost part of the prison and the inner castle that surrounds the whole thing. It is a smaller building and has no courtyard. The first thing I noticed was the darkness. It felt like time didn’t flow inside this building. Something was frozen. The first rooms I saw were darker and smaller than the ones I saw
This is the view the inmates would first see when they came out of the dark cells in the previous sections, but then I saw these cells. You can only take 3,5 normal steps in them, they were so small and pitch dark. On one corner there was a toilet. Nothing else. Dark. Only the darkness and a tiny opening on the door. I got inside one of them and tried to close the door. The old door didn’t close entirely but the isolation, the
Lost in between walls looking for the way out darkness and the timeless frozen horror of feeling for all who were put in these cells shook me deeply anyway. I wanted to stay in but could not handle more than 2 minutes. Last January I spent 11 hours a day in a dark room meditating for 10 straight days, but I could not stay in this cell more than 2 minutes. Even 24 hours in one of these cells can be detrimental to one’s mental health. I don’t think the damage of these cells can be healed afterwards. It would leave permanent damage. I came out of the cell as if I was diving in water after almost dying of thirst. As I walked out, some guide was explaining to a group of people that these were the “discipline cells” and the amount of punishment was determined by the degree of sunlight allowed. The heaviest ones were pitch dark. I remember the story of the Buddhist monks who go into a similar cell with no light for 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days and 3 hours as a way of initiation. Those monks though are trained and prepared for a long time and not all of them are allowed to do this but only the ones that are approved. Would it be possible to endure these cells by diving into the endless universes inside of us? Maybe, and still I claim that if those monks came here, they would have to train much longer to get into these prison cells. The walls, the dampness
Prison chickens and the building just eat your soul. The guide said, people who spent some years in this prison usually died shortly after they were released. The dampness, he said, damaged their lungs irreversibly. I don’t think it would be just the lungs. It is quite ridiculous for me to compare the experiences of a monk to an inmate in a cell: one goes in voluntarily, the other is forced: this "disciplining" cruelness would hurt me the most.   I may sound as if I am exaggerating but indeed after the cells I became disoriented and walked around in circles for a while through the walls and paths looking for the exit. If someone hurt a loved one, would I want the offender to be put in one of those cells? No. After seeing what it is, whatever s/he might have done, I know I wouldn’t want it. S/he would suffer terribly in a cell for sure, but this would also make her/him inhuman.