Remembrance of pears past

But there are only so many breakfast invitations one can turn down, especially if they come with something of a magical-mystery-tour air about them. I live in the upper part of Göreme, in the Aydınlı Mahallesi, and last year rumors were running wild there about something in the making that was called in shorthand Ali's Ark. What precisely this was I didn't know except that it had been made out of old whisky barrels and was intended to carry visitors to one of the valleys to partake in an organic breakfast in beautifully peaceful surroundings.

So when the eponymous Ali issued the “Come to breakfast” invitation a week ago my interest was piqued enough to have me out of bed and on the road by 9 a.m. What I found was indeed something vaguely Ark-shaped inasmuch as it came with curved sides. But instead of the animals entering two by two, this Ark gathered up a group of American students plus me and a friend taking advantage of her day off to enjoy a wholesome breakfast.

The Ark was towed by a tractor along the back road to Uçhisar. Then we had to navigate a walk down a steep flight of steps cut into the rock that led eventually to a glorious shaded valley where the breakfast table was set up with a multitude of delights while a pair of orphaned ducklings and a coterie of chickens provided a chirpy-chirpy-cheep-cheep soundtrack.

As I spooned walnut and eggplant (aubergine) jams onto my plate to follow on from the fresh orange juice, menemen (Turkish scrambled eggs), and delicious fresh bread and cheese I found myself wondering about the origins of this particular Ark.

“Where did you get the barrels from?” I asked Ali as we sat outside the Kelebek Hotel.

“I think they were old Tekel barrels,” Ali said, whereupon the conversation suddenly veered off into a wholly unexpected direction. I was asking about the steps.

“My family used to get into the garden from further along the road until some rocks fell and others were blasted to make it safe. The entrance path was blocked so my father cut the steps. I used to carry 40-kilogram baskets of pears back up them from the garden. My brothers ran away to get out of the work but I was the youngest and couldn't escape.”

Pears? That's the first time anyone had mentioned pears to me as anything special in all the time I've lived here. “We'd sell the ripe pears in the Nevşehir market,” Ali tells me. “Then the İstanbul wholesalers would come for the unripe ones. We laid them out on the ground near the Merkez Cami. We'd cover them with walnut leaves to make them turn more yellow.”

“I've never seen pear buyers here. When did that stop?”

Ali thinks hard, then suggests some time between 1980 and 1985. Which explains why I've never seen them, I suppose.

Pat Yale lives in a restored house in Göreme in Cappadocia.