Revelation Road

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The Second Holy Land

With more biblical sites than anywhere outside of Israel, Turkey's spiritual tourism leads travelers and pilgrims to its ruins.

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Yet, for more than half the trip, the only revelation I have is that, at each spot I visit, I am the only soul there. I had heard -- from Ultimate Journeys and others -- that business was booming on the seven churches trail. So where are all those walking in the footsteps of the people for whom Revelation was born?

I am somewhere on the highway south of Philadelphia and have two church sites to go: Laodicea, which is near the modern city of Denizli, and then, finally, Ephesus. The road wraps first to the right, then to left, and I take a hairpin turn that suddenly slopes into a winding valley only to hit a stoplight at the bottom of the hill. Slamming the brakes, I lurch to a stop so sudden it kicks up a storm of sand and stones.

And then I see them. As if they have been formed within the dust cloud, they stand like a mirage in the near-desert landscape: three men, two women, all in crisp white shirts and navy blue pants or skirts that make them seem like a lost field trip from a Catholic high school.

When the stoplight changes, I begin to roll forward, but then stop again. One of the men in the group has raised his hand into the air, calling to me. I roll down my window, and he leans in, smiling with relief as he gives the Muslim greeting, "A salaam aleichem" ("Peace be with you").

I know that one is expected to answer, "Wa aleichem salaam" ("And, to you, peace"), but I haven't spoken to anyone all day, and I can't help but blurt out, "Hello!"

"English?" he asks, then turns to the others. "Englitze," he calls to them.

Another young man steps forward and also puts his head through the window.

"We are schoolteachers," the second one says. "The autobus goes."

"Went," the first schoolteacher says.

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"Denizli."

I lean across the passenger seat, push open the door and wave inward, offering what I hope is the international sign for "get in."

"We all are schoolteachers," the second one says, as if my offer of a ride was limited only to the educators in the group.

So far on this trip, my Ford Festiva rental has seated one comfortably. Now, we would see if it could live up to its festive name. The first teacher climbs in beside me, leaving the four others to pack themselves into the back seat.

"Denizli?" I ask.

"Evet, evet" they say. Yes, yes. "Denizli."

From behind me, there soon comes a period of spirited discussion I cannot understand, followed by flashes of careful, considered questions and comments intended for me.

"What is your name?" they ask slowly, rolling each word like a letter in a spelling bee.

I tell them, and soon they tell me theirs, as well. In the passenger seat next to me is Mehmet. Directly behind me, with his head pushed up against the Festiva's ceiling because he is seated on a lap, is the second man, Esra. Under him is the third male teacher, Ihsan. The women are Gokcen and Ulas. It takes about 20 minutes to convey all this, but we are still about 25 miles from Denizli, which is another four or so from Laodicea, so we've got nothing but time.

Once names have been established, there follows another five minutes of intense Turkish debate. Finally, Gokcen tries her hand at a translation of what they have been saying. She says haltingly, "We . . . love . . . you . . . Peter."

Ulas laughs and buries her face in Gokcen's ear. In the rearview mirror I see her turn red.

"For the driving we are loving you," she says. "For the driving."

"Thank you," Mehmet suggests. "She means to say, 'Thank you.' "

Every English word is followed by what seems to be a fierce disputation on grammar and vocabulary. They have all had plenty of instruction in the language, I gather, but rarely get to speak it.

Gokcen is the most fearless: "Peter, are you drinking something?"

Ulas covers her face to stifle more laughter, but Gokcen forges ahead. "Do you like to drink something? Liquids? Soft drinks or tea?"

"Do I like drinking liquids?" I ask. There's nothing like travel to cause you to answer questions you never thought to consider. "Yes, I do like drinking liquids," I say, "when I am thirsty."

"We would drink anything with you."

I check my watch -- 4 o'clock -- and tell them that in fact I need to get to Laodicea and then to Ephesus before my flight out of Izmir late that night.

"We drink something to thank you," Mehmet says, and all in the back seat make sincere sounds of assent.

On the outskirts of Denizli, we stop at a Burger King, where we all pile into a booth that seems considerably smaller than American Burger King booths. Only after we have crammed in together does Esra extract himself to order six Cokes at the counter.

Each of the schoolteachers takes a turn trying to tell me something in English, and then I try out a bit of my guidebook Turkish. When I have said my three words and they have blushed through their quiet but useful English vocabularies, we fall into a pleasant silence.

"We want to speak," Esra says, "but we cannot."

Then it seems to be Gokcen's turn again. Everyone watches her, waiting.

Finally she opens her mouth to speak.

"The words," she says.

She appears on the verge of adding a verb to her noun, but instead she breaks into a wide smile that turns into a laugh. In a moment, we're all laughing. At what? The words, and the space between them.

We finish our Cokes, climb back into the Festiva and continue in the direction of Denizli. As Mehmet directs me, I make one stop, then another, dropping off Gokcen, Ulas and Ihsan near their homes.

"Where now?" I ask, expecting that I would now drive my last two accidental fares to their destinations.

Mehmet and Esra share a few conspiratorial words in Turkish.

"Laodicea!" they shout.

We drive on, out of the city, beginning on a wide street that thins as it carves through hills of green and yellow. The land is beautiful, the road a labyrinth. There is no way I could have navigated this part of the trip without them. Turning left off the pavement, we bump down a narrow channel of stone and dirt, finally rolling through a chain-link gate pulled halfway across the road. Out before us, the sky opens behind fallen white columns and the remnants of buildings that look like Atlantis pulled up from the sea.

"We're here?" I ask.

"No problem," Esra says, and then they both grin. This site is as neglected as the other seven churches sites I have seen. In fact, there is a far more impressive site just down the road -- Pamukkale. Not only is it a favorite of the guidebooks, it is also a place locals are just as likely to visit as tourists. But Laodicea? Mehmet and Esra smile at each other at least in part because they have no reason to be here other than that they happened to cross my path.

I park the car, and we set out on foot, walking among the ruins we saw from the road. Signs of a once-bustling boulevard stretch 200 yards before us. On either side of a field of cracked stone slabs that form an ancient plaza, I can see where buildings had stood. Grass and weeds yellowed by the sun poke out here and there from patches of red-brown clay that seem determined to swallow every carved stone into the earth.

My new friends jog from shattered statues to splintered chunks of columns as wide as sewer pipes, occasionally grabbing my hand to show me something they fear I might miss. Surveying what is left of Laodicea, I can't help but think of penciled letters erased from a page; only the ghosts of their shapes remain, along with the mess of time undoing what civilization has made.

Beyond the ruins, we make our way up a slight grassy slope. Soon we stand on the cusp of what was once a vast open-air theater, a steep hill with stone benches set deep enough in the earth that they have not budged in 2000 years.

We walk back through the ruins, entering a wide thoroughfare with white marble columns on either side that provide the sensation of walking through the husk of a giant whale washed up on shore. Esra puts a hand on one of these bones of the civilization that once stood here, pats it heartily, grinning. His look says he desperately wants to tell me something about this place. He is a schoolteacher, after all.

"History!" he finally says. "History!"

Then he laughs at the absurdity of it. We all laugh.

"History!" I agree.

"No problem!" Mehmet says.

"Laodicea!" Esra shouts, with a tone unmistakable: Why on earth are we here? There are other, better ruins not far away.

"Why come Turkey, Peter?" Mehmet asks.

I try to explain. "Well, there were these seven churches," I say. "And this guy, John, he wrote them each a letter, and those letters ended up in a book of the Bible. Some people believe that book tells how the world will end."

I give up there, and we all laugh again. Standing in a place that was once a city center but now is thick with weeds and silence, I wonder if they are thinking what I'm thinking: that the world is too flexible to ever end -- at least not in the ways any book could foretell.

Dusk is approaching when I drop Mehmet and Esra back in Denizli. I have about 62 miles to go to reach Ephesus by nightfall, and I push the Festiva hard to make it. Miraculously, I do not get lost.

Except in my thoughts: There is nothing quite like the feeling of racing toward the setting sun in a new country, thinking about friends just made whom you likely will never see again. I thought about the local people to whom John of Patmos once wrote, and I wondered if their descendants remained, like the arid yet fertile land of Anatolia, as creeds came and went through the centuries. If that was the case, then my new friends -- Turks, Muslims, schoolteachers -- though separated by faith and language, might be the closest living relatives of those for whom Revelation was written.

The ruins at Ephesus are closed by the time I get there. The sun hangs low in the sky, and the only people around are armed guards smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. With nowhere else to go, I keep driving toward what is left of the sun.

A mile or two beyond Ephesus, the road to Revelation ends at a beach. I park the Festiva, walk to the water and strip down to my boxer shorts.

I wade into the sea, sinking in over my head just as the last light of the sun and the soft breeze turn the surface a rippling orange and red. The wind whistles faintly on the water. It's not quite a revelation, nor a call to prayer. But it's close.

Peter Manseau is the editor of Search magazine and the author of the novel "Songs for the Butcher's Daughter," published this month by Free Press/Simon & Schuster. He can be reached at plm@petermanseau.com.