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

By Peter Manseau
Sunday, September 14, 2008

From 3,000 loudspeakers affixed to the city's 3,000 minarets, the canned wailing of muezzins rings out the call to prayer five times a day. Istanbul has been a Muslim city for more than 500 years, and yet there still seems to be no coordination when it comes to scheduling this most basic of Islamic customs. With each chorus of "allahu akbar" beginning imprecisely at sunrise, it's pretty much every mosque for itself. Some start 10 seconds early, some 10 seconds late; at least one seems to wait until the coast is clear so that its adhan will have the air all to itself.

I don't hear a thing once inside the immaculate, Muzak-filled confines of the Point Hotel. The Point is one of a new generation of high-end Istanbul lodgings -- most within a few blocks of trendy Taksim Square -- that seem to cater to travelers who do not want to know they are in Turkey. To enter the lobby from the predawn din is to suddenly inhabit another universe, one equipped with a Japanese restaurant, a "wellness spa" and molded plastic furniture apparently borrowed from the lounge deck of the Starship Enterprise.

In the suites above, a group of Christian tourists is hoping to glimpse another vision of the future. They have come to Turkey with a Seattle-based touring company called Ultimate Journeys for the "Seven Churches Experience," which allows Scripture-toting adventurers to visit the seven cities addressed in the closing pages of the New Testament, the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, also known as the Apocalypse. Featured prominently in a text that some believe foretells the end of the world, the ancient Turkish cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea were home to first-century churches that now lie in ruins. Now they all welcome postcard-buying visitors in hopes of reaping a few lira from their place in the earliest history of Christendom.

Turkey is sometimes called the Second Holy Land in the world of spiritual tourism -- travel to places known for either their religious significance or ethereal emanations. With more biblical sites than anywhere outside Israel, the western region of Anatolia has for centuries attracted pilgrims in search of contact with the origins of their faith.

Of the many faith-based tours of the region available -- ranging from retracing the travels of Saint Paul to pilgrimages to Antioch, where followers of Jesus first called themselves Christians -- I am most interested in following the Revelation route because, wherever I go in the world, small-"r" revelation is part of my reason for traveling. I'm too cynical to expect life-changing experiences every time I hop on a plane. I hope instead for feelings of connection, inklings of what it might have meant to live in another place or time. As soon as I heard that groups of tourists were looking for big-"R" Revelation explicitly -- in the land of Revelation no less -- I knew I had to go.

I am scanning the lobby for wild-eyed zealots when Russ Goodman appears at my side. Together with his wife, Sue, he's the force behind Ultimate Journeys, their family business. A barrel-chested fellow with a graying crew cut and matching mustache, he wears navy blue shorts and bright white sneakers that seem right for a day of walking in the Aegean heat, but not quite appropriate for the religious sites on today's itinerary.

"I am fired up for this tour," he says, with a football coach's pep. He is a dictionary illustration of a practical man at leisure: polo shirt tucked in, two cellphones on his belt. He is the past president of Seattle's Space Needle and seems very much a man who can keep the elevators running on time. Russ's plan is to spend a few hours showing the sites of Istanbul before leading the group off for the main event: a weeklong bus trek between the seven cities of Revelation, all about a day's travel to the south.

Russ checks his watch, scrolls his BlackBerry, then looks up in the direction of the balcony above the lobby. "Here come the troops."

Twenty-nine women and men ranging in age from early 20s to mid-60s descend the Point's floating staircase to the polished floor below. They do not look like people eagerly anticipating the end of the world. Pale legs and fanny packs, cameras and wallet-holders and water bottle slings around their necks, they look like people eagerly anticipating a day at the beach.

In the beginning, Revelation was essentially a book of comfort. Most think of the Apocalypse as a text that tells how the world will eventually come to a frightening end; yet the intention of its author, John, was more immediate than that. He mainly wanted to cheer up his fellow Christians as they suffered religious persecution.

According to tradition, he had made frequent visits to small communities throughout Asia Minor before being exiled to Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian at the end of the first century. Domitian was a champion of traditional Roman religion, with a particular affinity for the god Jupiter, and he had little patience for the minority religions within his domain. In letters addressed to the "seven churches of Asia," and then in an often inscrutable prophecy depicting a battle between Jesus Christ and a beast that believers regard as the devil incarnate and some scholars say symbolizes the Roman Empire, John offers assurance that hard times will soon come to an end.

On the Ultimate Journeys chartered bus, comfort comes without the wait. We ride through a hot morning in near-cryogenic air conditioning, listening to a local guide the tour organizers hire when they're in town.

A smiling Turk in a plaid shirt and khakis, Ali keeps up a steady patter of Turkish history. He calls the streets through which we roll "Constantinopolis," as if this group of 21st century Christians might still hold a grudge more than 80 years after modern Turkey's fiercely secular founding father, Kemal Ataturk, permanently unseated the Christian emperor Constantine as the city's namesake. I'm sitting next to Rikk Watts, who will take over tour guide duties once the group is on its way to the seven churches; he has done this trip before with Ultimate Journeys and knows Ali's script well. Just now, Ali is holding up the umbrella we are to look for if we get separated from the group.

"We call him Ali Poppins when he's got that umbrella," Rikk says. "He seems to like it, but I'm not sure he gets the reference."

Rikk teaches the New Testament at Vancouver's Regent College, the kind of religiously affiliated institution that requires all faculty members to sign a statement of faith. Regent, in fact, is the main reason the seats around us are full. Rikk is among the school's most popular professors, a dynamic speaker who, more than one tour member tells me, "makes history come alive."

That Rikk and his students believe in Revelation goes without saying, but he is an academic at heart and seems far more interested in context than prophecy. Within minutes of introducing himself, he is explaining to me that many of the sites on which the seven churches were built once held pagan temples.

"What you need to understand," he says with the urgency of an evangelist, "is that these temples were built along lines that were considered almost like a power grid. Rituals were performed to coax power out of the earth, out of the gods. It was inevitable that Christian churches would end up there."

As Rikk speaks of pagan temples giving rise to churches that would later make way for mosques, Ali is at the front of the bus explaining simply that indeed "Constantinopolis" was once a Christian city.

"Gosh," a voice behind me says.

As if to prove it, our first stop is Aya Sofia. Built as the world's largest church by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, it was converted into the world's largest mosque by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453. Not long after Ataturk's secular government took over following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the structure was converted again. Since 1935, it has been a museum of its own history, proudly displaying both ornate Arabic calligraphy and painstakingly restored Byzantine mosaics destroyed or obscured through the centuries.

We are deep inside Aya Sofia when I meet two more members of the Ultimate Journeys group. Dave and Tamara Duke of Seattle both work in construction. She's a project manager for industrial building; he oversees major public works projects: highways, bridges, tunnels. I ask David what he thinks of the tour so far.

"Impressive," he tells me. "I keep looking at this place, and all I can see is the cost!"

He pats a carved stone column the diameter of a California redwood.

"Jeez, just think of the infrastructure this must have taken! Build something on this scale today, we're in the billions, right? And think of the overpass you'd need!"

I ask another of the Ultimate Journeys travelers -- Robert Ralston, a 50-something fellow also dressed in shorts, sneakers and a polo shirt -- if he has come to Turkey for religious reasons.

"Well, sure," he says. "But that's like saying you get married for religious reasons. That may be part of it, but you also want to have sex, right?"

"This way," Ali calls out, and we all follow his umbrella out through the gates of Aya Sofia, back to the street. "This way, everyone! We go now to the Blue Mosque."

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque -- also called the Blue Mosque for the cerulean tiles decorating its interior walls -- is just a short stroll away. With six minarets and a vast marble courtyard leading to its main entrance, it is easily the most impressive of Istanbul's thousands of religious buildings. It is also the only Islamic site Ultimate Journeys will take in while in Turkey.

Ali leads us across the courtyard to the non-Muslim entrance, where a team of sextants waits to inspect the tourists and ensure that they are dressed appropriately. Judging from the sextants' exasperated reaction, the Ultimate Journeys group is certainly not.

"Please, please," the men at the door call out, frantically handing electric-blue head scarves to the women of the tour, asking them to cover their hair, their shoulders, their legs. Then they look down at the bare knees of Russ, Dave and nearly every other man in the group, and they begin handing out head scarves to them as well, urging the men to wrap the lengths of fabric around their waists like sarongs. "Please be so kind to cover!" they shout. "Please be so kind to cover!"

Once through this gantlet, we search for Ali's umbrella and join him beneath the hundreds of hanging lamps that light the mosque. He begins his tour again as soon as a dozen or so have found him.

"The front section is for the men doing their prayers," he says. "The rear section is for the ladies. The question is often asked, why they cannot pray together? The answer, very simple: How you can concentrate on God when a lady does like this in front of you?"

Ali bends over prayerfully then makes a show of wiggling his khaki-clad behind in our direction. The men of Ultimate Journeys seem to find this very funny; a few of the women roll their eyes.

Perhaps inspired by this, Rikk Watts spots a few of the male members in the group standing near each other in their blue modesty skirts and can't resist capturing the image.

"Get together now, gentlemen," he says with a grin as his camera jumps to his eye, "or dare I say gentlemen?"

Russ, Dave and Robert pose next to each other, each pulling the hem of his skirt up to show a little ankle.

"You all seem to get along so well, for a tour group," I say to Tamara Duke, who likewise has been watching the show.

"Oh, a bunch of us have been traveling together for years now," she tells me. "We don't just go on religious trips. We also play golf."

We travel through Istanbul as if behind glass, insulated not just by the tour bus but by the very fact that we are a tour -- a self-contained unit that has no need to meet or interact with anyone who lives among the sites we see.

After a long day with the group, I decide to set off on my own. Maybe solo revelation would be easier to find.

The city of Smyrna, like all the locations named in Revelation, now has a new name: Izmir. Once among most important seaports in Asia Minor, it remains Turkey's third-largest metropolis, yet is now visited by tourists almost exclusively for its airport. I rent a Ford Festiva from the airport Hertz counter, ask for a map, and I'm off on Revelation road. Reaching Pergamum -- now called Bergama -- four hours and several wrong turns later, I find a closet of a hotel room with a dirty orange carpet, a leaky sink and no windows, and I sink into a Bible-black sleep.

The next morning, I get an early start for the long day ahead. Bergama's main archaeological attractions are high up on the hill that overlooks the town, but the site of most interest to faith-based tour groups is down a quiet road just off the main drag. As Rikk suggested, the visible remains of the Christian community of what used to be called Pergamum are located on ground that once held a pagan temple, then a church and now a collection of half-collapsed walls and broken building stones that seem all but forgotten. The ancient buildings felled by history are nearly indistinguishable from the buildings of more recent construction that have fallen from simple neglect. The Church of Saint John the Theologian, as Bergama's seven churches site is known, sits catty-cornered to an abandoned storehouse, a crumbling barn and a dusty field where a skinny horse scrapes for grass in the hot morning sun.

With five more stops to make, I push on, setting out to check off first-century ruin sites like items on a shopping list. From Bergama, I head east, then south, beginning what would quickly turn into several hours of hard driving through a landscape of arid-looking earth that nonetheless has been coaxed to agricultural life. Along the road, women work in green fields with their heads wrapped in blue, red and black scarves.

Driving 500 miles in a single day in Turkey is not unlike driving 500 miles in a single day anywhere in the world. The radio plays different music, but the drivers are just as impatient with foreigners slowing to read every sign. It is not long before I learn my first lesson in Turkish driving. Back home in Washington, the car horn usually means something simple and not very expressive, like, Watch it, buddy. Here, it means something closer to: You'd better get ready because I'm going to pass you on either the left or the right; I haven't decided which yet, so if you're smart you will slow down a bit and drive as straight as possible while my truck full of chickens roars by.

My only breaks from the road are the remnants of communities long gone that dot this region like strip malls. In his letters to the seven churches, John of Patmos provides a fogged window into these vanished worlds. The words he wrote are full of both encouragement and rebuke, but their meaning is far from clear. With the precise circumstances that inspired each lost to history, John's letters at times read like disconnected snippets of conversation, answers to questions unheard. To one church he said, "I hold this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel"; to another, "If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief"; and to a third, "Because you have kept my message of endurance, I will keep you safe." Twenty centuries later, we're left to ponder what was at stake for the scattered bands of first-century believers who earned John's comfort and his wrath.

As I locate each of these cities (Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, respectively), I wonder if Scripture is perhaps necessarily inscrutable. If its original audience was around to answer questions, would it mean nearly so much to those who continue to seek out life's lessons in words on a page? I remembered something Rikk had told me before I left Istanbul about his reasons for teaching the history of his faith in the places where Christianity first arose.

"I tell the group that when we reach Ephesus they should hope a couple of cruise ships have just pulled into port." In addition to being a magnet for spiritual tourists, he explained, Ephesus is a prime excursion for pleasure cruises. In peak season, they transform the quiet town around the ancient ruins into a loud and bustling tourist hub -- one filled with all the merchants and beggars, garbage and pickpockets the term now implies.

"Only when we're walking packed shoulder to shoulder with people we don't know can we really understand what life was like in these places. Cities were dirty and filthy. They chewed up their populations. Cruelty was something taken for granted." The early Christians John wrote to in the letters to the seven churches, Rikk said, were trying to find a new way of living in a dangerous and difficult world. "My primary goal in leading these tours is to show that there is social dynamic to Scripture; it's not just spiritual."

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.