On the morning of my seventh day on the road, I walked out of Nazilli and stopped at a tea garden near the village of Hamzalı to top off my water supply. The tea garden was tended by a hyperactive 15-year-old boy named Halil who couldn’t stop talking about how fast his Peugeot scooter was and how rich he’d be after fixing it up and selling it.
His parting words to me as I left, yelled at the top of his lungs even though I was within an arm’s length, were, “Don’t forget me!”
“Okay Halil,” I said, “I won’t. I might even mention you in the book.”
Later that day, I pulled into a gas station for water and ended up resting in the shade drinking tea and chatting with the station manager. He mentioned that two men from Poland had come walking through the day before and had camped under a nearby tree. He leaned forward and pointed at the tree.
“When were they here?” I asked. “They left this morning.” he replied. I couldn’t believe my ears. Did he just say the Polish guys were here the whole night and had slept just over there? Man, they’ve got some mad hobo skills. I need skills like that, I thought.
I leaned forward as he talked, frustrated that my Turkish was so rusty that even though I listened intently I might not be getting the whole story. I admired the two Polish guys so much I didn’t want to miss anything that was said about them.
Darek and Piotr had taken on a kind of a star quality in my mind. I had been on the road a very short time, and was just beginning to learn what I called “hobo skills,” things like how to find a place to stay at night and how to wash your t-shirt at a mosque.
I had seen a lot of gasoline stations along the way, but I hadn’t been invited to sleep at one yet. Boy, I thought, if I could only figure out how to break that code or learn the secret handshake, it would rock my world!
When I realized the station manager was not going to teach me the secret handshake, I thanked him for the tea and shook hands with the station attendants. Then, as an afterthought, I asked the manager if I could lie on the grass and take a short rest before I continued on. “Of course you can,” he said. So I lay down and took a nap on the grass where Darek and Piotr had slept the night before, hoping some of their hobo skills would rub off on me. And then I stood up, pulled my backpack on, and continued walking.
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In 2012, Matt sold off or gave away almost everything he owned. He strapped whatever was left to his back, flew to Turkey, and walked across it. Every foot, from one end of the country to the other. Along the way he slept in mosque gardens, dined with strangers, and stumbled into refugee camps.
This is the story of that journey. We’ll be publishing one chapter each week from his book. If you would like to read the whole thing at once, you can purchase his book titled Heathen Pilgrim: Walk Across Turkey on Amazon.
