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Stephen drove the van up to the center of the village where we parked in front of a small pink mosque. A flock of children ran out to greet us with stares and giggles. They were extremely interested in Stephen and me -- our strange coats, our shoes, our language.

"Whoosh! Whoosh!" Eminou's brother, Ali, approached, shooing the children away like pigeons. Ali had deep, slanted black eyes, a big, bushy black mustache and a thick nose and mouth. Like Eminou, he was plump and cheerful.

There were hugs and tears as Eminou and her mother stepped out of the bus. The women went ahead to the house but surprisingly, Ali led us toward the mosque. We went in through a side door where there was a large bare room with men sitting about drinking tea.

Ali addressed them, and Huseyn translated. Ali told the men in the room and in particular the small group of elderly men huddled by the stove, that we were guests of his to be treated with respect and hospitality. The men sat listening seriously and when he had finished, they asked questions which only frustrated them as they were ignorant of the United States. Only a few had even heard that it existed and even they were not sure where it was.

They asked questions about the land we came from, the name of our king, whether you could see the ocean, the price of brides and the price of good wool sheep. After we had answered as best we could, the elders announced that we were the responsibility of every soul there, to be protected against harm. We were, they said, guests of the village.

We thanked them, then Ali led us out of the mosque along a path that was so narrow we had to walk single file in the now-dim light. "My friends," Ali said to us as we went, "you are much welcome. You are the first strangers to visit Keben."

Awed by this honor, we fell suddenly silent. We hopped on rocks across a stream to reach his small house, itself made of rocks. We took off our shoes and entered.

Like so many of the one-room homes we had seen in Turkey, this one was warm and cozy. The bare earth was covered with straw mats overlaid with handmade red and orange carpets. In the room's center, pine wood burned in the fireplace where a large black cauldron hanging on a pole bubbled with stewed vegetables. Long, embroidered white cushions rimmed the walls while above our heads, hanging by ropes, floated a wool cradle holding a sleeping baby.

"Please, please, you are much welcome! Please come, you are sitting!"

We sat against the walls, our backs supported by the cushions. We were introduced to Ali's slim and quiet wife, Melek, and his mother, a tanned, wrinkled woman with three horizontal rows of gleaming gold coins strung across her forehead. Melek sprinkled our hands with rosewater and then we were served a vegetable stew of okra, tomato and eggplant with hot flat bread to soak up the juices. We ate scrambled eggs too, and sipped sweet black tea.

The warm room made us drowsy. After the children went to sleep, Eminou and Melek and their mothers sat in the corner, chatting and beading bonjuk. In these Turkish homes with no traffic outside and no electric light within, the world vanishes fast, giving the interior an intensity. People appear beautifully posed and illuminated like the holy family in a Baroque nocturne. Lantern and candlelight cast the humblest family in high relief and gild them with grace. Now, in the opposite corner of the room, the glow from the crackling fire made dancing shadows on the joyful faces of Huseyn and Ali.

They were hatching a plan.

Ali reached under his shirt and pulled out something that he cupped in his hand. Huseyn took the lantern from the mantel and placed it on the rug at our feet. Sitting next to us, Ali opened his fist to reveal two coins and said with meaning, "Gold."

The coins did not look golden, but rather a muddy orange-brown. Stephen and I took a closer look. We examined them under the yellow lantern light. Perhaps they were gold; they were very heavy. One of the coins had writing on both sides. On the other coin, one side had been completely rubbed away over time, but the other side showed a profile of a woman in a fan-shaped hat. The edges of the coins were crooked yet the warped shapes made them look really old. They looked real, but we had no clue precisely what they were.

Ali took back the coins and dropped them into a tiny drawstring pouch that tied around his neck.

"I don't know from where they come," he said. "My grandfather, he give them to me when I am a boy. I don't show them to everybodys."

Ali's black eyes grew bright and it seemed to me that his upturned mustache and his mouth were both smiling together.

"Tomorrow, inshallah," Huseyn said, "we get more gold coins."

"What are you saying?" Stephen asked.

Huseyn then explained their idea. He told us that the mountains here were rich with Hittite carvings. The Hittites lived well before the Osmanli (Ottoman) reign but now the Hittites are dead. Gone. Their gold, though, must still be here. It must be in these hills and he, Huseyn, knew exactly where it was. Exactly.

"But digging for gold or any archaeological thing in Turkey is not allowed," I ventured.

"You don't think anythings!" Ali crowed. "In this moment we are asking the old men of Keben. We ask them. We ask them to give us donkey!"

Donkey?

Huseyn and Ali talked in rapid-fire Turkish to each other, then stood up and went out the door. In less than an hour, they returned beaming.

"We are very good. Very good." Ali announced. "The old men say, 'It is not our way to let strangers dig in our mountains.' But we say to them we do not want the gold for us but as gift to the village. We give with everybodys! We say, 'We have only good thinkings.' Now they say yes. They give much tools. They give donkey!"

Next page | "The lady, she is pointing to the gold"