Zeynep Oral's Books:

6. Journey To Infinity

The sun had not yet risen. It was twilight. In front of me was an endless and motionless quiet smooth sea. A silk atlas…

I was on a beach.

My eyes could not distinguish anything other than the infinity, in the half darkness. And also silence… silence so dense, it could almost be seen by the eyes or touched by the hands. Infinity did not look like anything other than infinity. An infinite silk atlas… I do not know whether it was silence or infinity predominating the surroundings. Some time later, silence retreated, left its place to infinity. And all of a sudden…

WAnd all of a sudden… put- put engine sounds…Engine sounds could be heard from a long, long distance. Engine sounds from across, from the right, the left, from everywhere, but all were from a distance…

While the engine sounds started getting closer, the darkness opened part way and the first lights of the sun showed up… While the twilight opened partially, in the distance colorful dots appeared.

The dots got closer and closer and closer…They were triangles, not dots…Yellow, blue, green, red, lilac, orange, purple, white triangles…Triangles were slipping over the water. Multicolored triangles were drawing the horizon towards me. Forgetting about sunrise, redness moving towards me, I could not move my eyes from the sailboats getting closer. They were not three, five, but dozens of them… They were racing with each other, zigzagging on the water. Five, ten of them formed a line and that line was slipping towards me. A few of them were cutting each other's way. One sailing in front of another, the other one left behind and another one was mingling with the ones behind. Some were making slalom; some were coming like a skyrocket…

I had not seen such a water ballet until now.

When they drew close to the beach, the engine sounds stopped abruptly. Now only the splitting sound of water and wind filling up the sails could be heard. The sound of water the sound of wind intensified this unique action.

And where the water and beach united, the sails were wrapping on the poles with a crashing sound. One crash…five crashes...ten crashes… dozens of crashes…Just then, ten, twenty of them pulled alongside the shore, started lodging on the sand. With the name I gave them, these "magnificent creatures" (one hundred or maybe two hundred of them) lined up on the beach…

"Magnificent creatures" were long, slim wooden boats.

For me, comparing them to "creatures" rather than boats came from the "arms" or "wings" that opened up on their sides. With the bamboo trunks attached to these arms, they resembled giant octopi, giant crickets or fish with wings. They did not have weights, keels; they were the most primitive, most plain examples of catamaran type boats.

The boats were full of nets and the nets were full of fish. There were two young men inside each boat. The minute they came ashore, the villagers would run to each "creature,", taking the nets, emptying the fish from the nets. At the same time, four young men would lift up a "creature" from its arms, carrying it on their shoulders inland, underneath the palm and coconut trees. They had to carry them because in a little while the tide would rise. The boats had to be secured right away and the fish had to be transported to each corner of the island.

It was seven in the morning. I was in a fishing village called Amed, on the north-east corner of Bali Island.

That morning at that beach I was perhaps the only "foreigner" witnessing the "return of the fisherman" scene. It was not my first or my last "ceremony." I would witness the return of the fishermen from fishing ceremonies pretty often in the Northern villages of Bali Island or the shores of Lombok Island…

That morning, the oldest of the fishermen was mumbling. When I asked what he was talking about they giggled amongst themselves and told me that he always mumbled like that. I insisted. One of the youngsters translated to a language I would understand.

Here are some notes that I underlined:

"These waters are obliged to feed us. We fed these waters for hundreds of years. We fed them with the ashes of our ancestors all the time and are still feeding…"

"What is it that you call life, just a temporary voyage? Preparation for the following voyages… Now fishing, selling the fish, feeding the family… Getting ready for the following voyages…"

Was I ready for the following voyages?

I don't know.

All of the islands of Indonesia suffer bitterly with the economic crises; the students fight with the police every day on Java Island; dozens of people die in the fights between religious and ethnic groups on the Kalimantan and Sulavesi Islands; the independence war and the government terror against independence has been at a peak for years in the north and on Timor Island, yet the tourist rush to Bali Island has not stopped, nor would it.

If you ask me, the danger bells have been ringing for Bali for a long time. What I call danger is the fast consumption of god-given blessings and genuine cultural accumulation with "savage tourism"…

Centers like Kuta, Nusa, Dua, Sanur, Jimbaran Denpasar, are surrounded by hotel chains, at the very south of Bali Island, named the "Golden Triangle;" green fields of few years back gave way to asphalt, McDonalds', Kentucky Fried Chickens, supermarkets, shops, auto parks, etc…These places were already wrapped up with the atmosphere of holiday eve of Sirkeci, Eminonu, Mahmutpasha*.

To discover the "rituals" in Bali, the first thing to do is to get away from the south, the "Golden Triangle."

I did that, got away from south. I hit the roads to the north.

To reach northern shores of Bali, I had to go beyond Penebel, Batukoru and the Tabanan Mountains to the west, inland of the island, pass Brandas River, go around the Buyan, Tamblingan and Bratan Lakes.

Each mountain, lake, and river had a story.

For example, lovers crossing over the Brandas River would never separate from each other. For that reason, every couple that gets married rushes there and the river is nicknamed "Honeymoon River."