The uncharacteristically brooding skies hanging over the region continued, but the rain held, as we drove to
Hasankeyf in Batman province, to see some caves that had supported continual human habitation for 12,000 years. Hanging in cliffs above the Tigris, and fanning away from the river following shallow natural valleys, the soft stone of the surface of each cave flakes pastry-like, and was hollowed by the joint efforts of water and hands, to form a complex that once housed thousands of people.
The entire population of cave-dwellers was forcibly evicted in the 1980s (crushing yet another unique socio-architectural environment), and the site was declared a conservation area in 1981. More recently, the entrance to the main complex has been fenced off and is guarded by two guards, although a brief tour of the left-hand valley is possible with a local Kurdish boy. Goats skitter and teeter on the rocks, and gnaw at the low-hanging leaves from fruit trees, creating neat topiary edges as far as their necks can crane. From the path the caves are dark, and many of them contain the threatening twists of discoloured textile and scattered plastic that accompany abandonment. Every so often satellite dishes and water containers jar with the surface of the stone, as a reminder of the recent evacuation. At the far end of the walk a single family holds on to their home, and another guards a carpet-dressed cave as a small museum, where each entry pays also for a bottle of water.
Contemporary stalls and cafes line the roads that lead to the caves, and some sit on stilts in the river, but business is waning since the fence was built as fewer and fewer people visit. Although the official line was that it was built for safety, citing a death, what was actually a viable dwelling environment for so many thousands of years seems instead to have been threatened with a more sinister design on erasure. In an almost unbelievable trepass on the footprints of global history, the planned
Ilısu Dam project will swell the river to flood the entire valley, raising the water levels to cover the caves, the town, and all the contingent livelihoods completely. Once under water, its action on the soft stone will quickly erode all traces of the thousands of years invested in the site.
Some more information on the British campaign against the dam
here.
^If the dam is built only the tower at the very top of this cliff will be visible, as a small island floating in the new lake.
^Kurdish coffee from a cafe terrace at the very edge of the fenced-off cave complex.
^ The skies finally broke as we stopped for lamb in Batman on the way home.
