Twists and turns through history

Jeremy Seal is a Turkophile, but don’t look to him for a grand history of the republic or lives of the Ottoman sultans. That is not his way. He prefers to approach things obliquely and, in particular, to come at them from an angle dictated by chance and beginning with a discovery. His first book, A Fez of the Heart, looked at Turkey and Turks through the prism of their most iconic piece of clothing: the fez. His previous book, Santa: A Life, was decided upon when he discovered that St Nicholas was a Turk. And now another discovery: the Meander.

We all know the idea of meandering. The word, with its sense of twisting and turning, and also of being convoluted, of going slowly, taking time, was used by ancient Greeks and Romans. It was inspired by the course of a river in Anatolia, one that Seal assumed was like the Styx and the Rubicon, lost to time. But looking out of the window of a bus some years ago, he approached a bridge with the sign, ‘Menderes, Meander’, and this journey was born.

Writer and river are happily matched. The Meander rises in a place called Dinar and winds its way through south-west Turkey to the Aegean Sea near Miletus, one of the wealthiest cities of ancient Greece, and the modern Turkish resort of Kusadasi. Its total run, including the detours and windings, is just over 300 miles, an easy paddle in an inflatable canoe, Seal’s preferred mode of transport, you might imagine. But while it may be short and old, the Meander is also a rollercoaster.

Take the morning, about half way through his narrative, beyond the hot springs and ancient ruins of Hierapolis. Seal had eaten two borek for breakfast, made a mental detour around the decorative motif we know as the Greek key and which the ancients knew as a meander, launched his canoe into the water and was paddling happily in the sunshine when the river disappeared.