Edoardo, just eleven last month, is the most charming child. He never whines or complains. His good nature will carry him throughout his life. He loves to try new foods. He listens like an adult to long historical background information about ruins. He has the quality that will make his time on earth enjoyable- curiosity. He seems interested to know everyone on the trip. I am surprised when he curls next to me to read what I am writing in my log. "I want to see what you see," he tells me. He also is keeping a log. He's reading a novel and working in a puzzle book and learning sailing knots from Mustapha.

Midmorning, after swims, we take the dinghy to sh.o.r.e. From the crescent beach we walk into the pine woods of Phaselis, a seventh century B.C. town with a processional street ending on another beach at the other side of this small peninsula. This was a trading outpost for wood and purple dye from murex sh.e.l.ls. Like Manhattan, Phaselis originally was sold for nothing. The colonizer Lakios offered a shepherd some dried fish in exchange for his land; a "Phaselis offer" still means a cheap one. The oldest coins are Persian, dating to 466 B.C. They're stamped with a boat prow on one side and the stern on the reverse. Coming and going. Along the broad way in, still recognizable as a street with sidewalks, I run my finger over Greek inscriptions engraved with calligraphic flourishes on stone columns, the (beta) and (omega) with extra curves and the (alpha) with a little arrow in the crossbar. The many potsherds are sea-washed smooth. I pick up handfuls, marveling that after all this time they're still underfoot. Decorative indentations, painted designs, ridges, what a thrill. I leave them in a magic hexagon pattern on a stone.

The baths are more intimate than at Perge and less grand, but the underfloor in the caldarium still has round terra-cotta pillars that held up the warmed floor and the arches for the flow of water into the tepidarium, then the frigidarium. Fulvio and I are fascinated that the terra-cotta stacks rest on twenty-five-centimeters-square cotto tiles with wavy designs that could have been made in Italy today. Terra-cotta is eternal, like the stones. We are walking everywhere on mosaics. Kick away a few inches of dirt, and underfoot are white tesserae in the running heart-shaped leaf design that we've seen in the other ruins. Behind this excavated street lie the agora (the piazza) and the remainder of this town, still unexcavated.

We sail along a wild and wilder coast, after pa.s.sing a clump of hotels. Fulvio says, "We're lucky to see this. It will be ruined in ten years." Every day Edoardo holds out a fishing line, trawling through the water, but nothing bites. Ed suns. Aurora looks out at the water. Cheryl listens to music with her earphones. The others read. I'm happy propped on the orange cushions with my log.

Lycia. This is the Lycian coast, formerly a league of twenty-three cities stretching from outside present-day Antalya west to Dalaman. Sorting out the history makes me pity Turkish schoolchildren who must be examined on the waves of sieges that beset this area. Along this coast lived early Anatolians. They were up and running in time to fight the Egyptians with the Hitt.i.tes, and to take the side of Troy in the Trojan war. All the mighty ancient-world warlords had their way with Lycia. By the time Alexander appeared here, most towns considered him their deliverer from a long struggle with the Persians and the Carians. At this pivot the Lycian language morphed into Greek. Some Lycian letters survive on tombs; a few inscriptions are even bilingual Greek and Lycian. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had his fling here, and later Syria took over. The convoluted history, packed into paragraphs in texts, actually was spread over many centuries, but it's difficult not to be overwhelmed by the preponderance of war. Too bad no one recorded more about sculpture, architecture, love, celebration, food, s.e.x, birth, poetry. When Lycia later became a Roman province in A.D. 46, the area prospered and Christianity developed alongside the pagan religions. Given as a prize to Rhodes by the Romans, the Lycian coast finally appealed to Rome and won its freedom. At that late date the Lycian League was formed along democratic principles, and the long-suffering twenty-three cities joined together. The cities fell in the eighth century to Arab warriors. Writing this in my log gives me a solid context in which to plug Enver's lectures.

About four we anchor in a cove and take the dinghy to a pebble beach at cirali, where Enver's in-laws have a house. Through orange and pomegranate orchards, we walk to their octagonal house, set on a larger porch of the same shape. Inside, I have the impression of being in a tent; perhaps their inspiration was nomadic. Six beams radiate from the center. Each side of the octagon has a double door opening to the surrounding grove. I would like to fall asleep to the scent of orange blossoms. The inside walls are irregular white stones lying flat like a jigsaw. His father-in-law, a famous sponge-diver, also did archaeological diving at Gallipoli. There's a photograph of him in the depths among World War I torpedos at rest with the fish. The in-laws are off on their boat, but we eat their olives and drink their tea and beer.

A neighbor, a reed-slender Turk who looks quite amused, comes around with his tractor pulling an open trailer spread with a Turkish rug and a long cushion. We climb in, sitting back to back, and he takes off down a dirt road, going full out. Who knew a tractor could fly? The air smells of pine and figs. We pa.s.s rude, ramshackle houses where children on the porch wave enthusiastically, laughing at crazy foreigners bouncing in the trailer. The houses look as though they were thrown together over a weekend and could as easily be dismantled tomorrow.

At dusk we again embark on a vertical climb. This time other people are walking, too. Hiking at the low-biorhythm time of day doubles the trouble. I lag behind and fall into step with a very pregnant Turkish woman and her husband. We pa.s.s a clump of scraggly bushes with limbs and twigs tied with tissue paper, tickets, and receipts. At this ancient place you make a wish on the way to the home of the Chimaera, the mythical fire-breathing monster. Women formerly tied their hair to the branches if they wished for health or a child. The pregnant woman ties nothing and does not pause at the magic bush.

Finally we arrive at a rock slope where eight or so fires blaze out of small openings. My group already is seated around the largest, listening to Enver tell the legend of the Chimaera who terrorized Lycia. Bellerophon, astride Pegasus, slayed the monster Chimaera by shooting arrows of lead that melted in her fiery throat, suffocating her. Around here, however, they say the monster was driven underground forever, and her breath flares out in eternal, inextinguishable fires on the mountain. The rational explanation for the flames is that gases leaking from the magma of the earth spontaneously ignite. If you put out one fire with dirt, gases escape from other crevices and combust. The oldest seafarers knew these natural lighthouses and looked for them as they sailed by far below. Who can explain this phenomenon? Surely gas leaks elsewhere, but nothing like the Chimaera fires exist, except on this rough slope. The legend of the raging female goat/lion/serpent driven underground may be as good an explanation as any. Some myths seem to answer the question why: Why does winter come? Why did the war begin? And why does the mountainside stay on fire?

The mythical beast is an old friend of ours. A fabulous bronze statue of the Chimaera made during Etruscan times was found by men digging trenches outside Arezzo's Porta San Laurentino in 1553 and now can be visited at the Archaeological Museum in Florence. Arezzo has two reproductions at one entrance to the city. They're positioned inside fountains, which cools the idea of fire-breathing. The legend is complex, and no one fully understands the monster, whose father was a giant and mother a half-serpent. Those two had some powerful recessive genes working. The other children were Orthrus, a dog with several heads; Hydra, a water snake with nine heads; and Cerberus, the hound of h.e.l.l. The Chimaera was not from a nice family.

Twilight lasts long; the fires look even more mythic. This home of the Chimaera in Lycia, this hot spot, draws young couples who gather around the flames. Is there an erotic element to the myth? Or maybe it's just the young who can make the climb.

We descend to the dark beach, and the first group of five jumps into the dinghy. I wait-for the pleasure of sitting on the still-warm beach pebbles with my feet in the silky water. I find a white rock, smoothed by the waters, like a miniature moon. Or maybe it's like a round of pita dough left to rest for half an hour, or the egg of some secret sea creature. I will steady my desk papers at Bramasole with its nice heft.

As we near the boat, Ali's flavorsome shish kebabs send out their scent to lure us. Mustapha and Ali have suspended a grill over the side of the boat. We motor down a few coves to a quieter spot, pa.s.sing Leek Island with, Enver tells us, ancient ship anchors and amphorae scattered on the bottom. Everyone has a swim in the dark before we sit down to red cabbage shredded with yogurt, roasted peppers with garlic, a variety of grilled meats, and fried potatoes.

The thematic current that draws our little ship of fools together proves to be an interest in buildings. Ian, formerly a racetrack owner, has restored forty-four historic buildings in New Orleans. Fulvio, of course, is the master builder of Tuscany, well known for his impeccable use of materials and his sensibility for the vernacular architecture. Karl is a builder in San Francisco who has worked on small houses as well as mega-estates in Atherton. Bernice and Armand have restored not only a Baltimore firehouse but also a farm in Virginia. Ed and I have our own restoration pa.s.sions that have involved us for fifteen years. After dinner we trade stories of various projects. There's a lingo, a bond, a mutual sympathy.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1: PORTO GENOESE.

Those men of Genoa covered the globe. What a strange landscape. We've gone from rugged and sheer multicolored stone mountains plunging into the sea, grottoes and clear water, goat trails, scrubby trees, and maquis to what looks like the Okefenokee Swamp. Instead of alligators and water moccasins, we find scattered ruins tangled in vines. At the start of the path, we pa.s.s two grand stone tombs. On one I find a carved boat and a poem that ends: After the light carried by the dawn had left,

Captain Eudemos

There buried the ship with a life as short as a day,

like a broken wave.

The dense oily incense of bay trees saturates the humid air. We pa.s.s a Turk chewing on myrtle leaves. Seeing our curiosity, he strips a branch and offers us some. It tastes astringent and bitter-no thanks. Meandering in the jungle, we cross several streams. Ed and I have the impractical shoes; everyone else bought the kind of sandal you can wear in water, rejected by us as too ugly when we shopped for our gear. We're bella figura trained but are taking to this kind of travel with a pa.s.sion. Ed has a two-day beard. This morning I slipped on a T-shirt I'd worn twice.

We come upon two young archaeologists surveying an area for possible excavation. They look rather befuddled in all the vegetation. Where to begin? At least there are no mosquitoes.

Stone columns lie everywhere in the mud. Enver knows where delicate mosaics lie secluded in the broken buildings. He points out Byzantine overlays that came long after the Roman temple and theatre. A bit of low aqueduct remains. We're crawling through arches under a canopy of trees and vines. One doorway has a flat keystone.

12:30. Sailing along the uninhabited coast. Ali is making stuffed eggplant. I'm reading The Lycian Sh.o.r.e by one of my favorite travel writers, Freya Stark, who made this journey with a friend in a small boat in the 1950s. I turn to my word list, which begins with short strong nouns: ada, island, da, mountain, dere, river, gol, lake, koy, village, su, water, yol, road.

Late in the day we are driven to Arycanda, a Lycian city from the fifth century, built dramatically like Delphi on a steep incline, with an even more dramatic setting. The site has a feeling of peace because, spread along the hill, it fans open to the view. The pines give their blue tint to the air. Splendid, splendid. These places knock the breath out of you. Empty, lonely, remote, beautiful, more than beautiful, a tantalizing atavism that displaces all my a.s.sumptions, all my prosaic everyday expectations. And in each ruin unforgettable designs or carvings. One floor has a clever mosaic floor in a fish scale pattern.

Here's the pure stony evidence of layer upon layer of nationalities, each imprinting itself in a unique form on the site. Each recycling the previous stones, using them casually and for their own purposes. In Greece and the South of Italy and here, that moves me most. Without regard for the Greek language, a Roman builder might incorporate an engraved stone in a wall and place it upside down. Who cares what it says-it holds up the column. We're scrambling like goats all over this stupendous site-three high baths with windows framing the view, an enormous cistern (water was always precious in these sere Mediterranean lands), then the theatre like a poem in a tight (omega) shape. I scuff through piles of terra-cotta shards.

Oops, I dropped the snorkel mask. Mustapha, formerly a sponge diver, goes down and down, but waving algae cover the floor of the sea here. He looks as natural as a seal as he breaks the surface of the water. How does he hold his breath for so long?

I am loving the water as I did when I was a child. The freedom Mustapha must feel in his strong body comes back to me. At some embryonic state the fetus has gill slits, a reminder of when we were finny and water flowed through us. I can relax in these old Mediterranean waters, feel at one. The resistance I usually carry, the reluctance to get wet, fears of being held under in baptism, the tension against water going into my lungs, all that has vanished. Play returns. To swim-a joy, as when the mothers, lined up (smoking) in hard candy-colored enamel chairs, watched while the children swam. I remember the poised attention at the edge of the high dive in my woolly suit, slender as a fish, my disdain at the boys' cannonballing. Then the release of swanning in the air and the cut into the water, scissors through silk, down to the rough concrete bottom of Bowen's Mill Pool. Touch the drain (you must), then flutter kick, breaking out of the cold spring water, a little otter. Then the mothers through the screen in their summer sundresses. Is my mother watching?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2: KEKOVA.

Gunaydin, good morning in Turkish: phonetically gun eye'den. It means "bright day," and these days are. The fresh sea invites me as soon as I'm awake. The salty water makes us buoyant. Floating is effortless. On a Styrofoam "noodle" I can really drift and dream. Fulvio, always more purposeful, splashes in with his snorkel every possible moment. He's rewarded with a crusty pot found at about ten meters, just offsh.o.r.e. He shows it to me briefly-a small pumpkin shape-and takes it to his cabin without telling anyone else. Surely he does not intend to take it home to Italy.

Yes, Enver says, this is the typical Turkish breakfast-breads, honey, yogurt, olives, eggs, fruit, cheeses. Ed and I usually don't eat breakfast, but now even the Italians rush to the table. I'm taking a scoop of scrambled eggs, bread spread with fig jam, a luscious peach. What a great word for bread: ekmek.

At Myra we see the high lavish Lycian tombs carved in the rocks. Heatstroke time-it must be 110 degrees. We look straight up at the columned houselike tombs. A cat in the shade of a carob tree has a good idea. I am thankful that visitors are prohibited to climb the rocks. Enver would be on his way up. Instead, we investigate the low tombs with rare Lycian script-Greek with the addition of several letters and embellishments.

In the town of Myra we dutifully visit the Church of St. Nicolas, packed with Turkish tourists. His life story doesn't sound much like the jolly old Saint Nick we know at all. His church is stripped, but the choir feels very early Christian, and the remaining mosaics have been polished to a shine by feet. Feathery colors of fresco remain. I feel that I've been here before. In a dream? In an art history cla.s.s slide lecture?

Joy, the joy we were born with, is the sea in serene twilight, the encircling coves scented with pine. The water is Coca-Cola-bottle green or limpid turquoise, clear to the bottom where fissured light ripples across the sand. No one can wait to get back to the boat, don the masks, plunge in. I've read that the broken patterns of light reflected on the sea bottom are the same as the designs on a giraffe's back, the same as cracks in dried mud. Nature limits her design possibilities. Sun glances off the water, reflecting the gray and white rock as lavender, the lichen-spotted, rain-streaked darker rock as wine-dark.

We moor late at Kekova, island of submerged harbors, tombs, and buildings. Some of us go by dinghy into the village of Kale. We're besieged by girls, aged four to twenty-four, who sell scarves and beads along the paths and among the ruins of the Crusader castle crowning the hill above their village. No road leads into the village; hence, no cars. The poor, improvised houses all face the water. Blue morning glories scramble over fences and roofs. The harbor's open-air restaurants (one advertises "fresh sea frood") are festooned with impatiens, four o'clocks, and geraniums planted in big olive oil cans. Enameled blue wooden tables with red-checked cloths are arranged on docks right along the water. Flags hanging from the rafters add more primary color. A lone sarcophagus rises from the water. Ed remarks that the etymology of sarcophagus goes back to roots meaning "flesh-eater." Off to the side of each structure is a makeshift covered porch with Turkish rugs and pillows around a crude table, often holding a water pipe. All news comes by boat. The girls wear the traditional loose, dark-flowered pants, but most of them top those with T-shirts printed with American university names (Boport University?) or English phrases. Each carries a basket filled with thin cotton scarves their mothers have trimmed with beads against the evil eye, or with pearls or sh.e.l.ls. "What's your name? You're mine," says one of the older girls, who starts to walk with me. Gulgun, with light green eyes and an earthy aroma, announces loudly, "She's mine." Other girls claim each member of our group, and I see that Ed has been chosen by a tiny girl, n.a.z.ika, with the brown eyes of a colt. He will be buying scarves. Fatima, latched onto Fulvio, says, "Americans love to shop."

"But I'm Italian," he says. Nonetheless he buys several for Aurora, who has stayed on board. We zigzag up the village path to the castle with its 360-degree view. Ed falls into conversation with a young Turkish doctor and his gorgeous wife. We exchange addresses, and it is nice to think we might sometime meet again. I love these moments of connection in travel. We might be good friends. They go with us down the back way into a field scattered with stone sarcophagi and twisted olive trees that must be a thousand years old. There the village girls await us for final reckoning. We sit down with them among the tombs and look through scarves we don't need but buy anyway because we don't want to disappoint them. Several mothers and grandmothers are sewing as the girls unfold their aqua, pink, and salmon scarves. Ed throws me a help look; he's having an impossible time resisting little n.a.z.ika. Gulgun ties a white, pearl-edged scarf around my head in a turban, and I suddenly feel quite exotic. The girls are persistent but genuinely friendly and fun, too, like the rug merchants.

The Cevri Hasan sleeps at anchor in the harbor. The village, by ten, is almost totally dark, and the Milky Way, like one of the pearl-edged white scarves flung, offers once more the sacrament of beauty. I lie on deck, letting the shooting stars fall through my mind. How small the village, how big the night. All winter Gulgun must look out at the wide sea and wider sky, and her green, green eyes have taken some of the mystery of both.

Hot, hot, not a slap of wave against the bow. I won't sleep tonight. But finally I dream and am awakened before light by aggressive roosters on sh.o.r.e heralding the day. They seem to be calling, Ataturk, Ataturk.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3: KAS.

Seher-"dawn" in Turkish. The seher-sea. I need a Turkish word because the sea light I swim through before breakfast transcends my English. The light unto itself. Green eyes of my first love, iridescent green of a Roman vial, green of the emerald in the sultan's turban. To part the radiant green waters with my own body, green moving deeper to malachite, only clear. In other coves the water is liquefied sapphire. The water-where I so easily flip and kick, scurry down with the side-to-side motion of a dolphin, and burst back into air.

Kas. A little seaside village with pierced wooden balconies hidden by mixed pink and white bougainvillea. A large sarcophagus remains at a street juncture where a street musician leans, playing his guitar. I stop in a rug shop, how fatal for me, and exit with seven rugs-six small for bedside or bath, one about four feet square in stripes. All tribal, which I've slowly collected since my twenties for the humane, earthy soft colors and the spontaneity of design. These, so inexpensive I couldn't not. Fulvio also found a striped tribal rug and two saddlebags. One skill of the rug merchants is folding rugs so that they take no more s.p.a.ce than a towel.

Ali serves a fish soup with mint and lemon, the bream and grouper Enver bought in Kekova yesterday. And as always, we're into the water, fishes ourselves.

SAt.u.r.dAY, SEPTEMBER 4: KALKAN.

Another village seemingly given over to tourism but pleasant and low key, flowery, with many more sleeping cats than tourists. We looked for rugs again! Irresistible. Fulvio found a Kurdish weaving that reminded me of a Paul Klee painting gone wild-dramatic, a live piece of art woven, the Kurdish dealer said, for a wedding bed. The two panels were joined together when the marriage took place. The weaving can be major art on a large wall, always exciting to look at. I love the "folk" tradition. When I held up a garment covered with sh.e.l.ls, bells, metal flowers, and beads, Fulvio insisted on buying it for me. Enver complimented us and identified it as a circ.u.mcision garment, a Yuruk piece about eighty or so years old. Bernice and Armand found a bright rug for their farm, and Cheryl and Karl picked out a runner. Fifteen-year-old Sara bought armfuls of bracelets. All our cabins are even more crowded.

Late in the morning we wind our way into the mountains to our van driver Mehmet's home. He's also the school bus driver, a postman, and formerly a tailor, but his village had too many. We come to no town, in terms of shops, but are let off on a dirt road with scattered houses. The buildings all seem improvised-slapped together and abandoned as easily. The fences are constructed of whatever boards and sticks could be found. Shaded by grapevine pergolas, the outdoor living areas are covered with rugs (sometimes a rug-stamped design on woven plastic) and multipatterned cotton cushions. The abundant grapes dangle so low you could take a bite. At a cleared area under spreading sycamores, a dozen men play cards and tile rummy. There's a new mosque with stools around a fountain for washing away a layer or two before entering the mosque.

Mehmet's house reminds me of the black people's houses I knew back in the stone age in Georgia. Dishes, few, they store in an unpainted wooden open cabinet. On the walls six photographs, an embroidered cloth hanging from the mantel-so little, but what they have seems iconographic. His wife, Fato, sweet round face and intelligence sparkling in her eyes, and his mother, Aye, a soft walking rag doll, invite us to sit around the fireplace. With long thin rolling pins, they're making gozleme, a flatbread to fill, fold over, and cook quickly on the griddle. They're quick and skillful! They use a low round board (it doubles as a table) expressly made for the purpose. From a wooden bowl of dough, they take handfuls and form little flattened b.a.l.l.s about the size of a tennis ball. The younger woman rolls, makes a quick one-eighth or so turn, rolls again. In an aluminum pan she's mixed beet leaves, parsley, mint, and scallions. She sprinkles this over half of the big white circle of dough, then sprinkles on some feta and red pepper, folds it over, and crimps down the edges. With her rolling pin she scoops it up and unrolls it on a metal disk in the fire. Again, just the right size. Her mother-in-law brushes on olive oil and tends to the grilling. She rolls some slightly thicker, spreads the dough with tahini and a little sugar, pulls a hole in the center out to four edges, bunches up a section, and begins to turn the dough, as in a cinnamon roll. When it's wound around, she rolls it again. This-crisp and hot-we dip into a mixture of boiled-to-syrup grape juice mixed with tahini.

These two are delicious. The vegetable one crackly and very fresh, the slightly sweet one scrumptious!

We move out onto the covered porch and all sit on cushions around three low tables-tin trays on stands-and the family serves us cuc.u.mbers and tomato salad, little finger-sized dolmas of vine leaves stuffed with vegetables, peppers stuffed with rice, fried potatoes, pasta-very tender. Thick yogurt, of course.

For dessert, watermelon and melon from the garden, more of the tahini pastry, and rice pudding with nutmeg. At one end of the porch is a sink with no faucets and a rearview mirror from a car attached to the wall. The grandmother takes me by the hand into their new room. Like the porch, it's full of pillows, each one made or bought on its own merits, a wild melange, lively to look at. With so many patterns and colors, they come together in a new way. A blue eye ornament to counteract evil hangs from the ceiling. She shows me a photo of her grandson on his circ.u.mcision day, his big rite of pa.s.sage at seven. She touches my bracelets, then slips one off and onto her own wrist. Also an evil eye protection amulet, which I bought in Greece; it is unlike the local ones. Since she does not give it back, I'm glad it was not emeralds. She and her daughter-in-law are dressed in the semifolkloric "harem" pants and scarf. Shirt checked, scarf flowered, pants another flower. The clean and tidy house has almost no furniture except for a plastic-protected sofa and several sorts of banquettes or daybeds where they can sit or sleep. Riotous pattern reigns. The wife says, "When we eat at a table, we are never full." The driver, wearing totally Western clothes, nevertheless has an impressive black mustache. They all seem very pleased that we came. The grandmother holds my hand and sits touching me.

Careening through the hills, b.u.mpy road, no air-conditioning, we press on in the sweltering afternoon to mythic Xanthus, where I am simply too hot to go on. I walk far enough to see the big pillar with Lycian script on four sides, then with Aurora retreat to the shade and guzzle two bottles of water. When I've cooled, I rejoin the others and walk to the remains of a Byzantine church. I'm happy to see the familiar borders of leaves, as well as geometric and entwined Carolingian-looking designs, on pieces of white-tesserae floor. Enver pours water onto one section and shows us palm trees, then clears a threshold of dust with his foot to show us a large mosaic rabbit.

We stop for a swim at long, sandy Patara Beach, then rest with drinks under palapa. Cool at last. Apollo is supposed to have wintered here, which must be to say the coast stays warm all year. This was an ancient-world site of oracular predictions, second only to Delphi, but no one ever has located either the shrine or the oracle to Apollo. Just his sun chariot charging across the sky every day. The boat will meet us at another cove, so we hike across flatland (the silted harbor) and gra.s.ses incredibly scattered with ruins that hark back to Alexander and before. My map notes Patara as the only Lycian site continuously occupied since the Bronze Age. Silky long-haired goats graze among the foundations. Three brown-bearded ones pause and look up, as if to say, What brings you here? Mustapha sees us coming and sends the dinghy. We board in the same spot where Saint Luke and Saint Paul, that most peripatetic traveller, having landed here from Cos then Rhodes, found a ship to take them on to Phoenicia. There must have been a Christian settlement here by then. I'm awash in histories, stories.

And we swim again, off the boat. Dinner on board-grilled chicken and lamb, various mezes, and a bulgur salad similar to tabouli. We are anch.o.r.ed off Gemile Adasi. Adasi, my second word for "island." Almost everyone sleeps on deck tonight. Our souls are rocked.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5: GEMILE ADASI.

Easy day off this sacred island covered with Byzantine monastery stones. We hike to the top of the island. My hiking shoes hold on slippery terrain. That hour with the good hiking adviser at REI in Corte Madera was wise time. The astronaut-size shoes give me confidence to leap from rock to rock. Of the lives of the monks who lived on this austere island, five churches and several cisterns remain. They tried to catch every drop of rain, since there are no wells. We come upon a most curious structure, a covered walkway or narrow street with gaps in the roof as the building descends the hill. Arches open on the east and west sides. The functional effect is to cool the "street." The gaps in the arched roof slightly overlap to the next layer down so no rain gets in but air circulates. Besides being a corridor from the church at the top of the hill, it must have been a place to linger. I've never seen anything like this. The views all around from the top of the island are blue, blue, blue. We find a small necropolis and nearby a domed kiln large enough to bake bread for all the monks. Some graves are carved directly out of stone. We're alone on a mythic Mediterranean island with sage and myrtle-scented scrubby hillsides littered with sacred stone. We all photograph the views of coves. Going back, we follow the snags of goat hair in the bushes. They know the best ways down.

A swim, a peaceful afternoon on deck. Bernice and I stayed behind this afternoon while everyone else hiked to the large Greek ghost town, Kayakoy, only empty since 1922, when Ataturk arranged an exchange program that brought Turks from Greece and sent Greeks back to their original homes.

We lounge, talk books, and nap. I admit my weakness for the Aga Saga, the English tempest-in-a-teapot novel of domestic life, often written with Austen influences of skill and restraint. I pa.s.s one on to Bernice. She falls into it immediately and doesn't look up again. c.u.mulatively the hot days and little sleep make me want a few hours to read my hero, Freya Stark. She mentions finding myrtle tied to tombstones.

Hiking in the full sun this morning, we heard a loud boom. When we got back on board, Mustapha said we had had an earthquake.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6: FETHIYE/LYDAE/CLEOPATRA'S BATHS Into the small resort of Fethiye for a stroll among trellised houses with vines shading the street and pleasant small squares with fountains. The people are everywhere warm. Big smiles, and they touch you. They're eager to shake hands. A hand on my shoulder surprises me in a Muslim country. I buy several alabaster soap dishes and a T-shirt with a Medusa head on it. The Di Rosas help us select good snorkeling masks. Now we are really equipped. At the market Enver buys fish, and we find enormous loaves of rustic bread.

Mustapha takes us up the coast to the spot where Anthony and Cleopatra are rumored to have cavorted in the baths of a small harbor. No perfumed sails and p.o.o.p of beaten gold here. Their little ruin sank long ago in an earthquake. A squalid settlement remains, where a beached rowboat has been strangely fitted out as a bread oven and various nasty chickens and dogs roam, peck, and snuffle in the bare dirt. A black pot sits in coals near a sign for Amigo Restaurant, now defunct, which is fortunate for the health of all concerned. We see no one, but a terrier comes wagging and follows us into the hills.

Up, up as usual from sea level to a peak, along a stony path, with Bernice saying, "I am not a goat." We enter a forest of Aleppo pines, heavily scented, cross more rocky terrain, and meet a Yuruk (nomad) family with their daughters, ages one and two, tied onto donkeys. They're moving a herd of goats with a.s.sistance from two dogs. One girl has on an evil eye necklace. Enver has met them before, and they graciously allow us to photograph them. The girls are shy, but the mother smiles confidently. Her husband follows the ridge, calling to the goats. Soon we pa.s.s their dark tents. Following a high path, we arrive at an empty green valley, where we find a domed cistern, then another, quite intact. Channels trap the rain, which collects below. Several partial structures loom against the sunset sky. I step on a marble torso, the navel and drapery easily identifiable, and other marble pieces broken and lying around. Enver calls to another nomad, asking him if he has found any coins lately, but he has not. The man stares as we pa.s.s. We look weird to him. Possibly zoological.

On through woods scattered with rocks and ruins, so many that I can't tell them apart. A few stone tombs and views of Robinson Crusoe coves of emerald water.

Back for a golden light swim.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7: DALYAN CAUNUS.

Boarded a riverboat piloted by a sinewy young man and his eight-year-old boy, who can't keep his eyes off us. These glimpses of how pale-faced and odd we must look amuse both of us. We travel a few miles up the Dalyan River, around the bend from where we moored. Slow old river-Moses in the bulrushes! Big turtles, kingfishers flashing blue, rock-carved temple tombs on the hills high above. Because one was left unfinished during the Persian War, I can see the method of construction. First smooth the rock face, then carve the house-shaped tomb into it so that it's freestanding except at the bottom, where it's anch.o.r.ed in rock. These rock tombs are eerie and also fascinating because they mimic the temples or domestic architecture of the ruling cla.s.s of that time. Peaked roofs, columned entrances, friezes, and carvings over the doors reveal a sophisticated aesthetic for the living and the dead.

Marshes on either side line the milky jade waters. Marshes are my favorite landscape. Not water. Not land. Childhood summers along the Georgia coast with its vast Marshes of Glynn imprinted the serene watery beauty in my psyche. I loved the subtle shifts of color in the gra.s.ses and the sudden flop of an alligator from a log into the water. In this area the preservation of the loggerhead turtle is important. We see several sunning on mud banks, oblivious to the fuss made about where they lay their eggs. We tie up, and Enver leads us to a hot sulfur pool-very stinky-where we soak among warm rocks, then slather each other with green mud. Rheumatism and gynecological abnormalities will be cured, and male potency enhanced. So tonight the boat may rock with a power over and beyond the tides. Many photographs ensue, since we all look like the night of the living dead. Soon the mud dries to silver, and we each emit a big rotten egg smell. Karl, who is handsome and partially bald, looks the scariest.

We dry as we motor to the large lake of Koyceiz. I wonder but don't ask if this is the Lake of Leeches I read about. I don't fancy jumping off the boat into the murky water, but I do. When I climb back up the ladder, I still have a sheen of mud on my back and legs. I jump in again. We're all soothed and smoothed by the healing properties of the mud. Still, we look bedraggled in the garden restaurant, with our snaky hair and scoured faces. We don't care and enjoy a long lunch of grilled shrimp, lamb kebabs with spicy yogurt, tomato salad, and fresh humus on sesame pita that we picked up in the village of Dalyan.

Enver keeps us moving. In the afternoon we hike to Caunus, a site where extensive roads have been uncovered. I'm attracted by a round "measuring platform" in stone, about thirty feet in diameter with concentric markings. The practical explanation may be right, but to me it looks like an astronomical layout. I've heard nothing about astronomy in any of the ruins, but surely these brilliant builders of cities wondered about the skies. More goats graze. They think they're in an astronomical zone.

The low landscape and reedy water look like Asia. Small fishing boats with awnings could be in the Mekong Delta. From one we buy a box of blue crabs.

I'm shocked to realize this is our last night on board. Life on the water, never familiar to me, has come to seem divine. Wouldn't my ex-husband be surprised? A sailboat figured largely in the breakup of our marriage. All Frank wanted to do was sail, every weekend. As a child he'd built his own sailboat in Pensacola, and I remember well the picture of him at six sitting in it, a sheet for a sail, his determined, intelligent little face. His father had a large sailboat, the Mignon, with its own china, and the loss of that in some financial fiasco involving a gas well reverberated still. Sailing was in his genes. But he was the captain, and I was the one running all over the boat hoisting the jib, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the main, throwing the anchor, plus cooking down below on the stove with two saucer-size burners. Some days were sublime. But San Francis...o...b..y is cold, rough, and often shallow. Sometimes we ran aground when the sonar malfunctioned, and one New Year's Eve when we were stuck and had to wait for the tide to rise, I had a little epiphany: I would sail no more.

The privacy and freedom to maneuver this squiggly coast has been a great gift-the small coves where we slept to the calls of five kinds of owls and awoke to a visitation of bees at breakfast. Warm waters, the moon's paths of wavering light, the boat's billowing sails and little creaks-I've adored the life on board. I even find myself nodding agreement when Fulvio talks about buying a boat. We could sail for six months. Have I gone mad?

Tonight the crab feast, a huge mound in the middle of the table, with couscous enlivened by parsley, raisins, and nuts, and the "priest fainted" eggplant, imam bayildi, rich with concentrated tomatoes and onions. Ali concocts a flaming tower made of fruits for a finale.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8: KUSADASI.

Cast out of Eden, we disembark at Marmaris, what a lovely name, and drive forever (three hours is forever in a bus) to Aphrodisias, one of the earliest settlements of Asia Minor. We pa.s.s sesame fields just harvested, the shocks gathered into upright pyramids for drying.

The layers of shards found at the site start in 5800 B.C. Overwhelming. This is where I am hit with Stendhal's syndrome. So much of the ancient world has been given to our eyes. The difference between this and all the other ruins is that Aphrodisias was a sculpture center, because of a white marble quarry nearby, where artists from all over the Roman provinces came to study. The site abounds with carved surfaces and soaring fluted columns, an astonishing number of them. This approaches a paradisiacal city with a pleasure garden-the most ancient garden I've ever known about. A circle of marble seats surrounds a decorative pond, where one could sit with baby and friends. My dear symbol, the bull, was important-a whole pediment of bull heads lies along a colonnade, and a "changing room" in the theatre is full of others. Is the site more simpatico because it lay in a fertile land where they worshiped the great mother-who later became Aphrodite? Even the theatre seats are marble, many with drawings and Greek writing on them. The upturned stones are carved with the familiar figures of Pan, Medusa, Pegasus, and putti. We've seen so many theatres, but here the personal touches of the writing and symbolic figures bring the reality closer. There's more-much. The stadium-astounding. University of Florida could play Georgia there tonight. The huge ellipse of stone seats is undamaged by the centuries. Very easily I visualize a chariot race. We could not pull ourselves away from all the wonders and so lost the opportunity to see the museum, which closed at five.

Again we board the bus for two hours to the port city Kusadasi, where we check into a 1970s hotel. Our suite is shades of turquoise and blue, all of which have seen brighter days. The place is truly dreary, after the freedom of the boat with always the exquisite water and fresh coastal view. We have dinner outside, the only bad meal we've had in Turkey. Buffet is a bad word anyway, and here, partly because we are eating late, everything oversimmered in the stainless-steel bain-marie has toughened and saddened. The only consolation is that the hotel garden faces the harbor in front, with the lights of the town stretching beyond.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10: KUSADASI AND EPHESUS.

But we sleep. A real bed. And wake at ten. Out the window the leafy tropical garden and the sea resemble a Matisse painting. To Ephesus this afternoon!

The site we'd seen before on a sizzling August day with mobs. Spoiled we are now by hiking to remote ruins. Even with few tourists at Ephesus this time, the experience is so vastly different. Of course, this is one of the most interesting and arresting of the ancient sites, but the sense of discovery feels missing. All has been laid out, pointed out, explicated. The effect of "main street," a marble street lined with astonishing houses and temples, even a public toilet room, cannot be overstated. The grandeur of the ancient world lies beneath our feet. Still, no shard to turn over with your toe, no torso in the weeds. And the end of the trip.

SAt.u.r.dAY, SEPTEMBER 11: KUSADASI/ISTANBUL.

Seeing that we are rug mad, Enver takes us to the workshop of his friend, Dr. ogul Orhan. We're given tea and a show of antique kelims, as well as the process of making silk thread from coc.o.o.ns. Women are weaving under an open-walled room. This is a school that preserves the traditional dying techniques and provides training for village women. The owner is also a motorcycle collector, and Armand would like to take off on a vintage Moto Guzzi. We find a few primitive weavings and have them shipped to California. "World very small. The rugs will be home before you will," Dr. Orhan tells us.

We have lunch outside a Greek village, which looks as if it landed from some Aegean island. We have a stewed seaweed, and hot crispy spinach filo with feta, and a wheat gruel with onions, something you have to have acquired a taste for in early childhood. My favorite bread of the trip is their sesame pan bread made with garbanzo flour.

From Izmir, old Smyrna, we fly back to our little hotel in Istanbul. After much confabulation about the best kebab restaurant, we take an insufferably long taxi through traffic to a strictly local but enormous restaurant. It is mediocre, after all the trouble.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12: ISTANBUL.

Enver goes off to see friends, and a young guide takes us to the Blue Mosque, the Byzantine Cistern, and Hagia Sophia. We did not see the cistern when we were here before. How dangerous, our a.s.sumptions. I'd thought, Oh, a cistern; we have one at Bramasole. This cistern is up there with the wonders of the world-a columned temple of water underground, formerly the city's drinking water. There are fish and low lights and a feeling of being in the afterlife. Many of the 336 columns were recycled from other places. Some are Doric, some Corinthian. One is based on an enormous head placed sideways for the right column height. "This must be the ultimate in improvisation," Bernice remarks. I see Greek writing all over one, and a teardrop design on another.

Topkapi is half the size of Monaco, six kilometers around the walls. As I child I collected postcards and Viewmasters. Although I'd been nowhere farther than Atlanta, I was a traveller in training. The first book I remember reading on my own was Sally Goes Travelling Alone. The moral of the story was, Don't forget your belongings. Sally had four items and compulsively counted them. The lesson did not take; I frequently leave voice recorders, underwear, even jewelry behind. One of my Viewmasters-you inserted a disk of tiny slides in a viewer and clicked from scene to scene-was of Topkapi. I wonder now where I acquired such exotic sights in my s...o...b..x full of treasures. I would like to whisper to the child way down in rural Georgia, Someday you will see Topkapi.

Sometimes you get a new glimpse of a friend just from a throwaway remark. Aurora walking in the garden at Topkapi says, "In my neighborhood in Torino I walked to school down a street lined with sycamores." And suddenly I have a vision of her, a small blond girl with long legs, shy and beautiful, the drying scent of the leaves, and the gold light of a Torino autumn. The day to day of childhood, how long it lasts, then how it turns to a few memories that stay. How we wish we could reclaim memory. And now so many years later she's a lovely mother chasing her boy around the big trees on this first autumn day at Topkapi. I see hundreds of faces in the white hydrangea.

If I could choose one gift from the Topkapi trove, it would not be a big emerald that the sultans were so fond of, or the mirror of twisted gold wire, or even the blackamoor the size of a votive with his pearl pantaloons, turban and jacket of rubies, anklets of diamonds, and his foot on a diamond pillow. I wouldn't take a rose-water sprinkler-my goodness, they are divine-or the little trees of pearl, or even the eighty-six-carat diamond found in a rubbish dump and sold for three spoons. But I would take one of the gold writing boxes all bejeweled. Hidden inside, there must be precious indigo and bloodroot inks and sheets of vellum large enough for a love letter or a poem. To open it and write-what would be the words? Maybe only the essential ones, salt, star, stone.

While we were on the boat, the season changed in Istanbul: mid-September. Today a light rain falls off and on. We have lunch in the greenhouse of a historic Ottoman-style hotel. This is my third visit to the city, and a sense of being in place begins. Sitting here in the watery light with friends, through the gla.s.s roof I can see minarets against the gray sky. The music piped in takes me back to high school, "Stranger in Paradise," augmented by a trickling fountain. Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise. True. The waiters are touchingly attentive as they serve pasta stuffed with veal and a cream sauce of dill and pepper oil. A kitten pounces around and sweeps her body around my legs. A place, and a place like no other.

Briefly I get to see Guven, whom we met on our first visit here. He has been to California twice since then. He's handsome in an Armani-style suit, his black curls long over the collar. He takes us and our friends to look at some rugs, but we are rugged out. With true Turkish fierceness, he has adopted us as friends. When he came to California, Guven hid something in the house to protect us. He worried about us in violent America and asked if he should send an uncle to guard us.

As a farewell, Enver arranges for a boat to take us up the Bosporus to a restaurant. After all the hikes in T-shirts and big shoes, we look fresh in nice clothes. I take pictures of houses along the sh.o.r.e. Like everything in Turkey, they are a mix of charm, interest, decay, and improvisation. Some dark wooden restored houses look as if they could be on a lake in the Adirondacks. Some look as if Tolstoy or Chekhov is inside writing something immortal, a distinctly eastern, dacha cast. Others have a gingerbread Victorian trim, but one frame off, the way nineteenth-century houses look in New Zealand. Others are simply on the verge of collapse. This must be one of the most fabulous places to live in the world. The architecture reflects what a crossroads these waters always have been. They face the choppy Bosporus always hacking at the sh.o.r.e, and the long history of those who have pa.s.sed this way.

We pull up to a seafood restaurant and are all surprisingly subdued for our gala goodbye. We want to arrange to meet later with Guven, to sip a little tea somewhere, but our phone does not connect with his. We all give Enver notes of thanks and books and little gifts. He is an inspired guide and gave us great joy by revealing his country to us.

Back in the bridal chamber, I dream of walking down steps in ruined Greek theatres, and then before the early call of the muezzin, which I am awaiting, there are other dreams of watery colors and patterns-hooks, snakes, scorpions, ram's horns, and goz, the eye, a rug motif based on the belief that the human eye is the best protection against the evil eye. Especially if the eye is blue. I think of Willie's clear, clear gaze and hope it always protects him against evil. He has the lucky darker ring around the iris. When I said to him, "You have my mother Frankye's eyes," he looked surprised and said, "Why?" And I whispered to him, "Because she told me to pa.s.s them on to you." At two he understands. If my mother and Ataturk had married, I still would have inherited blue eyes. Her gene for them was stronger than his black eyes. I wish my mother had sailed in the afternoon on his caique, admiring the lacy Crimean houses over his shoulder. That they had laughed when she told him her grandmother's name, Sarah America Gray. No, impossible. Sarah America Gray was my father's grandmother, and my father has not yet entered this picture. For now, it's only Frankye in shorts and a white sailor top, and Mustafa Kemal who whispers to her, "America, America." He smells of the carnations of Iznik, his lips are wet with salt water, and the sun rains down a silver sheen over the mosques . . .

Then the dreams are just images, no narrative, the tribal symbols of birds and stars rise up, and they must mean holiness, hope, and luck. The dreams give me again glimpses of carved stones. The thousand patterns that I saw, I see again, as though I am walking over them, which, I suppose, I am and always will. The muezzin cry splits the sky.