HOUSES IN A MYRIAD COLOUR KETENDERE

Ketendere,Ketendere is a mountain village near the ancient Carian city of Labranda. It lies due north of the town of Milas in Turkey's southeastern province of Mugla. Here there are neither the luxuriant greenery and half-timbered houses of the Black Sea, nor the adobe houses of the eastern region. Instead the stone streets and stone houses of the village stand in a bare setting of siliceous rock. But the inhabitants make up for the colour nature has begrudged them by growing carnations and geraniums in large tins on their balconies and terraces, by adorning their heads with posies of flowers, and by painting vivid designs on the woodwork inside and out.
My first sight of the village had left me standing in my tracks. Women and children in brightly coloured traditional costume were busy moving to and fro across the rock which glinted in the sunshine. I wondered if I had come across a film set, or somehow travelled back in time. We were looking for the home of Ayse, whom my friends had met at Milas market.

Everyone we asked insisted that we first go to their house and then to Ayse's, as if we were guests of the entire village instead of hers personally. When we eventually found her, she gave us a warm welcome. A little while later her husband and children arrived back, and in a matter of half an hour Ayse prepared a variety of dishes. Over the meal we chatted like old friends, and afterwards Ayse and her husband took us visiting from house to house around the village. Since it was the Feast of Sacrifice, everyone was at home, and everywhere we went food was spread before us.
The houses of Ketendere are built of large hewn stones with small pieces of tile between them, which is both attractive and strengthens the walls. It apparently takes four builders one and a half or two months to complete a house. Some of the new houses are being constructed of brick these days, but Ketendere has far fewer than neighbouring villages.

The houses have colourfully painted and carved wooden shutters and doors, which are unfortunately diminishing in number since they are being bought up by people from Bodrum and Marmaris and turned into tables.
As we entered each house we were enchanted by the remarkable interiors. The wooden doors, cupboards, ceilings and shelves were all painted in silver and gold patterns. These are the work of Ibrahim Usta, who explained with regret that no young people have learnt this traditional craft to carry it on after him. On the shelves encircling the rooms were white embroidered cloths on which stood gleaming copper bowls and cooking pots. In a corner of some rooms hung embroidered handkerchiefs, and before we could ask what they were our hosts explained that on every religious feast until their marriage, girls send an embroidered handkerchief to the boys they are going to marry. The number of handkerchiefs shows how long the couple have waited for one another.

The women were dressed in their finest and most colourful costumes for the feast days, and each had attached a posy of fresh flowers to the edge of her headscarf when she left the house, even just to visit the neighbours. Women of all ages, including eighty year old grandmothers kept up this picturesque custom. They also wore bracelets and necklaces made of blue beads and seeds. The villagers all had happy smiling faces, and they insisted that there is no problem of daughters-in-law not getting on with their mothers-in-law in their village, since the newly-weds move into their own small cottage built for them and known as haney, rather than living with the boy's family.

Ayse insisted we stay the night, and that evening the house was filled with relatives who came to see us. Men and women all joined in the conversation on equal terms. The houses are furnished in the traditional way with fitted divans around the walls instead of chairs or settees. Everyone sits either on these or on large cushions on the floor.

Meals are eaten on a cloth spread on the floor so there is no table. Coffee is brewed over a gas bottle set on the floor in the room for convenience, and meals are cooked over a wood fire in the kitchen. I was surprised to see that the inside of the hearth in the kitchen was brilliant white instead of smoke-blackened, and was told that it is whitewashed every two or three weeks.

There is no land suitable for cultivation around the village, and vegetables are grown in fields a couple of hours' walk away. Every family has at least a small olive grove, and after storing enough for their own needs the surplus olives and olive oil are sold. But the income from this is not sufficient to make a living, so at harvest time both men and women take on seasonal work picking cotton or gathering olives, and some of the men work as labourers in Milas. At around six o'clock in the evening during the week, they arrive in minibuses from Milas, tired after the day's work.

When I revisited Ketendere I was fortunate enough to see a wedding, a festive affair which lasted four days and nights. In the late afternoon of the day that the bride is fetched to her new home, ten or twelve cloths from her trousseau are laid on the back of a horse, and seated on these the bride rides in procession around the streets of the village. She wears a wedding dress of wine red velvet and a thick white veil over her face.
Ketendere was more than just a pleasant excursion for me. I made friends there and have kept in touch with them. How could I forget the kindness of these people? One woman left her small child at home to show me the way to the mountain pastures, another took off her beautiful headscarf and gave it to me, and with another we shared the disappointment of finding the water jugs which local people conceal in shady spots along the paths to be empty, and then the joy of discovering a small spring to quench our thirst. l

* Tülin Dizdaroglu is a photographer

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