Under the blazing sun in Mardin, a group of men with traditional baggy pants and prayer beads were trying to make their way to the local mosque for Friday noon prayers, but the narrow, cobbled street was blocked by buses and a white Mercedes with Istanbul plates. An elderly man shrugged and remarked, “There are more cars than people in the city nowadays.”
Back at the hotel, an ancient caravanserai (travelers inn), a harried woman negotiates with the receptionist for two additional rooms while simultaneously shouting into her phone. “You have to pick them up from the airport,” she says to the person on the other end, dropping the names of two of Turkey’s most famous art collectors. Meanwhile, artists speaking French wait for their bus outside, while several Turkish women loudly discuss what they will do the rest of the day now that they've opened their exhibition of “ebru,” the Turkish art of marbling, at the Mardin Museum.
