The car is packed to the roof, the Istanbul flat is handed back, and I am on the E-5 heading west before the city even wakes up. The highway is empty at six in the morning, and the only sound is the hum of the tyres and the click of the indicator as I merge onto the road to Çanakkale. 362 kilometres, about four and a half hours of driving, and then a ferry. The plan is simple: get to Geyikli pier, cross to Bozcaada, and not think about paperwork for at least two weeks.
The drive is uneventful in the best way. The Marmara Sea appears on my left, grey and flat in the early light, and then the highway cuts inland through rolling hills that are dry and golden, already baked by August. I stop at a roadside petrol station outside Bandırma for çay and a simit, and the man behind the counter asks where I am headed. When I say Bozcaada, he grins and says, 'Rüzgar var.' There will be wind. He is not wrong.
I reach Geyikli around eleven, which leaves me an hour before the next ferry. The pier at Yükyeri is a bare concrete slip with a ticket booth and a few cars already queued. A truck is being waved through ahead of me, and I remember what I read about the summer ban: buses and midibuses cannot cross at all, and heavy vehicles only on certain days. My little rental hatchback has no such problem. I pay the fare, about 400 lira for car and driver, and park in the line. The air smells of diesel and salt.
The ferry is called the Geyikli, operated by GESTAŞ, and it is not much to look at — a flat-decked workhorse with a few rows of plastic chairs on the upper deck. I buy a glass of çay from the little counter and stand at the rail as the boat pulls away. The crossing takes about thirty minutes, and for most of it the island is a low blue shape on the horizon. Then Bozcaada Castle rises out of the haze, squat and pale on its rock at the harbour mouth, and I feel the odd relief of a place I have never seen before deciding it will do fine as home.
The ferry docks at the main harbour, right in the middle of town. There is no shuttle, no bus, no grand arrival hall — you just drive off the ramp and you are on the island. I park near the harbour wall and step out into the heat. The town of Bozcaada, or Chora as the locals call it, is the only settlement on the island, and it spills down to the waterfront in a jumble of whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs. The castle looms to my left, and a row of fishing boats bobs to my right. It is just past noon, and the whole place smells of grilled fish and sun on stone.
I have booked two nights at a guesthouse called Ela Tenedos Hotel, which is tucked into a lane in the Greek Quarter. The room is simple but cool, with a stone wall and a window that looks over the rooftops to the sea. It costs about 3,500 lira a night in high summer, which is more than I paid in Istanbul, but it comes with a terrace and a kettle and a view that does most of the work. I drop my bags, splash water on my face, and go back out into the maze of lanes.
The Greek Quarter is a grid of narrow streets lined with vine-covered houses and little galleries. I wander past the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God, a handsome 19th-century building with a bell tower that was restored in 2006, and I step inside for a moment of cool and quiet. A few old women are arranging flowers near the iconostasis, and the air smells of beeswax and dust. The church is one of the few reminders that this island was once mostly Greek, and the peace is almost heavy.
I cross into the Turkish Quarter, which dates from the early 1700s, and find the Alaybey Mosque with its plain stone minaret. In the courtyard there is a grave I did not expect: Grand Vizier Halil Hamid Pasha, who died in 1785, is buried here. The caretaker, an old man with a hose, waves me over and tells me the story in quick Turkish — something about a conspiracy and a sultan's favour, most of which I miss — and then he points me toward the Namazgah fountain for good water. I thank him and keep walking.
By late afternoon I have seen most of the town, which is easy because it is not large. I stop at a café called Kahve Arası Bozcaada on the main square for a cold ayran and watch the world go by. A group of teenagers is playing a game on their phones near the Ziraat Bankasi ATM, and a man is selling tomatoes from the back of a pickup. The wind is already getting up, as promised, and it rattles the awning above my head. I check my phone; one bar of signal, but enough. The residence permit is still, as far as I can tell, in the hands of the bureaucracy.
I have dinner at a place called Vahit'in Yeri, which is a terrace right on the harbour with plastic tables and a view of the boats. The menu is short and honest: a plate of meze, then grilled fish that was probably swimming this morning, and a glass of the local white made from the Vasilaki grape. It is not fancy, but it is exactly what I wanted. The bill comes to about 600 lira, which is not cheap, but the island is in peak season and everything is marked up. I pay, and I sit for a while longer, watching the light go gold over the castle.
As the evening settles, I find my way to the Cumhuriyet Meydanı — the main square — where I have been told a film is showing tonight. It is a free open-air cinema set up by Türk Telekom, and tonight they are screening an animated film called 'Zootropolis 2'. The square is already filling with families and teenagers and a few tourists, and the screen is a big inflatable thing on the cobbles. I grab a spot on a low wall and watch. The film is in Turkish, which means I understand perhaps a third of it, but it does not matter. The crowd laughs at the same jokes, and the popcorn seller does a brisk trade.
The film ends around ten, and the square empties as quickly as it filled. I walk back through the lanes to my guesthouse, and the wind has dropped to nothing. The harbour is still, the boats creaking gently on their lines, and the castle is a dark shape against a sky full of stars. I stand on the terrace for a while, listening to the silence. It is the first real quiet I have had in a week.
I sleep with the window open, and I wake early to the sound of gulls. The forecast promised 24 to 30 degrees and mostly clear, and it is keeping its word. I have a coffee at a bakery in the Turkish Quarter — terrible instant stuff, but the view of the harbour makes up for it — and I spend the morning walking the lanes again. The grapes are ripening everywhere; the Çavuş vines hang heavy over garden walls, and the air has that sweet, slightly musky smell of a harvest about to happen. The 26th Bozcaada Grape Harvest Festival starts in less than a week, on the 14th, and I plan to be here for it.
In the afternoon I rent a scooter from a shop near the harbour and ride west toward Cape Polente. The road is straight and empty, and the wind is strong enough that I have to lean into it. The lighthouse at Polente is white and small against the blue of the Aegean, and beside it the 17 wind turbines of the island's wind farm turn slowly, huge and hypnotic. I sit on a low wall and watch the sea for a while. The water is impossibly clear, and I can see the bottom from the shore.
On the way back I stop at Ayazma Beach, which is on the southwest coast and apparently the liveliest on the island. There is a small café and a pebbly shore, and people are swimming in the cold, spring-fed water. I wade in myself, and it is bracing enough to make me gasp. Beyond the beach, the Ayazma Monastery sits on a hill, quiet and white. I am told it hosts a festival in July; right now it is just a place to look at from the water.
Dinner tonight is at a place called Madam Antula, up a lane in the Greek Quarter. It is a little more polished than last night, with candles on the tables and a wine list that leans local. I order the kopanisti cheese pastry, which is a local specialty, and a glass of Kuntra red, and I eat slowly, unhurried, the way people do on a small island in August. The bill is around 800 lira, and I do not mind. This is what I came for.
After dinner I walk down to the harbour again. The water is glassy, and the lights from the restaurants shimmer in long lines. A group of musicians is setting up on a terrace, and the first notes of a saz drift across the water. I think about the road ahead — the Lycian coast, the autumn, all the long drives and ferry crossings — but right now I am here, on Tenedos, the island where the Greeks hid their fleet before the Trojan Horse. It is a strange thought, standing on a harbour that has seen that much history.
I stop at a small shop on the way back and buy a jar of red-poppy jam and a bottle of Çavuş wine to take to whatever flat I eventually find. The woman at the counter wraps them carefully and wishes me iyi akşamlar, a good evening. I wish her the same, and I mean it.
Back on the terrace of Ela Tenedos, I sit and listen to the cicadas and the very distant sound of a television from a house down the lane. The wind has died again, and the stars are sharp overhead. I have been here less than twenty-four hours, and already the mainland feels a world away. Istanbul was a week of forms and ferries and noise; this is something else. Tomorrow I will ride to the western cape and watch the sunset at Polente. The day after that, maybe, I will start to feel like I live here. For now, the quiet is enough.
That is the thing about moving, I think: you carry the noise with you for a while, and then one evening, in a place you have never been before, it drops away. The ferry brought me across the water, and the island has done the rest. I am going to sleep now, with the window open and the gulls as my alarm. Yarın, another day. Goodnight from Bozcaada.