World Underground

“It’s purgatory.” 

Sitting on the roadside in the town of Mazi drinking tea, I was speaking with Ihsan, a native of the town who became fascinated by the local underground cities as a young boy and is now an expert guide on these futuristic constructions from the past. He was referring to the Mazi underground city when he ironically commented on the unique experience of being held in its claustrophobic limbo.

Just another hole in the wall: one of the entrances to the underground city.

Underground cities, are scattered through out Cappadocia.  It is guessed that that they were used by many different peoples since the Bronze Age primarily as places of hiding and living.  The one in Mazi is a particularly amazing because it is tourist- free (for now), well excavated and quite large.  Having Ihsan as our guide, Viivi and I were able to get a real feeling for what it may have been like living in and maneuvering through this circuitous labyrinth.  

Ihsan and Viivi going through one of the tunnels

In short, it is cold, pitch black and cramped- kind of like being in a coffin or maybe something like being a mole.  I barely stood up straight the entire time we were there and when we moved through the tunnels that connected the rooms, I was nearly crawling on all fours. It made me wonder what the people who used these cities looked like and how they adapted their bodies in order to move around.

Ihsan leading Viivi down one of the tunnels using a rope

One of the passages taken with a flash

The most interesting and unexpected part of the tour was when we had to climb up one of the ventilation/passageways in order to proceed to the next room.  I had seen these tunnels before and often wondered how people were able to move in a vertical direction hanging onto the crevices carved into the sides of the tunnels.  Fortunately, it wasn’t as impossible as I imagine.  Here is my nifty artist rendition showing how we climbed up the tunnel:

For me, being in the underground city was something between being on an episode of the Flintstones, underground with Kirk in Star Trek, being lost in the movie Gerry or being trapped at the end of the movie The Vanishing (the 1988 version).  This is to say, it was something between comedy, romantic adventure and deep, basic human anxiety.  A little purgatory and a little adventurous freedom.  In other words- complicated- like the rest of Cappadocia.