Friday, May 31, 2013

Mor Dimat

 All churches, unless they are part of monastery are bolted and locked tight. Usually there is a cretaker inside who, if you bang on the door, will open to let you in. Or else there could be a villager with a key. There is usually a village next to it. Here an old nun, dressed in black all over, opened the door but quickly disappeared after she let us in. I couldn't take her picture or even greet her. Our taxi driver talked to her in Turkish that we want to visit the church. We asked the name of the church, she replied, 'Mor Dimat.' It was in a state of being restored but work seems to have stalled.

 The yard was overgrown, it was obvious the nun didn't have the wherewithall to take care of things. She just lives there. Pity we couldn't talk to her but even if she stayed to chat, we couldn't understand her or our taxi driver.



 It was quite a pretty church though I don't think anyone uses it anymore.
Writing in Aramaic.
After we finished with Mor Gabriel, we caught a ride back to Midyat bus station and since it was quite early in the afternoon we decided we'll get a taxi to take us back to see the other churches and monasteries. We found this older guy doing nothing. I motioned to him that we want to go to Tur Abdin, he's to drive us around, show us at least 4 (dort) churches (kilesi) but not Mor Gabriel since we've already been there. We'll pay him 300Tl, I wrote it down for him. He looked at the map, thought hard, he asked 'dort' and 300TL? I said, 'taman'. (OK in Turkish). He said, 'taman' and off we went.

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