The border-obsessed times we live in reminded me of some really tough borders I encountered in years past.
It is October 1961, the place: rural Turkey. Where you would have expected to roll on down the deserted dusty road, there is a boom gate and four sentries. This can't be a border, however.
We had already experienced the grim realities of a Middle East border in our attempt to cross from Israel into Jordan through the Mandelbaum Gate. Despite our special ‘clean’ Australian passports, supplied by the Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv and devoid of any Israeli stamps, our trepidation as we approached the crossing was acute and intensified by the sudden bursts of gunfire on both sides of the gateway. We U-turned sharply and retreated and so ended our drive to Baghdad.
But this laconically guarded boom gate is no border: this is just a Turkish road, rough, mostly empty, curving away over stubbly green hills into a steel grey wintry afternoon. Our Kombi van eases to a stop at the boom gate and the engine idles with that hesitant, unlovely clunking that became so familiar as the people’s car spread across the world. The four of us — Australian students Ray, Jim, Bob and me — look blankly at the sentries.
A mixture of halting English and vestigial German ensues and we learn that our plan to drive to Gallipoli means that we must enter a ‘military area’. Forty-six years after the landing, entry to the battlegrounds that are familiar names to most Australians and New Zealanders, not to mention most Turks is still restricted.
We shrug and walk around, stretching, inspecting the boom gate, squinting at what seems to be a distant sliver of silver sea. The sentries smile and shuffle their feet. We show them our Grüne Karte. They are amiably unimpressed. So what, everyone has a Grüne Karte their expressions seem to say. We show them our passports.
'We shrug and walk around, stretching, inspecting the boom gate, squinting at what seems to be a distant sliver of silver sea. The sentries smile and shuffle their feet.'
‘Aussie, good’, says one.
We smile modestly.
‘Gellibolu?’ says the first sentry, who seems to be in charge. We nod and mimic his pronunciation. Gellibolu.
After consulting the four passports again, he hands them back, lifts the boom gate, points to his watch and raises the index finger of his right hand. Since it is four o’clock in