The Caravan Moves On

by Irfan Orga

This book made Irfan Orga something of a celebrity when it was first published in the 1950s. It is about living with a nomadic people who have no sense of belonging to a nation or the world beyond their tribe. Orga journeys to the center of Turkey to stay with the Yuruk nomads in the High Taurus Mountains. There he learns their lore, listens to their legends, and lives to feel that heroes dead a thousand years and abducted princesses turned mad by grief are still palpably alive. Orga opens a world untouched by politics or the march of events. He reconnects us with a once-ubiquitous emotional landscape-a visceral place underpinned by elemental values.

Genres: Travel, Memoir, Nonfiction, Middle East, Turkish, Turkish Literature, History

174 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Irfan Orga was a Turkish fighter pilot, staff officer, and author. He published books on many areas of Turkish life, cookery, and history, as well as a biography of Atatürk, and his own autobiography (Portrait of a Turkish Family). He also wrote two children’s books. Orga was born into a wealthy Ottoman Turkish family in Istanbul. Soon World War I broke and his life was changed forever. Orga witnessed the atrocities and hardships of war. His novels display the common everyday life of an Ottoman Turkish family. It was during his adulthood in 1942, when he met a young married Norman-Irish woman, Margaret Veronyca, while he was on a three-year posting in England from the Turkish air force. However, the Turkish Air Force did not approve of his living with a foreign woman in England, and Orga was stripped of his rank and forced out of the air force. After Veronyca’s divorce had been finalised in 1948, they married. While his wife began working her way up the hierarchy of publishing, Orga pursued several menial jobs. He also began writing and publishing books.

Reviews

[Jen Holman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of this author. Last year while traveling in Turkey I read his book "Portrait of a Turkish Family" and since then I've been wanting to read more of his work. Being back in Istanbul, I managed to find this one. I was a little nervous it might be dry, but luckily his writing style is just so readable and charming that it was a lovely read. He includes lots of interesting details about the Yuruk and his experiences while staying with them for 3 weeks. The Yuruk are a nomadic community who live in the Taurus mountains of Turkey, and they are virtually untouched by modern civilizations. They adhere to a strange mix of Islam and superstitions passed down generation to generation. As the author puts it, they are probably one of the only societies whose ancestors would recognize them as their descendants.

Just as great as discovering this book, is discovering the Eland publishing house, who aim to revive great travel books that have gone out of print. www.travelbooks.co.uk

[Alice Manderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a great distaste for the self-serious, authoritative tone of autobiographical works of last century. My harsh judgement wavered as the author’s idiosyncrasies leaked through in his fondness of birds and I was begrudgingly won over with his anthropological nature and lush writing style. Sometimes unnecessary detail droned on and on but you’re always eventually rewarded with a gem of some deeply profound observation. Kind of equivalent to watching chrome cast photos as an activity

[Garry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful little travel memoir from perhaps the 1940s set in Turkey. Very enjoyable and descriptive writing.

[Jenny Ekberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melancholic travel journal, quite beautiful. Very strange, though, to read the term "mountain Turk" - I can only assume that is how Kurds were referred to in the past (?). However, it seems like the term here also includes migrants from elsewhere (Central Asia/Caucasus?).

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The death of civilizations makes me tremble for the fate of our own, which has given so much less to posterity."

[Rita]

1958. Of ethnographic interest, though his being stationed there [as an army officer] had nothing to do with anthropology.

[Omar Taufik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book could be considered a memoir as the previous book by the author (Portrait of a Turkish Family), but at a lower scale covering a period of three weeks.
The bulk of the three weeks were spent with the nomadic Yürük Türkmen of Anatolia on the mount Karadağ. The journey to the Yürük settlement starting from Izmir ending in karaman going through Manisa, Afyon and Konya were also covered along with the journey back home covering Antalya, Mersin and Adana.
The author as an Istanbul born citizen of Turkey discovers the enchantment in the exotic and hidden world of the Yürük. The reader will discover many interesting details of the Yürük covering aspects of culture, history, religion, rituals and more ..
This book is a very good recommendation for readers interested in exploring the world of the Yürük who are ethnically the purest of the Turks of Turkey regarding the minor change that impacted them since the Turkish migration to Asia Minor from Central Asia (Türkistan) ten centuries ago in their world of isolation and their special form of freedom.