The Fisherman of Halicarnassus
Noone has ever described the Mediterranean coast as poeticly
as he has. The story of the Fisherman of Halicarnassus or
with his actual name Cevat Sakir Kabaagacli, is worth noticing :
He was sent to exile to Bodrum ( Ancient Halicarnassus ) in 1908, convicted of murdering his father, for they both were in Iove
with the same woman.

He is a graduate of Oxford, therefore this quiet town did not
bother him that much.
He introduced the town and the life on the Meditarrenean to Turkey.
He wrote stories about the people of Bodrum, about their Iives and
folklore and most important of all, of the philosophy of the people
that Iived on the Aegean coast of Anatolia since ancient times.
He was sent to exile for 3 years, he remained there for 25 years.

Laughing Tombstones

In his beautiful book titled " The Western Shores of Turkey", we learn from John Freely, the writer, that Cevat Şakir wrote an essay on the epitaphs that he himself translated from tombstones in the old graveyard in Bodrum. It might be very interesting to give some them here :

A pity to good-hearted Ismail Efendi. whose death caused great sadness among his friends. Having caught the illness of Iove at the age of seventy
he took the bit between his teeth and dashed full gallop to paradise.

Stopping his ears with his fingers, Judge Mehmet hied off from this beautiful world, leaving his wife's cackling and his mother- in-law's gabbling.

(On a wayside tomb): Oh passerby, spare me your prayers,
but please don 't steal my tombstone!

I could have died as well without a doctor as
with the quack that friends had set upon me.

I have swerved away from you for a Iong time. But in soil, air , cloud, rain, plant,
flower , butterfly or bird, I am always with you.

( On a tombstone with the relief of three trees: an almond, a cypress, and a peach-tree ):
I've planted these trees so that people might know my fate. I loved an almond-eyed, cypress-taIl maiden, and bade fareweIl to this beautiful world without savouring her peaches.