Explorations
Digging for Energy in Distant Lands
The fairy chimneys of Cappadocia.
Dispatch 2: Of Two Worlds
ON THE ROAD TO ANKARA—State College feels like another world as I watch the Turkish landscape slide by. We are on a tour bus, leaving the caves, underground cities, and "fairy chimneys" of Cappadocia. Volcanic eruptions three million years ago covered this plateau with tufa, a soft stone made of lava, ash, and mud. Wind and rain have eroded the brittle rock and created an eerie landscape of rock cones and ravines. Centuries of desert winds have left tall, conical formations of hard basalt tops protecting the ash directly beneath them. Generations of Anatolians carved homes and as many as 220 churches into these and the surrounding cliffs. Others, including my great-grandparents, built underground cities more than 40 meters deep, with air shafts, water systems, communal kitchens and even wineries, that protected hundreds of people at a time from the warring factions on the surface. I was awed by these as a child, and, 30 years later, I have brought my 11-year-old daughter Ayshe to see them as well. Now we are heading to Turkey's capital, Ankara.
The land in central Anatolia is a dry off-white, speckled with differing degrees of green and brown. Long fields of sun-soaked wheat are separated by others of lush low-lying melons or bushy, dark green peach trees. Small herds of goats munch away under the occasional stand of olive trees or curiously watch traffic go by from a perch on an old stone wall. On the horizon sit towering, dramatic mountains, looking ancient and entitled, as majestic as the Swiss Alps but capped not with white, blinding snow but the beiges and browns of parched summer soil. As we speed through the occasional intersection or small village, we see colorful Turkish carpets lavishly patched together edge to edge under outdoor tables set for any passer-by. To breathe the air here is to breathe burnt dust mixed with spicy grilled meat, soft, sweet tomatoes and fresh water sprinkled onto the dusty open spaces.
The many colors of central Anatolia.
Only six weeks ago, I sat with Esra Eren, a Penn State graduate student in fuel science, in the cool morning shade of Irving's coffee shop on College Avenue in State College. She was smiling broadly, her white teeth dazzling under her large brown eyes. She was excited, nervous. The electricity was practically jumping out of her.
Eren was going home to Turkey in a few days, for only the second time since she had moved to the United States a yearearlier. As she nursed a bottle of cranberry juice, she lamented that "Everyone gains weight when they come here!" and then announced with pride that she had lost six kilos since her short visit home in January. We both knew her mother would be pleased when she saw her.
This is Eren's first time away from home. Having studied for a master's degree in chemical engineering at Ege University in the city of Izmir, she won a scholarship from the Turkish Petroleum Corporation to continue her studies in America, in petroleum engineering. She landed at Kennedy Airport last June, with little spoken English and fewer friends. Within days she was heading out of her dorm room in the middle of Manhattan, trying to find her way to her first class. She survived just three months at New York University.
"I escaped from New York because it was huge," Eren said. She began looking for the right graduate program somewhere else. "I checked many universities—Penn State, Texas A&M, Caltech, University of California, Los Angeles, MIT. There were many parameters I considered—living costs, area and climate, feeling like I was home, the campus, the professors. Then I made a table. It was a real scientific table; I learned how to do it in my other master's degree. That table showed me Penn State was the best for me.
"I came on Greyhound!" she added. "It was a good experience for me." At the bus station in Milesburg, Eren was met by Semih Eser associate professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering, who is also from Turkey. Eren had corresponded with Eser and other professors about opportunities at Penn State, and Eser later became her research adviser.
From left: Suzan Erem, Suzan's daughter Ayshe, Paul Durrenberger, Esra Eren. Photo from Suzan Erem
Eren's year in the United States has been challenging—improving her English and learning a new field at once, finding her way around the intimidating expanse of New York and then the winding roads around State College. But she never dwells on difficulty. And on that humid day in Irving's coffee shop, she was thinking only of going home, seeing friends and family, and getting the asphaltite samples she needs for her research.
Without these samples—organic minerals that look like the black, shiny coal found in Pennsylvania—Eren will not be able to complete her research. She is looking to find more cost-effective ways of extracting energy-rich compounds from asphaltite.
Already Feridun Alp Ugur, her research director at the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, had told her by e-mail that a trip to southeast Turkey (where a large deposit of asphaltite lies under the earth) was neither safe, being so close to the war in Iraq, nor absolutely necessary. She would have to rely on the supply of samples in the archives at Turkish Petroleum in Ankara. He reassured her there would be no problem, but Eren was anxious to have those samples in her hands.
"I land on Wednesday," she told me excitedly, "and I want to be in Ankara on Monday, but they said they are busy. I would go right away but I have to wait!" She was smiling as always, an ear-to-ear grin, eyebrows raised in excitement. "I always say, 'Where is my sample? My sample! But it is not 'my sample.' It is a rock. But I need it!"
Those cool mornings in State College are far behind us. I pull the curtain across the bus's tinted window to shade myself from the insistent sun. The young bus attendant, who has supplied us with water, tea, coffee and muffins during our journey, comes down the aisle pouring lemon cologne into the cupped hands of willing passengers, signaling our arrival at our final destination. Soon I'll be in Ankara, and tomorrow I'll meet up with Eren and find out what has happened with her samples.