The View From Here

At the very southern tip of Hakkâri province is one of the most isolated regions in all of Türkiye. The cool, picturesque mountains that surround and protect villages in the north have collapsed into this barren, dry landscape of the south with summer temperatures hovering around 40°C. — But this is home for the people of Derecik, a small Kurdish village where no one ever comes to visit, and where most of the people who live here can think of a hundred places they’d rather be.

From the mud-covered shore of the Rupsa river this woman has climbed into this boat with grace and ease. She now stands steady at the bow as though it were her rightful place in life. —The water was rough not a moment ago with wind all morning and waves all day. But the air turned still as she stepped from the shore, the sky becoming clear, the water like glass.

A pair of large, black ravens have now taken position directly above her, circling in silence and on guard. It has been this way her whole life, and she had felt it always: Protected by the world around her. Nothing to fear.

If you were to walk out along this pier and slide down the remains of this slowly deteriorating waterslide, you would splash into the magical waters of the 3-million-year-old Lake Ohrid, the oldest and deepest lake in all of Europe.

In today’s world, Lake Ohrid belongs to the people of modern-day Albania and North Macedonia who treasure it for its beauty and take pride in its history. But this is also home to 200 species of plants and animals, marine life that is endemic to these waters, and that can be found nowhere else on earth.

For the last 25 minutes this young boy has been preparing his kite for take-off, running down the hillside that leads to this launch pad, and harnessing just the right amount of wind for this perfect moment of flight.

This is his city of Mardin, built on the southern-facing slope of a mountainside that overlooks the limestone plateau of the Syrian border, and the horizon of a world beyond him.

He flies his kite from here every day, watching it climb high as his imagination soars. On the days he craves adventure he rides its wings across the world to learn what lives beyond him. On the days he feels alone, he holds his kite straight and tight and steadies it above him like a beacon of light, a chance for the world to find him.

This young man lives nearby and often sits perched on the top of this wall, high above the busy streets and sometimes even the whole wide world. The wall is no more than ten feet high, but the view from here is endless.

There are dozens of fishing communities wrapped around Batangas Bay and easily housands more that line the coasts of the many Philippine islands. There are two strikingly common features of these communities — their homes all lean out over the water’s edge as far as they can without falling in; and the catamaran-style vessels are the fishermen’s watercraft of choice, sitting high in the water and able navigate the wind and waves with the greatest of ease.

This fishing community is settled on a small peninsula at the mouth of the Calumpang River in the province of Batangas on the Philippine island of Luzon. It’s is a Badjaoan community that’s home to a small population of indigenous Badjao people once known for their nomadic, seafaring lifestyle.

It is estimated that there are upwards of half a million Badjaoan people living in the Philippines who have exchanged their nomadic lifestyles for sedentary ones in coastal communities like this one. They still fish in catamarans and live in homes that lean into the water as far as they can without falling in. Water has always been their way of life and they just can’t get enough.

The city of Gaziantep is known as one of the oldest, continuously inhabited cities of the world, and it is built on rolling limestone hills just west of the Euphrates River, sixty miles north of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

For the Turks, Gaziantep is considered to be the home of the finest cuisine in all of Türkiye and, in better times, is a popular destination for food lovers throughout the country. For the Syrian people, however, Gaziantep is more simply thought of as a home away from home. Over the past ten years of war in their country, the Syrian population of Gaziantep alone has grown to 500,000 – a quarter of the entire population of the city itself – and it is estimated that there are currently 4 million Syrians living or taking refuge out here in the south-eastern part of Türkiye.

If you were to travel Armenia from the very north of the country at its border with Georgia, all the way down to the southern end of its territory at the border crossing into the Zagros mountains of Iran, you would be in the town of Agarak at the bottom of the country, and this would be the very last house you would see.