It’s 2009, and I’m in Turkey to research my novel Deep State. Standing behind is Melinda Snodgrass, and Patricia Rogers is behind the camera.
I’m in the smog-swathed capital of Ankara, the city known to the Hittites as Ankuwash, to the Romans as Ancyra, and to the Ottomans as Angora. Ankara is a modern, largely secular city, with more than 20 universities, but looming above is the acropolis topped by its citadel, mostly Byzantine and Turkish but with foundations that go back to the Phrygians.
Walking through the citadel’s gates really is like walking into another, older world. There’s an entire city inside the walls. Men smoke in doorways or play backgammon, old women in headscarves walk up the steep paths carrying enormous bundles of Angora wool on their backs, and kids kick footballs around. Even little girls wear headscarves, which I hadn’t seen anywhere else. Groups of teenage girls in headscarves and ankle-length overcoats giggle and snap selfies of each other. People seem poorer than elsewhere in the city.
The citadel plays a part in Deep State, as the place where Dagmar and Ismet, her love interest, first connect, when he takes her hand and leads her along the top of a connecting wall to a bastion.
A little nervous, I walked to the bastion myself, but no one held my hand.
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