“The Greek woman is screaming in pain and is about to give birth. The day is etched in my memory… August 27, 1957. We have some way to go to reach the Odunluk pier. Bozcaada is way back in the distance, and it wouldn’t matter even if I turned back, you could already see the crown of the baby’s head… so I grabbed it and yanked it out… blood everywhere, and a little girl in my lap.  I grabbed my metal saw and cut the umbilical cord, wrapped the baby up in a blanket, turned the rudder, and we returned to Bozcaada. Later when it was time to name the baby, I said to the priest:

‘Look, name her Yakaruku Eleni… that way Skipper Yakar’s name will be part of her name and her life. ‘  The priest refused, and they named her something else. The family later moved to Athens, the priest met his Maker, and that girl I helped bring to this world has now three children of her own; she still looks me up”

Skipper Yakar is on a roll, and I fascinated. I am on Bozcaada.

Sitting at a tiny square wooden table, at the crack of dawn, with a cup of tea in my hand, I am reading Haluk Sahin’s “Bozcaada” novel… a book he wrote 13 years ago. An island this beautiful could only be put to words as captivating as this.

One of the chapters of this book is dedicated to Skipper Halil Yakar. How he from the age of 15, all the way to 65 - for 50 years – was the only game in town, as far as hauling people, goods and vehicles were concerned, on his sail and motor boats between the island and the Odunluk pier.  

 In one breath I scan through how after 1983, when discarded army landing crafts were put into service and spoiled the fun for the Skipper, he hung up his hat and quit. I am looking at photos of this island legend at the end of the book, among gorgeous photos of Bozcaada, and feel the deep respect rising in me.

Turning to the waiter I ask: “Is the Skipper still alive?”   “Sure” he replies, “he’ll be here any minute now”.

So the big guy is still around… so his eyes will still be able to see me… so I can still get a first hand account of recent island history … and so his hand which I am prepared to kiss out of respect is still a comfortable 36.5 degrees Celsius.

So, patiently I wait, and soon a giant of a man slowly makes his way towards me, with his white Skipper’s cap, his cane, his enormous belly, and with steps taken with effort.

I recognize him… it’s the Skipper.

I rush up to the table as he plops himself down…

 “Skipper Yakar?”

Through a fog of an opaque curtain, two green eyes are sizing me up.

“Yes?”

I take the wrinkled hand among mine, and my lips touch it with profound respect… and so, two people – a generation apart - separated by the Aegean, dive into a lively conversation. I gift him with the book I was reading, and he accepts it with grace. With an ear that became the size of an elephant’s, with a chest pounding like a drum, I am listening to history… as told in words through a wobbly prosthesis… and not dry words on a piece of paper. How his second in command Gultekin, on a wedding night, was broadsided by a colossal barge in the channel; the life and death struggle in the water that ensued for hours thereafter; and the subsequent rescue by a Russian freighter… or the fact that even the cobblestones beneath the table we were sitting at were carried over on his boat.

Vasil’s tavern, Andre’s mortar-crushed coffee, and Sokrat Incesu from across the brook… Sokrat the true friend of the Turks. Sokrat, whose love for Turkey made it into books; who – as a Christian - died with the Koran under his pillow; whose body was neither accepted by the Church for a funeral ceremony, nor by the Mosque for a final prayer, and was buried without a religious service as the body started to decompose. The Greek Sokrat Incesu, a true lover of Turks and Turkey. The Skipper also tells the story of a desolate Greek woman he had to ready for burial lately. To him, she had been the final chapter of the songbirds that left for Canada or Australia after the Cyprus conflict.

 I am invited to the Skipper’s home for dinner. The centerpiece of the dinner table being the famous Cavus grapes, for which the island is renowned. The grape, from which the famous Dimitrakopulo wines were made from once; the grape on thousand year old Bozcaada coins. This being the height of the grape harvest, the vineyards and the tractors are loaded with grapes, but the Skipper is worried:

“There were times, when 10 truckloads would leave the island every day for the mainland, but the vineyards were all burned down, and we’re lucky if nowadays we can get one truckload out.”

The walls are covered end to end with photos. In one of the photos, is a man, chiseled like an athlete with piercing bright eyes. It is the young Skipper on his wedding day, in 1948… and pictures of his late wife Murvet, whose death affected the captain so profoundly that on the day she died he vowed never to sail again, sold his boat – which later burned down; and from which day on he watched the sea from his bay window at home. The great love of a cantankerous sea-wolf.

One wonders then, as to Murvet’s frame of mind. Her grandson gives a snapshot:” She was so adamant about me not becoming a sailor, that she told me she would turn in her grave if that was ever the case”, missing her husband deeply all her life. The grandson continues: “Before the boat got sold and burned down, when I was still a little boy, my grandpa would give me the helm, point to the two hills ahead and say ‘keep heading in that direction’ and then would go and take a nap. He tells that with all the souls, cargo and equipment on board, and steering wheel in his tiny hand, he would pray to the king of Atlantis, a show that would be watching at the time, to give him safe passage home.

Lost in thought, my eyes scan the walls and they land on some of grandson Yakar’s medals. 1973 was not a good year for the Skipper.  He barely made it across in a heavy storm, and his boat sank at the berth of Odunluk.

I hear the Northerly wind howling through the kitchen window, and I keep thinking how difficult it must be to spend the long and endless winter nights, alone with your ancient memories.

I see a famous reporter in one of the pictures, and say to myself “Bravo my friend, you picked the right guy for an interview”…  an interview done on board his boat with a legend, who had not lost his life partner yet, and thus had not turned his back to the sea then… a true descendant of Poseidon.

The plaques given to him during sea festivals are next to pictures of this swashbuckler’s wedding. Black does not suit the Skipper – neither does sitting on the sidelines and just watch the sea for all these years.

That day I also had struck up a conversation at the café with old-timers such as Mustafa and Mehmet. They told me about the days before the Lausanne Treaty, when during the Greek occupation their fathers were tied up with telephone wires, thrown into a ship’s hold, and taken over to the island of Hios… and how two Turkish boatmen, realizing that they were going to be beaten up badly by the occupying Greeks, tried to escape but were cornered at the tip of a shaky and narrow pier, and took on about two hundred Greeks, who had no choice but to approach one on one, and also got taken down one by one by these two… and how the British governor, when hearing about this accomplishment, rewarded the two boatmen with a sack of flour and a sack of sugar each.  One other story they told me I also heard from the Skipper:

After the Lausanne Treaty that gave the island back to Turkey, when Turkish ships were approaching the island, the Greek population on the island made their way to the other side of the island – namely Ayazma. Two Turks, who had remained on the island, took this opportunity to take down the Greek Flag flying high on the fort, then desecrated the flag and pulled up the Turkish flag. For some reason the Turkish ships turned back to the mainland, without ever making it to the island. The enraged Greek crowd, started a house-to-house search for these two Turks, and finally caught up with them, while they were trying to make it across the channel to the mainland. Needless to say, they were both killed on the spot.

Skipper Yakar’s sail or motorboats are no more, and nor are the ramshackle Paxman Ricards military landing crafts, replacing his boat in 1983. Now there are the ferries that operate on a set schedule… and now there is an old captain sitting in his home watching the sea from his bay window of his home in the harbor; a skipper that has been the bridge between the island and the mainland for the island folk for 50 years; an icon that has carried everyone and everything to and from the island for 50 years; a legend whose statue is waiting to be erected in the harbor after his death; a sea-wolf who has turned his back to the sea; whose boat is in ashes; a man looking out of his window with the Northerly wind blowing through his kitchen, with no seagulls to follow him anymore…. Skipper Halil Yakar.

May you live long, and may the road ahead be smooth… Ahoy Skipper.

Written by the “Dream Doctor” Yalcin Ergir