The Chimera, A Mystical Journey of Nazli Eray’s Orpheus

by Vanessa H. Larson

A  rock burning bright on an August night. A full moon lights up the sky.  I'm up on a mountainside, watching the natural flames shoot out of the rock.  This is the Chimera.

I am at Cirali, a sleepy town in Mediterranean Turkey, yet suddenly I feel transported into the world of Orpheus, a Turkish novel that I helped translate into English a year earlier.  Standing here, watching the flames dance, I am inside of the novel.

The Chimera, called the Yanartas, or "burning rock," in Turkish, is a place on the slopes of Mount Olympos where natural flames emerge from crev...