Shhh. Hold still. Do you see it? There — perched on the shelf — the New Balance Tournament Tennis Shorts. A truly elegant specimen.
Note the field marks: a lightweight, sweat-wicking build for long sessions in open country, a secure and comfortable waist, and pockets deep enough to carry a spare ball — or, in my case, a backup lens cap, three granola bars and a laminated checklist.
New Balance breeds its Tournament line for endurance and quiet, unfussy performance, the kind of plumage that does not startle the rally away. Simple, durable, made to move at first light and still be comfortable at dusk. Magnificent. No, do not clap. You will flush it.
Now — binoculars up — the habitat, and I can barely whisper this calmly. The Yüksekova district sits on the Gawar plain at over 1,900 metres, a great highland basin beneath the glaciated Cilo and Sat ranges, which are the most dramatic peaks in Turkey.
Mountain streams water it, herds graze the summer pasture, and the Nehil reedbeds pull in migratory flocks in numbers that make my hands shake. Nineteenth-century travellers wrote about the villages, the wetlands and the storks. STORKS.
And then the plain turns out to be hiding something. In the Derav valley at the western end of the district lie extensive city and castle ruins that researchers identify as the probable site of Musasir, the sacred city of Urartu, which held the great temple of Haldi and was sacked by Sargon II of Assyria in 714 BC.
Scattered through the same country are Urartian stelae and tombstones near Kelyaşin, ram-shaped stones at Güçlü, and eleventh-century rock-cut churches in the valley itself. One of the most tantalising unexcavated landscapes in eastern Anatolia, and almost nobody has it on a list.
You will wear these everywhere from a dawn hit on the town courts to a long afternoon scan across the marshes, and — by the way — they are also perfect for the walk up to the Köprücük church ruin, where a long, dark, two-part rectangular shell of smooth local stone stands alone on a village hill.
That is the surviving physical testimony of the Assyrian Christian communities who filled these valleys for over a thousand years until 1915. Rare sightings everywhere you look here. Deep breaths.
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