Where god doesn’t exist

When Sidar told me over breakfast this morning that we’d be going to the Castle of St Peter this afternoon, I can’t say I was overly excited. I was kind of thinking of just hanging out at the beach today. Maybe sitting at a little waterfront café and ordering mezzes and cold Turkish beers. But Sidar was adamant.

“This is now the greatest underwater archeology museum in the world,” he said with his usual restraint.

I don’t know. An underwater museum? Did I really want to go see that?

“Definitely,” he said.

So we went. We’re walking up the cobblestone path towards a shady courtyard where they have ancient amphoras—those odd shaped earthenware jars used to transport olive oil and wine thousands of years ago—when we come to a passageway leading to the interior of the castle. There’s some writing chiseled in to the stone. I ask Sidar what it says.

“It says this is a place where god doesn’t exist.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Because during the Crusades, the Christians would either kill or capture Muslims and if they were captured, they became slaves. They were brought to this castle to work literally to the death. And so the crusaders wanted the slaves to know there was no hope here. That the minute they crossed under this arch and into the castle, they were entering a place where god didn’t exist.”

Right then I started to get a lot more interested in the castle.