About three weeks ago Sezgin woke up groaning. The pain in his lower back had reached a new critical and crippling level. A recurring problem since I met him four years ago the last six months had seen a striking deterioration in his condition and an ill considered garden blitz the day before had rendered him disabled. The pain had spread and was now all around his middle, accross his buttocks and down one side of his legs. İt took him nearly fifteen minutes to make it out of the bed. A long hot shower eased the discomfort but that day and night were in turn uncomfortable and then unbearable. İt finally sank in that he would have to seek medical attention.

At the Yücelen hospital in Muğla they rolled him slowly into the magnetic resonance machine and exhausted from fighting the pain on the hours drive there he propmptly fell asleep. The results were disppointing, he has a trapped nerve caused by a herniated disc. The portentous words of advice by two consultants left him unable to sleep later that evening. The first had recommended surgery and the second had confirmed the opinion of the first and added that if he wanted more children he should have them prior to the surgery as it might leave him paralysed from the waist down.

The family’s consensus was that under no circumstances should he allow doctor’s to tamper with his spine, instead he should go to visit Abdurahman the çıkıkçı (bonesetter) in Köyceğiz. Marvellous stories of full recoveries made after a single session with this miraculous healer were discussed over evening tea. My mother-in-law had seen a woman arrive rolled in a carpet, unable to walk, soiled as she had lost control of her bowels and despairing of ever moving her legs of her own volition again. She apparently left the bonesetter’s on her own two feet. About ten years ago a sudden movement had left Sezgin bent double from the waist and his father had taken him lying on the back seat of his uncle’s old Fiat to this same man. Sezgin rode home in the front seat released from his wizened position.

Abdurahman’s house was an unassuming one storey village house in a small field. The building was surrounded by flowers planted in whitewashed former oil canisters and the porch had at least thirty pairs of shoes on it. The bonesetter came and greeted us at his open door wearing a light grey tracksuit and a broad smile. İn his late forties he welcomed us warmly and invited us into the lounge while mumbling humble apologies for the crowd already inside. I think I was a little disappointed that he didn’t look a little more witch-doctory.

We were led into a low ceilinged lounge and joined two women, dressed in shades of brown, and four oldish men all with moustaches in complementary shades of grey, in sitting on the divans. I took my place next to a lady (as is expected of proper Turkish women) and Sezgin, after shaking hands with all the menfolk, sat next to one of the men. The house seemed very unmedical with a tapestry of roses on one wall, a painting of a house by a river on another and three red ribboned medals for basketball hanging from nails above my head. To my surprise though, like Sezgin, everyone had a Yücelen hospital carrier bag with their x-rays and MR images in them indicating their attitude that they were here for medical treatment.

Before Sezgin’s turn for treatment came there were some mini-consults with the existing patients. One was given the name and phone number of a medical specialist for a condition Abdurahman couldn’t treat and another was politely told that losing weight would be the best medicine. İn the meantime wooden doors in the corridor and off the lounge opened and closed to reveal one quietly sobbing girl who tiptoed to the toilet and a lady who left buttoning her voluminous brown (of course) cardigan. İ assumed that these were the treatment rooms.

The atmosphere was relaxed and pleasantly chatty, it was easy to understand why these simple village people preferred treatment here rather than in the sterile clinical environment of a Turkish hospital with their famously hostile starchy nurses and bossy patronising doctors. Abdurahman sat on the floor of the lounge and asked to see Sezgin’s MR, he immediately located and identified the herniated discs, which impressed Sezgin and then went on to quote Hippocrates and tell us about the Reiki course he had returned from which impressed me. He laid a tasseled sheet on the carpet and asked Sezgin to strip to the waist and lie down. Abdu took off his tracksuit top and then in his white cotton vest and (in front of everybody else) started to massage Sez’s back with oil. The massage continued as did the chit-chat, Abdu revealing himself as a terrible name dropper as he ‘inadvertently’ mentioned all the great and important people he was currently treating and who flew him here and there for private sessions. Sezgin lay quietly and awkwardly on the floor, half naked and bum cleft slightly revealed, while the conversation carried on over his head. For the amount of attention the other attendees paid to him Abdu might as well have been kneading bread.

The massage was a vigorous one, more of a hard rub first over the shoulders, then along his arms, neck and back. İt seemed odd that such little attention was paid to Sezgin’s lower back but Abdu was saving the bset for last. İ’m glad that Sezgin didn’t see him set light to a burning rag on a little cork foot that he then placed on Sezgin’s back. As this odd thing merrily blazed away with a disturbingly large flame he slammed a large glass jar over it. Almost immediately the flame was doused and the skin on Sezgin’s back began to rise like a baking loaf into the jar’s cavity. Abdu explained that the newer mechanised cupping machines just didn’t have the same amount of power as the old fashined methods.

When there was a five centimeter dome of pink stretched flesh in the jar Abdu released it with a popping sound. After creating this kind of extreme vaccuum a few times he then left the jar attached as he rolled Sezgin onto his side and manipulated his legs. Finally after the suction therapy he got a cotton cloth and took handfuls of Sezgin’s skin and pulled as hard he could. The aim he said was to pull and suck the sciatic nerve out of its trapped position. Sezgin groaned a little more and though the cure was not complete he left feeling a little better. Perhaps it was too much to hope for an instant cure and the pain was back the next day though not as severely. Over the next few weeks Sezgin was to acquire a legion of personal alternative therapists.