Author: Pesha Magid and Laura Neumann / Source: Atlas Obscura
The roses are a deep, rich, wine-colored red when in full bloom, but as buds they look black. Alaattin Aydın smiles and summons his grandchildren over to take pictures among them in his garden.
He keeps the roses in large tin cans that used to contain tomato paste. He, like many old men in Halfeti, makes much of his living cultivating roses and selling them to visitors who have come seeking the black rose.Tourists flock to buy these roses, which are called kara gül in Turkish. They have an almost mythic quality, particularly within Turkey, and particularly within the last decade. A Turkish TV show was named after them; a novel and a perfume are produced in their names. According to locals, they only grow in the small southern town of Halfeti. As knowledge about them has spread, more and more tourists have made their way to the town to see the roses for themselves. In the springtime as the weather warms, Halfeti transforms from a sleepy town into a bustling hotspot, with vendors hawking black rose magnets, keychains, and spritzers.
Perched on the edge of the Euphrates river, Halfeti looks like something out of a film; the blue of the water is hyper-real in its intensity, the picturesque stone buildings seem timeless and perfectly at ease on the steep hills surrounding the river.
But under the shining turquoise water lies another version of the town. Farther into the valley a minaret rises out of the water like a ghost. The rest of the mosque ripples beneath feet of water. Closer to the main town, other roofs and walls glimmer under the waves.
The majority of Halfeti was flooded in 2001 in the aftermath of a massive state project to dam the Euphrates. The dam cost thousands their homes and their livelihoods. It changed the shape of the town, dividing it into “New” and “Old” Halfeti. New Halfeti lies on the hill above the Euphrates and its houses are all recently built; it does not have a view of the water.
For the older inhabitants like Aydın the memory of the village prior to the dam stays as strong as if the flood was yesterday. He and four of his friends gather at his balcony at night, drinking endless glasses of tea and speaking of the years prior to the dam.
“In the winter times, the Euphrates would rise with the rain and snow, and would withdraw in the spring little by little…We would plant watermelons and cucumbers in our kitchen gardens,” says Salih Aybek, a grey-haired man wearing a blue-checked shirt, his tone wistful. “In springtime, when the rain would start, the Euphrates would start to rise again without fail. We would have these beautiful, golden views. Now, these views are gone and everything is concrete. All that is under the water.”
In the last few years, as tourism has boomed, Turkish news outlets have largely painted Halfeti as a hidden paradise. Articles and from visitors highlight the unique beauty of the black rose and the sunken mosque, without delving into the town’s deeper histories.
The older men’s oral histories show how state decisions have fundamentally reshaped Halfeti for generations. After a few hours…
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