For those who haven't read the first two bits of this, it is a report on my trip to Turkey in 1985, for my first bridge holiday. There were 40 of us from the Manchester area who were mostly strangers to me when we left home. 

We arrived on Monday but Tuesday was the first time we did any exploring in Cesme.
Almost from the first I became obsessed by a Turkish carpet salesman.

This man who so attracted me was about 5’ 8” tall, just shorter than me. I guessed his age as being about 55. ( I was about 40.)  He wore a green V-necked sweater over an ordinary shirt and ordinary trousers and trainers on his feet. Why did I notice such detail? I doubt if I could tell you what any other shopkeeper we visited with that day was wearing except that most of the younger men were wearing black leather jackets. Our friend had brown eyes and a medium-dark complexion with a small moustache. His eyes were very thoughtful and yet full of fun. He listened to everything we said and seemed to understand well. But enough of him for now, we had lots more shops to visit that morning.

My friend and bridge partner, Pat, wanted to buy a black leather jacket for her 34 year old son, Danny, of whom she was very proud. She wanted it to be good quality and a nice style and yet reasonably cheap. So the next shop we visited in was a leather shop. I sat on a stool and watched while she looked and worried over the various qualities of about six different coats. We visited lots of similar shops over the next few hours.

When we came to the end of the street,  just ahead was the Adriatic. All along the seafront was a concrete walkway with benches every so often. The sky was blue and air was fresh and clear, it was warm and almost absolutely empty. We could hardly believe our luck having this beautiful place to ourselves. We walked along the shoreline to the right and after awhile the way was along a sandy beach. We walked around the corner to an area of little inlets with some rocky areas. Behind us were cliffs with interesting fossils just waiting to be discovered. It was so beautiful and so empty. We sat awhile and took pictures and just enjoyed the experience of being in Turkey.

We went to a seaside restaurant and ordered a very un-Turkish pizza for lunch. While we had been sitting waiting for our food, the day had taken a turn for the worse slightly, and we were a bit chilly. Pat, being a sun worshiper was so keen to get back to the pool and sunbathing that she really resented all the time we wasted waiting for our food.

We wandered down the main street and off into a sort of alleyway. At the end was another leather shop with an enormous Turkish lady in charge. She asked us in and offered us tea, and this time we accepted. The tea we were served was called Apple Tea, and tasted a bit like hot cider. It was served in small glasses with gold spoons in the glass, a gold saucer underneath and two sugar lumps alongside. It was delicious. While Pat looked at coats and tried to decide which size suited her son best, I looked a bit at handbags. £20 was the price she quoted me. She took a very disparaging look at my handbag and said, “You want a new handbag,” but it was a statement, not a question. But she was friendly and pleasant, like everyone we had met in Turkey.

I asked her to write on a paper for us how to say Thank You in Turkish and also Good Morning. So she laboriously wrote this all down on a slip of paper I found very hard to learn- even the simplest phrases, but by the time we left we were both saying tesekkur ederim quite naturally to everyone. We left her with a promise to return, and continued up our street.

It was getting close to the end of the road and I think Pat rather wanted to avoid our carpet friend, but I saw him and waved. We went back into his shop and had a cup of tea with him too. Carpets weren't mentioned. He didn't do any selling at all. We just chatted. He told us about his children. His oldest was a daughter who was married to a goldsmith who had a good business in Izmir and mainly made jewelry to export to the Americans. He had more work than he could do. They had two children.

His second child, a son, was also a jeweler. He also was married, and I think he said they had one child.

The youngest son was obviously his favorite, and also the one he was worried about. This one he called his little one, although he was 22. This son, Mustafa was being trained in the jewelry business by his brother-in-law, and worked long hours. But what he really wanted was to marry an American or European girl, and thus get out of Turkey. Our friend was obviously bothered by this- he didn't want his son to marry a foreigner and move away, but because this was what his son wanted and because he loved this son so much, he felt that he needed to do what he could to try to help his son get what he wanted.

"It is so young for him to marry too young,” he said “He is only 22."

"How old were you when you married?" I asked him.

"21," he said, "and we also were too young. It was a mistake to marry so young.”

He was proud that his youngest son was born when he returned from the States, and that this son had blue eyes, as if the two things were somehow connected. "He is very good looking, my son, very handsome, and very good. He would make some girl a very good husband, but I don't know how to do this thing?"

The whole idea of arranged marriages and people using marriage for emigration purposes upset Pat and me. We tried to tactfully suggest that his son would not find Europe or America a good place to live if he couldn't speak the language and if his way of life was very different. Our friend seemed like a torn man- wanting so much to appease his son who had asked him to arrange this as he was the only one the family who spoke good English.

But he also was a very devout Muslim with a strong family tie who must know that what he was proposing would mean his son would be leaving his family and maybe they would lose him. We couldn’t think of any solutions to his problems but we were flattered for his confidence in us. We wanted to help him somehow even if it was only to convince him that he was onto a losing idea.

Having had our apple tea and went off up the hill to our hotel. Once there we changed into swim suits and settled down by the pool. Lots of our fellow bridge friends had settled down before us. The sun felt lovely and warm, but not really burning hot. I did my 10 minutes on each side, which I decided was my maximum for my pale flesh for the first exposure to sun for the year, and then I laid in the shade and listened to our friend Pam.

She had decided to get a postcard to send her husband. She was missing him very much - didn't know what had possessed her to come on a holiday without him. She read the postcard aloud.
 
"Dear Pat, I am having a lovely time- No hot water, hard beds and pillows like concrete; Toilet paper can't go into the loo; cold chips to eat. Wish you were here or to be more precise - wish I were there."

We laughed until the tears came down. The words themselves can't express the humour in the way she said each phrase. She was saying that it was all much less than we'd expected and hoped and yet somehow we were all having such a good time and wondering why.

Five o'clock we were to have our meeting with our Rep- Caroline. We were late as usual- due to our necessary pick-me-up in the room. After the first day, I had said I thought we'd never finish the litre of gin in the week. But after the second night I knew it would never last the week out. We bought some orange fizzy to mix with it- Fanta it was called- and after that water was only used for taking pills.

Caroline bought us all a glass of cheap and nasty wine. Coming on top of our generous helpings of gin we felt the effect rather adversely. She was busy telling about all these extra excursions we could take under her company's auspices for extra charges of course. Some of them sounded tempting, but as my friend Pat didn’t know anyone but me, and didn’t have any interest, I didn’t feel that I could go either. 

After she left, we had our evening meal. We were served outside on tables  by
the pool. This was supposed to make it easier to pIay bridge so we wouldn't have to wait for everyobody to finish eating first. But the wind had come up and the sun had gone under quite a bit, and we were so cold. We had chicken and boiled potatoes as a main course that night. Salad as usual and soup too, although mushroom, I think this time. For dessert we had apple cut up in slices. Pat doesn't like big hunks of meat so she asked for potatoes only.

They gave her two potatoes on a cold side plate with no butter or gravy. So she had cheese and crackers that she'd brought from home in our room that night to sustain her for the evening's bridge.