TURKISH DELIGHT | Pamukkale

In the village at the bottom of the snow-white cliff-side calcium terraces of Pamukkale we were in a shoebox of a bus office when a man said, “台北人?” He didn’t guess Tokyo or Seoul, hmm. Since his sleeve said 武士攻略, I guessed, “You got your T-shirt from Taiwan?” “Korea,” he shrugged and said, “all the Asians know what it says.”

Over apple tea in tulip glasses we waited at his father’s for the 6pm bus which wouldn’t be here before 6.20pm; he waited. He had a baby, six months old, he said. “We marry too young, make babies too much and they run everywhere.” He wanted another baby as soon as next year, he said, but his father, the village bus agent, wanted him to wait.

Had he been in Korea on business, the reporter in me reared its head to ask. “My wife, Korean.” Then he was on and off the phone, declared, “Korean dinner ready,” and was out of the office. He had been waiting for dinner – prepared by, perhaps, an ex-tourist.

So some men do want you – just as others want your money.

When I came home from Turkey M wrote from Tokyo, “So you survived the world-famous romantic attack?” The first wave of Japanese tourists, sold on Turkey’s campaign, swept the country in the mid-90s, she said, where some fell for men they would marry and others fell for “I love you” tricksters. (Who sound as infamous to the Japanese as China-born CPF-killers are to Singaporeans.)

In Istanbul a man told me of his factory and showed me a photo album of him in it. Another man told me of his life in the States and showed me his chequebook printed with his name and stateside address.

So some men do want you…or want you to think they want you…oh, I don’t know what they want.

TURKISH DELIGHT | Ayasofya

For a few hours, as my thoughts galloped like horses, I imagined my surrender. I’ll call him and we’ll… We? Yes, we. We’ll have Turkish wine, he said we would, and we’ll… But you are already drunk on him. Should you be having any actual alcohol? He said… Think. Think market. Think supply and demand. You had to buzz an old man to have him unlock the ladies, a lone room, in the Grand Bazaar. So there are not many girls in the market in the first place. So your being in demand was mere mathematics. Eh are you listening? Stop looking in the mirror and smiling like a moron leh. …and didn’t you see and hear how he said to me…

I called him. I said 7pm. He said 9pm; he had work to do. I said Ayasofya. He said he would park there and wait to pick me up. “I k–iss you,” he said in such an Italian way, broken English was whole and Humpty Dumpty unbroken happily ever after.

Once off the phone, however, I was in a panic. You don’t want him to come to the hostel. But do you want to cross the car park in the dark to go to the Ayasofya, close as the church is to the hostel? Do you want to be slain by someone else while waiting for him to come in his car – to take you who-knows-where for who-knows-what? Think of the headlines. Think of the parents.

I had to call the thing off. I said, “Nine is a little late.” He said, “I will n–ot kill you.” I said tomorrow. He said 8pm. But I didn’t call him again.

Daydreams are safer.

TURKISH DELIGHT | Grand Bazaar

Going into the Grand Bazaar, the “mother of all tourist traps…anything but pleasant”, in Frommer’s book, I was wary. Coming out of it I was so high, I wasn’t walking – I was floating. It wasn’t the shopping, no (I did lose myself, for half an hour, in the cute clutter of the children’s shop, Deli Kizin Yeri Junior). It was the men. One man. Half Turkish, half Italian, completely sexy.

What was it about him? He said he would sell me a “dream jacket” but after I stepped into his shop he squired me, with my hand on his arm, to another of his shops, sat me down for a cup of tea and started selling himself. He was a cook at “Sir Raffles Hotel” in Singapore. He lived in Hong Kong years ago. Oh, and he was, is and will be trim. For ever and ever. “Ganetics,” he said. “Genetics…? Yes, your Italian gene, yes,” I said. (Was I sounding breathy? Why was I sounding breathy?)

He wasn’t the only one to give me tea and his number. But he alone didn’t make me uncomfortable: He didn’t feel my hand up as he was shaking it (one man did and I had to scram when he tried to take me in his arms too); he didn’t ask what my room number was (another man did and I had to say I didn’t remember); he didn’t use “Turkish hospitality” as a pretext for inviting me into his shop.

What was it about him? Our fifteen minutes were so snug, it might last me a lifetime of never again being chatted up.

TURKISH DELIGHT | Blue Mosque

Turkish kids are a delight. Gaggles of them go on school tours of Topkapi Palace, see us, smile bigger and twitter, “Konichiwa! Konichiwa! Toshiba!” East Asian is spoken here, okay. (When I tell a girl I am not Japanese she takes a wide-eyed guess, “Turkish?” It must be my golden coat.)

All around Sultanahmet, the historic thus touristy district, Turkish men speak much more Asian. They usually try Japanese, then Korean, then Mandarin, all the better to tout restaurants.

Then there is the Turkish carpet salesman. We were minding our own business heading for the Blue Mosque one morning when a man – short, with long eyelashes – came over, made out our accent, “Chinese Singapore?” and advised us to hurry up to avoid the noon-prayer throng. He then showed us round the mosque, the bazaar beside it and his shop. He would sound upfront about this and that (he has a shop in Taipei 101; he hopes to master Mandarin; he has a Chinese ex-girlfriend; we haven’t been to Boracay in the Philippines? “They have the best beaches!”), then roll out his rugs. He would show us snapshots of a cousin in Tokyo, then roll out more rugs. By the time we walked out of the shop D had a new kilim and all I knew was: I didn’t know anything about the man behind those long lashes.