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.
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