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| Republic Square in Kayseri,, Turkey 2002 |
...I am short. I’ve spent most of my life being short except for one brief
moment when I was 12 and was the tallest girl in the class. Had I been a boy I
would have been the tallest boy then too. Over the years I’ve come to accept
that I’ll never wake up with legs up to my ears and am used to most things
being just out of my reach. I know I’ll always miss out on knowing what’s going
on if I’m standing in a crowd.
When I first came to Turkey
I could almost console myself to being short because Turkish women are short
too. Initially I felt at home because eye level for them was the same for me
and I didn’t feel so hampered by my lack of height in kitchens here. I say
almost, however, because while we share a vertical similarity, their
horizontals are so much smaller and slimmer than mine. Once again I was
prepared to resign myself to the fact that I am short, when I met the first of
my little men.
At that time I was living in Kayseri in
central Turkey.
I was working at a government university and living on campus. From there it
was a very fast and frightening three minute bus ride the four kilometers into
town with a driver who thought he was competing in a Formula One Grand Prix. Red
lights and speeding trucks were never any deterrent to them. When we screeched
to a halt at Republican Square
it was always a relief to get off the bus, even though it did mean leaping
several feet onto the ground from the curiously high set buses.
The old town centre was originally completely enclosed in a towering
granite wall. By the time I arrived the crumbling façade had been clumsily and
controversially rebuilt with poorly mixed concrete. The final result might not
have been aesthetically pleasing but it was practical. Along its base an
assortment of men had carefully set themselves up to ply their trades. The shoe
shiners lined up next to one another, each sitting behind an even more
elaborate brass plated, boat-shaped cleaning kit. They were lavishly decorated
with postcards featuring portraits of luscious female Turkish singers and impressively
masculine Turkish performers proudly showing off bristling moustaches. Their
ranks were supplemented by five men sitting at ancient tabletop treadle sewing
machine with the original glistening gold lettering, repairing shoes. All of
them displayed coloured shoe laces by draping them over a piece of string suspended
the length of the table. When the wind blew and the call to prayer sounded they
seemed like Hawaiian dancers undulating in time to the music.
All of the trees in the row planted in line with the wall had been
claimed. At each stood a man with a cart, usually made by a converting an
old-fashioned baby carriage, offering a startling range of goods and services.
I still smoked back then, and I went to the third tree from the left, where a
little man, dressed winter and summer in a long-sleeved shirt covered by a
hairy jumper, would refill my lighter. After being caught out by a burst of gas
the first time I went to him, I always stood upwind when he inserted the nozzle
of a bottle of butane into my lighter and refilled it. At other times I waited
as he started up his portable generator and turned on his laminating machine to
cover a new identity card or travel pass with plastic. Along with the men at
the other trees he sold mobile phone cases, pens, worry beads and an assortment
of other small things...
This is an excerpt from my new collection of short essays about life in Istanbul available next year. I have more stories available in my current collection called
Inside Out In Istanbul. Click on the book title today to buy your copy in paperback or as an ebook.
