Letter 24

Dear Clare, Sarah and all

Great news!

We've got our van back, at least for a while. An old friend came to the rescue and registered Raelene for us in Zambia, at least we like to think that it's registered but we don't know whether the papers are forgeries or not. He posted the papers to us along with the registration plates and we went up to the border at Ipsala to collect the car. It was essential that we leave the country on the same plates we entered on so we arrived at the customs with our new plates carefully hidden in our suitcases. We took lots of luggage to make it appear that we were leaving Turkey for a long time and allay suspicion that we might be returning the same day through another border post. They told us that we couldn't bring the car back in again for another six months because it had already been in the country for six months and that was all that was allowed in one calendar year. I wanted to point out that for two of those months, the car had been in the customs pound and therefore wasn't technically in the country but I'm sure that it would have caused a lot of hassle and I didn't want any of the customs officers to remember me so I just kept quiet.

I was surprised to find that the engine started straight away, a branch from a tree had fallen on the roof and made a dent in it but I wasn't particularly worried about that and I drove it out of the pound. It was covered in dust and dirt and Alicja asked if they had a brush but they insisted on washing it for us. This was so that we'd give them a tip of course but we didn't mind and gave them 20,000 lira to keep them happy. They asked me to drive over to the customs point but being nervous as we were, I struck the kerb and burst a tyre. They insisted on putting the spare on for us and we paid another 20,000 lira. Then at the customs point, a conversation took place between the director and the manager and although we couldn't understand all of it, we could tell that the manager wanted to charge us for the storage of the vehicle.

The director who I thought was a thoroughly good chap, was adamant that we shouldn't pay anything and he got his way. The paperwork took a further hour and we were all ready to go, all legally signed and everything. I asked for my passport back and they told me to go and see the director. We went over to him and said that we were now ready to go and please could we have my passport. "Yes" he said and asked us both to get into the van and drive over to this little sentry box affair. It was only 20 metres away and I said that we could walk but he insisted that we drive so the three of us got into the van whereupon he asked us blatantly for a bribe. This divested us of a further 50,000 lira which again we were more than happy to pay just to get out of the place. He wished us a pleasant trip and got out of the car. We headed across the border to Greece to confront the next round of problems. As you enter Greece they stamp your car details in your passport so that they can see that you have left the country with the vehicle and haven't sold it. We had then planned to drive North into Bulgaria where they don't take your car details and there we would swap number plates and enter Turkey again on my British passport. We couldn't go back legally on an Aussie passport with the same van for six months.

Surprise surprise, the Greeks forgot to enter the car in my passport. We wouldn't have to go to Bulgaria now and we could find another Greece/Turkey border crossing and go back into Turkey. The only small snag we could see was that I had entered Greece on my Australian passport and wanted to exit Greece on my British passport. This was essential to the plan because upon going back to Turkey, we couldn't let them see that we had only been out of the country for one day. One day isn't long enough to drive to Zambia and register a car and it isn't long enough either for us to have sold a car and come back with another one.

I suppose that I should admit here my geographical ignorance and tell you that I haven't a bloody clue where Zambia is but I think it’s just up the page a bit from South Africa and slightly to the left. One thing I was willing to bet on at the time though, was that most of the border guards in Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey would be hard pressed to say which continent it was on. We drove around until we found a secluded spot, swapped number plates and then hid my Aussie passport. Then we drove straight to a small border crossing in an attempt to get back into Turkey before the Ipsala customs people would have had a chance to enter my name on the computer because we had heard that the computer information is shared between all the Turkish customs points which border Greece.

We had to alter our Zambian registration papers which showed the same engine numbers etc as the one previous time that the car was entered in my British passport and we bought a Green Card with our new plate number on it. So far so good. We arrived at the Greek side only to find that this small border only opens for two hours a day between nine and eleven in the morning so we went for a drive for the rest of the day and arrived back there at 9:30 pm to spend the night in the van at the customs post. I got friendly with the caretaker who also performs some official function from 9 to 11 in the morning and I offered him a cigarette.

"You from Australia"

Shit I thought, my cover is blown - how does he know?.

"No I'm from England"

"The car's registered in England, it's got English plates"

"Well no - er it's registered in Zambia"

"How come it's got English plates then?"

"Oh that (think think) I bought it from a Zambian in London and they fixed it up at the Zambian Consulate there"

"Didn't know they had a consulate in London"

"Oh yeah, somewhere just off the Strand it is, I didn't have to actually go there or anything"

Christ, I'm at this tiny border crossing in Greece that nobody ever heard of and the bloody caretaker is debating whether or not there's a Zambian consulate in London.

"Your wife, she's Australian?"

"Yes, how did you guess?"

"She's got an Australian T shirt on"

Phew!

The next morning at nine we presented ourselves at the customs window, handed over the car papers, Green card and passports and the guy said

"Where's your other passport?".

"What other passport?"

"The one you came into Greece on"

"I came in on the passport you have in your hand"

"But there's no record of you coming into Greece, where did you come in?"

"I came in at Patras on the ferry from Brindisi in Italy and they took everyone's passports away from them when we boarded and gave them back when we arrived at Patras".

"Your wife came in from Turkey yesterday?"

"Yes that's right, she works there and I've come on holiday to visit her"

The customs man talked to the policeman and we didn't know what they were on about but we think that they figured that if they stamped my passport to show that I'd left Greece, they should first have checked with Patras to see that I'd entered Greece and as that was a lot of stuffing around, they wanted to forget about it so they waved us through without touching my passport at all. Five minutes later we were on the Turkish side and ready for a long wait. They can only work for the same two hours that the Greeks work but for some reason they employ about fifteen people compared with three in Greece. Alicja wore shorts and a top which showed half of her boobs because we figured that this would take up a lot of their attention which of course it did and they were friendly and asked if we wanted tea and if we needed any information about Turkey. "No" we said, "Alicja has been on holiday here for a while now and she's going to show me the sights".

He looked through my passport and said

"You've been here before though, in January"

"Yes" I said but unfortunately couldn't stay, but I'm back now and very pleased to be here".

"This is a different car"?

"Yup, a different car"

"Same model as the old one and same colour?"

"Yes, you can't beat a Mercedes for traveling, very strong cars you know"

"And where are the papers for the other car"?

"God knows, I sold it in London, could be anywhere by now"

Something was puzzling them about the old car entry in my passport and I couldn't make out what it was. This entry was in there from the time when I went out of Turkey to the Greek island of Cos on a British passport and came back in on an Australian one to gain an extra three months stay. It had all been perfectly legal and I'd left the car in the Bodrum customs pound. Upon returning they had simply removed the car from the British passport and entered it in the Australian one. This guy could see an irregularity but he wasn't sure what, and I didn't have a clue either and in this sort of situation a bribe seems to be customary but I didn't feel comfortable about offering one. In the end he got his bribe, though it was quite subtle. He said that British citizens must buy a visa for five pounds and I gave him ten. He asked if I had anything smaller and I said that ten pounds was the smallest denomination I had. He said that he'd go to the duty free shop and get some change and he came back a second later, not nearly enough time, saying that there was no change. We looked at each other and he smiled, stamped the car into the passport and told us to go. He was five pounds better off and we were relieved.

We went back to Eceabat for a day and then set out for Bodrum where things are easier, with the intention of getting the car put into Alicja's passport. Of course, things aren't that simple. We put out feelers about what we wanted to do carwise through a few friends but the answer came back from customs with a negative response. It was pointed out to them that I, the keeper of the vehicle, was the person in the log book but this doesn't mean that the owner is not Alicja. We could probably have won a case in court on this point but it wasn't worth it. I decided that the best thing would be for me to go to the customs people myself and tell them that I had to go back to England urgently to visit my sick grandmother and could we therefore put the car in Alicja's passport. "Yes" they said, it was possible but only for fifteen days, after which both Alicja and the vehicle would have to leave the country.

We heard about a man recently who was in the exact same position and he was leaving the country with his friend’s car because the fifteen days were up. Unfortunately he had an accident and the car couldn't be driven out of Turkey. The solution was simple - they confiscated the car! While I was talking to the Bodrum customs people, one of them started leafing through my passport and said that according to the stamps, my car was still in the marina customs pound. I said that it couldn't be because I'd already sold the car in England months ago. They said that according to the passport, the car went into the pound and never came out. I suddenly twigged that this was because it had gone in on the British passport and had been stamped out on the Australian one and this was the irregularity which the guy at the border had spotted. I couldn't show them my Aussie passport though because if they'd seen both passports together it would have been obvious that last week we had gone to Greece and returned within 24 hours with a very similar car.

If you've managed to stick with all this and keep reading, then I compliment you. It might not come as a surprise to you though to hear that we have even considered leaving Turkey for somewhere saner but the trouble is that we like it. As soon as my three months are up with the car, I'm supposed to leave the country and come in again but I'm getting tired of it all, it might be cheaper to stay longer and pay a fine or a bribe when we leave.

Unfortunately a couple of days ago we finally decided to leave Turkey. In the last letter I mentioned some of the problems associated with it all but believe me there are so many that they appeared to be insurmountable and so we packed up our bags and left Eceabat. It was making me a nervous wreck, firstly because I couldn't communicate with the people in authority who were hassling us and secondly because we slowly came to realise that we had made the wrong choice of partners and Huseyin was our only contact with the outside world. It was a feeling of total isolation for me and the details aren't worth mentioning but we decided in the end that it wasn't worth the mental stress and we left. We think we have a buyer for the restaurant and we've left it for our partners to run until it's sold. It may not happen and if that's the case we have lost our money but we were so miserable that it wasn't worth it. We are now in Istanbul staying in the flat of a terrific guy named Fatih while we get our visas sorted out because we are going to Poland to live. We met Fatih in Bodrum, and he's a good friend. He said to us on numerous occasions that we were welcome to stay in his flat any time we were in Istanbul and so we rang him and without hesitation he said "yes, come up and stay for as long as you want".

The flat is on the top floor of a six storey building, has a splendid view of the Bosphoros and is in Taksim which is the commercial sector of the city. We've been here for a week so far and are slowly unwinding. I've mentioned Istanbul elsewhere in these letters I know, but I say again, if you have to live in a city, this is the one. It must be one of the most fascinating cities on earth and this time we are able to see it at our leisure - fantastic. We've been to the Polish consulate a few times in order to get our residency fixed up and get exempted from import duties on our odds and ends and found that it wasn't going to be a quick process. To start with we have our stereo, microwave etc being sent here to Istanbul and it isn't due to arrive for six weeks so we have to arrange for a shipping agent to pick up the goods and re direct them to Poland. There are a few other hassles too but nothing that can't be fixed with time so we decided to make a little vacation of it.

We set out on Sunday for a trip on one of the Bosphoros ferries because we'd read in the guide books that it was something not to be missed. There is a park just opposite the flat and as we were walking past it on the way to the ferry a bear walked out of the bushes and he had in tow, a man on a piece of string. Using the man as an interpreter he said that perhaps we would care to have our photographs taken with him for a few lira. The man wasn't a very good interpreter because what he actually said was "say him bear you want photograph take of him with you". We politely declined and I advised the bear that the man didn't speak particularly good English and he could probably do better if he looked around for a better translator. He didn't answer. Smart animals though those bears and people seldom give them credit for the high degree of business acumen they display. Only another twenty paces down the road we were accosted by another man and a bear team. They seem to work very well together - men and bears.

I wondered where they keep these bears at night because there are hardly any gardens or back yards as far as I can see in Istanbul. I suppose that these people must have at least a small area outside their houses where they leave them for the night. Just think of having a bear around the place and what it entails and the conversations which must go on in their houses at night.

"Can't you finish those kebabs?"

"No, give 'em to the bear"

"That bloody bear's been pissing on my lettuce again"

"It's Sunday tomorrow, what you gonna do?"

"I thought I might take the bear for a walk"

I don't know why I think it's strange really,these conversations must go on mustn't they? What happens when they die, where do you bury a bloody great bear in the middle of a city and what do you feed it on?

The trip up the Bosphoros was everything that the guide book said it would be and more - what a way to spend an afternoon. We departed from the quay in the middle of Istanbul and sailed north towards the black sea for two hours stopping at half a dozen places along the way. There are lots of ferries and people live on one side of the water and work on the other, going to work on the ferry. The banks are mountainous and covered in trees for the most part with ultra expensive houses lining the waters edge and speed boats tied up at the bottom of the gardens.

Lots of swimming pools and manicured lawns and all the trappings that go with being filthy rich. I've been to Beverly Hills and seen the "stars houses" but for me it can't compare with living on the banks of the Bosphoros, it's just so beautiful and restful sitting on your lawn eating Badgers spleens and Ocelots gall bladders or whatever rich people eat and drinking imported pink gins while all the time looking out over this lovely waterway. There were some lovely old mosques, castles, palaces and civic buildings to look at on the trip as well. We stopped at Iskele, one of the little villages at the far end of the trip. It was quaint and charming just like the guide book said it would be and full of little restaurants serving mussels and fish delicacies. We settled for a sort of fish burger thing from a street seller (his streets were too expensive) and we were glad that we did, it was delicious. A big lump of bread with a grilled fillet of fish, onions and parsley inside it. It was a fishing village and there were old men mending nets and stuff. Used a whole roll of film I did.

We got off the ferry at a different point, alongside one of the palaces and we were walking up towards the road when Alicja said "camera, camera quick". I've learned not to question things when Alicja says this so I didn't look up but went straight for the zip on the camera case and then looked up and said "OK what?" She pointed and there was this guy walking along the pavement stark bollocking naked but for his sandals and socks.I don't know where he was from but I can tell you that he wasn't a Muslim or a Jew. The incredible thing was that nobody was taking a blind bit of notice of him. He just strode along the footpath showing off his shortcomings as I focused the camera and got a couple of shots of him from the back.

He walked right past a police car too and even they didn't notice him. When we got back to the flat I told Fatih who didn't believe me at first and said that this kind of thing just doesn't happen in Turkey - London maybe but not Istanbul. After I managed to convince him he contacted a friend in the newspaper business who was very interested in the shots and came around to collect the film so I might get one of my photographs in the newspaper. We've been able to observe quite a cross section of Turkish life by now from the peasants in their hovels to the rich and super sophisticated Istanbul society crowd who are entertaining us at the moment. It's interesting to see the differences in peoples various ways of life, not so much to compare them but rather to observe them in their natural habitats - and then compare them.

Fatih who is putting us up at the moment is a very well heeled business man and he owns property in Istanbul, London and God knows where else and he has a yacht and all the little niceties which go with money. This place we are staying at is his Istanbul residence and it's a penthouse suite on top of an office block which he owns. He's a great guy and keeps asking us to stay for a few months, won't let us pay for anything and he lives here with his English girlfriend Angela who we also like a lot. He keeps inviting us out to various places to meet his friends who also won't let us pay for anything which is fortunate because we're broke at the moment.

One night we were invited out for a drink to be followed by a meal and we were to meet in Fatih's office at 6 pm. We arrived at the office and were introduced to two of his friends and we sat at the boardroom table for a chat. The boardroom table is made of one large solid slab of marble and seats about twelve people, all in the best possible taste. One of the guys explained that they all went to the same school together and as the conversation progressed it turned out that between 20 and 40 of these old school friends meet on the last Thursday of each month for a chat and a drink. "It's quite good really" said one of them. "We are in all walks of life now and it's nice to have contacts when you want to get things done in a hurry and you need to be able to trust the person on the other end of the phone". I asked what he did for a living and he told me that he helped the mayor and he went on to tell me that there was nothing that he couldn't get done through this old boys (and girls) network. He wasn't boasting either because with a little more talk it was obvious that between them all, they had Istanbul just about sewn up as far as business was concerned.

When the time came to leave and go out on the town we climbed into this guys brand new, top of the range Daimler (complete with television in the back) and took off for the Bebek bar in a charming little Bosphoros suburb also named Bebek. Alicja had read about the place in a magazine and according to the article an international panel of travel people had voted it to be one of the top five places in the world in which to get pissed. It sure was beautiful and the prices certainly placed it amongst the top five places in the world. It was right on the water and we sat outside in the warm night air watching the yachts bob up and down with the lights of the houses on the Asian side facing us. The Bosphoros is at its narrowest point here and it looked as if you could throw a stone over to the Asian shore. Occasionally a floating restaurant would go by or a Russian container ship on its way from Odessa on the Black sea coast to the Mediterranean and points west. It was just on dusk when we arrived there and the ships were all lit up as they passed us. I couldn't help thinking about the sailors on these Russian ships which have been plying this waterway since well before the advent of communism. These guys were brought up on revolutionary bullshit and told how much better off they were than the people of the decadent west. One trip down this stretch of waterway and they must all have plainly seen that something was wrong at home, the affluence here can't be avoided.

Our friend with the Daimler was a lovely person and his English put me to shame as we talked. I told him that I thought this particular part of Istanbul was probably one of the best places in the world in which to pass your time and he agreed with me saying that he lived only six or seven houses away from this spot. He went on to say that he still appreciated the beauty of it all even after living there for over twenty years. He said that there was a healthy rivalry between him and Fatih over yachts versus motor boats. Fatih had bought a yacht but he had bought a motor boat because every night he liked to come home and take a trip up and down the water to unwind before dinner and there was too much messing around with a yacht to get it ready each night.

I couldn't help but agree with him as I took another sip at my expensive gin and tonic. Of course what he said wasn't strictly correct because Fatih has a full time captain on the yacht who could have it ready for him each night. He went on to say that he couldn't be bothered with learning all that yachting jargon and he just wanted something small enough to handle himself because he was anything but a seaman. We passed the small motor boat later on when we left to go to the restaurant. It was bloody enormous with a radar scanner and satellite navigation on it. I wondered if the mayor needed any more helpers. At the Bebek bar waiters hovered around us changing ashtrays before we had a chance to get them dirty and they kept up a supply of the biggest cherries I've ever seen, all served on a bed of ice. They were from the Black Sea they told me - the cherries that is - I couldn't tell where the waiters were from. Cherries are native to Turkey and it was the Romans who took them from here and introduced them to Europe. We didn't care where they were from, we pigged out on them - the cherries that is - not the waiters.

One of the ladies there was telling us that she had a house two doors down and her brother had been living in it rent free for five years and she wanted to sell it although it was going to cause upheaval in the family. She offered it to Fatih who excused himself for a few minutes to go and have a look at it because his mother, who must be getting on for eighty years old, always wanted a house in this spot. When he returned they discussed rental prices and everyone agreed that he could get about six to seven thousand dollars a month for it. I said to him afterwards that I thought that he said the house was for his mum and he told me that yes indeed at was for his mum but only for investment. I wondered why an eighty year old was still bothering with investments when she already had enough money to last a few lifetimes. He showed us the place from the outside and it wasn't a particularly good looking building, nor was it very large but nevertheless he was going to buy it for six hundred thousand pounds which he told us was only two thirds of its value. It was going cheap because the lady wanted to sell it in a hurry, it was causing such family problems. We said our goodbyes and with another couple we went off in search of dinner. It was now eleven o'clock in the evening but all the restaurants are open until the early hours and they don't really get going until ten anyway. I thought of Melbourne where they start clearing up at most places at eleven thirty and Warsaw where everything is closed by 10 pm.

This stretch of the Bosphoros coastline is alive all night and we passed countless restaurants and open air disco's as we drove along. A suitable establishment was located and we went upstairs onto a big balcony which held about twelve tables and overlooked the water again. It was tastefully decorated with Picasso prints on the walls and two gigantic trees grew up through the floor from the pavement below. In this restaurant they didn't have a menu, you could ask for just about anything you wanted and they'd have it. If they didn't, they would send someone down the road to get the ingredients. I was told that it was pretty difficult to stump them although an American had done it three years ago by asking for Buffalo balls on toast. Apparently they had to refuse him because they had run out of bread. The meal was superb and what made it all the more enjoyable was the complete absence of mosquitoes and other nasty flying insects. I asked about this and they told me that the city council keep them under control with constant spraying.

On the way back at around three in the morning, Fatih asked us if we wanted coffee and we said that we wouldn't mind so he stopped the taxi opposite some yachts and paid the driver off. He let out a long whistle and a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor came towards us. Fatih explained that the guy on board was the full time captain of the yacht and he asked if Ibrahim the owner was in. The captain said "yes" so we all piled into the boat and motored across to the yacht. It was superb and was apparently built as a replica of some famous old yacht which everyone except me had heard of. Ibrahim was asleep and I thought that he must have fallen out with his wife because he only lived across the road from the yacht but he explained that he slept on the yacht sometimes when he wanted to lay in because nobody knew the yachts telephone number and the phone wouldn't wake him. The captain made us all coffee but Ibrahim wanted to go out for a meal and was disappointed that we had just eaten. He is something of a gourmet and has an exceptional appetite so he suggested that the captain get something out of the fridge and cook us a meal on board but we had to refuse. This guy was nuts about food and Fatih said that we should look at his cooker because it was American and the best one he had seen on a boat. We looked at it. It was the best cooker I'd seen anywhere let alone on a boat. There was also a microwave, TV, compact disc player and a few other things that we'd put in our campervan if we weren't so short of space.

The next night we went out for another meal at a Korean restaurant in a courtyard covered in grape vines, it was like being a bloody caterpillar in a vineyard. It too was all done in the best possible taste but the thing that struck me about this particular evening was the women. They were all young, good looking and according to Alicja, all dressed in the very latest direct from Paris clothes. They just oozed class and they all knew which fork to pick up. That's the only thing that let them down - they couldn't use the chopsticks. Great food of course but it didn't match up to Nagyhan's mother's cabbage rolls we had in the hovel in Bodrum a few months ago. I thought about mentioning it because they were all sailing down to Bodrum the next week for Bayram which is a nine day religious holiday in Turkey. I thought better of it though because they'd all get their Paris creations dirty on the concrete floor.

After the meal we all piled into cars and went off to a big expensive apartment owned by Charlie, this wasn't his real name but they all had English nicknames and I thought to myself that Charlie couldn't be doing too well if he only had an apartment but I found out later that he owned the whole apartment block. It was very expensively decorated but this time it was in the worst possible taste. Full of expensive bright shiny objects which even I could see didn't go together and I'm colour blind. I did however get to see my first laser disc there and that was amazing, the reproduction is much better than video. I'd been talking to Charlie earlier in the night about the Muslim religion and he told me that he had two wives and introduced me to them but I don't know whether it was a joke or not, there were photographs in the apartment of only one of them but the two girls hung around with each other all night and they both left with Charlie at the end of the evening. Polygamy I think is illegal in Turkey but I'm not absolutely sure. Another subject we talked about was the fact that the Muslim religion and particularly Muslim society and tradition forbids sex before marriage and I quoted Eceabat where all these 30 to 40 year old men hadn't so much as held hands with a girl.

The conversation led on to sex with animals which I had been told wasn't unusual in villages. Charlie confirmed it and told me that he had a friend who was a vet and had recently concluded a study on the psychological effects which it had on the animals. He said that a male dog sees the man of the house as the master and if the master has a sexual relationship with it, the dog views this as a sort of marriage between them and then when the man has sex with his wife, and the dog knows about it, the dog often has some sort of canine nervous breakdown. The funny thing about it he said was that this doesn't occur with female dogs. "Absolutely fascinating, riveting" I said. "Yes" he went on, and if you have sex with a cow, it doesn't give milk for four or five days - cows aren't very strong emotionally you see". We went on through donkeys and oxes and so on and I could see from the corner of my eye that a few of the people around the table were finding it amusing and when we entered Charlie's apartment later on we were greeted by his dog as we opened the door. "Please may I introduce Charlie's third wife" said Fatih. As for sex with animals, well they're Ok but I wouldn't let my daughter marry one. I wondered what sort of furtive conversations go on in some of these villages. "Have you seen that new donkey of Mustaffa's, beautiful silky ears she's got".

After a couple of drinks we all went off to a night club. Like a lot of night clubs here they have a summer and a winter premises and this was the summer place. It was in the grounds of a beautiful old mansion next to the water with large trees and rose gardens all illuminated and there were about thirty tables with white starched table-cloths. The stage was illuminated with strobe lights and a band played jazz and pop music. We've seen a lot of concerts featuring international artists over the years but we both agreed that this band was the equal of any and the two singers were so good that I don't know why they aren't world famous. Waiters hovered around again and kept us supplied with cherries, melon, pistachio nuts and other goodies.

There were fourteen of us in the party now and we looked at our hosts. All of the men were between forty and fifty and with the exception of Fatih were all overweight, balding and unattractive but the wives were a totally different bunch who seemed to have nothing in common with them. The husbands all sat around talking about business whilst the wives all talked about things to spend the money on once the husbands earned it. All the girls were young, attractive, all were European and like their husbands they all spoke perfect English. It seems that when you make it here you have to get yourself a young wife with the correct specifications. It was the same on the dance floor, it was full of near geriatrics bopping away at half speed with wives who looked as though they were their daughters. I must add that all the people we met in these society circles were extremely hospitable and likeable and something I haven't seen for years - the men all stood up for the ladies as they left the tables. Fatih told me that one of the guys present had made his fortune by illegally importing electric motors for water pumps. It was quite a clever scheme and it did supply a much needed product to the market place. It seems that someone else had started manufacturing a twenty horsepower electric motor here in Turkey and had applied for tariff protection. That sort of thing is a mere formality in Turkey and they grant tariff protection automatically to anyone producing anything. As soon as it happens the price goes up and the quality goes down and this is exactly what happened with the electric motors. There wasn't a good quality one on the market.

Our friend had been to see the Bulgarian government who are desperate for hard currency and struck a deal with them. The 20 horsepower motors were imported from West Germany to Bulgaria where the name and specification plates were changed to rate them at 10 horsepower and they were then sent to Turkey. Once through Turkish customs the original plates were re fitted and they were sold. The Bulgarian government only made $3,000 each time it was done but Fatih said that they'd do a deal for even less than this, so desperate were they for hard currency and that they earn a lot of money this way and also with arms smugglers and drugs.

I went to the barbers for a haircut while we were here and that's unusual because for the last seven years Alicja has cut my hair not just to save money but because I can never find a decent barber. I didn't select a particular shop, in fact I avoided the flashy looking hair salons and went to one of the basement hair cutters which abound in Istanbul. I couldn't communicate very well but with a bit of sign language I got my instructions across. There was only one barber and two boys of about ten years old in the shop. The two boys washed my hair and stood around doing nothing in particular while the barber cut it and I wondered what their main function was. It was the only time I've ever had my hair cut and didn't have an itchy back at the end of it. I always have to have a shower after a haircut to remove the little pieces of hair which go down my neck but this time they turned my collar inside out and put this sort of vicars bib thing on me that fastened with velcro and not a single hair went down my neck. I wonder why they can't do that in Australia.

My hair was washed, cut and washed again before I was handed over to the two boys who proceeded to turn my nostrils inside out in a search and destroy mission for nose hairs. Then they inspected my ears but were disappointed in not finding anything. My scalp was then massaged by one of them and afterwards my temples, neck and shoulders were done by the other. The barber then made a re appearance and blow dried my hair. He held up the mirror behind my head and I thanked him and started to get up but a firm hand forced me back into the seat. The two boys took over again and stood each side of me lifting my arms onto their shoulders and massaging me from armpits to fingertips. It took about ten minutes and they took handfuls of cologne and rubbed it into my hands. It was all rather painful but I felt good at the end of it all and they charged me the equivalent of five dollars. The whole thing took forty minutes and the haircut was excellent.

Istanbul is full of street sellers, not the furtive kind like you see in London with watches up their arms or briefcases full of stolen goods looking sideways for the police all the time but guys earning a living officially with licences to sell on the street. First are the shoe shiners, they're everywhere and their equipment consists of an elaborately ornamented box with brass fittings all over it, sometimes with a big photograph of the Blue Mosque on the front. Inside the box are all the polishes, rags and brushes and they usually have an orange box which they use as a seat while the customer sits on a little stool. This is the executive type shoe shiner who has a fixed position on the street and can be seen in the same place every day.

The other down market, pedestrian type shoe shiner is a have orange box, will travel kind of entrepreneur. They are mostly young boys from the age of ten on up and their equipment is carried in an orange box hanging from a strap over the shoulder. These boys wander the streets, particularly in tourist traps asking tourists if they want their shoes shined in five different languages. (didn't know that shoes could be shined in different languages did you?) They are the biggest hustlers in Istanbul but even they aren't that persistent. They approach you when you are sitting at tables in open air cafes and the waiters shoo (not shoe) them away as though they were flies. I suppose that these boys aspire to and graduate to having a permanent spot of their own with an ornamented shoe shine box one day. It's not just the executives and the tourists that use them but ordinary working people on the way to or from work. Like everything here, having your shoes shined is something of a social occasion and the customers sit down for a chat about the football or whatever while their shoes are being taken care of and they either remove their shoes for the operation or the proprietor of the box stuffs pieces of cardboard in between the shoes and the socks while he puts the polish on.

I have often been approached for a shine when I was wearing sandals and not wanting to get polish all over my feet I have declined but we were taking a photograph of a shoe shiner at work the other day when I saw a pair of very black feet through the view-finder and I muttered to Alicja "see that blokes feet, that's why I wont have my sandals cleaned". "Alicja who wasn't looking through a camera view-finder replied "he's a Negro you silly sod". Next come the food sellers. Some of them have two wheeled barrows measuring something like two metres by a metre with handles on one end and they sell fruit. At this time of year a fruit seller will have pears, cherries, apricots, peaches, plums and perhaps a few other items as well. These barrows are solidly built affairs and must be awfully heavy when fully loaded and they have no brakes on them. You can see these poor buggers struggling up gradients with these things, the sweat pouring off them but I've also seen some of them coming down the very steep hills in cobbled side streets leading down to the Bosphoros, hanging on for all they were worth to their barrows and zig zagging from side to side to keep their speed down. If one of them tripped and let go of his charge it could easily write off a lot of people as it careered out of control down the hill.

Other food sellers push these sort of glass cases on four wheels, one at each end and one at each side. They have gas bottles underneath them and a big tub full of water in which they boil sweet corn, others sell roasted sweet corn which they cook over a charcoal fire. You can buy Lahmajun (Turkish Pizza) Chestnuts, concoctions of cold pickles, pop corn, fish burgers and all sorts of edible goodies from these "Mustaffa's Cafe de Wheels" type establishments and it's considerably cheaper than a sit down meal. There are stationary street food sellers (no I don't mean rice paper) too and they sell things like Mussels and bagels from tiny little pavement stalls. Apart from food there are guys selling all manner of things from hand carts on the street. Tools, cigarettes, watches, cassettes, shoe laces, kitchen knives and all sorts. You can get your lighter re fueled, knives sharpened, a new battery fitted in your watch in 30 seconds flat, buy a bus ticket or a glass of cold water, and if you're broke, you can also buy a single cigarette. I find it much more convenient to buy a lot of things on the street than waiting to be served in a shop. The cassette barrows always draw my attention, they have a selection nearly as big as some shops on them.

Another product I saw on the street the other day was ingenious and goes to show how far modern science has progressed. It was a toothpaste with "Tartar Control". I bought some and brushed my teeth with it the next day and sure enough, not one Tartar came within shouting distance of me the whole day although I did see a couple of Mongols but even so they kept their distance. If only this product had been on the market hundreds of years ago it would have changed the course of history. You can buy clothes on the street too but the sellers don't sell from barrows as a rule. Instead they have a piece of woven plastic sheeting, the four corners of which are connected with a piece of string to make the plastic turn up at the edges. They then have another piece of string with which to tow the whole thing around on so that they can move it all out of the way of cars and the guys with the hand carts.

I've watched these people at work, there are literally thousands of them in Istanbul and they all seem to be friends with each other and I've yet to see an altercation between any of them. Many's the time we've seen a guy go off for a pee or whatever and leave his barrow in the hands of the guy next door and a customer has come along. The acting barrow manager has sold the customer a T shirt or something on behalf of his friend despite the fact that he himself has been selling exactly the same item right next door.

Alicja and I have been in this city for three weeks so far and we've been trying to sort out our visa and shipping problems without much success and now we'll have to spend at least another two weeks here because of Bayram. Not that we aren't enjoying it mind you, Fatih has gone away and left us with the penthouse to ourselves. Bayram is a religious holiday and the whole of Istanbul has closed down for the fortnight and everybody who can afford it had gone out of town back to their villages or to the seaside. We think it's the best time to be in Istanbul because there's hardly any traffic and very few tourists and it's easy to walk around the city. It gets hot during the day and so we've taken to spending the whole day in the apartment and venturing out at six in the evening until the small hours when the temperature is perfect. The other night we were looking at this old cemetery and Alicja noticed that there was a courtyard inside with the lights on so we cautiously ventured in. It turned out to be a tea house come smoking garden and it was full of men smoking these bubble pipes.

Alicja was the only woman there but nobody seemed to mind her invasion of this male domain and we ordered two cups of the revolting liquid and watched them. There were a few young men but in the main they were all I'd say, aged from sixty up. There was a sort of kiosk there where they prepared the pipes for smoking and we asked if we could watch how it was done. One man stood behind the counter with a big dish of shredded tobacco leaves soaking in water (the tobacco) and he was grabbing a handful at a time and moulding it like papier mache into a cylindrical shape around a thing like a knitting needle. This was so that when he finished there would be a hole in the middle. Then he handed it to another man who wrapped the whole thing in a couple of full sized, wet tobacco leaves and fitted it to the top of the pipe withdrawing the knitting needle. At any one time they had twenty of these things on the go and waiters kept arriving and taking them out to the customers. The pipes were very elaborate contraptions with a bottle of water at the bottom and a kind of brass candlestick sprouting from the top of them. The tubes through which the smoke was drawn in, were fitted by the waiters as they collected the pipes from the kiosk and as far as I could see, there were different kinds of mouthpieces which would be requested by the smokers.

At the top of the brass candlesticks were round metal trays and poking out from the middle were the plugs of tobacco. Another guy was in charge of the fires and he had three pans of super heated charcoal blazing away in the corner and every so often he did the rounds, carefully placing the red hot charcoal on top of the tobacco with a pair of tongs. The charcoal would fall off as the tobacco burned down and each smoker was supplied with a pair of tweezers with which to pick it up again and re position it. Shit these guys could cough, and as a dedicated smoker myself it was interesting to see the water discolour as it filtered the smoke. I think it must be quite a healthy way to smoke really - much better than drawing the stuff in through the end of a cigarette. The only thing was that a lot of pipes were being shared by two or three men who will in all probability therefore die of aids instead of lung cancer.

We wandered out of the smoking garden and down the road where we came across another cemetery, a much larger one with sultanas buried in it according to one of the guide books. I don't quite know why such importance is attached the interment of dried grapes but there you are, it's a different culture. As cemeteries go, it was an attractive one and we went in for a look around. Again Alicja spotted a light, this time at the far end of the cemetery and we went off to check it out. It was an open air cafe inside the cemetery grounds! Can you imagine that at Highgate, Karl Marx would roll in his coffin wouldn't he? I suppose you might think it weird that two people would go on a tour of Istanbuls cemeteries at night instead of the more accepted tourist haunts (haunts) but we enjoyed it and to get back to something more in line we finished the night off watching the replay of the Cameroon vs England world cup match in a pavement cafe outside Aya Sophia. Cameroon, I wonder if it's anywhere near Zambia?

The next day we set out a little earlier and walked around the Grand Bazaar which as I mentioned elsewhere is reputed to have over four thousand shops under its roof. There are districts in there, a jewellery area and a carpet area and so forth and as you can imagine, there's a lot of competition. Because of the competition the salesmen have to think of ways to get you talking and entice you into their shop where they ply you with tea and Coca Cola and gradually get around to their sales pitch.

We were strolling along looking at nothing in particular when one guy came up to us and in perfect English said "excuse me, are you from China". It was a line guarantied to stop any non Asiatic looking person in their tracks and I was no exception and we chatted for five minutes or so. Another salesman approached us with "why don't you come in and let me cheat you". Nearly all first time tourists expect to be cheated in Turkey and it stops them. I told another hustler that I had no money at which he promptly put his hand in his back pocket and produced a roll of notes and asked me how much I needed. All these techniques are successful in their objective - they stop the tourist and make him talk. It's not as most people imagine though, they don't follow you down the street hassling you.

We aren't terribly good at bargaining but we've found that if you ask the price and offer about two thirds of it, they will come back with a counter offer. Then all one has to do is say "no thanks and walk away". If he wants to accept your offer he will follow you out of the shop and say "OK". If not, you know that you are below the price at which he can sell to you and make a profit. Whatever the item (except perhaps a carpet) you can find it in half a dozen other shops and using this technique we've found that it's easy to determine what the lowest price should be.

The area around the Bazaar is interesting too, full of narrow streets lined with shops selling all manner of things. But I like watching the porters most of all. Because streets are so narrow they become congested with cars easily and so all but the large or heavy goods are carried on the backs of these porters. Some of them seem to specialise in carrying one type of load and have made up a carrier to fit whatever it is, shoe boxes for example. Others can be seen walking about with big sacks of underpants or plastic dolls, whatever is sold in the shops, on their backs. They carry enormous loads and are literally bent double beneath them, in fact you can recognise the older men who have been doing this for years because they are permanently stooped from the waist and have to walk with the aid of a stick.

We have a good vantage point from which to view Istanbul street life at present from the top of this building with a balcony right next to a major road junction. The traffic never stops all night long, there being only a brief go slow between the hours of five & six in the morning and I don't think there's another city anywhere with such a large ratio of taxis to cars. All taxis are painted yellow with the exception of the classic cars which I'll explain later and at times I look out of the windows and see two lanes of yellow cars stopped at the traffic lights with not a privately owned car in sight. I'd say that at least 50% of all cars here are taxis and if you're the type that thrives on adrenalin I can thoroughly recommend a ride in one. The drivers are completely nuts and on two occasions we've been in taxis which have clipped fruit barrows with their side mirrors at speed. What I can't understand is that you seldom see an accident here.

The cab drivers are much more helpful than in other cities we've visited and you can climb into any cab with the assurance that the driver will eventually find your destination no matter how obscure it is. They ask other drivers at the lights and will stop their cabs and go into shops and ask the way if they don't know. The classic cars. On the streets you can see a lot of 1950s - 60s American cars in Istanbul still being used as taxis and as they consume so much fuel, the drivers are legally allowed to charge more than for their modern counterparts. How the mechanics manage to keep them all going is a mystery to me because parts for these things would now be unobtainable. And they aren't all beat up wrecks as you might think. Some of them would now fetch a fortune in the USA.

Went to the movies last week, a rare treat for us these days and saw "My Left Foot". I was expecting it to be corny but actually it was quite a good film. As we will be stuck in Istanbul for the whole of the Bayram period it will give me a chance to catch up on my writing so you can expect another letter soon.



All our love



Alicja & Pete