Turkey – a travel journal – Day 2

Walked along the Bosporous and climbed stairs to have breakfast overlooking the water – a Turkish breakfast of feta, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggs, bread, cay and honey. We go meet Ferah and her son and have kebobs later in the evening – her son is headed to Columbia University in a few weeks, he reads my coffee and says there are butterflies, which mean free, there is a fish, which is a good thing, there are three people talking about me, a moon, a river, and a man, he calls him moon man because he lays under the moon and makes me smile. Fatma takes the saucer and reads the remains – she says your heart is as big as a globe but there are no roads in. I agree – I tell her I’m blocked. The son leaves and we three go dancing at Sortie on the Bosporous – the belly dancers are achingly beautiful young nymphs who sway and move to Oriental music – then we go dance and I ask Ferah how to dance Turkish and she says, picture in your mind, Rachel, a man you want to seduce, and dance for him. And so I picture this man whose lap I am sitting in, whose shirt I’ve just unbuttoned, his fleur de lys danging from a leather necklace, and dance. Ferah comes to me – good Rachel, it took ten minutes for you to be Turkish. And then the French men come. Tonight, day 2, it is the French men who seek us out in this international scene.

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