Turkey – a travel journal – Day 3

We sleep late having come home at 5AM and eaten figs as we stared at the lights on the Bosporous. We head to the water for breakfast, again we are having our Turkish feast of cheese, honey, olives, bread, eggs, cay, and I order Love #9 juice and we see on the table a design of fish, and the bill is brought in a box with a butterfly, and we are by the water which I can reach and touch with my toes, and I think the coffee saw this day. We head to shop in the grand bazaar and buy trinkets. And then we go to meet Ferah, who by now I have fallen completely in love with even though she speaks 2 words of English and I speak only 10 of Turkish. But she is my canikom, my askim, and I tell her this – I say each day sine ozledem canikom, askim – which is I miss you my love, my life. We head to have our hair done and enter Ferah’s salon and are seated three across to have our hair washed, and the three Turkish, handsome men seat us three across and brush our long hair and style it. We are transformed and leave to go to dinner. Walking out, I turn to my beautiful girls and says “I’m so happy I’m a woman.” Fatma reads my coffee this night she says there is a bump in my heart and two men are talking about me, and two women are talking about me, and I have two projects, one a good one and one maybe not completed right away. We go home to change clothes for dancing and stop by the neighbor’s – Suela – who is the real reader – she takes her time making my coffee and talks – and talks – and then she reads – you have let your worries go, but they will return, you will meet a man with a Z inside his name, he will bring happiness, and in seven something – seven days, seven weeks, seven months, not sure how long but in seven, you will get beautiful news and someone will give you a key and you will be kissing him with joy, and there is a wild animal and it means good, it means you will make your projects, the two that you have on your mind, happen, they will turn out good. But there is a man, with thinner hair, long face, who you have trouble with, not bad, not good, just trouble. We head to the club in our high heels and dresses and there is a wedding with a pregnant bride, a bride on stilts, transvestites roam the crowd and the drummers pound a show on stage with smoke and fire – this is Istanbul. And we are introducing Cosmopolitans to Turkey – one bar at a time.

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