persianchyld: July 23, 2014: A Day of Rest

Mom seated on the veranda to the sounds of seagulls and ship horns.

July 23, 2014: A Day of Rest

Yes, as you might expect, I wanted to move as little as possible today. I spent most of the day shifting from one cozy spot to another, looking for escape from the sun to write, battling my head's desire to be on a pillow. Meals were lengthy affairs, relaxed encounters over familiar flavors and full of laughter as my mother told each story of the day before multiple times, in great detail and with a lot of dramatic flair. Slowly, the story of where she had ended up in Aksaray began to sink in and it was clear how desperate a moment it had been for her. Perhaps it was also the sheer beauty - and tranquility - of the space she had ended up in (could she have even imagined it from her perch on the dirty sidewalk, that a place like this could even exist?), in sheer contrast to her crash landing in Istanbul's cheapest tourist quarter, that was the biggest shock to the system. In any event, we were both recuperating.

Finally, at about 5:00pm, at which point I felt myself sinking in to a deep sleep as soon as my lids would close, I rose and announced it was time to leave the house. Braving the path back down the hill to town, and then finding the house on the way back, seemed like enough of an adventure to keep me awake. I convinced my mother to join me. I needed coffee. So, armed with a simple map, we headed out.

The map includes their wifi password,
so in case you end up on Burguzada
and need to log on, you ought
not have any problem. ;-)

To our surprise, it took us only 5 minutes to walk down to the seaside! The horses, evidently, can't handle the steepness of the hills, so they head up in wide switchbacks which explains why the trip up had been so long, and disorienting. Coupled with the exhaustion I had been battling, it was as if I had been blindfolded and spun for a game of Marco Polo. If it hadn't been for the hill we were climbing, I don't think I would have even known which way was up. But in the light of day, and with the sounds of the gulls to follow, it was an easy stroll down the path between houses to reach the shore.

We sat for a coffee at one of the many cafes by the dock. The garçon (that's what you're supposed to address them as, which leads me to wonder if I'll encounter any women in the job of waiter) got a kick out of figuring out our order. My Turkish is still a mess in my head, so the words that emerge when I try to communicate have, thus far, been coming out all wrong. I'm mixing my verbs (gid, gel, gör - not to be confused with gün which is morning), so I haven't been brave enough to try yet. So for now I'm an awkward tourist looking for someone who understands English.

Our biggest challenge was buying the ingredients we needed for dinner (my mother had offered to cook), and it took five shop visits to get all that we needed for a simple chicken and rice dish. By now I think all the shopkeepers downtown are aware that there are a couple of Americans on the island.

So as not to throw a lot of words at not much to say, I'll be brief with the rest:
She cooked, we ate, and our upstairs neighbors invited us up for tea to enjoy their unobstructed view of the sea and Anatolia. Delightful. And I managed to stay up until 1:00am before sleep overtook me. Altogether a restful day.