Market day, Karabortlen

One Friday, I decided to buy two kilos of onions from the market - it was Friday - the village street was crowded - no one took any notice of the market traffic - I dodged spidery mopeds, crumpled Renaults, ancient tractors - vehicles were suddenly reversing, parking slantwise, nudging sleepy village dogs - beat up  Fiat Doblos spouted diesel fumes from rusty exhausts - gaffers on push bikes of archaic design darted by, or slowly, blindly, wove their way through the shoals of dolmuses - 

Half smoked Larks were thrown out of the windows of Toyota pick up trucks - the young men smoked their cigarettes like 1940's film stars -

I saw tiny grannies, perched upon the back of mighty tractors, their bags crammed with cheeses, bread, olives and vegetables - lorries, with the legend Mashallah on their bonnets, were grossly overloaded with bales of straw -

I bought two loaves from the bakery - I tried out my Turkish - the woman with glossy hair smiled - within the bakery, I could see the small square opening of the oven - one of the gang of bakers, with his moustache and bravo's grin, pushed lozenges of dough inside with a wooden paddle -

The market was a place of marvels - I smelt sweet smelling pyramids of peaches - I feasted my eyes upon great vivid heaps of parsley, rocket and coriander - I heard innumerable voices, shouting or murmuring, all of the voices in a language that was strange and exotic to me -

There were glittering tawny and black drifts of olives - I sampled some, my mouth filling with their salty juices - there were mounds of onions, piled up like small skulls - ingots of pale, fragrant, cheeses -

I bought the onions - the market produce was sold from stalls, or from scraps of cloth laid out upon the ground - wrinkled old women would squat on their heels, next to their sparse merchandise - small hand scales with brass weights were used, as well as scales with digital displays -

At the far end of the market, hardware, shoes, clothes and kitchenware were for sale - all around me were families - mothers with their children - granddads with their flat caps and dark jackets - fistfuls of kurushes were exchanged - there were sacks of peanuts and pistachios -

I felt I could stay here for hours - there was so much to see and to smell, so many voices still to hear - but I had to return - there was dinner to make -