Put A Sheep In Your Pocket - Proverbs In
Istanbul
Author: Phillip Hill

Once in Istanbul I was eating at a cheap restaurant near Sultan
Ahmet- the Blue Mosque. It was one of those times when a bomb
had gone off or there was a war on somewhere, and despite this
being a tourist area there was nobody but me in the place. And
then a lady walked in. For some reason I decided she must be
Korean. She had a little girl, just about to experiment with
walking, but mostly an experienced and very fast crawler. And as
soon as the lady tucked into her meal, the little girl was off,
under the next table, round the corner, past me and straight for
the door on the street. On the threshold one of the waiters
whisked her up and carried her back to her mother, who paid her
no attention whatsoever. Five minutes later the girl was off
again, and again a waiter carried her back. On the girl's fourth
outing it was the cook who came out from the kitchen and grabbed
her. He held her in his arms, put his chef's hat on her head and
stood in the window with her and they both waved at passers-by
until the mother had finished eating.

The city was full of little poetic gestures like that. Every
now and then someone would give you their time or something they
owned in a completely unexpected way. I got really used to it,
so that one day when I was trying get back to the city from
half-way down the Bosporus, I got on a dolmuş bus and as I
stood stooped in the small vehicle just behind the driver, I was
not really surprised to find that people were handing me money.
It took me a few seconds to realize that these were all fares I
had to hand over to the driver and that I would then have to
sort out all the change.

The only people who ever bothered me were the carpet sellers
who would follow you for what seemed forever, turning everything
you said into another question. No thank you, would be answered
by Why not? and Because I don't want a carpet by Why don't you
want one? and so on and so on. And if you said nothing it was
even worse because they would then go through every nationality
in the world in many different languages. Français ? Italiano ?
English ? Deutsch ? I realized that there were not many
potential customers but I didn't see why I had to subsidise the
whole trade on my own. At one point, I thought of buying a small
carpet and carrying around with me all the time, so that I could
show them I already had one, but obviously that wouldn't have
worked. They would have told me I needed a bigger one.

Then, one day, I chanced upon the Sahaflar
Çarşısı the outdoor book market near the Grand
Bazaar and there I found a big red book entitled A Dictionary of
Turkish Proverbs. I learnt an easy one at the front of the book
- At var, meydan yok - We have a horse but no parade ground. And
the next time I was propositioned by a carpeteer, just to change
the script a little, instead of saying No, thank you,I said At
var, meydan yok. And then something strange happened - words
failed him and he fell behind me - for about five seconds- then
he caught up- but I had bewildered him for a bit. So I learnt
some more proverbs, I thought that if I could master eight or
nine I might be able to put enough distance between us to
escape. And sometimes it worked. Lack of logic was not something
they were prepared for.

Fish are in frying pan, hares in the plain,
If you cannot find a great man to consult, find a great rock,
When a snake has a headache it comes out into the middle of the
road.
If you don't have a mirror, look at your neighbor
If you want yogurt in winter, carry a sheep in your pocket.

I had no idea what they meant. I actually tried carrying a
sheep in my pocket one winter, but nothing happened - well, no
yogurt at least. But I did manage to get away more often and in
a much better mood, go down to the Spice market and the fish
market and the lane where they sold wonderful old knives and
kitchenware and as in the wonderful poem by the Turkish poet
Orhan Veli (Istanbul's dinliyorum) listen to the city with my
eyes closed or do what I most enjoy there- ride the boats which
cross all day from Europe to Asia.


About The Author: You can read more writing and poems by
Phillip Hill at Sideways Station http://www.sidewaysstation.com/