The Dissuader
I walked into his office and greeted him like a long-lost friend. I knew so few people here, in fact no one other than doctors and chemists, that my three meetings with him working on projects constituted a close and deep friendship.
“How are you?” His beaming smile radiated, I felt all warm and fuzzy. “We’re moving.” “Oh really, around here?” “No, it’s too expensive, we’re planning to move to The Black Sea.”
All of a sudden, the room became dark, his eyes too. In a flash he was Robert De Niro in “Cape Fear.”
“You can’t go north!” His voice became deep and menacing. I was glued to the chair, paralysed by fear.
“They are all conservative.” And he produced a graph to demonstrate just how conservative they are. “I would never live there.”
“Nothing will happen to you,” he then added in a tone which implied the opposite. I panicked and rang for my wife to come in, who was originally from the area. When she said as such, his tone softened and that me as a foreigner, her sister’s husband as a divorcé accepted by all her family without any questions at all, he appeared shocked and bewildered.
He continued, however, to show us other areas nearby we could try. All were in the middle of nowhere, expensive, and as ugly as sin.
We left shell-shocked having experienced out and out prejudice against the Northerners. As a person from Liverpool, I knew how that feels.
“The North is like Liverpool, proud of its region,” my wife explained and with further research I found the same prejudice we have in Liverpool from southerners.
Videos confirmed the beauty of the place and its people. “Let’s go North and fuck the metropolitan elite. Once again, I will be a proud Northerner.”
The Bouncy Bus
How can one feel so happy and contented in a tiny bus in which are you are thrown around so much you fear your soul is in danger of falling out.
We had made rainy visit to town, the news in the world was as bleak as the clouds.
Then in each shop I was warmly welcomed to the town. “Welcome welcome the shopkeepers rang out like church bells.
Then we crammed back into the tiny bus each caring for the others safety. As doors flung open and more pushed through. More the merrier I thought of these sunny people and town.
Mustafa Bey
“Mustafa Bey’s shop, he will repair my windows for nothing.“
The driver of the dolmuş (small bus) turned around startled and then formed a kind and gentle smile.
She was old, aided by a walking stick and dressed in village attire.
She then produced a piece of paper written by this Mustafa two years ago, stating exactly what she had just said. As if this was evidence of “Official” business.
He held this sacred document in his hand.
“I don’t know of any such shop.“
She remained standing as if to guide the bus to this mythical land of “Mustafa Bey’s shop.“
Instead, the driver went through a list of shops he passed, none matched.
“My husband left me for another woman,“ she blurted out.
He glanced back at her sympathetically.
Had she done this before, I thought.
He dropped her off in the main square to find the shop.
No money had exchanged hands, and in fact I saw the driver giving her money for the return journey.
She disappeared into the distance frantically searching for Mustafa Bey’s shop.
Do I want to get off? – A Black Sea Bus Journey
I know this route so well. It brought me to my operation and then, after weeks and weeks of will he make it, brought me back.
It is now taking me to a routine check-up with the dolmuş from our little town to a major city.
The thought of going there brings a smile to my face every time.
The people are friendly to me, as they are in fact across the North. I have braved the mountain cable car impressing myself and also my wife, and sat on golden sandy beaches, soaking in the sun.
The journey cuts through the countryside which in winter had been barren but is now lush in late spring. Individual houses are dotted throughout the hills, some even defying gravity.
“How do they live there?” My wife shakes her head. But I envied them, off the grid and impossible to reach, away from it all.
The bus abruptly stops in the middle of nowhere. An old lady gets off; the only place she could be going is up in the mountains. “But how?”
While I’m struck in wonder, a middle-aged man with one arm in a sling moves down the bus to the seat near the door, vacated by the old woman.
“Do you want to get off?” the dolmuş driver says, signalling to the man.
“Do I want to get off?” replies the man in a state of confusion.
“Are you getting off?” the driver says very slowly this time.
“Am I getting off?” says the man, not quite believing what is happening.
There is a long silence as the man chews over the conversation and finally in protest he blurts out defiantly, “I’m not getting off and why should I get off!”
He eventually does get off in the first major town. The conversation was people just being, in all their confusion and delight.
As I see him still scratching his head as he fades into the distance, I wish his life well and feel for the next bus driver who has to figure out where and when to stop the bus next time.
