I was walking to work yesterday morning, cutting through the little shopping centre full of tea-drinking middle-aged women is Mrs Roper muumuus (the lite versions so in style here these days) and the tiny boutiques that sell them, when one of the women, in the process of unlocking her particular boutique stopped to ask me where I had bought my bag.
‘In Canada’ I replied
‘Oh’ she replied, ‘I am not familiar with that shop. Is it in Akmerkez?’
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘Canada- like Toronto. Ca-Na-Da’
‘Hmmm Gogo, you say?’
‘No, Canada, in Vancouver. Just north of America’
‘So you didn’t get it in Istanbul?’
‘No, I’m afraid not’
*head desk*
Other than that moment of Zen, things are fine here. Aside from the unmentioned bomb that had Mecidiyeköy blocked off last night. And the other bomb in the thermos in the ili cemetary up the road by Cevahir. And the heat. It went down to 30 degrees yesterday, with overcast skies, and felt like autumn had finally moved in.
I’m ready to go. I’m tired.
