Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Doina RuSti

embellished with beads, belts with tens of small patches, handkerchiefs or the tops of slippers, trinkets for his sisters or his aunts. Just as he went in, a piece of silk wool caught his eye, almost hidden between the waves of fabrics. It was a soft little cloth, in which the silk seemed to have risen like a mirror to the forefront while the rest, a mixture of cotton and wool, had remained towards the back. It had the colour of silver turned green. Mustafa’s moustache went to one side: the fabric wasn’t cheap and you couldn’t even make much from it, not a pair of shalwars, anyway. It would work for insets or for some watery shirt tails. Perhaps for cuffs. But for pants...!

“No way”, young Milikopu opinedMustafa just as there appeared on the doorstep of the shop the shalim fez of the teacher Okimon. You could see by the light under the arches of his eye that he had obviously been by the post office at the port. “It appears that the very generous Selim has turned his eye upon our poor Thessaloniki ”, said the teacher with some emphasis and although poor Thessaloniki went by Eyālet-i Selānīk to Mustafa and Săruna to the Wallachians, neither had problems in understanding. In town everybody spoke Greek from dawn to dusk. Only in the white houses, under the bristly crowns of pines or in the market would groups of Turks argue

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