TE16 Turkish Delight

Altay Öktem watching the ferries transporting people to the other side of the Bosporus. Each ferry had a colony of seagulls following it. It was as if these adorable creatures had shared the commuting ferries, and each had their own ferry to stick around all day. It wasn’t just the ferries and the seagulls that didn’t stand still; cars, buses, people; the entire city was constantly on the move. Everything and everywhere shifted. If you shut your eyes for a couple of seconds at a corner, you’d open them to a completely different scene. It didn’t seem feasible to pack so much into a city, and time definitely flew by faster here; a unique pace impossible to keep up with. Iwasgetting hungry, orat least I felt like Iwas. Iwasn’t sure. Maybe I was conditioned to feel that it was time to eat after witnessing all that happened around me. I walked to the docked fishing boats. People, looking at least as hungry as I was, had formed queues in front of each boat. I got in the one that I thought to be the shortest. Though, I began worrying about how to order. Fisherman didn’t speak Swedish, that I was sure of. We had to get by with English. It turned out I didn’t have to worry at all. As I stuttered to form a sentence, the fisherman in a red vest with yellow ornaments on the sides had already sliced open half a loaf, filled it with fried fish, added a couple of onion slices with shredded lettuce, and handed it to me. All I had to do was to take the sandwich and give a banknote back to him. It was an effortless exchange.

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