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February 04, 2005
Travel Story #4
"God, I didn't sleep all night. I'm tired."
"You'll feel better once we get some tea. Where do you want to go first?"
"Well there's this thing real close." I pointed to a building on the map. It was one of those tourist-type maps where the places of interest are huge cartoony things that loom over the rest of the map. The building said "Bazaar."
"Oh, the bazaar. I think Turkish bazaars are really famous."
"Well let's go down there then."
We stopped for some tea on our way the half mile or so to the bazaar. We also passed about four mosques before we got to the tourist packed bazaar.
"Every stand sells the same shit. Why are these bazaars so famous?"
"I don't know. You could just go to the first stand and leave if you didn't like it. They've all got the same crap. This sucks."
But we kept walking. We wanted to make sure we weren't mistaken about the bazaar.
"Oh. It looks like this is a different section of all the same crap."
"No. They've go more metal crap here."
"Yeah. That last part was the hanging lights and plates section. This is the metal stuff section."
"Woah. We must be in the blue jean department now." From every stand someone yelled out to us about the importance of buying blue jeans from his stand.
"Hey, my friend, you need new blue jeans. The ladies love man in blue jeans. Only $5 my friend."
"Very nice blue jeans. $5 for you, my friend."
"Hey, let'd find the Persian rug section. I want to get a nice Persian rug for your mother."
As we wandered around the bazaar looking for the Persian rug department we stopped for a couple glasses of tea. But more often than that we were stopped by shopkeepers, "Where are you from?"
"The US."
"Oh. US. Very good. I love America. Very good. But George Bush, bad. George Bush bad. America good."
"That's it. From now on I'm going to tell them I'm from Magyaristan."
"Why?"
"I don't give a damn what they think about GW."
"So what? Just ignore them."
"Or I could tell them I'm from Magyaristan. They won't know what the hell to say to me and they'll shut up. Plus they won't think I'm some rich American and they won't jack up the prices."
We passed a store and an old fat man came out. "Hello, my friends, where are you from?"
"Magyaristan."
"Szia!"
They started talking in Hungarian for several minutes. Tehn they were done I asked my dad what had just transpired.
"Is there really a Magyaristan?"
"It's what they call Hungary. If they like a country they add a '-Stan' at the end."
"So that guy knew Hungarian?Wow."
"Yeah. He knew 9 languages besides Turkish. He taught himself by meeting the tourists."
"No way."
"Pretty amazing isn't it? I told you you should just shack up with some slut. Using a language is the best way to learn it. Plus you get laid."
We had stopped as we talked an were now standing somewhere in one of the crap departments. I looked over my dad's shoulder and noticed a small rug made in Afghanistan. It even said "made in Afghanistan" right on it. That was surrounded by pictures of stuff with English captions. An AK-47, a burqua, a plane crashing into a tower next to another one already in flames. That part read, "9/11" underneath. "Holy shit. Look at that. That rug has the 9/11 attck memorialized on it."
"wow."
"That's pretty fucked up."
A turk came out of the stand sellign the carpter. He was saying something or another to us in Turkish. Then he said, "It is beautiful." He started clapping and pointed to the carpet. "Good Bin Laden. Islam. Bin Laden. Good." He clapped some more, then stopped. "America bad. Bad America." He yelled before running off into the labyrithn-like hallways of the bazaar.
"What an asshole."
"What the fuck are we doing in this filthy country?"
"Can you believe that fucking carpet?How much do you think it is?"
"Why? You want that piece of shit? AK-47s are Russian, first of all."
"I don't give a shit about that. Who cares about the AK stuff? That fucking 9/11 shit. No one will believe it without proof."
"Here. I'll take a picture. Now let's go get some more tea."
My dad and Turkey were a great fit, aside from the fact everyone was trying to get his money, they love tea and he is addicted to tea. The problem is they drink tea in tiny glasses only about twice the size of a normal shot glass and my dad drinks lit by the half liter. He has to continually get more tea. "There's a stand right back here." We headed back the way we came so that we wouldn't get lost in the hallways that appeared grid-like, but in reality meandered in all directions.
"It's blocked."
"But we just came down this way."
"It looks like it's taped off or something." I couldn't see too well because people crowded where I thought the tape was. but still it looked like police tape and people were crowding around like it was a crime seen.
A Turk from ahead heard us talking and told us someone had just been stabbed.
"You think it's the asshole? I hope it's the asshole."
"Get a picture of it."
"No way. I don't want them to throw me in prison or something for talking pictures of a crime scene."
"Will they do that?"
"You never know around here."
"Come on, dad. Take a picture, then lets run."
We decided to go around the corner, since the stabbing happened at an intersection. "Look at that puddle of blood."
"Wow. I've never seen so much blood."
"There's another smaller puddle. Do you think two guys stabbed each other or the first guy moved?"
"I don't know. That's a lot of blood. It's fresh too."
"Well take a picture."
I convinced him to take a picture without holding the camera up. It might not be the best shot, but it'd get the blood. That's all we were concerned about."
"Let's get out of here."
"Yeah, lets go get some tea."
"Ok. But then I want to see one of these mosques."
"First tea. OK?"
Posted by calculatoronfire at February 4, 2005 05:11 PM