Hamdi

The first Christmas of my adulthood was also the first without my mother. Dad decided that it would be too upsetting to spend it in England so he booked a holiday in Istanbul. I expected a city out of Arabian nights but it was surprisingly European and bitterly cold. We stayed in an old hotel in the central tourist district, near the big mosques. I had learnt about Suleiman the magnificent at A'Level so I was excited to see his tomb.

My father found that when he went outside alone nobody bothered him. Friends from Greece tell me that he's dark enough to pass for a Greek so maybe that's why. When I went out with him we got a bit of hassle from enterprising locals trying to sell us carpets and guided tours. They knew a few words in every language and they usually tried their Swedish and German out on me. When we went out with my sister it was a different story all together. She was rather buxom but had a lot of body confidence and liked to wear very tight skimpy clothes. I remember her walking along in a very tight white t-shirt stretched across her chest. Men stared at us. Boys waggled their tongues at us. Locals called out the old 'how many camels for your daughter?' joke. The attention got so bad that I vowed never to return to Istanbul without a man for protection.

I shouldn't leave you with an unfair picture of the city. One day my father and I took a long walk to the suburbs to see a Byzantine church. As soon as we left the central tourist district everyone left us alone. We stopped in a cafe and rode on a bus without anyone even giving us a second glance.

About half way through the holiday my father was 'rescued' from a shoe shine scam by a handsome man called Hamdi. He said he was an English teacher from Northern Turkey and that he would like to buy us a drink. He had a large friend with him who didn't speak much English. We went to a cafe where I drank the first and only coffee I've ever had in my life. I'm not a coffee drinker but I couldn't be rude. The friend taught us how to say thank you in Turkish. It was something like Tea-Sugar-Iri-d-um. (Tell me if that's actually a rude word won't you?) We had a nice chat but then Hamdi mentioned that his cousins owned the carpet shop next door. When he invited us to dinner Dad realised that it was all a marketing trick. He told us later that if he'd been on his own he would've gone even if it had meant buying a carpet. I think he felt quite bad for standing Hamdi up. For the rest of the week we worried that we would bump into him but we didn't.