Gaziantep: baklava, mosaics and raki drunks

• We’ve been looking at Roman tile mosaics (floors and pool bottoms) recovered from sites in the region before they were lost under the GAP hydro dam lakes. Scenes from classical mythology –with glorious colouring and textures and flows motions, especially in the depictions of clothing fabrics – gowns, scarfs – but also in the birds and dolphins. Imagine these on shallow pool bottoms, the slightest breeze over the surface and the figures ripple, flow, come alive.
• Gaziantep is known for the best baklava in the country and we’ve been taste-testing with approval, Betty especially enjoying the chocolate kind. Also delicious in these parts: fresh fruit drinks (or in Betty’s case, a chocolate-hazelnut shake), and iskender with fresh pita on the bottom, then yoghurt, slivers of chicken and a tasty tomato-based sauce – with a cold beer if you’re lucky to be in a cafe that sells beer in these parts.
• Most women in the southeast are covered head to toe in several layers, usually topped by an ankle-length buttoned overcoat, and scarves over head and a pinafore like piece of scarf around the neck … and not infrequently a babe in arms and a youngster or two in hand. This cannot be comfortable, especially in 26-30 degree days, or the 45 degrees a few weeks ago that people still talk about. Meanwhile, the men walk around in shirtsleeves and slacks, often the older men in well worn sports jackets.
• Sound cacophony again. Repeatedly honk, honk, honks of six or eight city buses stopped in thick traffic going nowhere. Tinsmith and coppersmith hammers drum metal on anvils just down the bazaar laneways. Youthful simit (rounds of sesame seed covered bread) and chai sellers shouting their wares. Restaurants touts struggle to call above the din. Cellphone chatter comes and goes and comes constantly …. Is it possible to be asphyxiated by the absence of livable sound? I began to feel so.
• The journey’s prize for brazenness so far. We are overcharged by about 20% at a café overlooking beautiful Golbesi. I check the menu, do the math, a manager comes, agrees, seemingly all apologies, scolds the waiter (we can’t tell the fake from the genuine in any of this) and brings the correct change. Then, as we get up to leave, the waiter with the creative math reappears and asks for my pen. We think he wants to write his regrets, but no, he tries out the pen, then asks for it, almost demands it as his right, pointing to his penless pocket. We laugh, telling him to ask his manager for one, more theatrics of the ‘I’m penniless, it’s easy for you to give me this pen’ kind. We try to work up our most scornful looks and leave.
• For two nights now, the three a.m. raki drunks have gathered in the lane around the sidewalk charcoal kebab grill beneath our window. Last night they barked and whined over their cellphones. Tonight they’re in black suits, white shirttails flapping. Penguins on raki. Maybe they’ve spent the day wanting to bark back at orders and insults and now here they are, especially Baldinghead, yelling, finger-pointing, shoving, picking up a chair and smashing it against the pavement. Friends hold Baldinghead and another man apart, and finally the barking penguins stumble down the street … but no, here’s another insult or two yelled up the laneway and they’re back for a return engagement. The cops arrive, shoot the breeze and leave. A wit amongst the penguins gets a big laugh all round. A second has almost lost his pants. Baldinghead snags some fruit from the kebab man’s stand and is then throttled by two bystanders til the goods are pulled from his pocket and everyone starts howling again. They just can’t get enough … but that’s enough for us. I dig out my earplugs.