I shouldn’t have complained, for guests arrived laden with food, which they shared with us, knowing we are soon to depart. Keeping their visit brief, they left with dua for our household. These were model guests.
Our day of trying to pack up and mothball the house always ends with a crowd of guests turning up unannounced, when we have nothing to offer them, nor anywhere for them to sit. We brace ourselves for the expected unexpected.
Today, I visited my wife’s home village for the first time in six years. Buried deep in a valley inland, I’d forgotten how hot it gets there midsummer. How fortunate we are that our hillside house is so cool by comparison. A blessing to return to in the afternoon.
Hazelnuts from the garden beneath our house.
How embarrassing to order a meal at a restaurant and recognise it as a product from your local budget supermarket. It might be okay if it was a cheap fast-food shack offering convenience to passing travellers. Not so forgivable at a venue presenting itself as an upmarket restaurant with prices to match. The kids ordered …
Unfortunately, in Karadeniz, the tourist industry is chasing Gulf Arab money, and so prices follow in kind. A family meal out, which might once have seemed a bargain, now costs more than it would back home, and for a very small portion at that.
Another day trip to the highlands.
There’s nothing like the crunch of the steel tracks of the council’s 10 tonne backhoe excavator on the road you personally paid for to wake you up in the morning. As soon as we’ve worked out the source of the thunderous clamour, we race outside to inspect the damage. The caterpillar tracks have scraped a …
The drawback of building a house amidst hazelnut groves is that in the weeks before harvest, the valley is filled with the monotonous sound of two stroke engines, strimming the ground clear of brambles and ferns from first light.
The view from the mosque garden.
The neighbours are building something. All I can say is you get what you pay for. Being an Englishman, I insisted we get geological reports and planning permission signed in triplicate. Regrettably, that did mean we had to comply with building regulations, which made ours a complicated build. Five metres away from any road or …
Winding through this landscape, I couldn’t help returning to that oft-repeated question. How on earth did I end up with a woman from here? “Kismet,” came my beloved’s reply.
Alas, Pokut Yayla was in the clouds. But we ate Sarma and Laz Böreği all the same, before doing safari namaz in a local’s house. Afterwards, we headed back down the mountain for a spot of lunch. Then on to Ayder, hoping to visit its yayla plateau, but reports of bad weather made this our …
