There is a Rug For Everyone

So Ethan and I are attempting our first joint blog post. Here goes.


Literally seconds after leaving our net cafe this afternoon, we were approached by a friendly man interested in where we were from. After an awkward pause, he asked "Do you know what I am trying to sell you?" Ethan ventured a wild guess: "A rug?" he said with trepidation. "YES!" After we emphatically turned down his offer, a conversation ensued in which we asked why in the world anyone would think we, two poorly dressed college males, would want a Turkish rug. We explained that there is absolutely no way we would buy a rug. We were overbudget as is, Andy is allergic to them, and Ethan doesn't even like them. We asked, do other college students actually buy these things? He replied, "Oh yes. They use parent's credit card! Don't you have parent's credit card?" We replied in the negative. A few minutes of small talk later, he asked again, as if honestly surprised, "So.. you really don't want to buy a rug?" We left exasperated and walked 30m before the next rug vendor stopped us.

"Where are you from?" he said as we passed. We turned around in unison and screamed "WE DON'T WANT A RUG!".
"I'm not trying to sell you a rug! Where are you from?"
"Oh, uh... California"
Again we casually wondered aloud why so many people stopped us to buy rugs, and explained that we have absolutely no desire whatsoever to buy a rug.
"Oh yeah?" He responded, "Well, you know, there's a rug for everyone."

That was enough and we headed on our way.

After a brief sojurn across a scary bridge, we found a little place to eat and sat down, and enjoyed the company of a nice Kurdish waiter: Beshi.

Ethan's thoughts on Beshi
Time and time again, the most interesting experiences have been the ones where we interact with the locals. Beshi was friendly, a math teacher from a small city near Van, deep in the Kurdish region of Turkey. He had been learning English for 3 months and was eager to practice. Additionally, he was learning Spanish and he and I had several practice conversations. It was very interesting to see the other side of the people constantly trying to sell us things. He chatted about his family and how he misses them (4 kids, 9, 7, 5 and 2 years old). He comes to Istanbul to work during the summers when school is out, and waits tables. We learned how the locals pick up phrase books to learn new languages very superficially (English and Spanish are the best languages in Istanbul apparently) and he was very helpful, teaching us some Turkish and warning us to stay away from dark alleys with pickpockets. We left him a big tip (the entire meal cost us about $8 for both of us) and said goodbye.

Andy's Musings
So far Istanbul has been a big scary place with lots of people always trying to sell you stuff. Before we met Beshi I had walked by a shoe-shine guy who had just packed up his stand. As he was walking away he dropped his shoe-brush. I said "Excuse me!" and pointed to the dropped brush. He seemed very grateful and offered to shine my shoe in return. I was dying of hunger and wearing my tennies anyway so I said no and kept going. He followed, was very insistant, and spent 10 seconds scrubbing my shoe. Of course at the end he wanted to get paid. I had had enough of people taking advantage of my hospitalty and said forget it.

I'm glad I bumped into Beshi because at that point my perspective on Istanbulis was rather low.

I find Istanbul very foreign and different. Beshi helped clear some things up and made it a little less foreign. He likes to learn languages and he has 4 kids that he likes to talk about, just like anyone else. And he enjoys conversation, even when he's not trying to sell stuff. It must be really miserable for him to have to spend part of the year so far away from his home and family who live in Kurdistan, but he seems to be making the best of it. The whole place remainds me of New York, another crazy city that I am only slightly more familiar with. Anyway, I look forward to high-tailing it to London where I know a little bit more about what is going on. In the meantime, I hope to run into more people like Beshi. Ciao.