Free Gorgeous East by null Page B

struggle, self-indulgence, failure, and depression: curiosity. He no longer cared about what would happen next.

    3.
    T he pillared arcade where the Whirling Dervishes once performed their ritual dances stood empty except for a few cats asleep on the cool paving tiles. At the far end of the arcade, near the street entrance, a fat man sat at a small table reading a newspaper. Crowding the table, an old typewriter, piles of dingy writing paper, pens, a few tattered paperback multilanguage dictionaries. A sign bore inscriptions in five languages, the last one English:
    PROFESSIONAL WRITINGS—LETTERS PERSONAL & ROMANTIC—PETITIONS, ETC.—TURKISH, FRENCH, ITALIAN, GERMAN, ENGLISH. TRANSLATE UPON REQUEST. M. AYAK, PROP.
    Here was the public letter writer of the Tünel District; most city neighborhoods had at least one, a necessity in a country where nearly 30 percent of the population couldn’t read.
    There were no chairs for patrons so the tea peddler unstrapped his tank and squatted down and began speaking to the letter writer in rapid Turkish, all the while gesturing at Smith, who stood there awkwardly, hands in his pockets. Smith saw that the typewriter was a 1940s-era crackle-black Remington Rand Noiseless and wondered where the hell you’d get ribbons for a machine like that in Istanbul, then noticed that it had no ribbons at all. It was rusty-keyed and just for show, a symbol of the trade.
    At last, the tea peddler stood back; the letter writer motioned for Smith to step forward:
    “You are English?” he said in a decent facsimile of the language.
    “American,” Smith said.
    “So”—the letter writer nodded—“I also write very good American. You want me to scribe a letter of love to the woman with the hair of gold in the window?”
    “No,” Smith said. “Thank you.”
    The letter writer paused, disappointed at losing this bit of business. Then he indicated the tea peddler: “Such a man here, he is from the country, from a place called Caltilibuk, which is in Bursa. Do you know Bursa?”
    “No,” Smith said.
    “A very beautiful area, many trees, many flowers. The people of Bursa are plain people, but honest.”
    “ Tamam ,” Smith said. O.K.
    “ Iyi, tamam .” The letter writer nodded. “So this man wishes me to say to you some things because he cannot say them himself, having no American to speak. With your permission. Evet? ”
    “Yes, go ahead,” Smith said.
    “First the man say you make him sad because he think of his son, who was a foolish young man so much like you.”
    Smith didn’t respond to this.
    “He also say you must forget this woman who has a rich husband in the window—”
    “She’s not married,” Smith interrupted. “Not yet.”
    “Perhaps.” The letter writer nodded. “But she is the woman of another man. So much so true, yes?”
    Smith allowed that this was true.
    “Aha!” The letter writer wagged a finger. “Such a woman is bad poison for you. This good fellow”—he indicated the tea peddler—“wishes me to say something private about his only son, Hasan. Many years before today, his son was good, handsome, strong. But he throws himself under a railway carriage in Bursa for the love of a girl whose parents had betrothed her to another man. This is very terrible, but more terrible is that the boy did not die from such foolish act but he cuts off two legs at the knee. So now, he begs alms on the street in Bursa and is a very sad person and consistently remains unmarried.”
    “I’m really sorry to hear that,” Smith said.
    The letter writer translated these words of condolence and the tea peddler bowed his head.
    “So our good gentleman”—again the letter writer indicated the tea peddler—“wishes me to say you must not waste tears like so on this woman. That there are many other womans for a handsome young man like you, so strong and with such beautiful hair . . .”
    Smith’s hair, blond and thick and nearly as lustrous as Jessica’s, had been one of