it's sweet

I hope to spend at least a couple of weekends in Turkey while I'm over in that area of the world. It's possibly my favorite country I've ever visited. I loved the shady characters in Istanbul, the beaches, the mosques, the food (best cherries ever), and the people.

While I was there on a trip in 1999, I decided to travel to a remote area of the country to see some Roman ruins. I had been counseled not to go to that area because there were problems with the Kurds, and it was close to the Iraqi border. But I went anyway.

I hired a taxi driver to take me around for the day. I went to five sites. When I would get back to the taxi after visiting each site I would find my driver progressively more and more drunk. By the time I got to the final site I was worried he wouldn't be able to drive, but it was the site I had most wanted to see, so I told the driver I would be back in 10 minutes or less and headed off to take a picture of this really cool Medusa head.

When I returned to where I had left him, the taxi driver was gone. By then it was evening and the sun was going down. I was in a very remote area with nothing but my guide book. It would have taken hours to walk to the nearest town even if I had known what roads to take.

I walked until I found a house and knocked on the door. The guy who answered, amazingly, spoke English. He told me not to worry, that a bus would come by, and I could take it back to town. I asked where the bus stop was and he pointed to this corner of the street that was overgrown with weeds. No sign, no nothing. I was a little dubious so I asked when the bus would come. "Soon," he said. "Very soon."

Uh huh. So I stood on the corner, in the weeds, feeling like someone was playing a joke on me. As the sun sank lower I saw a car coming down the street. It was a big white sedan, and there were four men in the car. As they drove passed me the car slowed to a crawl, and all the men were staring at me, standing in my sweaty clothes looking like a scrawny and defenseless idiot. Great, I thought, here's the part of the trip where I get kidnapped by terrorists.

The car drove up to a wider part of the street and turned around, coming back towards me. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, but I didn't move. There was no place to run to. The car stopped on the street, and the four men got out. One walked over to me, reaching into his shirt. I speculated that maybe they were going to shoot me instead kidnapping me.

To my surprise, the guy pulled out this enormous cucumber and handed it to me. We stared at each other. I suddenly wanted to cry, but instead I laughed. The man gestured at the cucumber. I laughed harder and wondered what the fuck was going on.

Finally, he took it away from me, pulled out a knife, and cut off the end of the cucumber. Then he cut a slice and handed it to me. "It's sweet" he said to me in arabic. I realized that these guys had seen me looking like a wretchedly sweaty and lost tourist, and they stopped to give me a refreshing snack to eat while I was waiting for the bus. I felt horrible for assuming the worst about them.

The bus finally came, and I eventually got back to my hotel. I ate the whole cucumber. It was sweet.