Durali and his taxi
One of the characters we met during our travels in Turkey back in July, was Durali, who showed up riding his mule and wearing, take note, a Nike hat. At that time we were by Kartal Gölü, a high altitude lake on Sandras Mountain (more on that lake later).
Durali announced that he was a 73-year old shepherd. Then he proudly introduced his companion (in translation, of course):"This is my taxi. It is a mule. It had a donkey for a father and an animal for a mother."
One of us questioned him:
"Animal? You mean a horse?"
But Durali was adamant in his nomenclature:
"It had a donkey for a father and an animal for a mother."
We left it at that.
Later, Durali started complaining that he was short on cash. My friend Zeki whispered to me: "He is hoping we will give him money." But when Durali didn't see our wallets appearing, he drastically lowered his expectations and the subject of his complaints became a lost pencil, which Zeki was kind enough to replace.
I hope I will be strong enough to ride mules after missing pencils on mountain tops when I am 73.
2 comments:
What a lovely travel encounter.
Discovered your blog through Alun's after he passed a meme you gave him, to me.
I am really enjoying all your posts and the beer reviews, delightful!
I am participating ina little social experiment called 20 Comments Wednesday where about a dozen of us visit blogs and leave comments. We are hoping to improve traffic and the already dynamic blogging experience.
If you have time or inclination, I would like to hear if you experienced more traffic as a result of me linking you to my blog this week///more comments? any change?
You are comment #1 out of 20.
cheers,
Candy
http://gnosticminx.blogspot.com/
Yes, 'lovely' is the word I would use too. The mystery 'animal' is both intriguing and amusing - and in this situation - an encounter with a wandering elderly shepherd - would lend itself very nicely to a little magical realism! Great story.
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