Deal - TLC 39

Downcast broken Turkish females wearing too much foundation makeup portrayed a beautiful face above a big behind tomorrow as merchants hung Ottoman carpets, caressed friendships, soles, heels and leather working tools.

A one-eyed Bursa shoemaker sharpened his utilitarian knife. One blind brown eye reflected Winter Hawk’s wings in rods, cones, a retina, iris, and cornea. He heard unemployed grizzle-faced men in a nearby teahouse slap cards on a green felt table.

Shoemaker in his small blue shack threaded uppers to lowers. His steel Blade Runner revealed reflections. He smashed his left hand on a window sparking conversations with a wealthy barefoot beggar seeking alms.

Another day dead he flicked a yellow switch extinguishing a single bulb. Carrying his bent arthritic back he shuffled across fresh packed sticky asphalt into a diner for rice, beans, coarse bread and brown tea.

A silver teaspoon tinkled glass music.

A player shuffled a deck.

Your deal, said Omar the blind.

Wind-spirits turned a page.

My Name is Erhan- TLC 64

I am your masseuse. I’ve lived in this Bursa hammam since 1555.

In a large domed room sunrays shafting at precarious precious angles slant along humid walls glancing off mosaic tiles singing blue, green, yellow reflections. The dome has a perfect eight-starred symmetrical hat surrounded by sixteen stars in a geometric pattern. At night stars sing their light. They give me a pleasant headache.

This is where I live and work. I raised my family here. I will die here. This is my fate in a water world where tea and conversations meet in companionship, community and conspiracy.

After the hammam and noon prayers men went to a teahouse. They whispered stories, gossip, myth, legends, fairy tales, innuendo, lies, half-truths and fabulous fictions as small silver spoons danced in glass.

Someone else writes this with a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 149 fountain pen. He drinks thick black Turkish coffee. A silver embossed glass of water waits for fingers to leave condensation on its surface. He turned to a stranger, “Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death and sweet as love.”

“If you finish the water it means the coffee’s no good,” said a stranger.

Lucky distributed providence to oral storytellers engaging tongues, dialects, foolscap, and fading footsteps behind shadows playing cards and slurping tea. Eyelids were heavy deep visual reminders studying down all the daze.

Such a grand and glorious saga, sang Zeynep, a heroine in a vignette.

I am a short story. You are a novel.

By day I am a gravedigger, said Lucky, and a literary prostitute after dark.

We bury our successes and failures in the same grave.

On your grave are two dates separated by a dash. What’s important is what you do during the dash. Is life a dash or marathon?

Go with your flow. Flow your glow.

The Language Company

Zeynep the heroine