Thursday, July 2/2020

Market day again. About 8:30 when we leave, so well before midday heat, but not much breeze so it already feels pretty warm. But the shadows are long and the shady side of the street still is pretty shaded.

We’re really mostly interested in the food, and occasional small purchases like batteries or shoe laces, but indeed you can get anything you want -almost. Including machinery we can’t even identify.

Cherries are still good. Averaging about 20 TL a kilo (€2.58, £2.33, $3.96 CAD). Strawberries less, but they’re really past their prime, though I can smell them through my mask long after I’ve passed the stall. Plums and cucumbers at basically give away prices. Four small cucumbers for about 20 cents Canadian. J buys another half kilo of coffee, which has a wonderful scent as the man grinds it. And another sesame seed bread. Cherry tomatoes and full size ones, both on the vine. There are oranges, though it’s late In the season, but they’re heavy, as are the inexpensive but enormous watermelons. With luck the truck will be round again, though if it came Tuesday we missed it.

It can be noisy, especially as many of the men are good at hawking their wares at high volume, their voices sometimes blasting your eardrums Unexpectedly from a few inches away as they announce their bargain prices or superior products. Characters amongst them too, many who must have a permanent life marketing - one day a week at Famagusta, one at Kyrenia, one at Nicosia, and so on.  Note the coffee and cigarette in the man’s hands. It was a cigar stub earlier but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to pose, although he might have been delighted. Do I look like a spy for the healh inspection services? And anyway you can’t drink coffee or smoke with a mask on, can you?

We’re in luck. Sitting reading on the front steps when the watermelon truck comes by. J buys the smallest, but it really isn’t small. Think we’ll do our best by it though.