The morning after market the sensory pleasures continue - colour, texture, scent (easy to forget that carrots have scent), and of course taste. The green grapes are particularly sweet. Love the deep colour of the aubergines. The ones at home usually look like war survivors.
First task of the day is replacing the corkscrew. We try a shop in the old walled city that caters mainly to tourists, though we did buy some basics there - yoghurt, beer - in the old lockdown days when we lived here for five months. They sell quite a bit of whiskey and wine and presumably not all tourists have come equipped with Swiss Army knives. And yes, several of the sort we bought on Wednesday. Are we the only people to have noted, albeit belatedly, the basic design flaw? But spot as we leave a rack of souvenirs and such which includes a church key type bottle opener and a small self-styled professional corkscrew. Mission accomplished.
Then to Petek’s patisserie. Not for pastries but for a box of their chocolates, presentation every bit as impressive as their taste. A gift for the motherly woman who lives across from the place we stayed from March to July of 2020, during much of which we were locked down (and locked down more thoroughly than in other countries, except possibly China). We probably didn’t have ten words in common but this lovely woman kindly brought us regular gifts from her kitchen - pastries, freshly made humus, a plate from the family barbecue. And in spring circlets of sweet smelling jasmine. We knock on the door and get a middle aged woman. Friendly, but again no language in common. Think she remembers us. We’ve tried ‘Canada’ and pointed across the road to where we stayed. Then I try saying mother and that does it. Shouts for mother and she appears, and certainly remembers. Hugs, and a teenage son of the family is summoned from upstairs. Now we have a translator, although our affection and gratitude has already been understood without words. She is all warmth and smiles.
Mid afternoon meal at Fa Kebap round the corner where we used to eat at the outside tables, in summer waiting for sundown so it would be cooler. And, as often before, ask for şeftali, the little Cypriot sausages known in the south as sheftalia (do have a Greek keyboard but couldn’t begin to transliterate) and find that, sadly, they are out of them. But still a lovely meal, surprisingly free of opportunistic cats coming by to beg. And no Cypriot restaurant, north or south, would dream of trying to hurry a patron. It would be, and is, uncivilised.
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