Go with your gut!

Everyone who knows me I go with my gut feeling a whole lot. One example is meeting a guy on a dive boat, having the feeling that he is not going to be some serial killer but a nice and a loving man, and ending up marrying him. Yes, I go with my gut a lot. Unlike this time!

On my regular morning walks to the harbor I was stopping by at a bakery to pick up a fresh loaf of olive bread (to die for!) and a chat with the owner, our friend. There are always customers at that hour, people coming to grab freshly baked pastries for breakfast, some sitting down with a cup of tea, some rushing on to get to work.

On a few occasions I have met an elderly man at the bakery having his breakfast there. It turned out he ran a car fixing business around the corner and the whole neighborhood adored him. Hikmet is about 70-75 years old, has one eye and a missing finger. He quickly spotted me as a foreigner and we chatted in English a few times. I was interested in his life story, he was interested in something else, but we will get there later.

You have to imagine a man with a beaten up appearance telling you how after the war his property and his business in Limasol (Greek part of the island) was ruined and he never got the money back, so he had to work hard in the UK to make some more money to come back to Cyprus and start his business. To my question if he was married, his good eye welled up with tears (which made me feel horrible) and said that his beloved has passed away. At some point it seemed strange to me how curious he was about me and my life, because normally older people love to talk about their lives. Well, not if you have a made up one, then you don’t!

It still didn’t hit me at that point and as we were sitting there I saw many neighbors stopping by and patting Hikmet on the back and making some jokes, you could tell people loved him. So I thought, what a great find – a new friend and already you can see he is a decent person! Lucky me!

The next morning he offered to give me a ride home. I thought why not, we have been chatting a few times already and everyone seems to think he is a great guy. I asked our friend the baker just to be on the safe side if he thinks it’s ok to what he said that of course it is, Hikmet is wonderful.

So I hop into his truck and he drops me off at the apartment and then he looks pensively at me with his one eye and asks if he can come up for a coffee. I said ‘gee, I have to work, but ok, one cup of coffee.’ The man has parts of the body missing, for Pete’s sake, I was afraid to hurt his feelings!

I won’t keep you guessing any longer, (be ready to gag!) - he tried to kiss me on the lips. How disgusting and gross is that? At first I thought it couldn’t be true, it was a mistake, you know when someone gives you a peck on the cheek and then kind of misses the cheek? Well, yeah, he definitely tried to kiss me again to what I just played stupid – he was already in my kitchen. I always worry how the freak is going to behave after you say no. So I chose to play stupid. After he drank his coffee, he got a phone call and had to go back to his shop. I stayed there feeling incredibly stupid and disgusting.

A few times when we spoke I got that nagging gut feeling saying ‘he is a dirty old man, dirty old man’, but no, I thought, give him a chance he is already beaten by life so badly that maybe what he needs is a good ear. Well, apparently my intuition was right; too bad I decided to shut it up this time.

Next time I am with any of you my dear friends and I say someone is a dirty old pervert – believe me! I also found out that Hikmet’s wife is alive and kicking, bless her heart.

Today I had a chance to thank my intuition and be rude to someone who deserved it. I was waiting for a bus when a taxi pulled in from the parking lot, the driver said he’d take me to where I needed to go. I politely declined. (Taxis cost an arm and a leg in Cyprus, you never take them.) The driver then insisted I’d get into the car because someone called him and didn’t show up and he was either thinking I was the person who called and didn’t show or I looked that stupid to get into a cab I didn’t call. After a few broken English phrases I saw he wasn’t getting the message, to what I said in Turkish ‘istemiyorum, ya!’ it only means ‘I don’t want to’, but when you say it with the right intonation and throw your hands up in the air like the Turkish women do – the fancy Mercedes was speeding along the highway in the blink of an eye.

‘There’, I thought to myself, ‘the gut would be happy now that the balance is restored again.’



Greetings from the Island of Love,

Your Tanka Lou

The Not-So-Secret Love Affair

It has been ages since I’ve written last time, it has been the most stressful month of my life so far. I had to spend four weeks wrapping up my life in Baku and being eager to leave didn’t help. As my friend Demet said, the first week you’ll recover from your holiday in Cyprus, the second and third you’ll get into the swing of things and the fourth one will fly by because you’d be getting ready to leave. The first two weeks went according to my friend’s prediction, but last two weeks were very stressful and only seeing my girlfriends, consuming lots of good wine and sharing lots of jokes and laughter (all of the above normally go hand-in-hand) kept me through those dreadful last weeks. Thank you, Janet, Marianne and Andrea!!! I will definitely remember the last days we spent in Baku together! Those were the days!

I was sad saying good bye to a few people, some of them stayed in Baku, some left a while ago, but I am grateful for all of you – Ayan, Leyla, both Saidas – you know who you are, and many other friends I’ve made at work – I will not embarrass each and every one of them here!

I had a proper send off, kept the job, thank heavens for that, as you all know your friend is not very happy when not working, so all is right with the world.

So the situation in the paradise is the following: moved into the new apartment overlooking the sea, in the town on Kyrenia, spare bedroom and bathroom, especially for friends who’d like to visit, a seven-minute walk to the supermarket and a good half hour walk to the harbor (the most charming harbor you’ll ever see!).

I did the walk this morning and it took me 2 hours both ways, but I did make a few stops - at the bakery that our friend runs downtown, and then at the harbor to admire the peaceful morning and observe how the sailors hurry to their ships and wake them up from the night’s slumber, merchants opening up their shops to invite the first visitors, fishermen putting their first bait on the hooks… The salty smell of the sea, the golden rays of sun, everything screams ‘Good morning! I am in love with you!’ And I say it back. Yes, I am in love, and this is the love affair I cannot hide – you have to come and see for yourselves!

Greetings from the island of love,

Your Tanka Lou