Mall Hopping/Dinner with Ates

As usual, Ates (my Besiktas teammate) had called the other day, said he would pick us up at noon on Friday, but didn’t go into details. Earlier he had mentioned visiting one of his daughters, who has a boat, perhaps taking a boat trip, so we thought there was a possibility of that, and brought along jackets. Well, once we got into the car, he announced we were going to visit two more malls today, one called Kanyon, which suggests its outer shape of looking like a ship with sails. It turned out to be a beautiful curve mall from the outside, with wonder shapes and lines, circular inside, so you walked around a larger inner core, mostly open, and the stores were on the outside of the circle, if that’s clear. We continued to make jokes about Mavi jeans, because Julia had said she loved these jeans. So, of course, we had to look for a Mavi jean store but first we went to eat at the food court, Turkish version, which actually has a Mc Donald’s, but many other marvelous trendy looking spots, from sushi to Turkish to Chinese, all filled during the lunch hour with prosperous looking people, all Turks. As Ates confirmed, and as we thought to ourselves over the past week, all Turks do is eat. Everywhere we have been, restaurants, whether in tourists or normal areas, seem full of people, eating, drinking, conversing, whatever hour of the day, whether noon, early evening or night. It seems to never stop. Anyways, we went to get doner kebab at Saray, a restaurant supposedly owned by the mayor of Istanbul, a friend of Mine’s, though it was once a great restaurant in Taksim when we lived here…we may have gone there. We ordered Iskender kebab, which has pita, meat, tomato sauce and yogurt. Of course, Ates wants us to try everything on the menu even though we try to say NO…which is impossible. He won’t listen. He insisted on ordering me a special yogurt, which is made from Buffalo milk, and I must agree, it was the best I have ever had, thick, creamy, sweet almost, like eating the very best of puddings. Our Iskender’s came and they were wonderful, just what we were hankering for. We had eaten iskenders a couple of days ago but the meat was tough, the kebab so. This was the best, great meat, tomato sauce, yogurt on the side, thick so they could serve it as a slab. Of course, we were full by the end of the meal, but it did not end. Ates made us go up to the counter that had all sorts of sweets and we had to order something. I got egmek kadaife, which is basically a bread soaked in honey with kaymak on top (the crème of a buffalo, which is my favorite). Evie order a Su Borek, which is something similar to a noodle borek, with cheese but it’s made from phyllo dough, or in Turkish yukfa. Needless to say, we ate hardly more than half of our desserts…they are sitting in our refrigerator right now as we had to take doggy bags home. We left home around noon, and it was now 2:00. So we went out to see the other mall shops, ended up in a wonderful glass store called Pasabachce, where we admired the various glass works. I made the mistake of deciding to buy an evil eye on a stand. Mine (Ates’ wife) heard me order it, grabbed the salesperson, and insisted on buying it for us. No matter our protestations…it was a done deal; we now had a beautiful evil eye for our house So, on we went, with Ates leading the way, to mostly high end stores like Harvey Nichols, a London based store, like Saks. Nothing was affordable but we could look. We finally went to a stationary store where we bought some paints and sketches books for Lara, their 8 year old granddaughter, a cutie who reminds us so much of Marisa in personality and looks. We did go to Mavi jeans, to look for a tee shirt for me with Istanbul written on it, but they had only one I liked and the XL was too small. Evie did get a black ¾ length blouse or tee, in wonderful cotton, with the Istanbul skyline and the words Istanbul beneath, as if reflected in water. It looks really good on her. So we continued our stroll; Ates and I usually let the ladies go in a store, and we would sit down outside, as Ates has a bad knee and limps quite a bit. He says this is what he does with his days. He is a chauffeur for his wife; she goes in a mall, he finds a coffee shop and tells her to come back in two hours. And there are coffee shops in all the malls, either Starbucks, or another chain called Gloria Jeans, which is all over Europe. It is fun to be with Ates as he talks with eveyrone, as if they are his good friends, whether the waiter, a salesperson, or just someone who is standing around the mall, like us. We then left Kanyon about 4:00 and went to a mall slightly older and smaller. Either Evie or I had mentioned dish washing detergent, which was mistake number two, after admiring the evil eye. That led us after browsing another mall, this one with Marx and Spencer, and London based department store, to Migros, a grocery store, looking for dishwashing detergent. AS we entered, Ates said, why don’t you come to our house for fish…of course we tried to say no, it was too much trouble, etc, to no avail, so they called their maid, and we bought sweets, salmon, vegetables, bulgar, wine, all we might need for dinner and headed to Ates’s apartment for high tea, then dinner. On the way, he said why not invite Mustafa and his wife Leyla too, a couple we had had dinner with last week, a teacher at Bosporus University, who I had known back in the RC days. When we arrived at Ates apartment, he would not let us bring the groceries in…the maid would come and get them. So, we went up, and he immediately took us to his granddaughter’s room; she had just returned from school. She was sitting on her bed, eating a snack of crackers, cheese, and tomatoes. Lovely. We then relaxed for a few minutes, while Mine and the maid got high tea ready. We sat down around their glass coffee table, in a very formal living room for cheese, three kinds, tomatoes, then chocolate brownie cake, and cookies. Needless to say, we were still full from lunch, but we ate as much as we could, talked, and had two or three cups of tea. By this time, it was arranged for Mustafa to come, so Ates and I went to pick him up, about ten minutes away via back alleys and some roads. While I was gone, Mine showed Evie pictures of their wedding, things like that, mostly of her and her family, none of Ates and her, which was strange. I guess this is tradition…as Ates said, they have all kinds of pictures of her parents, none of his because that is the custom, only the wife’s parents pictures are on display. We all sat down on their third floor apartment balcony, with chips, walnuts and apricots as snacks, talked, drank wine, and Ates got out his old photo albums, of the Besiktas days and when he was in high school and college. We took about an hour to go through them and talk, which was fun. Evie also pulled out our computer to show them pictures from the last dinner, our dinner with Mustafa and his wife, and a picture of Marisa, to show them how much she reminded us of Lara. Ates kept pulling pictures out that he was going to photocopy for me. Briefly, Ates’ oldest daughter stopped in(the divorced mother of Lara), said hello, remembers her father always telling to her about ‘the legend’ Tom Davis. She was soon off to dinner and no doubt a club with friends; I get the feeling that Ates and Mine do most of the parenting. After we were about finished, Lara came out with two huge albums of her baby pictures, sat on my lap, and Evie and I went through them with her, even though we could not communicate very well. She really took to Evie and by the end of the night, she clung to her life clue, in fact, she drove back to our apartment with us at 10:30, just to be with her. After photographs and snacks, we sat down to an elaborately set table, of china and silverware, and various colored small stones scattered on the table as a design, and had a dinner of salmon, with tomato sauce on top, and salad. As we were eating our first course, we could not help but notice how meticulously Lara was eating her dinner, taking apart the fish with fork and knife, carefully, to make sure there were no bones, pushing together every last bite of her bulgur pilaf, also with knife and fork. Ates proudly mentioned how wonderful she eats, where as her cousins eat like animals with their hands. She is no doubt Ates’ favorite and he is her favorite, always hugging and kissing him. After we finished the salmon and salad, our plates were taken away by the maid, another plate set, and we were served bulgur pilaf, which looked like large grains of rice flavored with tomato. It was also served in a cake form, so it was sliced and put on our plates. Then, we were served eggplant with tomatoes, kind of a stew that was done in the oven. Together, they made a tasty second course, and I even had seconds on both. After that, we had dessert, more brownie cake and chocolate ice cream, finishing it all with Turkish coffee. We listened most of the night to oldiest from the sixties, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, and Mustafa and Ates knew almost all of the words to the songs, singing them as we talked and ate. Their favorite and ours, now, was called I Know What It is Like to Be Young, and older song sung by Orson Wells, but they also have a Turkish version. The lyrics are very apt for old men like us. We talked quite a bit with Leyla, Mustafa’s wife, his fourth by the way, who had been to the US quite often, as she had worked for various hotels, and she had gone to summer school at Cornell’s Hotel Management School. Because Mustafa was teaching in Izmir Saturday (he flies there every Saturday), they wanted to leave early as it was 10:30, so Ates took us all home, despite the protestations of Mine who wanted us to stay longer. Lara came with us; we dropped off Mustafa and Leyla, then we were taken home, said good bye to Ates and Lara, and went to bed around 11:30. I forgot to mention that while we were at Ates’, one of my other Besiktas teammates called and invited us for brunch on Sunday at a hotel in old Istanbul. That means we had lunch and dinner yesterday(Friday) with Ates, dinner tonight(Saturday) at Fehmi’s on the Asian side, with Ahmet and Nikki, then brunch tomorrow, Sunday with Faruk, his wife, and Ates and Mine. As you can see, we live a pretty busy life. We are slowly learning the ways here…to go prepared even though you think your visit might be for a couple of hours. Remember, it’s impolite to leave any food on the plate. If you mention you like something, it’ yours, whether a food, a place you want to visit, or a piece of art you find attractive. As Ates says, this is Turkish hospitality, their way of treating guests, so get used to it. They won’t change! By the end of the visit, we will feel, no doubt, a huge debt of gratitude, one that we cannot possibly hope of repaying because of their kindness and generosity.