I spent a good deal of the early 80’s in the part of the Middle East known as the ‘Levant’ – Lebanon, Israel mostly, plus a few sides trips to places like Egypt and Turkey. It was during this time that I developed an appreciation for Middle-Eastern women with their thick, dark hair, their flashing, almond-shaped deep brown eyes, their olive complexions. And of course those full bodied figures; hips like a pair of battleships, and knockers that never quit. The girls in that part of the world are built to breed. You never have to worry about falling out of the saddle with one of those mamas; they can take a rough ride and come back for more. Terrific women. World class.
In September 1985 my work took me to Turkey for a couple of weeks. Toward the end of my stay there I had an exotic adventure one night in the Souk Kabeer – the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul.
I had finished my work and was getting ready to leave Turkey in a couple of days. In other words, it was playtime. A German guy I was working with, Hans, and myself were following the advice one of the women at the American embassy had given us. We went out to explore the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a rabbit’s warren of shops jammed packed next to one another, situated along a seemingly endless maze of narrow streets and alleys. The place dates back to the Byzantine era and it looks like it. The entire complex is walled in and in most places covered. A sort of ancient civilization version of a modern-day shopping mall.
It was late afternoon by the time we got there. I didn’t have a lot of money on me and we didn’t have a lot of time to kill. We strolled through the street of rug merchants, the street of brass workers, the street of jewelers and goldsmiths. We came to a barbershop and decided it was a good time for a haircut.
The barbershop was an experience in itself. It was a hole in the wall joint with barely enough room for the two old-fashioned barber chairs and a bench on the side for customer waiting their turn. The walls were papered with posters advertising all sorts of products, from batteries to cars to the local brand of ice cream, and an odd collection of newspaper articles featuring President Reagan. Old Ron-Bomb was making quite an impression in that part of the world in those days, and so this did not seem out of place or unusual. There was nobody waiting so the barbers sat us down and went right to work. They didn’t speak a word of English or any other of the handful of languages that Hans and I had between us, so it was all sign language and unintelligible phrases. I ended up getting a severe trim that looked like a Marine haircut and then the guy shaved me with a straight razor, like something out of a mafia film. Then he cleaned me off with a hot towel and he shaved me a second time. Hans had his moustache trimmed and for about the millionth time in my life I wished I could grow a big bushy mo like everyone else in the Middle East. We paid the guy, then went outside to explore the souk some more.
The air was getting cooler and the shadows were growing long. Already most of the narrow streets and passageways were quite dark. Dusk was coming on and most of the shopkeepers were beginning to shutter up their shops by the time we stumbled upon the bar.
The place was a simple whitewashed room with Formica-topped folding tables. It was crowded and noisy, full of Turkish men with their thick black moustaches. They all wore crumpled white shirts and heavy wool gray suits and they smoked like chimneys. They were drinking arak. I’d heard of the stuff before, in books written by guys like Somerset Maugham and Ernest Hemingway, but this was my first introduction to the arak experience. Wish I knew then what I know now. Hans and I sat down. A heavy-set Turk who looked anywhere from forty to sixty-five sat on the other side of the table. We nodded with the same tough-guy frown this guy gave us, and when the proprietor came up, we both indicated the same thing he was drinking, a clear glass bottle the size of a coke bottle containing a clear liquid.
“Arak?”
“Yeah. Arak.”
The big Turk on the other side of the table lit up a cigarette and ignored us. Then the proprietor returned with our bottles, two glasses containing chunks of ice obviously hacked off a larger block, and a small jug of water. I tossed a few drachma or lire or whatever the currency is over there on the table and we were on our way.
I guess arak is a type of anisette liqueur, along the lines of that god-awful stuff they drink in the south of France. Whatever it’s made of, it’s got a liquorice taste to it and it turns into a white liquid when water is poured into it. A twelve-ounce bottle of the stuff cost us about fifty cents.
What I didn’t get from reading all those novels was the kick this stuff has. It sort of sneaks up on you. Hans and I were knocking the stuff back like it was kool-aid and ordering more bottles. Before I knew it there were ten or twelve empties on the table. My head was pounding, I had a taste like gacky cough medicine down the back of my throat and the room was beginning to spin. “Hans,” I said, “ we gotta get outta here. I need some fresh air.”
“Yah, John, dot’s a good idea.” I threw a few more shekels or whatever they were on the table and we stumbled out of the place, back into the souk, now dark and cold.
We staggered along the damp cobblestones, trying to keep our balance. That arak really hit home hard, but as hard as it hit it seemed to be wearing off pretty fast, too. My head seemed quite clear in the cold night air. We tried to keep straight as we walked past what appeared to be a police station, and then somehow we ended up stumbling into an open doorway that led us up a flight of stairs and into a large, darkened room full of tables and chairs and filled with Turkish men and women.
At first I thought it was just another bar. Then I noticed that all the women in the place were all wearing nothing but lingerie beneath these long flowing nightgowns made of sheer diaphanous material. It was pretty obvious what sort of a place we had stumbled upon. We found a couple of seats at a table. The proprietor came up, a fat guy in a white apron. I told him the only word I know in Turkish. “Arak.” At the time I wished I knew how to order a beer, but in retrospect it probably saved my life that I didn’t mix grain with whatever it is they make that ungodly stuff out of. He came back with the little bottles, the glasses and the water and we paid him.
Like I said, my head had cleared up from our little walk down the street, and I could now take in the scenery around us from a fairly straight point of view. I noticed quite a few police officers about the place, but this is not unusual in Third World whorehouses. Either they’re there getting paid to provide security or they’re picking up their payola.
The girls were all around the place. Some sat at tables with the customers, drinking and smoking and playing backgammon. Others hung off the bar, waiting to be summoned. They all wore variations of the same outfit – bras and panties, with lots of bare skin covered more or less by open and revealing negligees. Some of the girls wore thigh high stockings, which was a nice touch, and all of them wore these dainty little high-heeled slippers. I even noticed a couple of girls in the traditional belly dancer costumes; see-thru genie pants and be-sequined brassieres and panties, cut very low. A couple of the girls lay back on the sofa beds lining the wall, sharing a hookah - the water pipe that the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland smoked. Reclining with their gowns falling from their bare bodies, they resembled an old Victorian engraving of the girls in the sultan’s harem.
A couple of the whores came up to join us.
These girls weren’t half-bad looking. Like I said before, I’ve developed a taste for Middle Eastern women and this pair were prime specimens. The long flowing brown hair, full lips and dark flashing eyes. Both the girls were full bodied, with their large pendulous breasts barely contained in the cups of their brassieres, which were cut so low you could easily see the tops of their brown nipples. Neither of them made the slightest effort to contain their treasures; they were obviously displaying what they had to their greatest advantage. Clad as they were in their filmy robes, it was easy to appraise the full package. Narrow waists that flared out into generous hips and nice, well formed legs. Hans and I ordered a round of arak for the ladies and we started to party. The lack of a common language was hardly an obstacle.
