To be promoted wasn't a complete surprise. I had been the top performer in my team for over a year and I had made it clear to my superiors that I expected nothing less. The new position, however, caused some upheaval in my social live. On top of my current job I would lead a team in our newly opened Istanbul office. This meant that I would spent one out of every three weeks in Turkey. My wife, I got married last summer, was obviously not too happy about this. But it seemed okay to me, we bought a house just over a year ago and the extra money wasn't unwelcome. I also figured that if I was gonna work abroad I wanted to do it before we got children and before I was thirty. My gut feeling had decided almost immediately that I wanted to take the position, but I waited another week, in which I convinced my wife,, before I took the position.
My wife Lina and I have been together for about five years now. We met at university and though she might not be considered a 'hotty' by everyone,she does the trick for me. She combines sensual eyes and high cheekbones - giving her a mysterious eastern look - with large firm breasts and long slim legs. The only downside about her physique are her wide shoulders, flat behind and the fact that she packs about five 6 kilos too much.
I fell for her head over heels, I worked hard to get her and have been faithful to her ever since. She is fun, understanding and not the jealous type. Our sex live is healthy, though maybe a tad on the boring side, it takes place in the bedroom. There's a range of four to five positions to choose from. It happens about twice a week. It's not something I worry about, but I would be lying if I 'd say I didn't dream about different women and different position.
My first week in Istanbul can only be described as rather unpleasant, the hotel I was staying in, was a typical business hotel with the personality of a paper towell, it was located in the new business district far away from any interesting historic sites, not that there was any time time to look into those anyhow. My working days would start at about eight in the morning and would last until seven at night. Every other day I would take someone from my team to lunch to get to know them better. Long days. I reinvented myself as a hard-working super professional. I limited myself to management speak and tried to make as little jokes as possible (I have crude sense of humor that can be quite off-putting to people who don't know me).
The team surprised me. As a Western European, my views on Turkey are basically limited to the Turkish immigrants that live in Western Europe, mostly poor, often uneducated and not very modern. My team was entirely different. They were all young, learned, urban and hyper professional. Whereas at our company headquarters it is okay to come to work unshaven and in a wrinkly shirt, my team would look immaculate: suits and ties for the men and two piece suits for women. There were two women on the team and three men. Even though the women were young, they seemed rather frigid and sexless. Their outfits were more functional professional than sexy professional. Their hair was tied in a knot or braided. Ferhiye, the youngest of the two had a pretty face, was about a 1,65 meters and I guess weighed a bit more than she would want to. She seemed smart, picked stuff up easily, but refused to smile. Yaprak was taller and slimmer, I would be lying if I described her as smily, but she seemed a bit more extoverted.
One of our unofficial company mottos is: Work hard, party harder and I had been instructed by my direct superior to take the team out at least once in my first week. So on Thursday evening, the day before I would leave, We decided to go out for a few drinks, armed with a company credit card. It was excellent. I will be the first one to admit that I need a drink or two before I can unwind and the same seems to be true for my new colleagues. My idea had been to have a polite drink or two and make it back to the hotel around eight so that there would be time for packing and sleeping. But it ended rather differently. After two beers, we took a streetcar to Beyoglu, the lively heart of modern European Istanbul, and ended up in a series of bars. Starting at a hipstery place and ending at a karaoke bar. It was around four o'clock by the time I found my hotel room. The next morning I showed at up work less cleanly shaven and with quite a hangover.
The two weeks after that, I worked from our headquarters in Scandinavia and stayed in touch with Istanbul through long distance meetings and calls.
I agreed with travel management to change my hotel for the next trip to a small 'boutique' hotel in Beyoglu and to book my flight back on Sunday evening instead of Friday evening, so that I would have two days to discover the city's sights during the weekend.
The work athmosphere during my next trip was completely different. Whereas I was Mr. Professional in my first week in Turkey, now I was more relaxed, we had gone out together. I had taught them some of the unofficial tricks to keep upper management of their and ultimately off my back. In my first week there, it had been them and me. This time, it was us. Again we worked long hours and again we went for drinks on Thursday evening.
On Friday I asked people about where I should go for good food in my area and I agreed to meet Yaprak around 09.00 pm at Taksim square, the heart of modern Istanbul, in walking distance from my hotel.
After work I took the metro to my hotel and took a long cold shower, the weather was over 25 degrees and I my shirt was clinging to my chest by the time I got to the Hotel. I called my wife and watched some TV. A bit before 09.00, I made my way to Taksim. Just like the past three days, everyone of Istanbul's 13 million inhabitants seemed to be out in the streets, and they were made up for the night. Oufits ranged from cool chique to hipster to street sweeper for men and from burqa to tiny shorts for women. There was something festive about the town.
After a lot of searching I met Yaprak and Esra, a friend of her's on the square. I was happy she had brought a friend along as it would avoid the possibility of uncomfortable moments.
Whatever business outfit Yaprak might have been wearing that day, it had been tossed aside for a black skirt that wasn't mini, but clearly flirtt. A cream coloured blouse and a wide burgundy colored scarf made her look sophisticated. Her hair was tied into a loose braide that hung over her shoulder.
Esra however was quite the piece. She was small and frail, had half long darkbrown hair, with a twinkle in her eyes and a dimple in her cheeks when she smiled and she smiled a lot.
She wore a greyish dress with stockings and a black turtle neck sweater that hugged her body tightly. I like to think that I give people a chance, that I don't judge them in those first split seconds I see them. But that is not the case, in those first seconds I judged her as cheeky, sexual and very attractive.
We got to the restaurant, a smallish, rather expensive, organic meets fine dining affair. We found a table. I chose the bench side of the table and Yaprak took a chair. Esra sat next to me on the bench side, Instead of keeping some distance, as one normally does in new and even old company. She sat right next to me, way in my comfort zone, which put me off my game a bit.
We ordered and got into a light discussion about how European Istanbul is. What Esra lacked in in size, she made up for in opinions. She would deliver them eloquently and passionately. When she talked she didn't look around. No, her eyes we intensely focused on Yaprak or me, depending on who she was addressing and she would support her ideas and statements with body movements, more then once touching my shoulder, arm or hand. She seemed, rather, intense.
After a while and my first red wine, however, I got comfortable around her. I found out she had been an exchange student in Northern Italy, had studied tourism and was now working for a business hotel in Istanbul. She came from Marmaris, a small touristic city in the south west of Turkey and had lived in Istanbul for a five years. She was unattached after a long relationship had recently petered out.
The food was excellent and we combined it with two bottles of red and a sweet white wine to go with the desert. By the time we got out of the restaurant it was about 11.30, I was somewhat tipsy, though far removed from drunk. We were locked in a debate about the book 'Istanbul: Memories and the city' by Orhan Pamuk. We had all read it. I had appreciated it a lot, the writing was poetic, though not too much, and the book was an excellent introduction to the city. Esra claimed it was emotional dribble and accused me of defending the melancholic ideas of the Ottoman upper class. Yaprak's opinion got lost in the crossfire.
Having reached Taksim, Esra and me would go one way, as she was to take a streetcar a bit east of my hotel and Yaprak needed to go somewhere else.
Esra vaguely knew the hotel I was staying at, it had only recently opened and gotten rave reviews on travel websites.
'I wanna come up and see your room. I saw pictures of the rooms on the net. They looked great.
The statement seemed a bit weird. At this point the alarm bells in my head out to have started ringing. It was not that that they weren't. It was more that I was consciously ignoring them. "Common, she just wants to see the room, she'll be in and out in five minutes, she works in tourism, they need to know what's happening in the industry in their town." One part of me thought. "Yeah, sure, working on a Friday night." my more realistic part answered.
