Tiffany was furious with her parents. What were they thinking, sending her to this godforsaken place? She wouldn't have minded a summer in Rome or Paris but no, they had to send her to Istanbul. Just because she got in a little scrape back home in Tennessee, her parents decided that she should spend some time with her diplomat uncle and his native wife in Turkey.
Istanbul! It was foreign to her in every sense of the word. The smells, the language, the cuisine and the customs were all strange in the extreme to a girl who had never before left the United States. Even her arrival at the airport and drive into the city had been traumatic. It seemed that every man at the seedy terminal had leered at her in the most obvious and demeaning way, and every driver on the crowded streets was trying to kill her. Tiffany was grateful for the cool quiet of Uncle Edward's Mercedes, but she still didn't feel safe. Even the bus drivers raced from stoplight to stoplight like lunatics in hot rods.
That spring Tiffany had turned nineteen. She was a lovely girl, with wide brown eyes, long chestnut hair, and a stunning figure. It's true that she had fallen in with a wild crowd after high school and was out drinking and partying almost every night, but it was her arrest for possession of marijuana that proved to be the last straw. Almost before she knew it she was on a flight to Atlanta, and from there a Delta 747 whisked her off to Istanbul. Her parents had given her a couple of guidebooks and kissed her goodbye, feeling that some time in new surroundings would straighten her out. Little did they know that they had sent their daughter into a situation that would change her life forever.
Tiffany was by no means naïve. She had lost her virginity in high school, and had a variety of boyfriends since then. But there were plenty of sexual matters that were simply beyond her experience. All that was about to change.
She was pleasantly surprised when she finally arrived at her uncle's home in the old European quarter of Istanbul. It lay in a tree-lined street of century old houses that could have been in Amsterdam or Brussels rather than here in the exotic East. While the exterior of the house was impressive, the interior was downright opulent. The high-ceilinged rooms were beautifully and expensively furnished in a mixture of Turkish and Western tastes. Original art work was placed with care on the walls, and thick Turkish carpets covered the floors.
And if Tiffany was amazed by the house, she was absolutely shocked to meet her uncle's new Turkish wife. She looked to be about half her husband's sixty years, and was one of the most beautiful women Tiffany had ever seen. Large hazel eyes were framed by long thick lashes. Her nose was straight and delicately shaped, her lips full. Tiffany had supposed that all Turks had dark skin, but the woman before her was fair, almost pale, though her hair was indeed very dark. She wore a form-fitting black dress that showed off a curvaceous figure.
The woman greeted Tiffany warmly when Edward introduced her as Ayshe Hanim. "Oh, that's too formal," she said. "You can just call me Ayshe. I'm sure we're going to be great friends." She spoke with an upper-class British accent. "Perhaps you'd like to freshen up a bit, and then we'll have some tea."
Tiffany was not thrilled by the prospect of tea, but she was more than pleased by the private suite of rooms where she was to stay. There was a small sitting room with a comfortable sofa and chair, a bedroom with balcony overlooking the garden and a huge four-poster bed, and a luxurious marble bath with tub big enough for three. Maybe the summer wouldn't be so bad, after all.
The next day, Ayshe showed Tiffany some of the sights for which Istanbul was famous: Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, and Topkapi Palace. After lunch at an outdoor café above the Bosporus, Ayshe took Tiffany's arm and led her to the car. "Now it's time to shop till we drop," she said, smiling.
"Are we going to the mall?" Tiffany asked when they were in the car.
"Yes, the oldest mall in the world."
At first Tiffany was not impressed with the Kapali Charshi, or Covered Bazaar, a maze of shops over 500 years old. But once they reached the jewelry shops at the center of the Bazaar, she was hooked, and Ayshe had to drag her out after three hours.
On the way home, as their driver weaved through the dense crowds of vehicles and pedestrians, the two women chatted like old friends. It seemed that Ayshe had acquired her command of English (and her accent) while attending boarding school near London. She also had a degree in filmmaking from the Sorbonne. "It's very common for Turks of the better families to send their children to secondary school and university in Europe," she said.
She also explained why so many men had leered at Tiffany in the airport. "You have to realize that Turkey, while a secular country, is still Moslem. Women are expected to dress modestly. I thought you looked great in the top you were wearing yesterday, but those men assumed you were a prostitute." Tiffany remembered that she had taken off her jacket in the terminal, and wore only a small tank top that showed a good bit of cleavage. She blushed, and looked down to see what she had on. "Don't worry," Ayshe laughed. "The T-shirt you're wearing today is fine."
They were soon drinking chilled white wine on the veranda, Tiffany trying on the antique silver bracelets and earrings that Ayshe had purchased for her in the Bazaar. She told the older woman how much she liked the bath in her room.
"Ah," said Ayshe. "If you like that, tomorrow I'll take you to a hamam."
"What's a hamam?"
"It's a public bath house, or as people elsewhere call it, a Turkish bath."
