Aye, Mama!

Once she was beautiful, and at nearly eighty years old, still her face is handsome.  Her back is bent into a crescent and she is only four feet tall. She wears a babushka which hoods her face.  Her brown eyes miss nothing, however, and she has decided that I need to buy something. We are climbing the winding limestone steps leading to the Ottoman fortress, built in the time of Suleyman the Magnificent, which still stands watch on the hill above old Marmaris town

We cannot pass without running the gamut past her tiny shop. She presses me with bracelets, made of silvered  metal and macramed beads. I say no, no, thank you, thank you, I don't need them.

She persists, and we say we have to go  now or the museum in the castle will be closed, since dusk is approaching.  I say we will look at her wares on the way back.  With my first step out of the fort, she has me in the cross-hairs.  She grasps my arm in a viselike grip and escorts me to her shop. I ask her name; she says, "I Mama". Bracelet after bracelet are pressed upon me, the prices creeping higher. "Where you from?  Ah, America good. Twen'y five years I here. America good"  . She starts putting several bracelets into a bag.  She pins on me a tiny safety pin with a blue eye bead and tiny dolphin on it."Is good luck", she says, and adds a handful to the bag. She tosses in two more bracelets as well.  I protest feebly, to no avail. I can do nothing but burst out laughing. I am being hustled by a tiny ancient land-shark.  I take the bracelets out; she replaces them with bars of olive oil soap, decorated with olive sprigs and blue eye beads.  She reaches up and gives me a brisk little slap on the cheek, saying "America good."

HELP!!

 Finally I cannot but yield and ask the final price. She says 15 lira, then adds another bar of soap and ups the ante to 20.  I get 15 out of my purse, still chuckling.  She says "5 more, 5 more".  Her son is enjoying the show, chuckling in his folding chair across the street. I give her the money, by now as much a ransom as a mercantile transaction. At last she releases me. I call her back and give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Turkey good, Mama good. Is lucky.

Yes, Virginia, there are pirates.