The Shoe Seller

by Francis Martin (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Turkey

I met Salaam on a warm evening in Kemalpaşa, the last village on Turkey’s Black Sea coast before reaching the Georgian border. He looked me in the eyes as he spoke to me in Turkish, unconcerned that I did not understand. The dome and minaret of the nearby mosque were visible, and behind us tea bushes rose up the mountain in a dark, dense carpet. We sat and drank tea in a flower-strewn garden. His girlfriend, an Iranian woman who had studied English in Tehran, occasionally translated a phrase, but often seemed too absorbed in his words to interpret them for me. He held my gaze with dark eyes that seemed, in the gloom, to emit a light of their own, and he laughed often. I came with my host when we all drove up the mountain to where Salaam and his girlfriend were staying, dropping them back at the end of the evening. I leant out of the window to say goodbye and Salaam cuffed me across the pate, hard enough to hurt. As we drove back down the winding road, my host explained that Salaam owned a shoe shop in town, but that two days ago it had burnt down. He had lived above the shop, and so not only his livelihood but his home had been destroyed. The next day we went to the town hall to help him sort through the stock that had been saved from the fire. The main room of the town hall was large, with thick square columns painted red and a floor of cream coloured tiles. A disco ball hung rather incongruously from the ceiling. Much of the floor was taken up with shoes, some in neat rows, others heaped up haphazardly. Amongst the shoes were various personal possessions, most of them damp from the efforts to extinguish the fire. I picked up a book by Nietzsche. It was sodden, the pages clinging together and smeared with dust and damp ash. Salaam’s girlfriend was crouched there, sorting through the piles for things worth keeping. The rest of us took large sacks and threw the shoes into them. I came across a foul-smelling comedy wig and we all tried it on, laughing. A pair of brand-new pink socks, child’s size, had melted through the heels. Mostly we worked without speaking, though Salaam occasionally sung a few lines of an achingly sad melody, more to himself than to us. Twice he challenged me to a fight—I tried my best, but he was strong and extremely quick. He hit and kicked me hard, and we both laughed. It was, for a moment, a distraction from the funeral preparations in which we were engaged. As we neared the end of our work, Salaam found his bağlama, mercifully undamaged by fire or water. He gently tuned the hard strings. At first he just picked out some broken chords, allowing his fingers to re-accustom themselves to the instrument, and then suddenly he struck it with force. Each chord was accompanied by the percussive rap of fingernails against polished wood. His voice was plaintive but clear, rising above the vigorous beat as if carried by a breath of wind. I couldn’t tell whether it was a love song, a lament, or a prayer. When he had finished, he placed his instrument on the floor and said something to me in Turkish. He said it again several times as he walked over to where we’d piled the sacks of shoes. I looked to his girlfriend. ‘He says “fake world.”’ Salaam smiled and repeated it in English: ‘fake world, fake world.’ He had lost a huge amount, and yet it seemed as if none of this could touch him. The flames that had ravished his livelihood could not wound his spirit.