CHAPTER XV

MARKET DAY

It was midsummer market day at Ak Hissar. Temporary booths were erected along the street, and awnings of coarse sacking were stretched from roof to roof to protect the people and their wares from the scorching rays of the sun. Peasants from the neighboring villages came trooping in; some carried their marketable possessions in little packs balanced on their heads or their shoulders; others, more thrifty, followed their heavily laden donkeys, and if fortunate enough to own a horse, perched on the high packsaddle between the well-filled baskets. The wealthier peasant pulled his unwieldy buffaloes along by a rope attached to the nose, while the cart wheels, which were merely circular blocks sawed from the trunk of an ancient oak, groaned beneath the weight of luscious melons and plump white-gowned females of the harem. The peasants, all turning merchants for the day, spread out their goods, each in the place that his forefathers had occupied from time immemorial. What quantities of melons, onions, garlic, long squashes sold by the cubit, delicious white grapes, the first figs of the season, dried mulberries, eggplants, cherries, shucked walnuts, curded buffalo’s milk, and other delicacies familiar to the Anatolian! The old junk dealer arranged artistically his stock of rusty nails, pewter forks, padlocks, hinges, and old clock wheels. The grocer displayed before his shop a box of dirty rock salt, and a few glass jars half filled with lump sugar, Turkish delight, and cigarette papers. Suspended from the roof of the saddler’s booth were rope halters, strings of blue glass beads for the buffaloes, and bunches of evil eyes, which were good to bind about the necks of children as a preventive of accident or disease. The money changer, the successor of Badiark, had arranged his piles of silver coins to tempt the people to buy or to borrow. And Dicran, removing the wooden shutters from his shop, spread out his gaudy English prints.

The peasants had turned out in large numbers. Although the Lazis from the hamlet over on the mountain side had nothing to sell nor money with which to buy, they were there in a body, and the chaoush, or corporal, with his four soldiers of the military patrol had abandoned the long, lonesome beat over the country roads, to join the crowd for a holiday.

By nine o’clock business was at its height. The dispenser of drinks was winding his way through the crowd, shrilly crying, to the accompaniment of his clanking glasses, “Limonata sowuk, chok sowuk, buz gibi! lemonade, cold, very cold, like ice!” although for an hour the sun had been pouring its rays into his unprotected can. The butcher stood before the suspended leg of mutton, and with a horse’s tail mounted on a stick brushed away the clouds of flies. The baker balancing a large wooden tray on his head, and carrying a tall tripod with which to erect a temporary stand, was crying “Semit!” to tempt the hungry to buy his hoop-shaped bread. The vender of ices, with buckets of cherry and cream suspended from a pole swung over his shoulder, was drawling out his nasal “Dondurma!” and the little children, begging their closely veiled mammas for ten paras, looked longingly at the cold sweets. The barber had placed his chair in the middle of the street, and was thumping his copper basin to remind the people that their hair was long, or that they needed a shave. A Jew, a stranger to the village, went round chanting in a nasal, singsong tone the virtues of his cheap Manchester prints, which he called “Americani.” At the lower end of the street were the two village musicians, one improvising weird minor strains on a crude clarionet, the other beating time on terra cotta pompoms, while in a circle about them were soldiers, who, with guns raised above their heads, were performing the peculiar Oriental dance that to the European seems a series of contortions without rhyme or reason.

The old Armenian women went from booth to booth, poking their long bony fingers into the fruit, complaining that it was unripe, or sour, or too dear, and bought nothing. The swarthy Armenian girls, clad in their bright-colored baggy trousers, or skirts gathered about the ankles, and decked with all the family jewelry, walked back and forth, making eyes at the young men, or stopping for a moment to talk and titter. Everywhere little groups of fat Turkish women were squatting on the ground, peeking out through the openings of their veils, and whispering secrets to each other.

It was the first time since she had been away to school, that Armenouhi was spending her vacation at home; for the unscrupulous Hassan Bey had married a Turkish girl, and from him no more trouble was anticipated. When she and her sister Vassinag wandered about the market, examining the goods which the peasants were offering for sale, the eyes of the marketers followed them, for of all the girls in the village they alone wore European dress. The rough soldiers stopped in the midst of their dance to stare; the Lazis, to whom European clothes were strange, stood transfixed, as if gazing at an apparition from their celestial paradise; the girls from the other villages turned and looked with envy; and the gossiping women, nudging each other, whispered that Hassan Bey could not be blamed for trying to win her even by force. The sisters stopped before their grandfather’s shop, and while pretending to admire the lack of skill with which he displayed his heterogeneous stock of axes, silks, and cigarettes, they were listening to one of his stories. Although the recital was intended to excite their laughter, Dicran himself was watching the changing expression on Armenouhi’s face. How like his own mother she was! Suddenly looking up, he met the staring gaze of a strange white-turbaned priest standing before his shop. The priest dropped his eyes in confusion and moved on to the group of dancing soldiers.