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.