With our passports submitted to the Iranian Consulate and our visas expected in two days, there are a lot of small errands I need to do today. I need a haircut and my bike needs to be cleaned and readied for the trip. Right after breakfast at the hostel, I take my bike out and clean it thoroughly. While doing so I realize the screw that holds the bottom of my front right pannier rack to my front fork has fallen out and that my brake pads are worn dangerously thin. I will also need to find a bike shop.
Coen has been to a local bike shop on Turkeli Caddesi so I get the directions from him. The shop is a reassuringly crowded, cluttered affair - usually a sign that the proprietor is more into bicycle repairs than marketing and up-selling. I ask him for a replacement screw which I have taken off the left rack to show him. He digs around through a box of renegade screws like a true mechanic while I poke around for a bit, looking for things I might have forgotten. When I return to the counter with spare inner tubes and patch kits, he has found a similar screw, a bit longer but with the same thread.
I am back at the hostel re-attaching both screws when Coen comes by to say that he and Vincent are going to spend the afternoon at Topkapi Palace. It is not a fine weather day but more of the attractions are inside anyway. I agree to meet them for dinner. They want to eat out tonight to sample a real Turkish restaurant.
I spend the afternoon doing small errands, including getting my haircut, making a trip to the pharmacy and writing postcards and buying stamps at the post office. I also call home at 5:30, which is 7:30 am in Toronto, to wish my father happy birthday. It's his 59th birthday. I catch him fresh out of the bathroom and preparing his breakfast. Mom is still in bed so I can't speak to her. Dad gets up early and goes to bed very early, and Mom does to opposite to give them time apart - probably to better sleep too, since they snore like competing lawn mowers.
Coen and Vincent are waiting for me to leave for dinner when I return from the post office. They have chosen a Turkish restaurant two blocks away that looks both authentic and reasonable. On our way there, two boys in their late teens pass us holding hands. They smile at us and check us out. "Do you think they are gay?" Coen asks me. Probably not, I answer. Gay men would be more discreet here as homosexuality is technically illegal. It is common, though not as common as in Egypt, for male friends, especially younger male friends to hold hands when they are together.
I have also picked up from talking with others at the hostel over the past week that a Turkish man is not allowed to marry until he can support a wife, so if he has a menial job, like the men I have seen selling bus and subway tickets, they can probably never marry. Sex before marriage is strictly taboo, with especially serious consequences for women who break the rules, so sometimes the only sex young unmarried or poor men can have is with other men. For that reason, homosexual sex is understood and quite common here although homosexuality itself is illegal. One experienced backpacker at the hostel, a handsome straight Swede in his late 20s, says this is the gayest country he has ever been in. I am not getting all attention he has been getting though.
The restaurant Vincent and Coen have chosen is a larger inside than it looks on the outside. It wraps around the back of the shops beside it. It serves Turkish food and some European foods like pizzas as it caters to the tourist market. That's not surprising because it is in Sultanahmet, the most active tourist area. A significant number of the clients seem to be tourists and the restaurant provides entertainment - a male Turkish dancer. Over half the tourists are women and they and I enjoy this.
I tease the Dutch boys that the restaurant must have known I was coming. When he gyrates past our table, I tuck a dollar bill in waistband like the women have been doing. I have never done this in a straight bar in Toronto, and rarely in a gay club, but I am still testing their comfort levels with me as a gay man before we travel together. Coen smiles and blushes a lovely rose colour. Vincent just laughs in delight. PHOTO 1: Turkish entertainer at the restaurant
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