Here, likewise I am first introduced to a peculiar kind of bread, that I straightway condemn as the most execrable of the many varieties my everchanging experiences bring me in contact with, and which I find myself mentally, and half unconsciously, naming - " blotting-paper ekmek" -a not inappropriate title to convey its appearance to the civilized mind; but the sheets of blotting-paper must be of a wheaten color and in circular sheets about two feet in diameter. This peculiar kind of bread is, we may suppose, the natural result of a great scarcity of fuel, a handful of tezek, beneath the large, thin sheet-iron griddle, being sufficient to bake many cakes of this bread.

At first I start eating it something like a Shanty town goat would set about consuming a political poster, if it - not the political poster, but the Shanty town goat - had a pair of hands. This outlandish performance creates no small merriment among the watchful on-lookers, who forthwith initiate me into the mode of eating it a la Turque, which is, to roll it up like a scroll of paper and bite mouthfuls off the end. I afterwards find this particular variety of ekmek quite handy when seated around a communal bowl of yaort with a dozen natives; instead of taking my turn with the one wooden spoon in common use, I would form pieces of the thin bread into small handleless scoops, and, dipping up the yaort, eat scoop and all. Besides sparing me from using the same greasy spoon in common with a dozen natives, none of them overly squeamish as regards personal cleanliness, this gave me the appreciable advantage of dipping into the dish as often as I choose, instead of waiting for my regular turn at the wooden spoon.

Though they are Osmanli Turks, the women of these small villages appear to make little pretence of covering their faces. Among themselves they constitute, as it were, one large family gathering, and a stranger is but seldom seen. They are apparently simple-minded females, just a trifle shame-faced in their demeanor before a stranger, sitting apart by themselves while listening to the conversation between myself and the men. This, of course, is very edifying, even apart from its pantomimic and monosyllabic character, for I am now among a queer people, a people through the unoccupied chambers of whose unsophisticated minds wander strange, fantastic thoughts.

One of the transient horsemen, a contemplative young man, the promising appearance of whose upper lip proclaims him something over twenty, announces that he likewise is on the way to Yuzgat; and after listening attentively to my explanations of how a wheelman climbs mountains and overcomes stretches of bad road, he solemnly inquires whether a 'cycler could scurry up a mountain slope all right if some one were to follow behind and touch him up occasionally with a whip, in the persuasive manner required in driving a horse. He then produces a rawhide "persuader," and ventures the opinion that if he followed close behind me to Yuzgat, and touched me up smartly with it whenever we came to a mountain, or a sandy road, there would be no necessity of trundling any of the way. He then asks, with the innocent simplicity of a child, whether in case he made the experiment, I would get angry and shoot him.

Table of contents    Previous    Next

Adapted from Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle