A Turkish Vegetable Market

Every friday I walk a few blocks to the local vegetable market to meet the villagers who come to sell there weekly harvest. It’s a misnomer really, because it also consists of vendors of fish, cheese, fruits, seeds, spices, breads, oils, many plastic Chinese-made household items, clothes, and delicious gözleme (a pancake-like treat with potatoes, meat, or parsley and cheese inside). The food products are fresh and delicious, I can’t rave enough, and the non-food items are, well, very cheap. Every neighborhood in Izmir has one, and in Kahramanlar, it is the place to be on fridays.

Turkish farmers are on the forefront of green-bean piling technology.

Friday is also my day off work. Amid small and frumpy elderly ladies dressed in şalvar (basically MC Hammer pants) with their grocery carts, my girlfriend and I try to negotiate the terrain. The system is basic; the vendors have their piles of goods in front of them and you grab what you want and hand it to them, then you always have to ask the price even though it is apparent you that want to make the purchase (they don’t automatically tell you the price for a reason I can’t understand and no one here can explain). My experience is that they are almost always honest, perhaps because they are villagers and don’t have the big-city savvy to rip off a foreigner (plus I may be one of the only ones they’ve talked to, as the market is out of the way)… or perhaps they are just honest people, I hope for the later. And even if they aren’t I haven’t noticed because the prices are so ridiculously cheap that a 200% increase in price would still sound fair to me. However, I would like to assume that they are just plain honest.

I would also recommend bringing lots of small bills and change, the vegetable-marketeers seem refreshingly ambivalent that they can’t make a sale because of the lack of divisible currency. Be warned. Another suggestion: don’t be daunted by those little bastard old ladies, they will push and shove and have no concept of lines. Be firm! Shout your order when your turn comes, and if you are foreign then your accent may serve as an asset – as people are often startled by the retarded sounding Turkish.

We stock up for the week, go back to the house, and have a nice big traditional Turkish breakfast consisting of eggs, sausage (not pork), olives, cheese, bread, tomatoes (perhaps with pomegranate sauce), cucumbers, honey, tahin pekmez (a sesame seed and grape sauce which is just awesome), fresh fruit, and lots of tea. We talk and I read the Guardian Weekly, which I buy from an English language bookstore in the city. It is probably my favorite time of the week.

-Charles P. Pearson