before choosing a single bar of soap, retired army officers who came in to buy a whistle and ended up blowing on every whistle in the box, one by one. But he’d become used to it. He no longer cared. No longer was he offended by the housewife who grumbled because he didn’t stock a back issue of a photonovel from ten years ago, by the fat gent who licked a stamp to check out the flavor, and by the butcher’s wife who returned the crepe-paper carnation the next day, good and angry because the artificial flower didn’t have any scent.
He’d built up the store tooth and nail. For years he had bound the Texas and Tom Mix comics himself, with his own hands; he was the one who opened shop and swept it while the city slept; he himself had fastened the newspapers and the magazines on the door and on the chestnut tree; he’d put the trendiest goods in the store window; and, to satisfy his customers’ demands, he’d traversed the whole of Istanbul for years, inch by inch, store by store, to procure the oddest of merchandise (like the toy ballerinas who pirouetted as the magnetized mirror was brought close; the tricolored shoelaces; the plaster-of-Paris statuettes of Atatürk which had blue lightbulbs behind the pupils; the pencil sharpeners in the shape of Dutch windmills; the signs that said FOR RENT or IN THE NAME OF ALLAH THE COMPASSIONATE, THE MERCIFUL ; the pine-flavored bubblegum which came with pictures of birds numbered from one to a hundred; the pink backgammon dice which could only be found at the Covered Bazaar; the transfer pictures of Tarzan and Admiral Barbarossa; the gadgets which were shoehorns on one end and bottle openers on the other; and the soccer hoods in the colors of the teams—he himself had worn a blue one the last ten years). He hadn’t yet said “nay” even to the most unreasonable demands (Do you carry rose-scented blue ink? Do you have any of those rings that sing?), reasoning that if something were being asked for, then it must have a prototype. He’d make a note in his book, saying “We’ll have it in here by tomorrow,” and he’d search the city, store by store, like a traveler questing after a mystery, until he landed his quarry. There’d been times he’d made easy money peddling photonovels which sold like mad, or else cowboy comics, or photos of domestic movie stars whose faces said blah; and then there’d been cold, bitchy, nothing-doing days when coffee and cigarettes ended up on the black market and people had to line up in cues. When you looked out of your store window, you wouldn’t think people who flowed down the sidewalk were “this way and that way,” but … but people were “something else.”
People who each seemed to march to a different drum suddenly all wanted musical cigarette boxes as if they were going out of style, or they all went ape over Japanese fountain pens no larger than your little finger; then they’d lose interest the next month, and they all wanted pistol-shaped cigarette lighters so bad that Aladdin had a time and a half keeping the lighters in stock. Then there’d be a fad for plastic cigarette holders, and, for the next six months, they’d all be watching the tar build up on the plastic with the obsession of a mad scientist. Then, abandoning that, all of them, the leftist and the conservative, the God-fearing and the godless, they all purchased at Aladdin’s the rosaries that came in all colors and all shapes, and they went to town fingering the beads. Before the bead storm was over and Aladdin could return the leftover rosaries, a dream fad would surface, and they’d line up at the door to get the little booklet interpreting dreams. Some American film would hit and all the punks had to have dark glasses; an item in the papers, and all the women had to have lip gloss; or the men had to have beanies for their heads as if they were imams. All in all, fads spread unchartered like the Black Death. Otherwise, why else had thousands, tens of
He’d built up the store tooth and nail. For years he had bound the Texas and Tom Mix comics himself, with his own hands; he was the one who opened shop and swept it while the city slept; he himself had fastened the newspapers and the magazines on the door and on the chestnut tree; he’d put the trendiest goods in the store window; and, to satisfy his customers’ demands, he’d traversed the whole of Istanbul for years, inch by inch, store by store, to procure the oddest of merchandise (like the toy ballerinas who pirouetted as the magnetized mirror was brought close; the tricolored shoelaces; the plaster-of-Paris statuettes of Atatürk which had blue lightbulbs behind the pupils; the pencil sharpeners in the shape of Dutch windmills; the signs that said FOR RENT or IN THE NAME OF ALLAH THE COMPASSIONATE, THE MERCIFUL ; the pine-flavored bubblegum which came with pictures of birds numbered from one to a hundred; the pink backgammon dice which could only be found at the Covered Bazaar; the transfer pictures of Tarzan and Admiral Barbarossa; the gadgets which were shoehorns on one end and bottle openers on the other; and the soccer hoods in the colors of the teams—he himself had worn a blue one the last ten years). He hadn’t yet said “nay” even to the most unreasonable demands (Do you carry rose-scented blue ink? Do you have any of those rings that sing?), reasoning that if something were being asked for, then it must have a prototype. He’d make a note in his book, saying “We’ll have it in here by tomorrow,” and he’d search the city, store by store, like a traveler questing after a mystery, until he landed his quarry. There’d been times he’d made easy money peddling photonovels which sold like mad, or else cowboy comics, or photos of domestic movie stars whose faces said blah; and then there’d been cold, bitchy, nothing-doing days when coffee and cigarettes ended up on the black market and people had to line up in cues. When you looked out of your store window, you wouldn’t think people who flowed down the sidewalk were “this way and that way,” but … but people were “something else.”
People who each seemed to march to a different drum suddenly all wanted musical cigarette boxes as if they were going out of style, or they all went ape over Japanese fountain pens no larger than your little finger; then they’d lose interest the next month, and they all wanted pistol-shaped cigarette lighters so bad that Aladdin had a time and a half keeping the lighters in stock. Then there’d be a fad for plastic cigarette holders, and, for the next six months, they’d all be watching the tar build up on the plastic with the obsession of a mad scientist. Then, abandoning that, all of them, the leftist and the conservative, the God-fearing and the godless, they all purchased at Aladdin’s the rosaries that came in all colors and all shapes, and they went to town fingering the beads. Before the bead storm was over and Aladdin could return the leftover rosaries, a dream fad would surface, and they’d line up at the door to get the little booklet interpreting dreams. Some American film would hit and all the punks had to have dark glasses; an item in the papers, and all the women had to have lip gloss; or the men had to have beanies for their heads as if they were imams. All in all, fads spread unchartered like the Black Death. Otherwise, why else had thousands, tens of
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