Melodies with Lydia

I step from the bus bracing my backpack as the lanky gypsy tour guide exclaims “Me Hercule.” I am looking to each direction of a four-way intersection, down a long boulevard at a series of non-descript five-story buildings of marble, stone, and pink and yellow stucco. The layout is simultaneously familiar and foreign. Noting my bewilderment, the gypsy ushers me to a nearby vendor, a short, mustachioed man with whom he exchanges a few words. The gypsy turns to say, “you can leave your bag here.” In the few moments that I spend studying the vendor’s wrinkled face, the gypsy vanishes into the noon-hour traffic.

A narrow cobblestone alley runs past plaza, fountain, and Ottoman mosque toward the bazaar, which lies five blocks from the ancient marble agora of Smyrna, a residence of the poet Homer and the ancient Lydians. The bazaar is a collection of street-level tunnels and walkways. Scraps of corrugated aluminum, sheets of translucent green plastic, and a spread of beige canvas overshadow some of the walkways. Others are open-aired. The tunnels twine into each other like the tentacles of an octopus. The layout entices like a beckoning siren with its sights, smells, and sounds until the voyeur is hopelessly lost among multitudes of vendors and unable to escape their callings. There is every sort of item in these stalls: prayer carpets from Bukhara and Dagestan, spices in large wooden barrels and in apothecary jars, leather goods, copperware, gaudy wedding dresses with sequins of red, silver, and gold hung up on ropes and racks, shalver kameezes, hanging pashminas, and bolts of silk of every weave and color. The scent of turmeric, cumin, and cloves carries in the springtime breeze and mingles with tea, coffee, and baklava at the heart of all the walkways, a tea garden encircled by small diners and cafes, servings of rice pilaf, kebabs, and confections. A small fountain spouts water beside lush green fronds and an arrangement of sofas upholstered in paisleys and palmettos, in prints of crimson and saffron that are echoed in scattered rugs on the floor. Students study, couples romance, and young families with grandparents and children chat beside bulging shopping bags as they sip black tea from tiny glass teacups. A punch-bellied man in the corner quietly tokes on a blue-glass nargile, and I watch the wisps of smoke twist upward in the light shafts that break through the cracks overhead. Lutes, drums, zithers, baglamas, and plaintive wailings ring through these tunnels in every direction as young brides with kohl-lined eyes silently echoing their black veils promenade beside proud husbands. A waitress in jeans and t-shirt leans into the doorframe of a cafe and looks on at the spectacle. Men argued about prices, and then break out in laughter. The bazaar has relocated many times, but not changed. After five hours in this menagerie pass like several seconds, I return to the mustachioed vendor near the bus stop. My bag sits in the corner of his shop - untouched.