On Being a Sultan

Bekarım. I am a bachelor.

Special K has gone to the Land of Albion to practise being a grandmother. So I have two weeks of bachelorhood. The Turks have an expression for this bekarlık sultanlıktır. To be a bachelor is to be a sultan. Bekars can be choosers then.

The Turks have an expression about everything. Learn at least one and you will impress the natives. For those who overstretch themselves, for instance; iki karpuz bir koltuğunda siğmaz. You cannot put two water melons under one armpit.

You cannot of course press the bekarlık sultanlık comparison too far. I am sure a sultan would not load his own dishwasher. And then there is the small matter of the harem. Hundreds of nubile Ottoman women, bathed, annointed with fragrant oils and ready to satisfy your every whim, whether reading some soulful poetry or dispensing more earthly pleasures. No sign of that.

But let us not be too grudging I see where the coiner of the expression is coming from. Indeed watching the sun sink over the bodamya, a freshly shaken margarita in a frosted glass, a dish of tortilla chips, a simple stir fry in prospect followed by The Dam Busters and suddenly I am a Sultan.

Two days after the departure of my loved one, I was enjoying just such a moment before giving the precious garden its complicated water. Everything changed when I found our piddly water tank was empty, the mains water was completely shut down and not a droplet of the precious stuff was to be had. Nothing. The garden was not going to get its all important watering this evening. However I am not one to panic. The Water would return over night and the tank would refill in the morning. I told myself

Except it did not. The next day dawned as dry as a scorpion’s armpit. I called in favours. Telephone calls were made. Assurances were given. The local ASAT engineer assured me the supply would return by four. Would I contact him then to update?

It did not return by four. It did not return by six. Lines from T. S. Elliot’s The Waste Land are now echoing in my head

..a heap of broken images where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.

By ten o’clock I am researching painless ways to commit suicide.

By eleven Elliot has gone and Coleridge has taken his place

Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink

Water, water everywhere and how the boards did shrink

Have I unknowingly slain an albatross?

This is Islamlar for God’s sake. People drive up here from Kalkan to fill their water containers from the flowing standpipe in the village. My friend Peeky Nice is one of them. He says it is the quality of the water but the fact that it is free may have a bearing. Peeky does look after his pecuniary resources with extraordinary wigour. He gets separation anxiety handing over a 100 lira note.

Turks have an expression for this as well. Cebinde akrep var. He has a scorpion in his pocket. But Peeky is the most excellent of fellows in every respect so this little foible is easy to forgive. He just likes to save a few bob. Nothing wrong with that. Unless it’s your few bob.

Anyway water flows copiously in the village but one kilometre above, in our little mahalle of Pınarbaşı (which ironically means the “source of the stream”), there is not a drop to be had. H₂O yok.

Before I go up the wooden stairs I take a last desperate look in my depot and there is the faintest plink as water begins to trickle in to our tank.

I drop to my knees. There is a god.

If I was a Sultan heads would roll.