Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 21

For some time, the only answer I got to my questions about a ferry, assuming anyone was willing to talk about it, was:

“Is’a no possible!”

Many were not even prepared to go that far, preferring to purse their lips, narrow their eyes, grimace and to raise their stubble-laden chins in an ultimate gesture of silent and defiant negativity.

This geographical charade went on for most of the afternoon with every travel agent I went into. Finally, when I was near my wit’s end, a man sitting at the back in one of the agencies beckoned me to follow him outside and motioning forwards we walked together briskly up one of the old Crusader streets passed shops selling hundreds of miniature Greek windmills, acres of lace work and ceramic versions of Greek theatrical masks for the tourists from the big cruise ships to buy who came to visit. We ended up in a shop which sold wines and spirituous liqueurs in lurid coloured bottles. It turned out that the family which ran this emporium, of which it seems he was the son, were originally Turkish Greeks that had left Smyrna in 1923 during the exchange of population following the Treaty of Lausanne. Anyway, almost fifty years later they still had relatives in Turkey and crossed over regularly. A couple of phone calls later and a sea captain appeared and said he was crossing early the next day. Some crumpled drachmae changed hands and he told me where to be in the harbour at seven the next morning.

I duly appeared at his boat, which turned out to be a small converted naval vessel, and after he had cast off we set out across the Gulf to Marmaris. It was a fine day with clear skies and a deep sapphire sea, the spray breaking into a bright white spume at the prow. The Greek flag, with its white cross and stripes on a pale blue background, flew jauntily from the flag staff. After an hour or so the mainland of Turkey loomed out of the morning

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