Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 24

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transpired, was to be the end of the line for our mini-bus. Everyone got out, chickens and all, the back doors were opened and I was motioned to climb down. I didn’t know where Datça was but I had arrived there in the centre of a dried out mud patch which served as the village bus station. Several other conveyances, mainly horses and carts, were lined up in the middle of this bus park. Otherwise, there was nothing. I stood with my holdall by the Transit in the middle of that warm afternoon totally unsure of what was to happen next. I quizzed the driver – Knidos? Knidos? He beckoned me over to a higgledy-piggledy clutter of small chairs and illustrated that I should take a seat. After a few minutes a glass of tea was brought to me on a little plastic saucer with two lumps of sugar. I sipped nervously and watched what was happening, trying to make some sense of the scene. I was offered a tiny cigarette from a paper packet – ‘Birinci’ it said on the front of the packet; “First class!”

The driver of the Transit was talking to a gaggle of men, pointing to me, and then pointing westwards. Heads nodded sagely. A small boy arrived with a brass tray which he held shoulder high by a tripod; more tea was handed around. I rose to remonstrate with the men, but the Transit driver nodded to me to sit down. It was all under control, as he seemed to understand it. After an hour or so had passed, the sun noticeably getting lower in the sky, and several more glasses of tea having been brought to me I was just becoming really anxious to know that I wouldn’t be spending the night in the Datça municipal bus park when an aged light green Willys Jeep puttered into view and stopped. Smiles were exchanged all round and I was motioned into the front of this ancient conveyance. As I did so, the driver alighted and went over to drink a glass of tea. I too was brought yet more tea such that I wondered if the jeep was perhaps the first tea-driven vehicle I had come across. More time passed. More tea was drunk until the jeep driver, as though suddenly remembering why he was there, jumped into the somewhat patched driving seat and we rattled off out of Datça and into the mountains again.

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Looking for Aphrodite

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