112
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Title
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112
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Transcription
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The next morning Ishan said to me, "If you will give me ten lira I think I can get it. I gave him the lira, about one dollar in U.S. currency. He suggested that I stay at the apartment, while he went to the dock. In about an hour, the truck load of furniture arrived.
The Government offices opened at 9:30 in the morning. In the summer time, this seemed very late to me. I had been working with a farmer at the experiment station, that went by the name of ONE ARM AHMET. He had lost his arm in an accident, and in this way his friends identified him from another AHMET at the station. I persuaded Ishan Bey to take me to the village where one-armed Ahmet lived. He spoke no English and I very little Turkish, but we both talked horse language. He was open to new ideas and I helped him with hi planting. He had been hiring 25 women to make rows for him to plant cotton. I suggested that he put another type of blade on his plow and with his oxen he did more in two hour than the women could do in a day. This method saved him money and he was always glad to see me come.
Ishan would pick me up at the apartment at six o'clock in the morning and we would go to Ahmet's village, and be back by 9:00 o'clock when the offices opened.
One morning when Ishan stopped for me, I got in the back seat of the car, but suddenly remembered that I didn't have my camera. I asked him to wait a few minutes while I went to the apartment to get it, but when I returned, he was gone. I could only wait until he returned. It was more than a hour before he knocked on the door, and with many apologizes said, " I heard the door slam and thought you were in the car: I thought you were being very quiet". He missed me only when he reached the village.
Ishan died in 1982, just a few weeks before our visit to Turkey. We did get to the village to see one-armed Ahmet, but Ishan didn't take us.
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Metzger Memories
