The elderly man sits at the side of the cobblestoned street, his handsfolded and motion less, his gaze serene. He looks as though he has beenthere forever. By his small skullcap and rounded beard I know him to bea religious man. He seems wise, unshakable, a man at peace.

Behind him is a mosque, small by Istanbul standards -- the fountainwhere the faithful wash their feet before prayer has but ten stools. Acrossfrom him is a Levi's store, where Sony monitors flash MTV type videos anda poster of a male model unbuttoning his 501 jeans lurks just inside thedoor. The old man looks toward this exhibition of contemporary culturebut his face gives nothing away.

He has prayer beads for sale to believers. He has a bathroom scale forthe convenience of eaters. I am walking along Istiklal Street, a shoppingpromenade, with a friend who speaks Turkish, and through her I learn thathe is Sabri Sengul, age 70. He has lived in the neighborhood for fortyyears, making a living as best he can since ; his small coal business failed.

I ask him the price of weighing myself. When he says 2,000 Turkish liras,about 14 cents at the time, I know that in his wisdom he has made me outto be a tourist, be cause it is twice the going rate. I say I will paythis amount only if he can predict how much I weigh.

"More than seventyfive kilos," he says.

In my wisdom, I know this to be true, for I have been in Istanbul formore than a week and this is one of the great cities in which to eat.

I have taken short trips up the Bosporus to visit seafood restaurantsmuch like those found at American oceanside resorts, except that the varietyand

[Photo Captions]

ABOVE; SABRI SENGUL Makes a living on a busy streets. OPPOSITE PAGE,TOP ROW: the Blue Mosque; baklava; a young carpet-repairer. CENTER ROW:street life; the Spice Bazaar; one of Istanbul's American taxis. BOTTOMROW: the Grand Bazaar; dining out; a fish merchant on the Bosporus.

freshness of the fish is better here. I have stood at counters and eatenwarm cheese- and meat-filled pastries called borek that are sliced andchopped by the Turkish equivalent of Ginsu-wielding Japanese steak-housechefs. I have not been able to get my fill of savory skewered meatballsroasted on indoor charcoal fires. Though mocked as a "baklava boy" by awoman who misunderstood my quest, I have walked the streets in search ofthe ultimate in such pastries. Only those who have been exposed to thedizzying perfection of flaky, honey-drenched Istanbul baklava can understandwhat sweet relief they are after a lifetime of consuming the soggy, leadeningots that thump on the table after a meal in a Greek-American restaurant.

I have sampled cuisine prepared by those who wish to reclaim the gloryof the Ottoman Empire, at least at the dinner table. Should anyone doubtthat the Ottoman Turks took their food seriously, they need only look atthe paintings of the gaily dressed sultans and harem women of the seventeenth,eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, inspirations for the balloons thatfloat over Thanksgiving Day parades, or visit the football field-sizedkitchen of Topkapi Palace, where the chimneys rise in silhouette like smokestacks over a steel mill.

Yes, I would say I weigh more than seventy-five kilos by now.

I pay Sengul and step on the scale, watch as the needle passes the seventy-five-kilomark in a blur, traveling at the speed of a scimitar slicing the air.

The religious man is silent in his awe.

I ask his opinion of this great weight I bear.

"Praise God," he says.

I do not know what he is thinking, for my ways are not his ways, buthe seems eager to say more. I lean forward to catch his words. He smiles,flashing a mouthful of metal teeth.

"And your coat hides a lot."

Istanbul, once Constantinople. Muslim, once Christian. Gritty, polluted,majestic. A city despairingly overcrowded, reeking of splendid decay, teeteringon hopelessness, absolutely eternal. Divided by the Bosporus, a waterwaylinking the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, Istanbul separates Asia fromEurope, East from West. It is the essence of cities, the Godfather of cities,the city Carl Sandburg would have chosen for his home had he been a Muslim.

What is most astonishing about Istanbul, ever-embattled Istanbul, isthat it's still there. (The same can be said of Turkey itself, a nationsurrounded by Greece, Syria, Iran, Iraq and a few of the ex-Soviet republics,not the friendliest lot.) Founded around 660 B.C. as Byzantium by Byzasthe Megarian, whose fame has not otherwise endured, the city became thecapital of the Roman Empire by decree of Constantine the Great in the fourthcentury, grew into the most magnificent city in the world under EmperorJustinian in the sixth century, was thoroughly sacked in the thirteenthcentury by Crusaders (who massacred, plundered and stole the idea for marzipan)and fell to Mehmet II and his army of 150,000 Osmanli Turks in the fifteenthcentury.

Today, Istanbul might best be described as desperately maintained, ratherthan immaculately preserved. The carpets in the mosques are threadbareand the grounds of the palaces far from manicured, but the city is filledwith irresistible bits of all those empires past: the jewels of TopkapiPalace; the splendor of Hagia Sophia, once a basilica, next a mosque, nowa museum; the six minarets of the fabled Blue Mosque; the sarcophagus ofAlexander the Great, a master piece, whether really his or not; the rectangularHippodrome, a racetrack built in the second century, today a grassy park;and the grandmother of all malls, the Grand Bazaar, a covered market with65 streets and nearly 4,000 shops that dates from the fifteenth centuryand swarms with entrepreneurs who would be more than happy to escort youto the shop of their brother who sells gold or their uncle who sells leatheror their father who sells carpets. From the sales pitches, it is clearthat the family unit is intact in Istanbul.

What is not so memorable about Istanbul is the inefficient postal system,the impossible public telephones, the self- righteous gatekeepers at themosques, the 5 P.M. traffic that makes Manhattan's rush hour seem likea stockcar race. The local wines are extremely modest, but you will soonlearn to bear them, since imported still wines are highly taxed and almostnever seen on wine lists. Actually, I like the wines a lot more than Ilike Kimiz, a Central Asian Turkish alcoholic beverage made from fermentedmare's milk. I don't even like the horse it rode in on.

"At the brothels, waiters bustling about.carrying tea a nd , pastriesprovide the only animation."

[Photo]

Turkish delight: superb bargain-priced dining.

ABOVE LEFT: the Restaurant Pandeli, with its stunning turquoise-and-cobalttiles, where you can enjoy artichoke hearts, TOP, or a selection of puddings,ABOVE RIGHT.

A problem not the least bothersome to me, but apparently on the mindof almost every Turk, is that Istanbul has too many Turks. In 1918, atthe end of the Ottoman Em pire, the population of the city was around 500,000--halfof it Turkish. By the mid-Eighties, the population was 7 million. Today,it is more than 10 million, 95 percent Turkish. The city is crowded ina way only a very old city can be crowded: too many people in homes thatcannot hold them and too many cars on streets not made for them.

Long-established residents lament the loss of diversity. They bemoanhow jammed and unsophisticated the city has become, how the quality oflife has slipped, pulled down by the weight of all the unwashed, uncultured,unemployable and unwanted people who have migrated from central and easternAnatolia (part of Asian Turkey). They came to Istanbul so their childrencould be educated, but they are so poor the children must work. They camefor better living conditions, but they live in miniature, ram shackle houseswith no plumbing. Some of the homeless can be seen sleeping on handwovencarpets, the only asset they will ever possess.

"When God gives out clever, Fahrettin is sleeping," says his friendHakan.

Fahrettin Isik, 26, of hollow-cheeked Kurdish descent, born in a smallvillage in central Anatolia, speaks Turkish, English, a little Italian,a little Japanese and is no dummy, despite what his friend says. HakanEvrin, 22, is short, swarthy, always carefully dressed, a Turkish MichaelJ. Fox. He speaks Basque, Spanish, English and a little Italian. Turksdo not study languages, they inhale them. Both are carpet dealers. Fahrettinand his brother have a small shop, Gallery Ottoman, in a bazaar behindthe Blue Mosque. Hakan has an even smaller shop, all his own, in the GrandBazaar. Fahrettin, in the custom of carpet dealers, has invited me to dinewith him. We are eating at a small Formica countertop-type restaurant,where I have ordered a spicy meatball-yogurt-and-tomato-sauce casserole,the only food in Istanbul to give me indigestion. Hakan will not let Fahrettinenjoy his dinner. He is chastising him for falling in love with his carpetsinstead of selling them.

A year ago, Fahrettin drove to Azerbaijan, one of the former Sovietrepublics. Accompanied by two bodyguards and traveling in a Russian jeepmade in the 1930s, he went to a remote mountain village, where he foundan antique carpet so beautiful, the owners had hung it on a wall ratherthan walk on it. It was a classic Turkish carpet--all-wool, double knotted,glowing with pure vegetable dyes, hand-made by a young woman preparingher dowry. Fahrettin bought it for $600 and will sell it for no less than$6,000. He has already turned down an offer of $4,000, which Hakan cannotbelieve.

"When the customer offers him $4,000 and he doesn't sell," says Hakan,"that means the cost of this carpet is not $600 anymore. It means it is$4,000, because that is the amount of money he does not have to use inhis business." Fahrettin says beautiful carpets should not sell for lessthan they are worth. Hakan looks upon such sentimental attach ments ascharacter flaws.

The carpet dealers of Istanbul, like the gondoliers of Venice and thetaxi drivers of London, personify their city. They are good-natured, generous,shrewd and indomitable. If you find yourself accosted on the street andall but dragged down a dank alley to a dark and shuttered shop, chancesare you're in the clutches of a carpet salesman, not a kidnapper. In seconds,the shop will be alight, the tea served, the rugs rolled out. The carpetdealers of Istanbul will amuse you, guide you and, of course, overchargeyou, if they can. How can a tourist know which one to trust? "It is likesomebody you marry," Fahrettin says. "You will know."

I promise Fahrettin that I will return to his shop, but before I buyI must visit Hakan in the Grand Bazaar. He is horrified. He says that ifI go to see Hakan I will never return. "If I leave you with him, he willsell you three or four carpets," he says. I ask him to have faith. He shakeshis head, dismayed. He offers to direct me to the shop of the most famouscarpet dealer in all of Istanbul, because anything is better than Hakan.Fahrettin tells me to go to the Grand Bazaar, ask for Fat Osman.

When it comes to food, the Grand Bazaar is anything but. As far as Ican tell, the tens of thousands of people who work and shop there eat gyrosmade from lamb carved off of huge chunks of processed meat, sustenanceI always thought was indigenous to Times Square. Had I been heading forthe Spice Bazaar (sometimes called the Egyptian Bazaar), I might have goneto the Restaurant Pandeli, whose stairway promises an ascent into exoticabut in reality takes you to a clubby, rather pricey luncheon spot, wheremeats and fish are grilled, sauced and served by extremely proficient whitejacketedwaiters.

My translator friend leading the way, we wander in and around the GrandBazaar in search of a restaurant of promise. Unsuccessful, we finally ask,and a shopkeeper points to a row of windows three stories up. It is indeeda restaurant, the Kartal Yuvasi Balik Evi--"ballk evl" means "fish house"in Turkish. We start up the steps, and the pangs I feel are no longer hunger.They're dread. This is a bad stairway, narrow and none-too-spotless Weenter a low- ceilinged room of large tables filled with middle-aged meneating and smoking. Everybody, without exception, is a middle-aged man,and everybody is smoking. There is a saying in Italy, "fumare come un turco,"which means "to smoke like a Turk." This could be the very room where thephrase was coined.

The restaurant has no menus and no prices, but it does have canaries.I wonder if the hirds are there for the same reason they were in coal mines--becausecanaries die from toxic fumes more quickly than humans. Uneasily, we sit.We are ignored. I get up, determined to proceed on my own. I go to thecounter, point to some fish in a display case. Then I point to some salads.There is much nodding all around.

Buoyed by my remarkable achievement in culinary communications, I feeloptimistic. I smell no cigarette smoke, which means the room has incredibleventilation. I smell no fishy odors, which means everything is fresh. Thefirst dishes to come to our table are the meze--yogurt with garlic; coldmixed vegetables; a large, uninteresting salad, more or less the same appetizersthat start every meal. We then have the unnamed fish I pointed to, grilled.It's superb. After that we have a fish stew I didn't know I'd pointed to.It's a bubbling concoction of fish, tomato sauce, peppers and onions servedin a Crock-Pot that could be the one antiquity the Crusaders neglectedto steal. It's everything I like in food: rich, aromatic, and there's toomuch of it. We have two half-liter bottles of beer. The bill totals about$14.

I feel as though I have conquered the Turkish restaurant. I am now readyto take on the master Turkish rug merchant, S,is,ko ("Fat") Osman. First,of course, I have to find him.

To enter the Grand Bazaar is to become lost. No other result is possible.Fahrettin has assured me that I will have no problem finding Osman, becauseeverybody knows him. This turns out to be true. Three times I ask for directionshecause three times I get lost. Everybody points the way. Twice more Iask even though I am not lost, just to see if there is anyone who doesnot know him. Everybody knows him.

Osman S,enel is his real name. He speaks seven languages, studied Arabicat Cairo University and economics at the Sorbonne and once weighed 134kilos, which is 295 pounds, even though he is not a very tall man. Nowhe is down to 220. When I appear disappointed, he apologizes and explainsthat he had knee trouble and was forced to lose weight. He is 67 now, orat least he thinks so, because the birth certificates back then weren'tall they are today, but he will not retire because that means he wouldbe home with his wife, and his wife says she will divorce him if he ishome all the time. He laughs happily. He is a happy man. Happy about hislife and happy about his carpets.

I ask him how many carpets there are in all of Istanbul, and he replies"No one can say--how many paintings do they have in Paris?" He himselfhas three shops in the Grand Bazaar: one for tourists, one for collectorsand one where he keeps his personal treasures. He shows me a 1910 Imperialcarpet, gold in color, made so fine that it was used as a tablecloth. Heshows me a ninety-year-old Taspinar carpet -- with blues so vibrant theyshimmer, made of wool so soft the carpet folds like a silk handkerchief.The masterpiece tumble out, like Christmas decorations spilling from aovercrowded hall closet. He is a wealthy man, yet he drives a 1972 Pontiac.He says it is "brand-new like the first day it comes from the factory,"and it is large enough to sleep in when he drives through Turkey, lookingfor carpets. The ones he seeks are made by the rare young woman who didnot copy what she had seen but had something original in her mind. Suchgirls and such carpets are no more. I ask him when young Turkish womenstopped making such pieces. I expect a vague answer, but instead he tellsme 1967.

"Exactly?" I ask.

"Exactly 1967," he says. "That is when we get TV. They cannot watchTV and make a carpet."

[Photo captions] OPPOSITE PAGE: You might stay at the Hidiv Kasri, TOP,SECOND AND THIRD FROM LEFT, whose Marble Room cafe, TOP RIGHT, is a plusfor guests. For shopping, try the Grand Bazaar, TOP LEFT, the Spice Bazaar,BOTTOM LEFT, or Istiklal Stteet, BOTTOM CENTER. Other sights: the sarcophagusof Alexander the Great, THIRD ROW, LEFT, and Topkapi Palace, SECOND ROW,RIGHT. Everyday life includes pre-prayer ablutions, SECOND ROW, LEFT, andrelaxing at the Erenler Pipe Salon, THIRD ROW, RIGHT.

Modern times have come to Istanbul. The tips of steel tOwers, not minarets,dominate the skyline. A shopping complex has opened in the business district,just north o the Golden Horn, the body of water that divides the Europeanside of Istanbul. It has two office towers, an apartment building and about275 shops, everything from Ferre to Wendy's. In a city blessed with almostinfinite traditiona eating places, residents are starting to embrace Baskin-Robbins,McDonald's and Pizza Hut. (Beware the thin-crust tuna- and-tiny shrimppizza at the branch on Bagdat Street the Columbus Avenue of Asia Minor;it tastes like hot canned fish on a cracker.) Stuffed baked potatoes areeverywhere, sold from little rolling carts, potatoes so unnaturally largethat my friend, a resident of Istanbul for more than ten years, is certainthey contain weird hormones. (Gastronomically paranoid, she also believesthe fish of the Black Sea have been contaminated by fallout from Chernobyl.)

Istanbul, the most secular of all Islamic cities, seems determined toprove its worldliness. While the call to prayer still wails from the topsof minarets five times a day, rock music bays through out the night fromclubs surrounding Taksim Square. The 7-Elevens peddle their own brand ofwine, the top-rated hotels offer casino gambling, Playboy sells openlyon newsstands, and the police regulate a red-light district that seemsthrust into this century from some longlost Arabian night. And though Istanbulis the spiritual heart of a nation where females are treated sub serviently,a 48-year-old woman, Tansu Ciller of the True Path Party, was re centlyinstalled as prime minister.

In the sumptuous and acoustically remarkable dining room of the HidivKasri hotel, once a pasha's summer palace, I overhear two businessmen discussingher ascendancy. They are speaking between bites of beef fillet stuffedwith button mushrooms, a cherished specialty of a restaurant that can berecom mended primarily for its appointments. Not even the exquisitely carvedwood paneling and the brocade fabrics can mute the voices of the gentlemen,one of whom is British, the other Turkish.

"Surprising, a woman elected in a Muslim country," the Englishman notes.

"It is fashionable," the Turkish businessman replies. "You had one,we decided we should have one."

"So," says the Turkish woman, "you are one of those baklava boys. Well,uh, not exactly.

Her name is Ayse Yasat, and she's a divorced teacher in her forties.While talking to her about the role of women in Turkish society, I offhandedlymention my efforts in seeking out the best in baklava. (I found it, bythe way, at the Baklavaci Gulluoglu, located opposite the maritime stationat the mouth of the Golden Horn.) Her smirks lead me to believe that a"baklava boy" is a man whose most intimate moments are not spent with women.

I have taken her to dinner in a small, glassed-in seafood restaurantin a slightly out-of-the-way, neo-bohemian district of Istanbul calledOrtakoy; it's the closest the city offers to New York's South Street Seaportor Boston's Quincy Market. Guides to the area proudly point out that thesection has a mosque, a church and a synagogue, and if that's not enough,there's also a pool hall. At dinner, we order grilled palamut, a mild-flavored,firmly textured local fish that I see alternately identified in restaurants,fish stores and guide books as tuna, bonito, scad and horse mackerel. InIstanbul, the sea is eternally mysterious.

"I am not a typical Muslim," says Ayse, "and I am not a typical Turkishwoman--dependent, traditional, obe dient, not adventuresome, worried aboutwhat people say. Turkish women are not very creative or imagina tive, andif they are, they don't show it. What is important to them is clothes anddecoration and showing off. Most husbands have mistresses or girlfriendsand come home late, but the women aren't allowed to go out. They are unhappy,but they can't bear to divorce."

She glares at me. I remind her that she cannot simultaneously brandme as a "baklava boy" and as a man who mistreats his women. She concedesthe point, continues.

"The women are very fond of children, especially sons. They don't reallydeal with girls, but the son is the dream prince, the king. When the boysget married, they always miss their mother's food. Here is a joke we tell:A man marries and his new wife cooks every day some thing new for him toeat, always she spends a lot of time and they are nice meals. He eats them,he is polite. One day she talks too long to the neighbors, she is latewith the dinner, she cooks only mincemeat and eggs, it is a little burned.She is scared of what her husband will say. He eats it, he smiles, he hasnever been so happy. He says, 'Oh, it is just like my mother made for me.'"

After being implicated in the evils that men do, I feel a need to validatemy manliness. In Istanbul, that means a visit to the red-light district,a maze of steep, narrow, wind ing, ill-lit cobblestoned streets that wendtheir way past storefront brothels. It is a trip into another millennium,a journey to an old-fashioned flesh market offering something between sexat its most primitive and sex at its most comic. The district is cordonedoff by police, who roughly frisk po tential customers as they enter thisnetherworld.

All the women look pretty much the same, as though they've heen aroundsince the dawn of By~antium. All rhe men act ~rert~ ml~h the same, transfixedby awe, shyness or deep respect. They stand in front of the shops, staring,un smiling, saying hardly a word. I've never seen a place so quiet thatis so full of half-dressed women. On the other hand, the sight of theseparticular half-dressed women would strike any man mute.

The only animation comes from bustling waiters walking in and out ofthe brothels carrying trays of tea and pastries. I must say, the slicesof chocolate cake look particularly good. The women greet the arrival oftheir snacks with the kind of pleasure not wasted on their customers. Irecognize familiar hungers churning up deep within me, so l set off tofind a nice piece of cevi~li, a kind of t-aklava made with ground walnutsinstead of pistachios.

In 1923, Mustafa Kemal, the man proclaimed Fa ther of the Turks, createdthe new Turk ish state. He secularized the country, changing the writtenlanguage from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin. This had one monumentaland probably un foreseen consequence All the old recipes were lost. Newgenerations could not read the writings of centuries past. The old wordswere not merely discarded, they were banned.

"In those days," says Vedat Bes,aran, 32, the food- andbeverage directorof the (~iragan Palace Kempinski, the grandest hotel in Istanbul, "if youeven write your name in Ottoman script, you were ar rested by the policeand the army."

Be,saran is a man obsessed with the cui sine of the Ottoman Empire.In his re search, far from complete, he has already found more than 1,800of the old recipes, 120 of them for eggplant dishes alone. Slowly, he isadapting them to the mod ern kitchen, which is no simple task, for eventhe measurements are of another time: Forty-four okkas equals I kantar,which equals 126 pounds. ~ust how picky were those Ottomans? Because lambsrise from the ground using their right leg, the more tender left was preferredfor lamb dishes.

In the Tugra Restaurant ("tugra" being the stamp of the sultan) at the(~iragan Palace, the food seems an amalgam of Turkish, Persian and Arabicwith some nouvelle plate arrangements added. Be,saran says that to operatesuch a restau rant, a member of the staff must stand over every table,explain every dish to every person. "The attention you must pay," he sayswith a sigh. ''YoU go to Ducasse [chef Alain Ducasse of Monaco's three-starLe Louis XV], he doesn't have to come to the table to explain the food.Here we must train our guests."

Whereas the Ottomans cooked and served a whole stuffed chicken, theTugra Restaurant offers a chicken breast stuffed with rice, pistachios,tomatoes and dill, roasted in the oven, then sliced and served on a bedof very creamy, slightly garlicky spinach. Be,saran says the chicken isone Ottoman dish, the spinach is an other, and the combination is his.Among the desserts at Tugra is the famous chicken- breast pudding, whichis very rich and sweet, but I cannot imagine eat ing chicken-breast puddingmore than once, not when you think about the ingredients.

If my single favorite dish in Istanbul was the stuffed chicken breast,my most exquisite meal was at Cengelkoy Iskele, located at a boat landingon the Asian side of the Bosporus. It is perhaps the best, although notby any means the most fa mous, of the hundreds of eating places that dotthe banks of the waterway. The most acclaimed is Urcan, located in thevillage of Sariyer, about thirty miles north of Istanbul proper (whereyou can also find the most famous borek restaurant, the Sariyer HunkarBorek,cisi). While the food at Urcan was acceptable, what I most admiredabout the place was the collec tion of unlikely celebrity photos on itswalls. Customers have included Burt Lancaster, Kareem Abdul]abbar, RudolfNureyev, Anatoly Karpov and Gary Hart.

Cengelkoy Iskele, like the third-floor fish house near the Grand Bazaar,is a no menu, no-English-spoken kind of place, but it's both more refinedand more ex pensive. The cooking reflects the care taken to please a demandingclientele. The food is traditional--meze, impecca ble fried calamari, squidcooked in an irre sistible green-peppergarlic-butter-soy and-tomato sauce,slightly salted sashimi grade tuna over mild purple onions, borek as lightas a croissant. I'd swim the Bosporus for one of its desserts, the bakedquince with ground pistachios and clotted cream.

The worst meal I had in Istanbul--I don't consider hot-fish pizza areal meal-- was at a restaurant famous in American lore, the legendaryPudding Shop. Lo cated on Divanyolu Street in the Sultan Ahmet section,close to the Blue Mosque, the Pudding Shop (real name: Lale) served asa mustering point in the Sixties and Seventies for legions of young Americans setting off for points east. If you were a pioneer in the drug culture,the Pudding Shop was where you came to hitch a ride, buy a fifth-hand VWBug or rendezvous with your old lady. Maybe she'd be there and maybe she'dhave left a note tacked to the wall "Couldn't wait. Gone to Katmandu."

The "world famous pudding shop," as it now bills itself, offers discomusic and plas tic tables. It is clean and sober. I know. I stood overthe steam table and inhaled.

The food ?

Bummer, man.

Next door is another notable establish ment, the Sultanahmet Koftecisi,better known as the Meatball Restaurant, a local favorite deserving ofits reputation. A light meal of meatballs grilled over a char coal fire,accompanied by a mixed salad of lettuce, onions and carrots, and fresh,soft Turkish bread costs less than $2

More upscale versions--actually rather expensive by Istanbul standards--arethe ocakba,sl restaurants, which are sushi bars for carnivores. (An "ocak"is an open cooking place, and "ba,si" means to sit around it and eat.)Here, various meats are skewered and cooked over charcoal fires. I particularlyliked the ,cop ,si,s kabobs, tiny bits of lamb and lamb fat eaten withpita bread. The word "cop" literally means 'lgarbage1~ and refers to theleftover naturc of the lamb pieces.

My only disaF)Flointment was the grilled lamb testiclcs, not nearlyas firm and meaty as I remember from a visit to Is ranbul ten years ago.With special memories, isn't that always the way ?

"I am so angry." says Fahrettin. "Hakan plays like he is rich and allthe girls want to go with him. I tell them they are capi talists, all theylike is his money."

I am listening to the tale of the three young Englishwomen who cameto Fahrcttin's shop and ended up buying from Hakan. Gentlemen that theyare Fahrettin, Hakan and another friend had invitecd the three to dinner.Hakan selected the restaurant, one where they open doors to him and ,parkhis car and treat him like a very important client. "of course they knowme," says Hakan. "I send them so many customers."

Of the three English girls, two were very pretty. The one who was notpretty, who was by all accollnts fat and ugly, was the one picked by Hakan"I see hlm kiss ing the gjrl," say a third friend. "and she is the onlyone who is ugly, and I say to him 'Hakan, why do you do that?' He says'I only\~ wannt to make her happy " The next day the three girls bouglltthree carrets worth $750 at Hakan's shop and one small carpet from Fahrettin.

Hakan is all businessman. His shop Imrerio Otomano, is tiny, about threeby four strides, with a miniature loft. He says that on one particularlygood day. he had two customers u~stairs, six downstairs and two outside.'l show the customers the pieces they like." he says. "Fahrettin showsthe customers the p ieces he likes." I tell hilll I am not read~ to buy,but I will b. hack. He sa\ i, "My gea-l grandfather says to me, 'I willcome back when the customer wh~- iays he will come back collles back.'"

He is right. Hakan is always right.. I end up purchasing a carpet fromFat Osman. As I leave, Hakan stands hunched over, holding the carpet Inearly bought but did not, looking forlorn and beaten. I turn the corner,wait a few seconds, then peek. He has recovered. He is speaking Catalan,a language he forgot to tell me he knew, to three tourists. I watch ashe sits cross-legged in the center of a carpet while four assistants grabthe corners and toss him into air. It is flying carpet trick. The touristsare loughing.

His granlfather, a wise man, can rest easy These three wlll not getaway.

July 1994