(From “The Trumpet Fisherman and Other Istanbul Sketches)

When I first met Bulent, he was working at his brother Edep’s shop in Çiçekçi, a pleasant residential area near Üsküdar. At the time, I was living in the neighborhood, and the brothers’ market stood on corner, and from the top of the hill looking down the street from the market you could see a fine view of the Bosphorous, with all the ships floating in the harbor and out at sea.

Edep was the more outgoing of the two brothers, and he spoke a little bit of English. “I am international people!” he would proclaim proudly, when we conversed in halting English. Edep took a liking to me; it was interesting to him that I was American, I suppose. “James, Amerika beautiful?” or he would have me choose: “Amerika? Istanbul? “

Or: “James, Amerika we go!” Edep’s hands would stretch out in a hypothetically west direction, urging us on. “Amerika big money!”

In contrast, Bulent, the other brother, was reserved, shy. We seldom spoke to one another. His well-combed hair was graying at the temples, though his face was youthful. He seemed so serious all the time.

The two brothers alternated shifts, with one taking the day and the other evenings. They were Kurds from somewhere in the east of Turkey, in the vicinity of Diyarbakır, I gathered, and had come to Istanbul some years ago. Both were married and had children, though I seldom saw them.

I was never good at saving money, and Istanbul is not a cheap city, especially if you like going out a lot, as I did. So usually I found myself broke at the end of every month, with payday still a long week away. Edep was really good about letting me have beer and cigarettes on account. He would keep track of what I owed and I would pay him when I had the money.

Buying on account is actually an old custom in Turkey, going back to the days before credit cards. Shop keepers have what is called the “veresiye defter,” or “account notebook,” where the names of the regular customers and amounts owed are kept in ink or pencil. Actually in most shops, they don’t even use a notebook, just sheets of paper with the names and amounts scratched down in long rows and columns.

Edep was always, as I said, very good about letting me, a yabancı, have beer and cigarettes on account. I probably could have had other things too, like food, but a strange sense of delicacy told me to keep my credit confined to beer and cigarettes. Besides, if I needed to eat there was Fetih, the canteen owner at the school who let me have sandwiches on account.

I was shy about asking Bulent. His shy, reserved air had in it something of watchfulness, or so I felt, and indeed when I finally approached him the first time about it he regarded me for a moment, and I saw him consider it, then with a shy, apologetic smile, he shook his head. It didn’t seem like a good idea, or he didn’t know me well enough. It was OK, I wasn’t surprised. That afternoon I waited until Edep came on for the evening shift, and made sure when I put my beer and cigarettes on the veresiye defter that Bulent was still there, so he could see that Edep knew me and trusted me, that I was a regular customer and that Edep and I already had a sound business arrangement. After that I knew that I probably could have also bought on credit from Bulent, but I still generally preferred to deal with his brother.

A time came, not many months later, when I moved from Çiçekçi back to Kadıköy. The flat was in Yeldeğirmeni, an old quarter of Kadıköy that in Ottoman times was home to Jewish and Armenian families. Nowadays the neighborhood is a bit rough, and the majority of people who live there are Turks and Kurds.

My first night at the flat, having settled in, I headed out to find the local market. It was on a corner facing an old pizzeria, the kind with the huge brick ovens and from the window you can see the workers shoveling pide and lahmacun in and out of the oven with long, wooden poles. Up the street was the local bakery.

I went into the market and – it was Bulent! He was behind the counter. We both started in surprise, then greeted each other enthusiastically. “Merhaba! Merhaba!” We were actually happy to see each other, to see a familiar face. I asked what he was doing in Yeldeğirmeni and he asked me the same thing. It turns out he was going into business for himself. Edep was fine, he said. He still had the shop in Çiçekçi. That evening I bought a few bottles of Efes and a pack of cigarettes. We shook hands and expressed our surprise again and wished each other good evening.

Outside on the way home I shook my head. Istanbul, a city of 13, 15, even 20 million souls, nobody is even sure exactly. How many markets would that make? And to think of all the markets and all the neighborhoods, that Bulent and I would end up on practically the same street. What were the odds? We took it as a good omen.

Inevitably, it wasn’t long before my spending caught up with me, and I was broke again. Putting my head down, I went to see Bulent at the market. I had noticed a change come over him in Yeldeğirmeni. He was a lot more relaxed and outgoing. Maybe having his own shop did that. Our relationship had changed too, and we were much more relaxed around each other.

Anyway, that evening I was broke and when I went to see Bulent, we chatted about the weather, about the neighborhood, about football (he was a Galatasaray fan). I asked if it was OK to have some beer and cigarettes on account, and he said no problem. It was a big relief, and Bulent and it was a good feeling to see that we now had our own arrangement, our own understanding.

I ended up living in Yeldeğirmeni through the summer. It was a long summer, and the days were long and hot. In the evenings I liked to get beer and cigarettes and sit out on the balcony drinking and smoking and watching the planes taking off and arriving at the airport. I tried to guess from the trajectory of the planes where they were headed. Many were headed south, to the pleasure resorts at Bodrum , Antalya and Marmaris. Others were headed to Europe, to Russia, to points East. Other times I watched the construction of the new metro line near the Nautilus shopping center, or the traffic piled up on the main highway, or the neighborhood women hanging their laundry out to dry on the balconies. It was a great balcony, located in a corner of the building, so that the breezes swirled there and kept the balcony cool even in August and you could see all around the different things happening in the city.

It was a different story down below. Construction crews in the neighborhood had gone to work on the main street, ripping it open to install or replace some pipes underneath. The street stones were piled up alongside the dug-up earth, and all day the sounds of the tractors and the hammers and drills kept the neighborhood very noisy, and the dust was everywhere, mixing with the heat and the noise of the workers. The streets were always crowded with people going to the markets and shops, and you had to step around the work and avoid running into people. In the evenings, it was cooler, the construction workers went home for the day, leaving the tractors parked and silent, and the dust settled. But even in the evenings the smell of the dust stayed in the air, in your nostrils.

“Çok toz!” Bulent would say, when I came in after work. Too much dust. He would complain about how the dust came in during the day and got all over everything in the shop, the fruit, the vegetables, the canned goods, the packets of chewing gum and cigarettes – everything – and he, Bulent, would have to keep everything constantly wiped down with a rag. At one point the work was going on right in front of the shop – the workers ripped up parts of the street in sections – and all day Bulent had to listen to the sounds of the tractors and drills right outside his shop.

I went to the market every evening after work. When I had money I paid in cash, and when I didn’t, Bulent let me use the veresiye defter. It was a splendid arrangement, mutually beneficial. Throughout that long, hot, dusty, noisy summer in Yeldeğirmeni I never needed to worry about having ice cold beer and cigarettes to enjoy from my cool balcony high up overlooking the neighborhood. In return, Bulent had a loyal customer, and a fairly large pay out every month. Often my tab would run up into the hundreds, and each month on the tenth I paid the amount in full. “Iyi Gün,” the Good Day, we called it.

At the end of the summer, with the new school year starting and autumn on the way, I found that I had to move again. The people I was renting from wanted to rent to the incoming Erasmus students who would pay higher prices. So I found a room in Erenköy, which is quite a ways from Kadıköy. When I moved I still owed Bulent some money, but promised myself I would go and see him as always when I got paid on the tenth.

But in Erenköy I was quickly absorbed by my new surroundings. It’s a trim, residential neighborhood, home to fairly well-off professionals and retirees. I fell into a new routine. The flat was very near the school where I worked, and so in the mornings I walked instead of taking the dolmuş. I hardly ever went to Kadıköy anymore except sometimes on the weekends. I even found a local market that let me by on account. I soon forgot all about Yeldeğirmeni and Bulent.

Months passed, a gorgeous Mediterranean fall followed by a pounding, cold winter. For weeks the city was covered in snow and ice. Then I had to move again. This time the flatmate announced, rather abruptly, that he had been offered a position in Barcelona, and was going to move there. After a bit of scrambling, I found a room for rent on Craigslist, and joyfully found myself back once again in Kadıköy.

The first night in the new flat, having paid the first month and deposit, I quickly set my few things in the room and went out for a walk. I walked past the fish markets and the produce markets, the fish and rakı cafes, realizing how much I had missed being in Kadıköy. In comparison, Erenköy was dull, desperate housewife central. Here in Kadıköy was all that I liked about Istanbul, the Bosphorous and the bustle of the crowds on the streets and by the waterfront, all the shops and cafes huddled on busy back streets.

I found myself walking through these back streets, familiarizing myself again with old haunts. Suddenly I was in Yeldeğirmeni, and I knew why I had gone there.

Bulent’s eyes widened with surprise and joy when I walked in. “Merhaba! Merhaba!” We shook hands energetically, and I pulled out my wallet. Bulent was already going for the veresiye defter and, taking a pencil from behind his ear, scanned the pages until he found my name. The amount had long ago been added up, months ago, and was waiting to be paid.

After paying the money, I apologized to Bulent for the long delay. I explained, in my halting Turkish, how I had moved to Erenköy, how it was far away, and how I had been busy at work and forgotten. No problem, no problem, Bulent said. He said he had worried that something bad had happened to me, or that maybe I had gone back to America. So we were both relieved, he because the account was settled and I because he had no hard feelings.

It wasn’t long before I was back on the veresiye defter with Bulent, even though it was a long walk to his market from my new flat. But when the tenth of the month came, I made sure to head straight over to the market and pay up.

“Iyi gün,” I said, handing the money over with a smile. The Good Day.

“Iyi gun,” Bulent said, nodding in agreement. “Ben, iyi gün. Sen, kötu gün!” Good Day for me, Bad Day for you.

Later I thought about Bulent and our agreement. Istanbul is a living body, with a strong heart fed by a vast network of busy veins and arteries. The veresiye defter, even though it is technically illegal these days, is one of the main arteries of commercial life. It is still widely used, especially in the poorer neighborhoods, where people don’t have access to credit cards. I doubt the city would ever crack down on the use of the veresiye defter (the reason why it is technically illegal is because the state cannot collect taxes on these hand-to-hand, informal credit transactions). To forbid the use of the veresiye defter would be to clog one of Istanbul’s main arteries, the effect could be almost like a cardiac arrest. It would be like cutting off the flow of credit to America; overnight, the great empire would come crashing down. But then, I’ve always found political analogies to be superficial and weak. I’m just glad that in the end, Bulent and I came out straight.

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James Tressler is a writer and teacher whose books, including “The Trumpet Fisherman and Other Istanbul Sketches,” can be purchased at Lulu.com. He lives in Istanbul.